3rd week: Girlfriend! :)

Ola! I don't have a lot of time, so I'll try to keep it short this time ;)

I decided to go for a quiet weekend last week. A bit of studying and relaxing. Monday; school. Tired afterwards.

Tuesday, just one workshop and in the evening ... the Freshers Ball! Yes, a ball is like what we call a "gala" in the Netherlands (: I went straight from university to Antonio's place, because he was the only guy I knew with a suit and he was ok with lending it to me. We talked for a while and I offered to bake him and Jan pancakes. So me and Jan went to ASDA, bought all the stuff and I ended up buying a whole new black suit ... (: thought i might need it later on and it was very cheap anyway :) I also manged to get 1 pink rose for free ... but taking it out of a bigger bouquet. I'm so evil! ;)

The pancakes worked out fine and after getting ready at home, around 9:30 i picked up my date ... date? ... yes! people have dates for those kind of Balls! (: ... well... my date was looking so incredibly beautiful! didn't get her to blush given her a rose though! :) ... so off to the ball... which... sucked! Wrong kind of music, university student union sure don't know how to throw a ball! So there was nothing else to do then shoot a lot of photos ... with me, sigal and joy in it. which i'll put online soon, hopefully after this post, guess who my date was afterwards :p

Wednesday I decided to play a $2500 tournament online. Jan popped by with pizza's, so I showed him how to play. And after 4 and a hours ... i managed to win the tournament! I turned my 6 dollars in to 700!! WOOHAAA!! :D - we celibrated it by going for some beers and the cinema afterwards with a lot of people; Shark Tale ... pretty funny! :) Afterwards i went home with Sigal and that evning I asked her ... if she wanted to be my girlfriend! :) We've been seeing each other a lot the last 4 weeks and I told her I wanted to take it easy earlier on, but I started feeling more and more for her the last few weeks and I feel very very happy about my decision (and hers of course! :)

Thursday; school all day. Went for "Goodbye, Lenin!" afterwards and at 22:00 Daantje arrived at Talbot Campus! haaaaaa! very cool to see him again! funny to have a piece of "home home" coming over to Bournemouth :) made me realize i'm already totally integrated here as well :) so we got his stuff back to my place and went out to Elements that night with Joy and Sigal :) Was ok there, not anything special (:

Friday, i took Daan to university and put him in the library to study there. I finished my Flash workshop at 16:30 and afterwards we had some rum and cokes in Hurn House before we went to Valerio's party in Winbourne house. The party turned out to be a LOT of fun, we got a bit too tipsy ... but i guess that was part of the fun ;)

Saturday, slow starting day. Showed Daan around town for a bit, had some coffee, met up with Ozz and Jan and we watched "City of God" at my place. Then went to Bar Bluu for the night, it was almost like a wickedjazzsounds session, so we all hit the floor like crazy! Emily joined us later on and received quite a lot of attention of the male supporters of my group, excluding yours truely, because i'm such a good little soul of course! ;D we moved to party over to "Camel", where we smoked a Mango waterpipe and we hit the floor and bongo's like nobody else (since everybody else was sitting ;) - absolutely GREAT fun, truely smashing evening! :)

Sunday, i took Daan to the casino to play the 5 pound poker tournament. I busted out 9th and he busted out 5th ... JUST out of the money, but it was exciting and a lot of fun :) At the moment we are sitting at home, Daan is studying and i'm typing this at the moment :)

I'll go and try to put some pictures up now ... they are on my laptop, so could take a while (:

x x x
moi :)

2nd Week: Slowly getting busier...

Another week flew by! It is getting busier and busier by the day… Study really kicked off this week. I could actually be found in the library at times! I’m not even sure I know where the library is in the VU (Vrije Universiteit) back home…

Saturday, where we left off last week… i went straight after the blog update for a milkshake in town. Even though it was extremely cold and raining … we drank it outside on the terrace! :) Afterwards, me, Joy and Sigal went to ASDA to do some shopping for the Latino party, which the 2 Latino girls were having that evening. The turn up was huge! And the hostesses managed to get pretty drunk! Too bad the party was terminated by the security guards, but at least it was an ending in style! ;)

Sunday, I went to play a 5 pound buy-in Texas Hold’em No Limit Poker Tournament in the Gala Casino here in Bournemouth. Very exciting! Since it was my first real life tournament. I was surprised to find out that all the tables had to do their own shuffling, cutting and dealing… The tournament progressed and I managed to triple up at one point, after that the blinds seemed to start climbing like a madman. I made it to the final table, but after a total of 3 hours, I had to make my final stand and I threw all my chips in on 78 suited. Nothing hit and I went home in 7th place. Price money started at 4th place, so maybe next time!

I got out and found myself sitting in the cinema with Joy and Sigal an hour later… Wimbledon! Yeshhh! Some cool shots in there, but quite the “chick flicky” movie :) Went home to catch up with some reading for the next day afterwards.

Monday, a long day in university. The day started with a class in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) in combination with Dreamweaver and it progressed through a really boring lecture in Media Theory to the first “Design for Interactive Media” class. We had to catch up with the class we missed last week, so it went quite the pace. This is the one of the subjects I really hope to learn the most from, since I came here for “design purposes”. It was interesting to hear that quite a lot of my course mates came to learn the technical side, cool that everybody wants something else from the course :)

Like I mentioned before, the project I have to do for the “Designing for Interactive Media” course is linked with “Narrative and New Media” course is going to be really really cool! I have to create a visual book with pen and paper to crystallize all my ideas on the design/aesthetical issues, next to that I have to write a story that can be followed in a non-linear fashion, so that the user can jump through the story as he/she chooses. There are so many forms to choose… it is overwhelming! I want to use video, but also 3D. I want to design pretty pictures, but need to be able integrate it in the Interface well… I need a story, but it should fit the design … music, sound… wahh! (:

I’ll keep you guys posted on it … it keeps my brain busy a lot though! They have so many facilities here, sound editing studios, 3D labs, video studios with blue screens and they even have a motion capture facility for animating 3D models … I wanna use ‘m allll!! So many things, so little time!! :)

Last class was a Media Theory seminar with David Gauntlett, who wrote the book “Web Studies”, which quite some of the studies at the VU use. I find him a really interesting and entertaining guy, and no I’m not writing this to suck up, just stating an opinion ;) not sure he even found his way to my blog yet ;D

After uni I felt like seeing Sigal, so I dropped by her room in Cranborne house. I intended to only stay for a bit, but we ended up telling each other our life stories for about 6 hours… :) ever sat down and told somebody your life story? Where to start? What to tell? What are you forgetting? There is just so much! :) So for today my children; tell somebody who doesn’t know your life story! …. ;)

Wednesday, the results of the ISOP photographic competition were announced. I had entered with the picture of my room with the 21 people in it … but … shockingly … I DIDN’T WIN! RECOUUNNTTTT!!! ;) – but at least the picture made it up on the board showing the best entries ;D – so we know what that means!

CELIBRATE!! Yeehaw! Off to Ozz’s place! Beer! Pasta! Music! Woohoo! Ok, there were only 4 ppl there, but that doesn’t matter. Ozz decided to stay home with his “date” afterwards and me and Jan went to a triple birthday party at the Student Village on the campus … a full house! International students all over (:

Me, Jan, Joy and Sigal took a cab around 01:00 back to Cranborne house, where the fire alarm went off at 02:15 that night! Everybody had to get out of the building, not that every did, but still … after 30 minutes we could get back in the building and try to get some sleep again … which worked, but then at 05:00 it went off again! So far for a good night sleep! Went downstairs to eat some yoghurt with Doa’a, which was nice (: although she was uttering some incomprehensible sentences that were produced from a still half asleep subconscious (; - so after 40 minutes of an extremely annoying sound, I climbed back to the 7th floor to get back to sleep (:

(the attentive reader can draw some conclusions from this last paragraph… ;)

Thursday, daytime was full of lectures and seminars at university. In the evening watched Trainspotting at Carolina’s place with about 10 people, couldn’t see the end because me and my course m8tes were going for a drink with David Gauntlett (yes, our tutor from Media Theory ;) – cool having a drink with one of your teachers! So, I bought him a beer and now I can finally say I have at least once in my lifetime tried to get my teacher drunk!

Friday, I had invited a lot of people to my place in the evening. Turned out to be a really cool! The going out plans stranded, but lots of photo sessions made up for that … I hope to put ‘m up later on (:

Saturday, yea – here we are again! I’m going to study today, draw in my visual book and put my ideas about the design/narrative project into words. Another fun week in prospect, Tuesday there is the “Freshers Ball” – will have to find a suit for that … take a long educated guess who my date is ;) – then Thursday I’m having my first visitor coming over!! Well … dutch visitor that is … Daantje!!! I’ll go check where the best parties are this weekend and of course play the poker tournament in the casino with him ;D looking forward to it! :)

It is nice to hear people are having fun at home and things are going well. I got a phone call from mum yesterday, which made me really happy (: love you very much mum! :) – Bob also called me earlier on to let me know how things are going, thanks very much m8tey! Hang in there! ;D Also heard that people got way to drunk on Daan’s b’day party in the Paradiso, that WickdJazzSounds is still as fun as ever, that Rob managed to crash his face into the street tarmac, that Todd is doing fine as ever; cool reading your stories man! That Anna is getting along fine with her dissertation (and boyfriend! :) That Sanne is actually to be found in university … and is dancing along with Daan and Todd also :D And Remco is still in the race for a 3 year, salary included, job to become a lawyer in … St Maarten! I hope you’ll make it man! Even though that would mean I wouldn’t see you very much … but I’ll come visit of course ;D

Time for me to do some design and writing!
Big Beso,
Rutger :)

Some Pictures from the Last Weeks :)

Just a handful of pictures - click to enlarge! if you want some more of them just tell me on MSN and i'll send you some :)


Haaaa, as most as my friends know me on the dance floor! ;)


Me and Sigal on stage in the Walkabout :)


Valerio's birthday party, my cocktails worked out quite well!


Under the stairs at Valerio's birthday party :)


Party at Jan's floor last night

New Phone Number

So here we go, my new phone number is:
0044 7968 274643

Sending sms's to phone's abroad is pretty expensive here... so I won't always reply to them... but I can safely answer every call without going bankrupt now! :) So calllll meeeeeee!! ;)

First week in university.

Monday, so here we are, 10am in the morning; the official enrollment! After proving that I have paid my tuition fees, showing that I really am a Bachelor of Science, I am the one and only Rutger van Dijk and quite a few more things. I finally receive my official university ID card. Je me suis un étudiant once more!
After this we meet up in Media Studio 3; a push code mechanism protected studio with 14 wide screen Mac G5’s. This is the studio where we will be spending most of our study time; lectures, workshops or self study. We are introduced to each other and it turns out there are 11 full time students and 3 part time students. From the 11 full timers, there are 2 native UK students and the others span quite a bit of the globe: Netherlands, France, Spain, Columbia, Nigeria, Dubai, Lebanon, India and China. Backgrounds range from Multimedia to Business Studies over Computer Science to Microbiology. Fascinating bunch of backgrounds! I’m sure we’ll get the most out of it this year :) I signed up for Dreamweaver classes on Tuesday and Flash classes on Friday, next to that I will try to follow the MA Computer Animation workshops on Friday on Maya and one of the part timers offered me to help me learn Cinema 4D! I’m so excited I can actually learn this stuff in university! Woohoooo!

The Mondays last from 10:00 till 17:00, I have a technical workshop, a course in Media Theory and one in Designing for Interactive Media. This Monday there was a speech from the head of the Bournemouth Media School and a welcome reception after classes … free wine … you do the maths! When walking around the reception I felt really happy bumping in to all the people I have met already here, sometimes wonder how I seem to know so many already! Me and Ozz managed to collect a huge amount of free wine vouchers and happily took advantage of ‘m … after that I was going for dinner with Sigal … but she already had dinner when I got there! – this reminded me of this time I was going for dinner with Doa’a, but she already ate HER PORTION of the meal! Maybe it is the UK! ;)

Tuesday: my first Dreamweaver workshop – pretty basic stuff. I got home and started up a web cam session with Vincent, who was throwing his birthday party at his place. It was pretty weird seeing everybody at home having a good time and me sitting here at home all by myself! But my rescue Jan knocked on the door, who brought some Fosters along!

Wednesday: long live the bureaucracies! I tried all day, and I mean ALL DAY, to get a mobile phone subscription … 6 hours of visiting different stores, filling in forms, being sent away, etc. etc. I managed to still have nothing … extra papers you need, proofs, identifications, letters, bank statements, machines that are not working, faxes that won’t send … trust me … they got it all! Got home around 17:30 without a mobile phone still… Jan dropped by again for a beer, so I relaxed, had some food and then went to Doa’a for a little get together of people there. We went with a bunch to pick up Ozz, who was hiding in Club Med near my place and dragged him, me, Jan, Doa’a and a Jordanian friend to Klute. Quite a fancy place, but it was student evening! Free entrance shots and if you buy two glasses of wine, you get the bottle for free! Haaaa! I can’t exactly point out why or when, but it turned out to be a great evening! Silly moves on the floor, silly conversations, singing on the street afterwards and of course some Chicken Kebabs! Slept pretty well afterwards :D
Thursday: Got up early to go to the Orange store and finalize the deal … everything went well … up till the last moment: “we want a written letter from your accommodation officer that you are going to stay here a year”. My eyes almost popped out of my head, I had brought my tenancy agreement, my tuition fees payment proof, my university acceptation letter, my bank statement who was sent to my address and all my ID’s … but NO… walked back the route to my room for the 14th time now. I got the letter, gave it to them and they managed to take another hour of my time, but in the end I HAVE THE PHONE! :)

University was quite cool; Thursdays last from 12:00 till 17:00 and I have Professional Studies and a course in Narrative & New Media, which seems like a really cool subject. The course is linked with Designing in Interactive Media and we’ll have to deliver an interactive non-linear piece of work, both aesthetically and ‘narrative-ly’ pleasing. Should crack some of my brain cells, but I’m really looking forward to it! I hope to combine quite some of the media mediums … film/photography/3d animation/graphic design/programming/written language … we’ll see!

Afterwards I went to Carolina’s place to grab a pizza and watch a movie with 12 others. “The Insider”; pretty long movie, although it is quite good! Dropped by Sigal after the movie and had a really good conversation about how we look at the world … always makes me happy if I find people who look at things the same way :)

Friday: got up pretty late, since my Flash workshop starts at 15:00. Again a pretty cool workshop! A little bit of game design to learn how to use Flash and Action scripting, which I can handle quite fine because of my Computer Science background. Time flew and I found myself walking to Ozz’s place, who lives in the Winterborne part of Bournemouth. We watched some Computer Animation works, which he got from the library. He studies Computer Animation, so I hope me and him can exchange quite some knowledge about it in the year to come!

After walking back to the Talbot Campus, taking the bus to Cranborne house, walking to ASDA, buying a 1.5l bottle of Vodka + juices and continuing walking to Thor’s place, we found Thor sitting on the couch and within 15 minutes he managed to catapult his room mates mobile phone, over his other room mates head (who actually did a cool evasive maneuver) against the wall, which cracked up the phone quite nicely! Pretty nice aim by Thor there! ;)

We collected our ASDA stuff (and the mobile phone) and went over to Hurn House where Jan was having a floor party, well actually – I think we organized it FOR him, but that’s ok Jan! You know we love you! ;-) A lot of the international students showed up and it was nice seeing some of the people I hadn’t seen in a while (well … a week! ;) – and the balloons and straws me and Ozz bought in ASDA proved to be quite colorful and cheery! Antonio at one point offered me and some others some prosciuto at his place, so I managed to finish a whole pack of it, together with quite some parmesan cheese … ooeee GOODY! And Antonio’s soothing guitar sounds made it even better ;D

So with a full stomach (well, me at least) we arrived at the Walkabout – where people could prove they were still able to move after all the drinks. I think everybody managed, although Emily got close to failing her exam! ;P The club closed, people stumbled home and I guess in the end … everybody was happy! :)

Saturday/Today: here I am … typing away on my little computer. Still happy, a bit more organization in my head on what I have to do this year, what the study expects of me … and what people will be in the story in the end, the story I can call “Bournemouth” when I’m old and grey… :)

Although I’m doing so great and am busy at times, I do think about you guys! Especially Bob and Rob at the moment… I feel bad I can’t be there for you guys now … but you both know I’m here if you need an extra ear to talk to! Even though it is a virtual ear one at the moment …

*big kiss for all*
Rutger :)

Last Days Off :)

Aloha!

Since the international orientation program ended last Saturday and I only had to do a handful of introductory courses this Tuesday, I was off the rest of the week. Just wanted to give you all a general impression of the last few days :)

Tuesday: After receiving my schedule for the upcoming year, learning about the campus library, the internal Media website for postgraduates and a short introduction to using Mac’s, I already managed to have myself promise two girls to help them with their life critical problems. So I took the bus back from campus with Doa’a towards Cranborne house…

Yes, 3 side notes here:
1) Bus: Yes Yes! I managed to have a flat tire on the first day already!
2) Doa’a: This really is a name yea! ;) Doa’a is also doing the MA Interactive Media, being one of the 11 lucky ones to study with me!! *cough* - I actually met her the very first day on the campus tour and have seen her quite a bit since then, she for sure is going to be one of my best friends this year and I hope we will do a lot of work together too! … next to doing some silly dance moves on the dance floor of course!
3) Cranborne House: the biggest student accommodation in town.

So, after a nice bus ride we got their and fixed the first problem… 1 second, an opened pickle jar and a happy smile later, I found myself in the elevator up to the 7th floor. *knock knock* - now, it is an ugly door, but the smile behind it it reveals is so beautiful! it is amazing how uplifting a smile can be (: :) – I was supposed to fix Sigal’s MSN on her Mac iBook – now, I know nothing about Mac’s… but that’s ok! And since her internet wasn’t working in the first place, there was nothing to fix anyway… silly computers :)

So we decided to do the shopping for the night, since I invited a total of about 15 people to come to my place … turned out to be 23 people in my room at one point; but that’s ok! Yes, well guessed! That is indeed the picture from the previous post! After a lot of happy cheers and drinks, we headed towards the Walkabout around the corner; a quite popular Australian club. Everybody was having a good time on the dance floor and it turned out to be a really good evening! :)

Wednesday: recover day – went to the movie Hero with Doa’a and Jan. Beautiful camera work and good story, a bit slow at times though :)

Thursday: was supposed to be a party at Cranborne House, but things were unclear and they were cancelled in the end… so up to the Old Fire Station! This is the most popular club, especially among the English boys’n’girls, it is very hot, very busy and there are more short skirts than you actually want to see… did I mention the queue takes an hour every time? – exactly why do we come here? ;)

I joined the queue with just Jan… but soon after we were joined by Christine and 2 of her Brazilians and soon Trina and Milena followed, who were both pretty TIPSY ;-) Now, you guys should know that I gave Trina one of my rubber ducks, which makes a lovely squeaky noise when pinched. I think the queue enjoyed the duck very much! ;P Within the hour we managed to learn some English, Dutch, German, Spanish, French, Russian, Tjech, Portuguese and Norwegian, not bad! :)

Inside, me and Trina had the duck float in every pint of beer we could find and we found out the duck is fluorescent… which makes a great attribute on the dance floor! After losing everybody else, we just had fun making a fool out of ourselves dancing … my favorite habit still!

Friday: Valerio’s birthday party in Winterborne House. House parties are mostly just an excuse to get drunk cheap … there were about 30 to 35 people in the 2 kitchens and the hall … pretty cozy! At one point me and Joy decided to go James Bond style through the staircase, we almost completed our mission: shutting down the entire electricity system of the house, but conscious got in the way and made us flee downstairs again. After retrieving Sigal from the party downstairs, we found a VERY small room under the stairs of about 1.5m3. We locked ourselves in, and managed to tell each other ghost stories for about an hour! … when the door flew open – and the police came in the house we decided it was time to go – a 45minute walk through Bournemouth brought us home safely.

Saturday: Visited the Information Fair on the Campus, which was pretty boring. Went for a long beach walk with Jan, we wanted to go surfing, but couldn’t get hold of 2 boards, so we crashed at Simon and Christine’s place for 2 hours to grab a snack. Cool chat … but it got time for the next party. A house warming party at Thor’s place! Again, people tend to get TIPSY at those parties! I danced a short tango in the living room with Kristin and afterwards we paraded to some clubs near my house. Another dancing evening and I finally fell asleep around 04:00, which is pretty late for UK standard ;)

Sunday: Went to play some Tennis with Jan, but was too tired to keep it going for very long. Went to the casino all by myself at night, because there is this Poker Tournament going on most nights at 20:30, it was supposed to last till 03:00 in the morning, so I decided not to join… after all … my first class is starting tomorrow!

Yesh! Here we are, had 2 absolutely GREAT weeks. I really feel like starting the study now though … it is going to be tough … but I already found lots of people to get me through the year I’m sure :) … on to a great year!

Lot’s of Love,
Moi :)