(no subject)
Alright. I just got home yesterday, now it's a matter of pretty much chillaxing until the Photoshoot on Saturday. Here are two of the.. Incidences that I can recall off the top of my head, I've got a couple more but they're all in my laptop. Which is.. All the way downstairs.
Thing I currently miss most about Amsterdam: Room Service.
Now there are a few things I learnt from my walk around the red light district. Fun thing number one: If you take a deep breath you will find yourself suddenly going I'm hungry and I don't know why.
Whereas during the entire trip I had barely seen seven American tourists, at least 85% of the people in the red light district were Americans.
And, the relevant one, prostitutes do not like other women.
So here's what happened. I'm wandering around with a camera, but obviously am not going to take pictures of the girls in the windows themselves because that's just rude. I am taking pictures of the rooms they stay in, the curtains that mean they're 'occupied', the stores and, my favourite, their audience.
There's nothing like The Red Light District to bring out everyone's inner 9 year old boy. My reaction most of the time was quite simply *gigglesnortgigglegigglescufffootlookupawkward wavegringrin* I felt rude looking at the women themselves if they saw I was looking. I have NO idea why. However, when I did catch a glimpse they were either talking to customers or.. Arranging for customers. (You could ALWAYS, ALWAYS tell who had just.. Catered to their services because they had this hunched over, hands in pockets, looking-intently-at-the-ground walk.)
But anyway. So I'm wandering around like this, and the entire time I've got my camera out. I see an empty window and I go to take a shot of where the prostitutes stay until I realize there's another girl right next to it, so I put my camera down. I make eye contact with this girl and instantly break it off to look at the ground, just HOLDING back laughter. The ISSUE with that is I tend to look smug as all hell when I do it, just this huge grin. So I'm walking away and I hear this BAMBAMABAMBAM. I turn around and it's the girl, furiously banging against her window, yelling at me and flipping me off.
Bursting out laughing was not the right move as she just got all the angrier. Her.. Audience is cracking the hell up as am I and I finally high tail it out of there. I really did want to take a picture, but I didn't want her to send some huge Dutch bouncer after me. Hell, I didn't want _her_ to come after me. Dutch women are freaking huge.
What I think happened is that she saw the camera, saw me looking smug and very likely thought that I thought of her as some circus attraction or subhuman scum and that I was laughing at her. She started acting out the MINUTE I broke eye contact with her, so I really think that's what caused her outburst. I can understand it fully, but doesn't mean I didn't high tail it to the hotel with a HUGE grin.
I got to spend a day in Belgium on thursday. 4 hour bus ride to and fro. And, to make things luckier, this obnoxious Spanish chick in front of me has her goddamn cellphone/mp3 player on speaker so she and her friends could listen to fucking rap. I ask her to turn it down. She ignores me. I ask her to turn it down, she ignores me. The tour guide asks her to turn it down. Guess what she does? Yeah.
Now, unfortunately for her, just the previous night I was reading a thread in SomethingAwful where this one guy lived beneath these people who would play obnoxiously loud music no matter how many times he asked them to stop. The thread was him asking people for ideas on how to get back at them. A couple had stuck with me.
So I take off my ipod, get out my speakers, and find it. Yakety Sax (For those of you who don't know what Yakety Sax is). And start playing it on a loop. At first I don't think she caught on, but after raising the volume on her cellphone a couple of times to have me simply crank up the volume on my ipod all the more I think she caught the goddamn message.
Was it the Right Thing To Do? No. Did I just sink to her level? Yes. Did I get my message across? Oh yeah. Did half the bus hate my guts? Quite so. DID SHE PUT DOWN THAT GODDAMN CELLPHONE? YES. DID SHE LOOKED ANNOYED AS ALL HELL? OF COURSE. WORTH IT? COMPLETELY.
So we get to Brudges and it's this amazing little medieval village built around a Monastery. Very, very beautiful. But fucking European weather that was the bane of my life living there struck again. DrySunnysunnyRAINsunnRAIsunnysunnysunnyRAINsuRAINsRAINRAIRAIsunnysunnyrainrainSUNRAIN.
I was only there for a couple of hours, but I got some nifty pics of the castle or, as I call it, Not-Hogwarts.
Next up THE TOURIST FROM THE LAYERS OF GODDAMN HELL and whatever the hell else is inside my far, far away laptop.
Thing I currently miss most about Amsterdam: Room Service.
Now there are a few things I learnt from my walk around the red light district. Fun thing number one: If you take a deep breath you will find yourself suddenly going I'm hungry and I don't know why.
Whereas during the entire trip I had barely seen seven American tourists, at least 85% of the people in the red light district were Americans.
And, the relevant one, prostitutes do not like other women.
So here's what happened. I'm wandering around with a camera, but obviously am not going to take pictures of the girls in the windows themselves because that's just rude. I am taking pictures of the rooms they stay in, the curtains that mean they're 'occupied', the stores and, my favourite, their audience.
There's nothing like The Red Light District to bring out everyone's inner 9 year old boy. My reaction most of the time was quite simply *gigglesnortgigglegigglescufffootlookupawkward wavegringrin* I felt rude looking at the women themselves if they saw I was looking. I have NO idea why. However, when I did catch a glimpse they were either talking to customers or.. Arranging for customers. (You could ALWAYS, ALWAYS tell who had just.. Catered to their services because they had this hunched over, hands in pockets, looking-intently-at-the-ground walk.)
But anyway. So I'm wandering around like this, and the entire time I've got my camera out. I see an empty window and I go to take a shot of where the prostitutes stay until I realize there's another girl right next to it, so I put my camera down. I make eye contact with this girl and instantly break it off to look at the ground, just HOLDING back laughter. The ISSUE with that is I tend to look smug as all hell when I do it, just this huge grin. So I'm walking away and I hear this BAMBAMABAMBAM. I turn around and it's the girl, furiously banging against her window, yelling at me and flipping me off.
Bursting out laughing was not the right move as she just got all the angrier. Her.. Audience is cracking the hell up as am I and I finally high tail it out of there. I really did want to take a picture, but I didn't want her to send some huge Dutch bouncer after me. Hell, I didn't want _her_ to come after me. Dutch women are freaking huge.
What I think happened is that she saw the camera, saw me looking smug and very likely thought that I thought of her as some circus attraction or subhuman scum and that I was laughing at her. She started acting out the MINUTE I broke eye contact with her, so I really think that's what caused her outburst. I can understand it fully, but doesn't mean I didn't high tail it to the hotel with a HUGE grin.
I got to spend a day in Belgium on thursday. 4 hour bus ride to and fro. And, to make things luckier, this obnoxious Spanish chick in front of me has her goddamn cellphone/mp3 player on speaker so she and her friends could listen to fucking rap. I ask her to turn it down. She ignores me. I ask her to turn it down, she ignores me. The tour guide asks her to turn it down. Guess what she does? Yeah.
Now, unfortunately for her, just the previous night I was reading a thread in SomethingAwful where this one guy lived beneath these people who would play obnoxiously loud music no matter how many times he asked them to stop. The thread was him asking people for ideas on how to get back at them. A couple had stuck with me.
So I take off my ipod, get out my speakers, and find it. Yakety Sax (For those of you who don't know what Yakety Sax is). And start playing it on a loop. At first I don't think she caught on, but after raising the volume on her cellphone a couple of times to have me simply crank up the volume on my ipod all the more I think she caught the goddamn message.
Was it the Right Thing To Do? No. Did I just sink to her level? Yes. Did I get my message across? Oh yeah. Did half the bus hate my guts? Quite so. DID SHE PUT DOWN THAT GODDAMN CELLPHONE? YES. DID SHE LOOKED ANNOYED AS ALL HELL? OF COURSE. WORTH IT? COMPLETELY.
So we get to Brudges and it's this amazing little medieval village built around a Monastery. Very, very beautiful. But fucking European weather that was the bane of my life living there struck again. DrySunnysunnyRAINsunnRAIsunnysunnysunnyRAINsuRAINsRAINRAIRAIsunnysunnyrainrainSUNRAIN.
I was only there for a couple of hours, but I got some nifty pics of the castle or, as I call it, Not-Hogwarts.
Next up THE TOURIST FROM THE LAYERS OF GODDAMN HELL and whatever the hell else is inside my far, far away laptop.