The end of the world as we know it

There’s a party in my tummy!
So yummy! So yummy!

Here’s some more funny stuff on youtube:

Guy having a party in his tummy too

Stormtrooper in Tokyo

Darth Vader and stormtrooper in Tokyo

Good luck and Tetris

Have you ever played tetris? You must have? Do you know the feeling when bad bricks keep on piling up and you can’t make a line, and just before your screen’s full exactly the right bricks come out and you clear out the entire screen? This is what my life feels like right now. People are being so nice to me for no reason! I especially have to thank Shieri and Alvaro who have been spoiling me recently lately with a lot things ^_^.

My holiday is planned! I’m going back to Holland for Christmas, and I will spend some days traveling around Europe with Kamil before going back to Japan. It’s a crazy and busy trip and I’m sure I will enjoy it a lot. It’s an expensive time too, and I need to spend a lot of money on traveling and stuff. It feels good though.

In fact, I decided to order a new lens for myself yesterday. After taking pictures of the monkeys last weekend I really found that I reached the limits of my zoom lens, so I ordered a new Canon 70-300mm IS lens. It should be quite good ^_^

It seems that whenever I feel like my luck changes for the better someone else’s luck changes for the worst. Is there a fixed amount of luckmatter (luckions?) in the universe? If one person gets it, it goes away from someone else, perhaps. And if there is, would you feel bad if you took much luckmatter for yourself? I wonder.

I haven’t really looked through the monkey pictures closely yet. I’ve deleted the blurry ones, but I haven’t really selected the good ones yet. Guess I’ll try to make time tonight, but it’s already 23:30 and I have a lot of work to do tomorrow :’( Work really does limit my creativity. I was gonna get started on Google’s Android too, but my job is taking all of my processing power where programming is concerned…

Het contact met de wereld compleet verloren

Vandaag las ik een nieuwsbericht waar me de mond van open viel. Blijkbaar is de gemiddelde Nederlander ‘immuun’ geworden voor ellende. Men ziet zoveel (al dan niet humanitaire) rampen in het nieuws dat iedereen het maar negeert. Veel mensen willen geen ellende zien tijdens hun avondeten en daarom zappen ze maar ergens anders heen.

Dat is niks verwonderlijks. Waar me letterlijk de bek van open viel is dat de hulporganisaties nu via ’sluwere campagnes’ toch de Nederland proberen te raken met het leed van ver weg. Blijkbaar is het niet voldoende voor de gemiddle Nederlander om rustig zijn avondeten te eten zonder zich zorgen te maken over de arme kindertjes in Afrika. Nee, hij moet zich schuldig voelen, en hij moet nog meer geld doneren aan goede doelen, en de overheid moet nog meer belastinggeld spenderen aan goede doelen en het helpen van mensen in nood.

Rot nou toch even gauw een heel eind op zeg. Hoe arrogant een land ben je als je zo denkt over andere landen? Je bent compleet gestoord als je je schuldig voelt bij je avondeten als je een arm kind in Afrika ziet, en je bent een gevaar voor de samenleving als je denkt dat jij hongerlijdende Afrikaantje op de TV van mensen die zitten te eten wilt serveren om meer aandacht voor al het leed te vragen.

Natuurlijk zijn er mensen die honger lijden, en natuurlijk is er veel ellende in de wereld, maar is het dan aan ‘ons’ Nederlanders om de wereld te verbeteren? Rot op. De wereld wil niet geholpen worden, en zeker niet door een stel arrogante Europeanen. Neem wat je kan krijgen is het motto, en elke ontwikkelingshulp zal goed gebruikt worden. Maar het is niet alsof die landen zichzelf niet kunnen redden. Zij bestaan al net zo lang als wij, en ze zijn er nog steeds. En de ontwikkelingslanden zijn juist de landen die heel wat beter met de aarde kunnen omgaan dan wij. Daar kunnen wij wat van leren.

Ik kan me bij god niet voorstellen dat mensen zich schuldig voelen omdat ze ‘niet genoeg doen’ voor al die mensen die diep in de ellende zitten. Iedereen doet wat hij kan, en wij zouden ons trots moeten voelen dat we überhaupt hulp geven. Het is een soort wedstrijdje aan het worden tussen de rijke landen: degene die het meeste geld en resources kwijt kan aan de arme landen wint. Zo werkt het toch niet… Wat geeft ons het recht om te besluiten dat we nu maar eens de arme mensen in één of ander kutlandje moeten verwennen met wat lekkers. Ga er lekker zelf wonen ofzo.

Het is die arrogantie die zo typerend is van Europa. Zo heeft elk continent wel wat ellende. Misschien moet Afrika maar eens wat hulp sturen naar Nederland, om de mensen van hun arrogantieprobleem af te helpen. Kijk eerst eens naar jezelf voordat je anderen probeert te ‘helpen’.

Monkey trip!

And what a trip it was indeed ^_^. Onsen, monkeys, lava, Japanese culture and oranges… All in all it was a great trip. And a chance for me to get some photographic exercise, because I haven’t been going on too many far away trips recently. I can honestly say this it felt great to get out of Atsugi with friends for a couple of days. It was a really welcome change from everyday work. As for the pictures, I shot about 750 pictures for the first day o_0. I’ve kind of sorted them, but no post-processing yet, so I”ll give you a (very) small preview first. More later

Holidays are coming….

And what an interesting time it is indeed.

There are a lot of things going on in other people’s lives. My friends are studying, looking for jobs, planning holidays, dealing with personal problems, thinking about the future, trying to be more independent, talking more to me, talking less to me.

And I’m still the same.

Am I happy? I don’t even have to think to answer this question. The answer is no. Objectively speaking, there are a lot of people who have a life unimaginably worse than mine. I don’t like to compare myself with others. And my life was unimaginably better last year around this time.

But that’s nothing new. I knew this was going to happen. I can deal with it. I’m calm now. And cold, as you can see from the picture. Winter is really coming. It’s good for me to talk to the friends I made last year, and it’s nice to see them move on with their life. In hindsight everything is clear. I observe people moving towards some goal, and when they finally reach it I realize that it was so obvious that they had been moving purposefully towards that goal all along. And then I wonder, is anyone observing me? And towards what goal am I moving?

Are you stupid if you believe in something? I know my attitude towards religious people is not very tolerant, but that’s not because I question their beliefs. I question that some people give themselves completely to a religion, and trust without doubt. But at the same time, I am one of these people. I never considered myself religious, but I think I am closer to a priest than to a scientist, even though I don’t believe in god. I believe in science. Blindly. Just like religious people believe in Christ or Buddha or Mohammed or whatever.

The ‘blindly’ part’s the bad part, I guess. A rational mindset is one of my highest goals in things that I look for, but I pursue it blindly, and I discard this goal when I find something I can believe in, no matter how unrealistic it is. Science is not the only thing I believe in. Just as religious people find faith in believing tales of god, I find faith in believing in myself, and that the world can be right again, as long as I believe.

The holiday season is coming. I’ve become more cynical since last year. I wonder what Marco would think of me now o_0. Haha. The good and the bad thing about believing in a higher purpose is that things of a lower purpose no longer matter to you. Yet it is these things that are a certainty, and that will prove to be important to you in the future. Don’t forget about that, and trust yourself. Amyko’s life motto has been adopted by me, and I will prove that by trusting myself I can be happy.

Messy christmas and a hairy new year? We’ll see…

Youtube vids

I added a link to some youtube video’s I’ve uploaded. You can find them here. So far there’s some time lapse videos and a clip of me and Kamil cycling down Sakurajima ^_^

Here’s some shots I made a couple of minutes ago from my balcony and my front door. Yes, I can see Mt. Fuji if I turn left. But then I’d have to look away from my PC screen. We don’t want that.