Pathe-tic

Once a year I'm back where I belong, where I'm truly happy. Who cares about a masters degree in Criminology if you can sell tickets at a festival without being paid for it?
Because that's exactly what I'm doing right now at Iffr. Where other volunteers ask me if I don't find the box office in Pathe claustrofobic or boring, I have to say 'no'. And I really don't, its my favourite location, for the simple reason that it's a place where I've worked for 5,5 years during my studies and I've always been very happy there. So nothing brings me more joy than telling people that a film is sold out, or in very rare (and usually Korean) occasion available, than from my chair behind bulletproof glass in a cubicle also known as 'the aquarium'. And who wouldn't love a dialogue like this:
- You could also go see 'Vapor Trail'?
- What? that film is over 260 minutes!
- really? Wow, I've had relationships that didn't even last 260 minutes...

At the Pathe Cinema's there's also the extra perk of 'common crowd', youngsters seemingly unablivious to the fact that the Tiger (symbol of iffr) has taken over the city. They point to the bulletinboard above the ticket-box and ask if we don't have any movies this evening. This is the moment when I smile apologetically and say that we have over 300 films and if they are interested in a black and white Japanese film on gangs in Tokyo or a familydrama from the Philipenes that they are more than welcome to buy a ticket. But if they want to see Avatar or A serious man, they have to go to the south-end of Rotterdam. Usually they turn at their feet when they hear 'black and white'. Honestly, I can't blame them on that part. Most sought after film after 'a single man' and 'Dial M for murder', at Pathe yesterday was Avatar...
The funny thing is, besides spotting the confused youth from a mile away, that the Tiger is absolutely everywhere. It's virtually impossible to miss it; it's on posters on the streets throughout the city, it's in newspapers, I found a notification on my bike and even on some money. The postman-bag in various colours is the must-have accesoiry this filmseason.
Sadly, unless you're a seventeen year old yob on a first date, monday the 8th of February, everything is back to normal and fashion and life in Rotterdam no longer includes tigers.

I ffr, U ffr, We all ffr

There's something magical about that first day of the International Film Festival of Rotterdam (iffr). It's full of promise, you are not yet intimidated by long queues of people while you are parking your bike (that comes when you turn round the corner and find out that the first guy has been there since 4 in the morning). You don't know yet that the film you want to see most will be sold out (both online and at the box-office). Armed with your 'Volkskrant-bijlage', you walk towards a volunteer who smiles at you welcomly, helping you to get your seats, you hope.

But if you're that volunteer it's different kind off tension. My mother is trained not to call me unless it's to have lunch at the Doelen. Even my colleagues know not to expect to much from me this week. I'm otherwise engaged. My friends invitation to go see 'have you heard about the Morgans?' is replied with a somewhat annoyed 'I can't, its Iffr (duh), so neither can you, not unless you go to the Kuip' (as if). Iffr to me means holiday in my own city, a city I'm still proud off, even when I'm angry with my country (it happens). A holiday filled with old & new friends (and ex-lovers), parties, crap movies where you can catch up on your sleep and great films that you will talk about in years to come.
So as I walk into the main building (Doelen), and greet the people I see once a year, the knot in my stomach finally unties. I collect my bag, my t-shirt and my drinking-ticket, and we're back.

That is, untill my supervisors place me at the end of the line (few customers, so really boring), near the exit (cold!). There's no coffee and the first customer doesn't even ask what he want's, he just starts screaming his complaints and after the second customer my computer deletes half of the tickets. I forgot, Iffr sucks, sometimes.

But, with some excitement I open up my first 'lunch package' for dinner and thank God for rolls with normal cheese and chicken (instead of that creamy fruit salad they gave us two years ago). The supposed apple square is greeted with less enthousiasm, but proves to be bonding material with other volunteers ("what do you think it is?", "I'm not sure" "Hi, I'm Therese etc.". And, it's Iffr, so when I make some people happy with tickets that were sold out online and nobody complains about the 1€ transaction fee implemented this year, I'm happy and I remember why I'm here (the free movie-vouchers help).

Technically it's not really the first day since I've already had box-office training, e-mail conversations about the rubbish reservation system with my best friend, planned my work-life around my Iffr-life, walked out on my first film (Kamui, sorry, I draw a line at Japanese Ninja's with a visible blue screen), drank away my first tokens and got re-aquainted with the 'bouwploeg' at last saturday's livingroom party.

Twelve more days, and I'm looking forward to every single one of them, (accept for that last sunday of course).

Ice ice baby

Meanwhile back home I'm freezing my ass off. Facebook is full of charming holiday pictures of friends abroad (the whole reason why I started this blog in the first place). Friends in the sea (with and without turtles or other water-creatures), friends on a beach somewhere, local children with bright but incomplete teeth and beautifull blue skies oddly interrupted by green mountains. All smiles, shorts and surfboards.
My reality at the moment revolves around snow, ice and frostbites. I'm not complaining, because I'm leaving for Thailand in two months time, and the warm blogs and
cozy pictures count as 'research'. But since it's my blog, I can write about whatever I want.
For now my bedroom is so cold I can no longer sleep there, not without NASA-approved hypothermal underwear, and apparently it's sold out everywhere. I have ice-flowers on the inside of my kitchendoor-window, the orangejuice in my fridge has iced up (yes, that's in my fridge, not freezer) and I'm using kitchen towels to cover the floor so that my feet aren't so cold. Bribing myself with coffee and a shower just to get out of bed no longer works. Bare rent really is bare with PWS in Rotterdam. I also realise I just killed any chance I had to promote or sublet my house for the month I'll be gone...
All this caused my semi-permanent move into the living room where my life now looks like the IKEA-add where a student lives around her four-poster bed. With me it's more like a trashed sofa-bed surrounded by all the knit-wear I could find. But, I'm warm, I have some feeling back in my toes, so I'm happy.
This also has something to do with my new best friend.
So what if he's a cheap (12€), extremely loud bastard who waits for me in the kitchen and follows me into the shower. He's dependable and keeps me warm, although he was intimidated by his competition at first.... but at the moment, I'm glad to have both!

The roast of 2009

I have to be honest, 2009 really wasn't that bad for me. It was pretty average, I've loved some, and I've lost some. I saw a reasonable amount of good films (Bronson, 500 days of summer) and some crappy ones (attempted David Lynch's Lost Highway again). Discovered new musicians, some of which aren't that old (Jason Mraz, Elbow, Kyteman, the Smiths). Saw old friends (Anastasia) and met new friends (buurman Sander).
But, this wouldn't be a proper blog if I didn't have something to bitch about.

So here are the things I decided to leave behind in 2009. I burned them.
Literally.
Number one is bad behaviour from guys towards me. That means: lying to me (about age, other girlfriends...) or not wanting to get to know me better (that didn't get him very far). Although, I could miss their nonsense, they do make good stories, but none of them are appropriate to share on a public blog.
Next on that list is overmeddling ex-girlfriends. Well, one in particular. If you're not sleeping with him, you have no business telling him what to do and who with... Of course the spineless dude attached to this fine example of a she-devil also stays behind in 2009 (see the first point on this list).
Number 3 is catalogue store Wehkamp. It's been four months and I'm still waiting for my special edition Fight Club dvd. They have sent me the alternative I suggested, unfortunately they also billed me for it. Apparently the concept of customer-service is too much to take in. So, forget them, they lost me for a client.
Then, four, on a more personal notice; I from now on refuse to feel guilty for not calling my grandmother as often as she would like. She ruined that when she gave me a box of chocolates way past it's expiration date and already opened saltine crackers for Christmas.
5. The compulsory finishing of books. You know the feeling, you're reading it, but are slightly dissapointed. You know it's a 'must read', but you feel like the 400 pages in front of you are not only wasting your time, but also keeping you from reading a book that is worth the effort. If it sucks, it sucks. So put the book down, it will not get any better, so who cares how it ends?
Another thing that gets left behind in 2009 is crappy volunteerjobs. I really don't mind volunteering. As a matter of fact I think it's a good (cheap) way to attend festivals, what's more, be a part of it. But, being stuck in a mouldy tent on a rainy campsite, or breaking down 80 army-beds from a dormitory and stuffing disgusting duvets in a binbag is not my idea of having fun. Neither is welcoming other volunteers with a large wooden sign on an island with wind power 8 nor scanning paper tickets in the pouring rain. In those cases, it's just not worth it.
(looking forward to volunteering at IFFR though!)

Now the last one (bare with me, I'm almost done) isn't really for me, but for my friend. I dedicate a bloody bonfire to the roast of B. He needs to get his beardy behind out of my superhero-best-friends head. There is no need for him to join us in 2010, he's not worthy of her awesomeness. That's all I'm saying.

Not a happy camper

An update on the handing-out-home-baked-cookies-on-the-market-incident. Honestly, I felt like a fraud. It was these happy brigade womens passion; they did loads more volunteerwork with the disabled, fundraisers and other good causes. I ignore charity-donation-workers in the shoppingstreet (it's better for all parties to leave me alone on a saturday when I come out of the H&M) and lie to people going door to door for money, saying that I already sponsor the other charity involved with children, animals, fill in any random disease. Although I do donate to the WWF and buy Pink Ribbon Magazine, hell, I even took pictures of my naked boobs and posted them on the Viva-website for breastcancer. But this was something else...
For some reason people think you want to poison them if you just give them the cookies. For fun. To make them smile. Without any marketing trick. They are not used to it anymore, which is quite sad when you think about it. So they end up shaking their head and ignoring me with my biscuit-tin and hawaii-necklace. I actually found it difficult to walk up to people and offer them my glazed biscuits, to my own surprise. In total it was a good thing, it did make people happy (just not me as much as I'd hoped) and I have learned that trying to make people happy costs a lot of energy. The most heard comment was: 'no, thank you'. Which pleased me a lot, because people obviously still say thank you.
Within an hour or so, we got through our stash of heart-shaped cookies, sweets, waffles and cakes and I was frozen. One of the women suggested to get some more, and I swear I could have killed her. Not a very optimistic, happy respons, I know. I just wanted to sit down somewhere, warm up and drink hot chocolate with whipped cream. And I have to say, I might not be optimistic, but I am persuasive, because within 10 minutes we were packed up and ready to get out of there.

Happy camper

I am not a natural optimist (soothing and consoling, yes, optimistic, no). For most of you, this will not come as a surprise.
I am intense (Reno).
I eat too much chocolate (Rob).
I am rude to clients (my current colleagues).
I am nice, but not as nice as my mother (Pieter).
I am caring (just like his mother; Teun).
But that's just other people's opinions, although the second one is probably true. And needless to say the last one didn't get much further than one coffee-date. I know I'm a lot to take in, and there has been a manual available on how to deal with me at Lowlands (ask Tanja) since 2006. Apart from priding myself with a good sense of humour, I congratulate myself with a fine taste in music. Maybe add drama-queen to that list (and plenty of other qualities that make me worth my while).
The psychological test I had to take for my job pointed out that I have a more than average inclination for depression. I knew that, but combine it with what I see at work everyday it's lethal combination ending up in pessimism. Although I prefer to call myself a realist, who always has a Plan B ready (B stands for backup, people).
But now a friend of ours is diagnosed with a braintumour and he needs all the positive thoughts he can get (next to surgery). My realism; "baby, it's a braintumour, not a splinter, he could die", makes my best friend cry, and we can't have that. So in order to practice some altruistic, happy, over-the-top-optimism, I am going to hand out heart-shaped-home-made cookies on the Rotterdam market tomorrow morning. Not by myself, oh no, there's actual groups doing this. For fun. I feel like I'm Wednesday Addams going to Camp Chippewa, but I'm pretty sure the 'blije brigade' (happy brigade) will be gentle with me, opti-virgo.


Yes, I spent my friday night baking. Ah well, I found myself drinking bottled water and munching on carrots last saturdaynight behind the till at Bazar Curieux, so it's progress.

This one is for Wouter (aka Walter Walletshaker).
To be continued...

Thereasily entertained

I always knew I was easy to entertain. As an ex-boyfriend of mine pointed out when we were having the 'this isn't going to work'-conversation: "We have nothing in common. You are just happy sitting in the park with your friends eating french stick with cheese. It doesn't take much to make you happy". I still wonder what his point was, but at that moment he reduced a virtue greatly appreciated by my parents when I was a child ('here honey, have some paper and crayons.' 'Whoehoe! Fun!') to something questionable.
Of course I laughed at him, shook my head and blocked him from my MSN-list.
The same goes for my opinion on movies. Friends have stopped asking me whether I like a film or not, because I usually do. There is always an actor, scene or musical fragment that I appreciate. As long as I don't fall asleep, it's a decent film. Accept for David Lynch: I do not like his work, sorry. (Warning to my friends: this is open for debate, but not discussion; I gave up on Lynch as soon as that blue box hit Mullholland Drive.) I like anything that moves and do not discriminate on genre.

So when I heard the magic words 'Glitterclub, Wipneus and Pim', the 19-year old locked inside me, went 'Whoehoe! Fun!', because I hadn't seen those two dj's in twelve years. Just give me an Indian headband, a room filled with balloons and a technicolor plastic palmtree and I'm good to go. I didn't realise how good, untill the dj needed someone from the audience to come on stage and be the fourth member of the Village People. I found it necessary to scream 'ME!', jump up and down with my finger up in the air. Proud as a parrot, having waited years for this moment, I was invited to join a cowboy, a cop and a builder.
On stage, with previously mentioned Indian feathered hat strapped proudly around my head, I realised, while doing the YMCA shapes, that my new H&M dress, really wasn't so much a dress as more of an elongated shirt. My YMCA dance moves involved some extra gestures; mainly pulling down my black silk shirt-dress... That didn't stop me from shaking it for all I was worth.
According to Tanja, nobody saw a thing and for the rest of the night we were dancing, and playing with whatever came out of Wipneus and Pims toychest; balloons, air-guitars, whistles and cheesy songs.

It doesn't take much to make me happy, but friends and glitter make it even better!