indo sekali

OK, so - I know what you might be thinking. You're like, Laurel, sweetie, why do these photos.... look the way they look... ? Like, kind of bad ? really bad ? And that's fair and you'd be right for thinking that.

At Jakarta's international airport my (fine - my dad's) analog camera came out of my suitcase broken, which happened surely because I had packed it so carelessly. I had already loaded it with a roll of kodak portra 400, my first roll of kodak ever, and also, worth a lotta $$$, which was now completely wasted. The camera was beyond repair while I was abroad and traveling java island and I had left my digital nikon at home. So I resorted to the next best short-term solution: two disposable fuiji film cameras, 24 clicks each. I used both over the course of two weeks. Then, after i returned to europe, I dropped off the the two film rolls at a sub par developer. And now the photos look like this. Something something murphy's law.

Now this is where i say that i kind of dig the low quality, from the underexposed backgrounds to the messy scanning. Somewhere, I find it charming. "retro" if you will. so bad it's good. idk. I like them! and this is my personal photo blog after all. Soo........ !

Something I put a little more effort into was this video log of a little over 9 minutes.

I know, I know. Here are some rave reviews:

"why is it so fast" - dad

"i like the parts with you in it" - marlien

"why did you put yourself in it so much" - mom

"amazing, ★★★★, i played it two more times" - steven spielberg

The idea behind this is that I would take 10 seconds clips at random moments during the trip and then move on with my life. It's useless and silly to try to document every little thing, so I figured I could make do with a handful of small moments. I get caught up in wanting so much of life documented and preserved sometimes, and I don't even know why or for what. I think i let a little of that go this summer.

Anyway ! i had a great, lovely time in indonesia. probably what I should have started this post with but really - love  going, love to see the country change every year. jakarta has a subway system now - i have a MRT card now! isn't that just wonderful?

j'ai senti la ville - paris

my actual journal entry for 27 july 2019:  a small bodega, nighttime-ish, we skipped to the back but the heatwave (day before i arrived it was 42C in paris) had warmed up the wine room (earlier that day i had texted, "does our airbnb apt have air-conditioning" and the reply i got read "laurel this is europe" meaning, "our architecture and infrastructure was not build for any temperature above 28C, so, naturally: No") The guy manning the store led us to the small cooler under the counter w wines instead and I went for a white. only asked "are we feeling a white?" after i had already put it on the counter. alicia bought a small round pringles box (me and ella did accept a chip when offered one later but could not believe someone would mix pringles with wine then) and I bought an orange nuclear-looking french substitute for gatorade because I was feeling dizzy and I have learned that that is the thing you drink when you feel that way. When we walked out ella noticed that the bottle had a cork (we were not gonna drink it in the apartment, which had a kitchen and likely a corkscrew, we were going to chill on the steps of the sacre ceour and toast on our first night in paris) so we asked the guy behind the counter for help. After he had investigated his (or i guess maybe not his since he didn't know what he did & did not have) store he concluded that he didn't have a cork screw so he send us to "his friend, the bartender" in the bar across the supermarket. i asked "what is your friend's name" in three languages before i got a workable answer. at the bar his friend (i remembered the name then but have forgotten it now) waved at supermarket guy from across the street, the two just waved at one another, then he opened up the bottle while another bartender wordlessly gave us three red plastic cups so we didn't have to pass the bottle around, a gesture so nice we came back that same night after the sacre ceour so me and ella could experience our first aperol spritzes ever together after alicia had hyped it a bit (i thought the spritz was just fine)

edinburgh 2018

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh / Scottish National Gallery

Went to Scotland for the first time and stayed with family in Edinburgh during Fringe Festival. I tried to go to a show or two every day either by myself, with family or with friends from home who happened to be in city around the same time. I saw Six and Hot Brown Honey (rec'd to me by KT through twitter, probably) and enjoyed those a lot. I also went to see slew of comedians and most of them were unfunny in ways I truly cannot articulate. Save for one: I might be biased, but the Amsterdam Underground Comedy Collective were by far the funniest people I saw there! Turns out you truly take yourself, wherever you go, eh. The AUCC only drew crowds of about 15 people for each show, which is an unfortunate and incredibly low turn-out. I hope they'll have more of an audience if they decide to come back this year, though I don't see why they should.

I was on the ground for this photo and only realized later that I had likely stamped through someone's kitchen garden... apologies!

National museum of Scotland - standing on this balcony waiting (and not rushing) for the right moment to click the shutter made me finally "get" what people watching is all about & how comforting it is to just watch people be & go about their day

Read A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four (the little red-gold pocketbook) here in honor of ACD. I bought it at 221b Baker Street when I was 11 years old and visiting London for the first time. Fitting, I thought, since I would take a train from Edinburgh to London later that week.

There was a exhibition on Dutch artists on at the Scottish National gallery when I was there. You come all this way...

Alright, final thoughts: I was mesmerized by how brown this city is. Not even just how it appears in photos, you would also kinda notice it walking around and paying a minimum amount of attention to the shape of the streets. I even thought about it when I left by train, like, am I ever going to be in a city as brown as Edinburgh again? I don't think so! Another thing that struck me is that Edinburgh is built on hills, which is probably something I should've known about before I got there. I borrowed a bicycle from my family (and left their helmet in the hallway) with the intention of getting around like that all week, because I'm Dutch and that's what I'm used to. I lasted about a day. It's too steep. Not impossible, but it's just - I'm on a holiday! If I wanted to get lean and work out every day, I probably should've just stayed at home.

berlinale log

2 February: A Portugesa/The Portugese Woman (dir. Rita Azevedo Gomes) is a perfect film for no one to see. Visually impressive, technically very sound, aloof, void of any emotion, too long. This film is over 2 hours when it has no reason not to be only 90 minutes... I think a skilled editor could have a field day with this, because it was exhausting to watch as is. European premiere, stacked, I might've just been the youngest person there. We left early and missed the Q&A so we could cue for Flatland. Alicia described it to Chris as "Medieval Boredom: the film" when we went out for burgers later that day (I had the organic jalapenos burger with "funky" fries, which I've been told is a Berlin euphemism for "a bucketload of garlic sauce.") I like the idea of film being a living Renaissance painting, with people just walking in and out of frame. Like it when you can go, "No cuts!" when the camera just pans along with the scene for a long time. But, you know, I don't think anything can and should go; I don't think that everyone can pull of this style AS substance thing. I'm glad I saw this here, so I never have to watch it again.

2 February: Flatland (dir. Jenna Bass) can and should be picked up by Netflix. It's exactly the sort of "hidden gem" art house film that would thrive on there. It's funny and a bit raw and, more importantly, it absolutely owns. When the credits rolled I was pleasantly surprised by the number of women listed as crew (writer/director Jenna Bass and cinematographer Sarah Cunningham, among others). Of all the movies I saw I would be the most disappointed if this one doesn't get picked up.

9 february: Το Θαύμα της Θάλασσας των Σαργασσών/The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea (dir. Syllas Tzoumerkas) exists. Like, it's definitely out there. I was also definitely there when it premiered. From where I was sitting I thought that the director looked like a younger Patrick Oswalt... It's kind of telling that I have so little to say about a film that does so much. Because of some inane inside-joke (prompted by a tweet exclaiming "Eels! Eels! Eels!" that crossed my timeline the day I left for Berlin and a movie description that sold this as a movie about eels) this will forever be affectionaly known as "the eels movie," even if, I'm sad to report, it actually doesn't have a whole lot to do with eels.

February 3: Olanda (dir. Bernd Schoch) is a masterpiece. It's also never gonna get picked up. It's very long, but I think something cool happens when a film is this light on plot, actually just atmospheric, and that long. Olanda drops its title card about two hours into the film, and I can't stop thinking about it. Bravo to the cameramen and the cinematographer, they're onto something. 

 February 3: Celle Que Vous Croyez/Who You Think I Am (dir. Safy Nebbou) premiere with Juliette Binoche present. I was planning on taking her seat name card with me after it was finished, but someone beat me to it. Alicia didn't like this film. I did. Binoche is a literature professor teaching "Les liaisons dangereuses" throughout the film to contrast with the rest of the plot, so yeah, sure, it's on the nose and not very deep. But isn't it enough for a film to just be satisfying to watch sometime?   [Note from future Laurel: journal entry goes off the rails after this...]

 February 4: Vice (dir. Adam Mckay) is a film designed to piss you off. I didn't like it! I think it's a very strange way to go about making movies! But I do enjoy seeing Jesse Plemons in things. There's a moment about 1/4th in where the film fakes rolling the credits (to signify an alternate course of history in which there would be no story left to tell, it's clearly played as a joke) and everyone around me - film critics, legit journalists - start clapping. Pretty surreal moment, if you ask me. I can't imagine being paid to professionally write about film, and really think a film with a stacked cast like this one would be about 30 minutes long and allowed to enter the competition. I know this is going to be nominated for a bunch of stuff, but there's only one prize it really deserves to win: that of trailer of the year. Phenomal use of 'The Man' by The Killers.

2015! japan & greece

Old ones that I haven't posted anywhere else before. I was going to write captions, but I realized that giving them context makes them less interesting.

 

 My camera died on day 2 of touring Greece, which meant I only took photos on my phone that I tried to edit so they could pass as something that wasn't taken on a phone. Results with varying degrees of succes.