Many moons

It has been many moons since I have last updated this journal. I would like to blame lockdown but in truth it has been more from a lackluster appetite to write my thoughts down somewhere.

So why now?

It bothers me that I would just simply give up on journaling here, as I don’t write much anywhere else now, although I have amassed a lot of tweets that I send and then delete as they are often directed at people who don’t really deserve the negative remark that I make.

It appears that any time that I used to spend writing here is now directed into learning Dutch. I am not sure that there is any other activity that I have done everyday for this amount of time, at current time of writing it is now 557 days. Duolingo like to encourage you with images such as:

I am thinking that I will try and update this a little more often, really with a view of taking photographs again as that is an activity that I have missed a lot in the past many moons.

Return to The Hague

A knee jerk reaction to a water leak in my apartment in The Hague last weekend also provided an opportunity to catch up with friends, take coffee and shoot photographs in the glorious sun! The leak turned out to be a five day long saga that is way to boring to go into here, but it was eventually resolved by a drainage engineer from Glasgow (obviously).

The weather was great which was much to my surprise, sunny every day and a little cool which provided me with ample opportunities to take photographs in between appointments with plumbers/buying washing machines/drainage engineers/clients.

I was also reminded how much I miss The Hague and the atmosphere around the city. I am never surprised now by the crowds of tourists and the happy go lucky "niceness" of the Dutch. The owners of my favourite places still remember me and ask when I am coming back. My answer to that question raises some uneasy feelings from within. Especially when 'something' is leaking to your downstairs neighbours apartment.

As always, I have collected together a few shots from last week below. The bronze sculptures are from the Museum Beelden aan Zee (Museum at the Sea) and the outside exhibition of  (by Tom Otterness). It's really worth looking around if you are ever there. Click the thumbnails for the large images :-)

 

 

 

King's Day

Just a short note to wish all my Dutch friends a Happy King's Day. If you don't know, Kings Day (Koningsdag), is a national holiday in the Kingdom of The Netherlands and is an opportunity for the monarch to honour citizens for their service to The Netherlands. 

It is seen as a time for people to go out and party as evidenced by the picture below. It's the first King's Day that I haven't been in The Netherlands for ten years! I am sure that my friends over their will have a Heineken for me!

Amsterdam on King's Day (from www.scanblatexperience.com)

Amsterdam on King's Day (from www.scanblatexperience.com)

End of classes and return to The Hague

End of Classes

I have spent most of time since last week reflecting on the fact that all the assessed parts of my classes have now finished. Just in time for summer! Just a 15,000 word dissertation assessing the potential for glacial lake outburst floods in eastern Tibet to write, before the start of August.

It was interesting presenting some early work on this project at the postgraduate conference, and in some ways justifying why I was looking into this. Someone told me that they were impressed as I was researching a topic that could directly influence people from the dangers of a geohazard and that they had chosen their topic because it was on offer and sounded cool. It amused me as most things related to glaciers 'seems cool' to me.

Truth be told, it is the environments that glaciers occur in that interest me, the mountains, the cold air, the silence, the photographs that can be taken and the total peace of mind that can be attained.

I have made no secret of the fact that I was disappointed with the grade that I was given for the presentation, I believe the marking system to be flawed and the markers staying anonymous stops discussion being possible. Fundamentally anti-science in an academic setting. Reading the handbook on the appeal process, I read between the lines, was basically don't waste your or our time. Of course, the mark for this doesn't matter as much as the feedback that I received from some of the audience members that contributed some excellent sources of new material and resources. I have found that issues that disappoint me are usually not worth worrying about and the people involved, less so.

 

The Hague

After a 'tour de force' of The Hague municipal government offices (due to an incorrectly addressed tax bill) I have finally sought refuge in theCentraal Station Starbucks for some much needed news updates and coffee intake. Having lunch with a friend earlier this week I commented that the bureaucracy of The Netherlands wasn't that bad once you had registered and were living here. The irony that my 'de-registering' from living in The Netherlands was processed incorrectly and had caused my municipal tax fee to be auto-sent was not lost on me as I traveled from one end of The Hague to another seeking resolution to this 'error'.

I have also found that the most amount of fun you can have is digging through mail that is still being sent your old address. It doesn't matter how thorough you are at informing banks, people, shops and any other promotional lists you will still have a ton of mail after a few months. Soooooooo much fun to be had. Sweating through the 'belastingdienst letters' (tax authority) and cursing over the missed deals from 'de Bijenkorf' (think John Lewis or Sears depending on your western culture). There was also a card that came out of the blue tugging at my past. It made me pause and think.

No daises were hurt in the making of this jacket.

No daises were hurt in the making of this jacket.

Getting a few days away from Edinburgh and traveling back to The Hague has also given me some time to reflect on the last few months of work. It's amazing how some distance can give a little perspective on life events and shows exactly how much some issues are worth in the grand scheme of life. That's not to say that we should stop caring, or standing up for, what is important to ourselves.

Visiting The Hague has been interesting, much of it is how I remember, with some inconsistencies, such a shops being different, the train station renovation being finished (after ten years) and most of the people I knew (know) still being around. There are missing pieces of my life here, experiences that have adjusted my opinion, fun times that will never be recreated and people that have moved on.

It's warmer than Scotland. The people are more relaxed. Their fashion sense ranges from stylish to irreverent and at times it makes me smile, for instance the photograph above. My photography has been limited due to time constraints, and to be fair I think that I shot almost everything in The Hague during 2013. I took a couple, click to enlarge below :-)

 

Quintessential Netherlands. Den Haag.

Het Plein. Den Haag.

Story Map

Update below...

I was recently tasked with an assignment as part of my Geovisualisation course taught by William Mackaness. The course highlights the need for effective visualisation in the analysis and display of geographic information. As part of the assessment of the course the class members have been asked to create a story map, through the ESRI story map web application. I have finally (is anything ever final?) got my story map to a point where I can share it online.

My story is of four different photography tours of The Hague, a city that I used to live in.  The photographs are all my own, mostly taken in 2013 when I was doing a 365 day photography project.

You can visit my story map at this link.

UPADTE 30/1/2016: It was pointed out to me that the link above was not shared publicly so here is the updated link that anyone can see :-) Photography tour of The Hague