Trace of the Past

Valentine's Day with Level 42

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 21:35:00 +0000

Muziekcentrum Frits Philips, Eindhoven, 14 February 2009

In Holland it is very popular to see '2 halen 1 betalen' promotion, which is the same as 'buy 1 get 1 free'. Although I didn't really expect it, this was also the case for the recent Level 42 show in Eindhoven. Sri saw this promotion on the local newspaper about 2 weeks before the concert date. I called the ticket office the day after and we got the ticket.

The concert was on Saturday evening, held at Muziekcentrum Frits Philips, the concert hall where we normally watch classical music concerts. We know exactly where the best seats are, so we decided to arrive half an hour before the show. We managed to get very good seats with direct view to the stage. The hall was getting full, most of the seats were taken including the upper level. The standing area next to the stage was also full with the audience.

The stage was already set in a simple layout. Mike Lindup's keyboards rack filled the left corner, drums set at the middle a bit to the back, and three microphone stands for Mark King, Nathan King (guitar), and Sean Freeman (sax). The background was only curtain, no projection slide. The lighting was also pretty standard, although it would provide nice effect during the show.

Around half past eight, the Level 42 entered the stage and Mark King greeted the audience. They kicked in with Fashion Fever from Running in the Family album, followed with a newer song, Forever Now.
The sound quality was very good. We got very clear bass sound and good mix of keyboards and vocal sounds. In the beginning Nathan's guitar sound was mixed too low but it was improved along the way.

They pleased the crowd with more old tunes, Turn it on from their first album and Heaven in My Hands, their hit from 1988. Besides his agile fingers on the bass fret, Mark King delivered good voice. Nathan and Sean also provided nice backing vocals.

Mark King made short comment about giving concert on Valentine's Day and (ironically) they sang the ballad Leaving Me Now. Sean gave nice saxophone sound here. This calm song was followed with another hit, Running in the Family. The vocals harmony was very nice.

After an unfamiliar song for me, The Machine Stops, Mark King played the bass intro of Dune Tune followed with his bass solo. He used loops to create multi-layer bass sounds. The effect did not work at the beginning but finally he succeeded after couple of tries.
The solo was followed with their first single ever, Love Games.

Not enough playing hits from 80's, they performed Something about You. After that Mark introduced Gary Husband on drums, who then delivered powerful drumming in Man and the instrumental Mr. Pink. The latest one also highlighted the skills from each player.

Then another slow hit, It's Over. After that Mike Lindup got the opportunity to deliver his nice falsetto in Starchild, which also got nice clapping from the crowd. It was followed with their biggest hit and also crowd's favorite Lessons in Love.
Before disappeared backstage, they performed the only song from the latest Retroglide album, Dive into the Sun.

For the encore, we got The Chinese Way followed with wonderful instrumental from the same album, The Pursuit of Accidents. Finally they closed the show with another crowds pleaser, Hot Water.

In general it was a good concert. It was very nice remembrance of the 80's era. The band still showed very strong skill. Moreover, I really enjoyed the sound quality of the hall. The atmosphere was not as intense as rock concert but more sober and calm, which is typical in jazz-funk concert. To conclude, Level 42 still could deliver nice show.

Level 42 are:
Mark King: bass, vocals
Mike Lindup: keyboards, vocals
Gary Husband: drums
Nathan King: guitar, vocals
Sean Freeman: saxophone, vocals

Setlist:
Fashion Fever
Forever Now
Turn it on
Heaven in my Hands
Leaving Me Now
Running in the Family
The Machine Stops
Mark King Bass Solo
Love Games
Something about You
Man
Mr. Pink
It's Over
Starchild
Lessons in Love
Dive into the Sun
-----------
The Chinese Way
The Pursuit of Accidents
Hot Water

Marillion - Happiness on the Road

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:12:00 +0000

Vereeniging, Nijmegen, 24 November 2008

Happiness is the Road (HitR) is the latest album of Marillion, released on 20 October 2008, only can be bought at Marillion web site unless you are in Poland or North America. Continuing the success strategy of deluxe edition campaign with Anoraknophobia and Marbles, the new album was available for pre-order since last year. Moreover, smart as ever, Marillion also pioneered the legal peer-to-peer free distribution of the digital version of the new album (yes, free...with a twist). This was even online before the release date of the album.

I had considered to pre-order HitR, but held back because it was pretty expensive and I was not sure about the quality. In the end I downloaded the digital version, blown back by the wonderful new songs, and decided to watch them live (where I presumed I could buy the CD).

With very loyal fans base in Holland, the Happiness on the Road tour included 4 dates in a row in Holland. The Tilburg show had been sold out, which was a tradition. I chose the show at Vereeniging, Nijmegen, where I watched The Musical Box before. I liked the Vereeniging theater, very old and classic so that I thought it would be perfectly suitable with the ambience of the new songs.

The show was on a cold Monday evening after a snowy weekend. I went directly from the office to the show. Vereeniging was a nice location, lots of parking places nearby. I arrived there few moments before the door was open, around 19.30. The checking was very minimal, just the ticket. My backpack with camera was untouched. I spotted the tour merchandises corner and walked there. As I predicted, the new albums are abundant there, even the deluxe edition (although the price is exactly the same as buying on the marillion.com). The t-shirts had nice designs, particularly the asylum satellite. Lucky that I had my backpack, the deluxe edition box was so thick!

It was pretty empty inside the hall at that time. The stage was nicely set and the standing area had no boundary with the stage, very nice. Quite some distances to the back, behind the soundboard area, there were permanent tribune seats. There were already some people occupied the seats, also few seats on the balcony. I had good experience sitting on the balcony, so I decided to move upstairs. I chose the left wing, which I slightly regretted later because I could not have complete view of Steve Rothery.

We waited quite some times before the opening act, Sine Star Project, performed. They were quite good performer with adequate progressive style. Some songs were mellow, dominated with keyboards and pedal steel guitar that reminded me of David Gilmour and Pink Floyd songs. The other songs were heavier style, fast tempo and lots of low guitar riffs. They performed about 40 minutes, gained lukewarm applause from the crowds.

We waited again after that, while the stage was rearranged. It was nice to watch the crew setup the stage with high precision and agility. The stage layout was Marillion standard. Ian's drum set and Mark's tower of keyboards at the back, Pete at the right side, Steve Rothery at the left, and Hogarth's keyboard at the middle, side by side with mic stand attached with different kind of percussions.

Around 9.30 the lights were dimmed, Ian and Mark ready on position, and then Pete, Steve, and Hogarth entered the stage. They opened the set with a new song, Dreamy Street followed with This Train is My Life. Hogarth wore long robe, barefoot, very relax. Mark Kelly wore the same shirt, I think, as the one at Snow-where Else tour last year (..duh..). Pete looked a bit older but very agile as always. The projection screen was nice, displayed different images related with the songs. The sound quality was very good, no echo, not too loud, I could hear almost all details. The train background sound was very nice.

After a quick hello from Hogarth to the crowd, they performed another sequence from the new album, Nothing Fills the Hole and Woke Up. The crowd enjoyed the crunchy guitar sounds and deep bass sound here.

After another small chat with the crowd, they gave The Other Half from the previous album. Then came Essence, one of my favorite songs from HitR. Hogarth's voice soared nicely in this song.

Then came an old song, Beautiful from Afraid of Sunlight (AoS) album. I think the whole theater sang together the whole song.
If I remembered correctly, after that Hogarth announced that the next day would be Steve Rothery's birthday. After a long clapping, we sang happy birthday and For He's a Jolly Good Fellow together for him.

Another new song, this time from the second part of the HitR, The Man from the Planet Marzipan. It was beautiful song and Hogarth was very expressive as the Planet Marzipan man. He opened his robe and showed his skin because the air was so thin :).

Another song from AoS, Hogarth gave a short introduction about Donald Campbell, racer who had died on his attempt to break water speed record for the 9th time. He, and Bluebird-the boat, had become the inspiration of Out of this World. The back screen displayed a black and white video footage of the day back in 1967, from the preparation until when the boat was flipped and crashed.

Then they performed two songs from Brave, Mad followed by The Great Escape. Once again it was very obvious that Hogarth really improved his theatrical expressive skill. His face expressions reflected the deep emotion of the songs.

The crowd went crazier when they performed Afraid of Sunlight. It was a nice view from the balcony to watch the crowd dancing and singing. The nice song was followed by Asylum Satellite #1, another brilliant song from HitR. I understand that some people judge the album as 'too mellow', but those are nice songs there!

Another crowd favorite was Between You and Me from Anoraknophobia. This song is always nice for live show, energetic and easy to sing. Hogarth also became more energetic, he climbed the speaker and sat there singing.
After that, finally we got something from Marbles, the magical Neverland. It was the third time I experienced this song being performed live and I liked it more than before. Steve Rothery delivered brilliant guitar solos.

After this song they went backstage, which surely could not be accepted by the crowd. But apparently they needed to do that because Hogarth changed his clothes to old style suit complete with eyeglasses and a walking stick. Pete started the groovy line of Invisible Man. This song was performed very well, one of their best performance for me. Hogarth really showed touching emotional expressions, very detail reflection about being invisible.

It was half an hour to midnight when they finished that wonderful song. Once again they went backstage, Hogarth changed back to his white shirt and pants. He explained that they had reached the time limit, but he said that he could not leave us yet...then he sang the main message...Happiness is the Road! This song started very calm, getting more and more powerful along the way. Pete shook the whole theater with his bass pedal. In the end Hogarth led the crowd to sing the 'Hapiness is the Road' line again and again, while the rest of the band disappeared backstage. Finally he embraced all the happiness from the crowd.
On the way back home, that line still echoed repeatedly in my head.

To conclude, it was another great live performance from Marillion. The production was generally better than their Christmas Tour, maybe because this tour was to promote the new album. The lights and screen were being used optimally. It was also nice idea to put small cameras close to each musician and projected the video on the screen.
The best part that night was the expressiveness. Hogarth really made me think about Peter Gabriel style on the stage. Pete was always moving everywhere. Even Steve Rothery walked to the other side couple of times. Ian Mosley was always consistent with his drumming. At last, as you noticed from HitR, lots of musical aspects were strongly built by keyboards sounds of Mark Kelly.
Marillion, thanks for bringing the happiness on the road!

Set list:
Dreamy Street
This Train Is My Life
Nothing Fills The Hole
Woke Up
The Other Half
Essence
Beautiful
The Man From The Planet Marzipan
Out Of This World
Mad
The Great Escape
Afraid Of Sunlight
Asylum Satellite #1
Between You and Me
Neverland
----
Invisible Man
----
Happiness Is The Road

The Shrine of Banneux Notre Dame

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:31:00 +0000

Banneux, Belgium, 25 October 2008

Our wonderful friends from IYCE (International Youth Community Eindhoven) proposed a pilgrimage trip to the Shrine of Banneux Notre Dame in Belgium, where Mary mother of Jesus appeared to a small girl in 1933.
We had heard about Banneux before and we thought it was a good plan to do the trip. In the end there were 7 of us who went. We used two cars, mine and a rented one driven by Marco.

We started from Eindhoven around 9.30 in the cold autumn morning. There was foggy and misty when we drove the highway to Maastricht and further passed the border to Liege in Belgium. I liked the route around Liege, where we drove beside the river Maas. After Liege we went out from the highway and followed a hilly route, where Marco practiced his rally driving skill, until we arrived at Banneux around 11.

The Shrine complex was quite big. We tried the information center but it was closed. Based on 'agenda of today' pamphlet, we entered the Chapel of Message, expecting a French mass. There was an option to join Italian mass in a smaller chapel, but it was empty. It turned out that the French mass was also delayed, so we walked out and visited the spring that was reserved for the sick, from the message of the apparition.

Marco and Caecilia in front of the Esplanade Altar

While we were there, Marco found out that lots of people gathered in the chapel so we joined them. There was preparation of mass in French, coordinated by an African community. So, amazingly we joined African-French mass in Banneux. It gave a very warm feeling for me, typical African mass that was expressive and joyful, although I did not understand a single word of it.

The choir of the African community

After the mass we sat down near the statue of Mother Mary to have our lunch. As certain as always, Agnese prepared enough nice sandwiches for all of us.

The IYCE people

With nicely filled stomach, after lunch we walked around the complex. Our next activity was the Way of the Cross, led by Caecilia who prepared the reading and the prayer.

After that, we did the Rosary in Marie Mediatrice Chapel. It was very nice, also because it was getting cold outside :). This time Marco led the praying in his full holiness.

Sri in front of the Spring

Before we went out from the Shrine complex, once again we visited the spring and visited the Chapel of the Apparitions where people ask for blessing and pray for health.

The Chapel of Apparitions

Outside the complex, we visited a souvenir shop that was full of Christian decorations. Our last agenda in Banneux was warm chocolate and coffee. We drove back home after that.

We arrived back in Eindhoven around dinner time. Safe and full of peaceful feeling after the trip.

Bon Jovi Lost Highway Tour 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 21:43:00 +0000

Amsterdam ArenA, 13 June 2008

Actually I had no desire to watch Bon Jovi in concert because I hadn't continuously followed their activities after Crush. Surely I still bought Bounce, Have a Nice Day, and even the not-really-right This Left Feels Right. I even have the nice 100 Millions boxset. But I wasn't really into their music anymore these days. Somewhere in my head I kept thinking that the Bon Jovi era was their first 6 albums. For me Crush was already on the edge.

The idea to watch the concert was coined by Fajar and back then it was directly agreed by two more friends. Another attractive point was that before the concert there would be football match on the big screen between Holland and France in the Euro 2008. First I was still doubting, since I also had no desire to watch the match on the big screen (what's the difference with my TV anyhow?). But then I thought, never mind, let's watch Bon Jovi. So we bought 4 tickets.

Then the plan was spread among more friends. Finally 4 more girls wanted to join, including Sri. So we bought 4 more tickets, luckily at the same seat section but just one different row.

For preparation, I tried to update myself on Bon Jovi. I couldn't get the latest album but luckily got the Lost Highway DVD. So I knew all the songs! The tour was already started in the US and from their website I got the setlists. Apparently they kept it slightly change so we could expect few surprises. The good news for me, mainly they played old songs.

When the day came, 5 of us arrived around 8 at the Amsterdam ArenA, the other 3 came later during the football match. We had plenty of time to queue, buy t-shirt (well, only me), toilet, and drink before we went to our seats. It was pretty good seat, not too high and not too far from the stage. They only sold the lower-half of the tribune seats because they placed wide screens facing the tribunes.

The atmosphere was like a football match. Lots of orange attributes. Then the match begun. As I expected, I didn't feel any difference than watching the match on my TV. Good thing was that Holland devastated France with wonderful goals.

After the match, all the lights off, then suddenly Jon, Richie, David, Tico, and Hugh appeared on the stage. Jon put on an orange shirt and they kicked in with Rockin' All Over the World.

After Lost Highway, they continued with Born to be My Baby, which is always my favourite. Then Jon screamed the most popular opening line...'Shot through the heart..and yours to blame..you give love.. a bad name..'. I think everybody stood and shouted together with him. Richie still rocked in this song, it reminded me to their glorious time with those long hairs.

Still from Slippery When Wet album, they played Raise Your Hands. This song was really good to raise the audiences' hands :).

Then they played their first hit ever, Runaway. I couldn't imagine that I still remember the songs in my head after more than 20 years and sing along just came out that easy.

During I'll Sleep when I'm Dead, Jon sang few lines from Jumpin' Jack Flash.

After another new song from Lost Highway, Jon introduced David Bryan on keyboards, whom then sang In These Arms in his barritone.

After that the stage was darkened and only Jon and Richie stood at the front. Jon announced that the song was never performed before on this tour, from These Days album...Diamond Ring. It's really a brilliant duet from them.

Always was the crowd's favourite, the whole stadium sang this song. Then they performed two songs from Crush followed with Someday I'll be Saturday Night, again another sing along song.

After that Richie extensively used the talk box in We Got it Going On. Then another big hit from Crush, It's My Life was performed. Not enough rocking, the deep intro of Keep the Faith was shocking the whole arena. It was amazing to see their stamina and energy.

After Keep the Faith, it was time for Jon to have a rest. Richie performed I'll be There for You. Surely he could sing so good.
Jon back on the stage and they played Blaze of Glory, followed by my other favourite song from New Jersey album, Blood on Blood.

Then they played some more recent songs, Have a Nice Day and the country style Who Says You Can't Go Home. In the last song we finally went home to catch the last train. It's a pity that we couldn't stay until the end of the show. While walking outside the arena I could hear Livin' on a Prayer sang by the crowd.

In general it turned out to be a very good concert. I really enjoyed the sing along part especially the old songs. Bon Jovi performed way above the standard, very energic and lively. Jon and Richie were still very attractive on stage. Tico Torres was very powerful with his drums. David did some nice solos on his keys during Keep the Faith.

The stage was quite simple with nice backscreens and also two side screens. The light show was also pretty simple, with some nice colors and audience shots. The sound quality of ArenA was bad as usual, although it was bearable after first couple of songs.

Setlist:
Rockin' All Over The World
Lost Highway
Born To Be My Baby
You Give Love A Bad Name
Raise Your Hands
Runaway
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead/Jumpin' Jack Flash/Gimme Some Lovin'
Whole Lot Of Leaving
In These Arms (David in vocal)
Diamond Ring
Always
Captain Crash & The Beauty Queen From Mars
Just Older
Someday I'll Be Saturday Night
We Got It Going On
It's My Life
Keep The Faith
I'll Be There For You (Richie in vocal)
Blaze Of Glory
Blood On Blood
Have A Nice Day
Who Says You Can't Go Home
Livin' On A Prayer

Encore:
Stick To Your Guns
Wanted Dead Or Alive

Marillion Snow-where Else Christmas Tour

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 18:49:00 +0000

8 December 2007
Live Music Hall, Cologne, Germany

This year I was quite desperate to watch Marillion Christmas show. First I aimed to watch the show in Zoetermeer, but it was sold out in no time. Some other dates in Holland were impossible for me because they were on working days. Then I looked at a possibility on the date in Cologne, which was Saturday. I proposed the plan to Sri in different wrapping: Christmas market visit to Cologne. She agreed with the plan as long as we could ask some other friends to join us so she would not be alone while I have fun with the show.
In the end two of our best friends decided to go. We arranged the hotel, rented the car, and ready to go. Oh, surely I had my ticket as well.

We spent the Saturday afternoon in the Cologne city center after checked in at our hotel. The area near the Dom cathedral was full with people enjoying the yearly Christmas market. We enjoyed the atmosphere, had our bratwurst and browsed the small booths to see the Christmas decorations that they sold.

After that we walked along the shopping area of Cologne until we reached Neumarkt area where we found another Christmas market. It was a bit less crowded than at the Dom. After a plate of sauerkraut (sour cabbage), I took the U-Bahn (German underground) to Live Music Hall in Ehrenfeld area.

The hall was about half full when I arrived. It looked like an old storage building that turned to a music hall. Just a square hall, flat floor, with two drink bars on both sides. I even could not spot the wardrobe directly, which was at a hidden corner after the small entrance.

The tour souvenir corner was not really impressive this time compared with Christmas show two years ago. I just bought a long sleeve shirt and the new released Somewhere in London DVD. After that I tried to sneak my way until near enough with the stage, slightly to the right so I could easily enjoy Steve Rothery in action.

Albeit the announcement that there was no opening act and the band would start the show one hour after the hall was open, we waited quite a while until the dark moody intro of Bridge was played. It was worth waiting though, as the band played the first four songs from Brave, the darkest album of Marillion. Steve Hogarth stayed sit behind his keyboard and his voice was full with emotions.

After the songs from Brave, Steve Rothery changed guitar and they played the bluesy The Fruit of the Wild Rose from Anoraknophobia. After the song H spoke to the audience. He said the previous song was not very often being performed. Then he drank from an alligator-shaped jar and told us that they would perform two shows that night.

After the short conversation, H introduced the Out of this World, a calm song from Afraid of Sunlight. After a tight performance from the band, they gave us a new song from the next album, titled Real Tears for Sale. H asked the audience about the song after that. When someone asked who's writing it, he answered "Kylie Minogue..." with further comment "she's deeper than you think...". But the song was pretty good, quite a promising new album.

Maintaining the atmosphere of the 'first show' to be calm and relax, they performed the best track from their latest album, Somewhere Else. The first set was closed with the brilliant winter song Seasons End, with H inserted short excerpt from O Come, O Come Emmanuel at the beginning of the song.

I enjoyed the first set very much, especially I liked the nuance of the songs to be very calm and dark. The lighting supported that very good with the color gradation filled in the whole stage. Unfortunately the stage was a bit too simple with no background images or slides.

After the break, we knew that the second set would be different when they started with the rocking Hooks in You continued with Most Toys. The mood was a bit calmer when they sang The Other Half from the new album, then it was back with another up-tempo song, Cannibal Surf Babe. Steve Rothery used his double neck for this song.

They then performed songs from Holidays in Eden album. This Town was rocking as usual, followed by The Rakes Progress and 100 Nights. The set was closed with This Strange Engine.

The encore was started with powerful bass lines from Pete Trewavas, the famous intro of Quartz from Anoraknophobia. Then they performed Neverland from Marbles. This beautiful song is always perfect for closing the show.

Ups..did I say anything about closing? After Neverland, the stage was darkened. Then the stage crew set a nice white christmas tree and some christmas lights on the stage. Not long after that, there were two Santa's on the stage! One was extremely fat until he could not stand properly behind his keyboards..poor Mark Kelly.

They threw away some kazoos to the audience and asked us to help in the next song. It was pretty useless, the kazoos were wet because they were kept inside the alligator jar together with H's beers. Pete got a dry one and he showed us the tune.
Then all of us sang Let It Snow, and we got fake snow all around the stage. Well, that's make the party perfect.

In general it was a pretty good show. The band played perfect as usual, Steve Rothery was really brilliant with his guitar. The sound quality was not very good, most likely because of the acoustic of the hall. On the other hand the audience was great, lots of sing along and interaction with the band. The songs selection was good, with some rarely performed songs. Good job guys!

Complete set list:
Bridge
Living With the Big Lie
Runaway
Wave / Mad / The Opium Den
Fruit Of The Wild Rose
Out of This World
Real Tears For Sale
Somewhere Else
Seasons End
---
Hooks In You
Most Toys
The Other Half
Cannibal Surf Babe
This Town
The Rakes Progress
100 Nights
This Strange Engine
---
Quartz
Neverland
---
Let It Snow

Nice Towns of Flanders, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:38:00 +0000

Antwerpen, Gent, Brugge, Oostende
12-14 October 2007

The first part of the trip is available here.

Brugge

The hotel where we stayed in Brugge was located quite far from the city center, but it was a nice place to stay. After the breakfast on Saturday morning, we drove to the center of Brugge and parked our car in Zilverpand parking garage, really close to the city center.

From the parking place we walked along the Steenstraat to the market square. The square was wide, with nice buildings around it. It was already quite busy that morning. There were several horse carts passing by the stone street and many tourists walking around.
We entered a small toy shop at the end of Steenstraat. It was a very nice shop with funny and cute toys, I particularly liked the carousel miniature.

We expected to find tourist info center in the area, but we were wrong. After asked someone, we were told that the tourist info center is located at the opposite of the Steenstraat. So we walked back along Steenstraat till we reached 't Zand square, where we found the tourist info center. It occupied a corner of the new Concert Hall building. From there we bought a walking routes book including the city map. (While writing this I just found out that the routes and the map can be printed from Brugge's official website.)

From the tourist info center we walked back along the Steenstraat and dropped by at Zara House, an interior shop of Zara. After that we entered a small cafe next to it to have coffee and snack, also to learn the walking routes of Brugge.

After the coffee break we began our walking tour. From the Steenstraat we turned right before St. Salvator Cathedral, passed small street to the Mariastraat, we saw the massive Onze Lieve Vrouwe church with its 122 metres brick tower, the tallest building in the city.

Tower of Onze Lieve Vrouwe church

We entered the church, which contained several arts collection. The highlight was a solemn white marble sculpture, 'Madonna and Child' by Michelangelo.

Madonna and Child

We walked further along the Mariastraat, crossed a river where we saw a busy boat tour operator and then we passed many small touristic shops along the street. We turned right to the small Walstreet, passed some more small shops and restaurants till we reached Wijngaardplein, a square with several restaurants, mostly served mussel on the menu. The square was quite busy as it was also a place where the horse carts stopped to allow the passengers to walk around the area.

Queue for the boat tour

Crossing a river from the Wijngaardplein, we entered the Beguinage area, which now is being used as monastery by the Benedictine sisters. It was a nice peaceful area, with old white houses and a garden full of big poplar trees.

The Beguinage

Outside the Beguinage we found a small lake called Minnewater, which mean 'Lake of love'. We walked a path along one side of the lake, crossed it on a bridge and walked back to the Wijngaardplein through a park that also named Minnewater park.

The Minnewater

It was lunch time when we reached the Wijngaardplein. Being attracted by the restaurants there, we decided to have lunch in a restaurant that served mussel and shrimp croquette.
We ordered the croquette for starter and mussel and omelette for main course. The croquette was not really special, it's basically minced shrimp replacing the usual minced meat inside the crispy breadcrumbs. The mussel also a bit tasteless. Luckily I had no complain about my omelette.

With a nicely filled stomach, we walked back to the Mariastraat and turned right after the Onze Lieve Vrouwe church, heading to the old part of the city. We passed the Dijver where some museums were located.
Along the riverbank at Rozenhoedkaai, we got a beautiful view of the old buildings and the river. I think this is one of the reasons that the city is called the Venice of the North.

View from Rozenhoedkaai

From the riverbank we walked passing the fish market, crossed the bridge and passed small street called Blinde Ezelstraat (meaning 'blind donkey street').
Out from this small street we arrived at the Burg, a big square where several historical buildings of the city were located. There were the Old Recorders' House, a renaissance building, and next to it the City Hall in gothic style. At the corner was the Basilica of the Holy Blood.

Brugge City Hall

We entered the Basilica of the Holy Blood, it was within the time of the veneration of the Holy Blood relic. The basilica has lower and upper chapels. We climbed the stairs to the upper chapel where the relic was located. The decorations of the upper chapel were quite beautiful, with nice stained glass windows and painted walls. The relic was displayed on a high seat by a lady and we queued briefly for the veneration.
After veneration, we went downstair and shortly entered the lower chapel. It was less attractive than the upper one.

Basilica of the Holy Blood

From the Burg we walked to the main market square that we visited before in the morning. The square was marked by the gothic style Provincial Court building and the magnificent Belfry with its tower. In front of the Provincial Court, there was a statue of Jan Breydel and Pieter de Coninck, local heroes during battle against French in the beginning of 14th century.

Provincial Court at the market square

From the square we walked through Wollestraat back to Rozenhoedkaai, where we stopped for a while in a cafe for coffee.
We almost finished with the walking route. After the coffee break we walked along Oude Burg and ended up at Simon Stevin square, named after mathematician born in Brugge and famous for several innovations in The Netherlands and chose to publish his writings in Dutch, making it the only European language that has the word for mathematics (wiskunde) was not derived from Greek or Latin.

From the Simon Stevin square we visited St. Salvator cathedral, which was not as impressive as the Onze Lieve Vrouwe church. It was around 5 in the afternoon when we were out from St. Salvator cathedral and we finished completely the walking route.

After that we attended the mass in the Onze Lieve Vrouwe church. Before the mass we had a short time to visit old St. John's hospital in front of the church. The hospital was another old preserved building in Brugge and now it is being used as museum.

The almshouses

After the mass we walked to see old almshouses on Driekroezenstraat and walked along Groeninge following the horse cart route until we arrived near the Rozenhoedkaai. Already in the center, we orientated ourselves to the menu cards outside some restaurants. We wandered around the Burg and the market square until finally we settled on with a small restaurant in Huidenvettersplein.
I had a local waterzooi, a creamy stewed fish and vegetables dish. It was quite good, the fish was fresh and the cream was just enough.

Belfry tower in the night

After dinner we strolled slowly through the market, glanced at the majestic Belfry once again, and then back to our car.

Oostende

On Sunday, after breakfast and checked out the hotel, we drove to Oostende, a seaside town about 20 km to the west of Brugge. After parking the car, we walked along the promenade parallel with the coast. We found the tourist information center near the big casino building.

After getting the city map and little information about touristic spots, we walked on the promenade to the marina. The promenade was very ideal for walking and enjoying the sea view. It was very wide with several benches to rest and relax.
About halfway we saw the seamen's memorial, a monument to commemorate died fishermen.

Seamen's memorial, Oostende

Walking a bit further, we reached the marina. It was full with fish market and small booths selling different kind of seafoods and escargot. We tried a cup of escargot, which was quite nice.

From the marina we walked along the shopping area, which was open on that Sunday. Lucky for Sri because she managed to get a shoe there.

For lunch we stopped by at small pizzeria. The place was 100% Italian and the food turned out to be very nice. After the nice lunch we walked back to the car and drove home.

Nice Towns of Flanders, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 18:07:00 +0000

Antwerpen, Gent, Brugge, Oostende
12-14 October 2007

After our summer break in Paris last August, we planned another weekend break to celebrate our wedding anniversary. We chose to drive to Brugge in West Flanders province in Belgium. With a reasonable distance from Eindhoven, we also planned to stop at Antwerpen and Gent, two big cities in the Flanders region that lay on the route to Brugge.

Antwerpen

On Friday, our anniversary day, we started our trip after breakfast from Eindhoven. We drove heading southwest on the highway to Antwerpen. It was pretty quiet on the road and after about one hour we already reached Antwerpen. We were guided by our TomTom navigation system and, using it for the first time, we had no idea that it could give direction to a parking garage in the city.
After being guided until very near to the center of the city, finally we found a parking garage near Groenplaats.

From the parking place we walked to the old city of Antwerpen, passed the big cathedral to Grote Markt, the main city square. We visited the tourist information center to take a city map. After that we decided to have lunch, in where we also could study the map.
We chose a quick lunch at a simple wok. I had a baguette with fried fish, quite tasty and fresh.

After lunch we walked to the bank of Schelde river. From the promenade we could enjoy the view of the river, but unfortunately it was cloudy so the view was a bit somber.
Walk a bit along the river, we visited het Steen, which means 'the Stone', a castle built around year 1200. The building currently is used as Maritime Museum and displayed some old ships next to it.

het Steen, Antwerpen

From the riverside we walked back to the old town area. We passed the Vleeshuis (Butcher's Hall), a unique building with alternating white stones and red bricks (locally known as bacon layers) for the wall construction.

Vleeshuis, Antwerpen

Walking a bit further, we arrived again at the Grote Markt. The main square was a nice spot of the city, with the City Hall building at one side, a fountain in the middle of the square with the statue of the Antwerpen's mythical hero Brabo, the beautiful Guildhouses, and some cafes at the opposite side of the City Hall.

Guildhouses at Grote Markt, Antwerpen

From the Grote Markt we continued our short city tour to the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal (Cathedral of our Lady). From outside, the cathedral offered nice view of its high tower. The inside part was worth visiting for 2 Euro entrance fee.
The highlights of the art collections in this cathedral were Baroque style paintings of Peter Paul Rubens. At both wings we could find The Raising of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross, the large triptych (three panels) paintings illustrating the crossing of Christ. Above the high altar we saw The Assumption of the Virgin Mary, a suitable piece for the cathedral. At one of the side room of the cathedral, there was another painting by Rubens, The Resurrection of Christ.

The Cathedral viewed from Grote Markt, Antwerpen

After the cathedral, we decided that we had enough of touristic spots and switched our attention to the shopping district of Antwerpen. We walked along Meir, the main shopping street of the city until we almost reached the train station. On our way back we stopped a while to enjoy the Belgium waffle, then we back to the car and drove out from Antwerpen to the next city, Gent.

Gent

Gent was not very far from Antwerpen and we reached the city around 4 in the afternoon. Once we entered the city, again we could not manage to quickly find a parking place. This time was worse than in Antwerpen, we drove away from the city center. In the end we followed a parking sign and found a parking garage at Sint-Pietersplein. It was pretty far from the center, about 10 to 15 minutes walking.

While we were walking downhill (yes, it was a bit hilly) from Sint-Pietersplein to the city center, we noticed many students of Gent University that was located nearby. Those students made the atmosphere more dynamic and lively, shaping our first impression of the city.

Closer to the center, we could see old buildings that define the city's landmarks. Feeling a bit clueless, we tried to find the tourist information center, from where we got a city map with walking route to visit the famous spots of the city.

St. Bavo Cathedral, Gent

Only having the evening to spend, we duly follow the walking route from the map and we managed to visit, or at least pass, all the buildings indicated on the map.
We started from Sint-Baafs (St. Bavo) Cathedral near the tourist information center. The cathedral hosted the Mystic Lamb, a panel painting by Van Eyck brothers. Unfortunately we were late and the entrance to the chapel hosting the painting was already closed.
Opposite the cathedral there was the Cloth Hall and the impressive Belfry tower, and on the right hand side of the cathedral we saw the city theatre building.

Belfry tower, Gent

From the cathedral we walked through small streets, passed the music academy, from where we could hear a nice piano sound, then went further around the corner to the City Hall building and a hotel building opposite to it that was stated as the oldest hotel in Western Europe!

City Hall, Gent

A bit further we visited the Friday Market, a big square surrounded with old buildings and on the center of it we saw statue of Jacob van Artevelde, Gent's politician from the 14th century, pointing his hand toward England.

Friday Market, Gent

Leaving the Friday Market, we crossed the Leie river and arrived at the corner of Patershol area, the old part of the city that nowadays hosted the famous restaurants of Gent.

Old buildings near Patershol, Gent

Along the river, we walked down Kraanlei heading away from the Patershol. Near the next bridge we saw the Butcher's Hall across the river.

Cafes along Leie river, Gent

Walked further we saw the huge Gravensteen (Castle of the Counts), a fortress built in 1180. Opposite to it there was Fishmarket building, which was closed and would be renovated.

Gravensteen, Gent

Crossing the Lieve river and walked through Jan Breydelstraat, we stopped at Appelbrugparkje, a tiny park that provided a nice view of the Butcher's Hall.

View from Appelbrugparkje, Gent

But the best part of the city was the old buildings from the 11th century along the Graslei and Korenlei, at the both sides of the Leie river. The area was the ancient trading harbour of Gent and the beautiful buildings there reflected the wealth and success of the trading era.

Graslei from two sides

At the end of Korenlei we walked up to the St. Michael's bridge, from where we could get great view of the area.
Crossing the river and walking back to the direction of city center, we had a nice view of St. Nicolas church with its tower, with the Belfry and St. Bavo towers at the background.

St. Nicolas church, Gent

Near the Belfry we stopped by at the Grote Triomphante, a big bell that used to be part of the carillon hung on the Belfry. Closer to the Belfry we saw a fountain statue that named The Fountain of the Kneelers, image of five persons staring at the water.

Fountain of the Kneelers, Gent

Arrived back at the St. Bavo square, we finished our Gent walking tour. It was around dinner time, so our next activity was to find a place for dinner.
We walked to Patershol area with a hope that we could find decent restaurant there. Without any reference, we walked around and browsed the menu card in front of some restaurants. We were not satisfied with any of them, so we moved to the area nearby the Korenlei. We found several good candidates but they were full. Then we moved again crossing the river to the square near the St. Nicolas church. The restaurants there were also full, and finally we found a place that was not packed, in Pizza Hut! Well, at least we had no problem with the familiar menu card.

Graslei at night

After the economic dinner, we walked back to the car, climbed the hill to Sint-Pietersplein. The driving to Brugge was uneventful and we arrived at the hotel safely.

The Four Seasons by Vivaldi

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 06:57:00 +0000

Frits Philips Muziekcentrum, Eindhoven, 5 October 2007

It has been a while since the last time we enjoyed classical music concert, especially in the Frits Philips Muziekcentrum Eindhoven. Then about two weeks ago Sri found an interesting performance, the complete Four Seasons of Antonio Vivaldi by English Chamber Orchestra and violinist Sarah Chang.
We got the tickets last week, bought a mid-price seat, the third row from the stage. We went with two friends of us.

So, yesterday we met in the music hall some times after 8 in the evening and hurrily checked in because the concert started at 8.15. Our seats were really very close to the stage so we could see clearly everything on it. Unfortunately the seats were the same height as the stage, meaning the sound will pass above our heads.

The concert started sharp on time (sigh..I wish rock concert follow this example). The first piece was the famous Brandenburg Concerto Nr. 3 by Bach. It was a simple performance, which was performed only by 11 persons: 3 violins, 3 violas, 3 cellos, 1 bass, and 1 harpsichord.

This famous piece from Bach was very nice to listen to, with some circling sound from the violins, violas, and cellos. As expected, the sound of the harpsichord was 'vaporized' in the air from where we sat.

After the brilliant performance and warm applause from the audience, the orchestra went inside and the stage was rearranged for bigger capacity. The second piece was something new for me, Serenade in Es Op. 6 by Josef Suk, apprentice of Dvorak.
The composition turned out to be very nice and melodious, although according to Sri the last two movements were a bit like movie soundtrack.

After that we had a break for about 15 minutes. Something noticable during the break was that the audience was not only dominated by old people like normally we noticed in the classical music concerts. There were some young people, very casually dressed for classical music concert. I assumed it was because The Four Seasons is really popular, or maybe they went to see Sarah Chang :).

After the break we back inside the hall, when I realized that it would be my first time watching the Four Seasons live.

The orchestra was in the same formation as when they played the second piece. Then the main violinist walked to the center of the stage. Dressed in elegant long gown and with her Asian look (she has Korean blood from her father), Sarah Chang held a beautiful charisma on the stage.

After quickly tuned the violin, she gave a sign to the others and begun the first part of the Four Seasons, La Primavera (Spring). This cheerful piece was really enjoyable, with impressive and confident playing by Sarah Chang and perfect harmony from the orchestra.

The following three parts of the concerto were also great. Normally I did not really able to enjoy Summer and Winter but live performance provided different view of it. It was great to capture the moments when the main violin played head-to-head with the cello or the viola. Moreover, watching Sarah's fingers flying on her violin was also awesome.

It felt the complete concerto was so short when they played the final notes of Winter and Sarah Chang finished it. She and the orchestra received a standing ovation for quite a while before finally they left the stage.

After the concert we had drinks at one of the terrace in the main square of the city, enjoying mild autumn evening. When it was getting colder, we went home. It was a good show and very nice evening!

Performers:

English Chamber Orchestra
Sarah Chang, main violinist in the Four Seasons

Complete performance:

Brandenburg Concerto Nr. 3 in G major - JS Bach
Adagio - Allegro

Serenade in Es Opus 6 - Josef Suk
Andante con moto
Allegro ma non troppo e grazioso
Adagio
Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo presto

----

The Four Seasons (Opus 8 Nr. 1-4) - Antonio Vivaldi

Spring (Concerto Nr. 1 in E major, Op. 8)
Allegro
Largo
Allegro

Summer (Concerto Nr. 2 in G minor, Op. 8)
Allegro non molto
Adagio
Presto

Autumn (Concerto Nr. 3 in F major, Op. 8)
Allegro
Adagio
Allegro

Winter (Concerto Nr. 4 in F minor, Op. 8)
Allegro non molto
Largo
Allegro

Paris Re-visited

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:17:00 +0000

4-7 August 2007

As a short break this summer, we decided to re-visit Paris on the first weekend of August. We chose the first weekend because the museums are free on the first Sunday of the month. We had used similar strategy two years ago and it was great so we would like to repeat the experience.
We bought Thalys tickets, departed from Rotterdam on Saturday afternoon and returned from Paris on early Tuesday morning. We booked a room at Ibis La Fayette, located about 10 minutes walking from Gare du Nord train station.

We left Eindhoven pretty early on Saturday and reached Rotterdam around lunchtime. It was because we had planned to have dim sum at Tai Wu. The dim sum was great, a very nice prolog of the holiday.

The trip with Thalys was smooth apart from few confused persons who could not find their seats. They found the correct number...but unfortunately in the wrong carriage. After about 3 hours we arrived at Gare du Nord. The big station was busy as well as the outside area. We walked a bit until junction between Rue La Fayette and Blvd. de Magenta and already saw the Ibis hotel where we would stay. We checked-in our room and put the luggage in a neat small room.

It was around 5.30 when we walked back to Gare du Nord from the hotel. We bought carnet, ten tickets for Paris transportation lines, and took the Metro to Etoile at the end of Avenue des Champs-Elysees.
It was a crowded Saturday evening in the famous Champs-Elysees when we got there. The weather was mild and the sun shone warmly. We walked some parts of the avenue to visit Sephora, a very big beauty shop. The shop was busy, probably most of the visitors are tourists, and it was quite amazing to see so many perfumes and cosmetics there.

From Sephora we walked back to the end of the avenue to visit Arc de Triomphe. The impressive monument is located at the center of wide roundabout, called Place Charles de Gaulle, at the end of Champs-Elysees. The roundabout itself was very wide and it had twelve avenues lead to there.
We used the underground passage to reach the Arc. It was even grander from closer view. The walls had ornaments and inscription of the names of French military generals and battles from Napoleon era.
We bought access ticket to enter the Arc and climbed the spiral stairs to the top. The view from the top was really wonderful. At the west side we could see La Defense monument. There was the famous Eiffel tower at the south and the long Champs-Elysees at the east. Between them we could see Montparnasse tower and the golden dome of Invalides. To the north side we had a nice view of Montmartre hill with the Sacre Cour basilica at the highest point.

View from the top of the Arc de Triomphe

Satisfied with the view, and also because we spotted possible dinner place besides going to crowded Champs-Elysees, we went down and out from the Arc. We walked to Avenue de Wagram where we spotted McDonald's and Quick (French fast food) signs. Near the Quick we found a restaurant called Monte Carlo. It was a kind of self-service restaurant serving some salads and warm meals. We chose minced beef with french fries and boiled vegetables. Simple and fast.

After the quick dinner we walked back to the roundabout, circled it, and walked along Avenue Kleber to Trocadero. From the esplanade of Palais de Chaillot we had a nice view of the great Eiffel tower. We sat down at the stair facing the Eiffel and just relaxed, waiting for the light show from the tower. It started around 10 o'clock and quite a nice view at the beginning. Not for long though since it was just monotone. It might be nicer to have music accompanying the light, like the Symphony of Light in Hong Kong.

Eiffel tower from the Trocadero

When the light show was over we left the Trocadero, took the Metro back to Gare du Nord and walked to the hotel.

The flickering Eiffel tower

The Sunday morning was sunny and warm. We went out from the hotel around 9 and had a breakfast at a restaurant at the front of the train station. We had French baguettes, which in the end we realized it was a bit too heavy for breakfast.
As our museum visit day, we started with Musee du Quai Branly. The museum was located at Quai Branly, near the Eiffel tower. The museum building was big, in red colour, surrounded with nice park. It was already a queue to enter the museum when we reached there. The museum displayed ancient culture collections from Africa, America, Asia, and Oceania. We just browsed through the collections, no specific interest since it was too crowded and the majority of the descriptions are only in French. From the main building we visited the souvenir shop and bought few small stuffs there.

Musee du Quai Branly

From the Quai Branly we took the train, and then transferred to a bus because the rail track was closed, to the Latin Quarter. We walked from Boulevard Saint-Michel, passing St. Severin church, to a Vietnamese restaurant on Rue Dante. My wife visited this restaurant last year and it had become her favourite. There we also met our old Indonesian friend who studied in Fontainebleau, a suburb of Paris. We chose different three-courses meal so we could try several dishes. The food was nice and quite filling, a perfect lunch.

After lunch we walked along the left bank of Seine river and crossed it near the Louvre. We walked through the park of the Louvre, passed the famous glass pyramid, and through the beautiful Jardin des Tuileries until we reached Musee de l'Orangerie, which was located near the Place de la Concorde. The weather was really warm with full sunshine and blue sky.

Louvre

There was another queue to enter the museum but in short time we could enter it. Once inside, we directly went to the oval rooms to see the Nympheas (Water Lilies) of Claude Monet. The setting was brilliant, where two oval rooms, with slightly different size, adjacent to each other displayed different Water Lilies paintings on curved wall. There were 4 paintings in each room displaying different colourful impressionist images of water surface with water lilies, willows, iris, and sky reflection. The rooms had direct filtered light from above, which gave nice nuance on the paintings.
Besides the Nympheas, the museum also held many paintings from impressionist era from Renoir, Sisley, and Cezanne, among others.

Monet's Water Lilies

From the l'Orangerie we walked pass the Place de la Concorde and the beginning of Champs-Elysees to visit the Petit Palais (small palace). Instead of the name, it was another museum building with a spacious hall displaying paintings and sculptures. The backside of the building had a half-circle shape, where we rested for a while in the museum's cafe.

Petit Palais

From the Petit Palais we took the Metro to visit the Jardin du Luxembourg, another nice garden in Paris. The garden was pretty full of Parisian who enjoyed the nice sunny weather and the nice view of the garden. We also sat for a while on the chairs that were provided for public. Besides the nice garden and Luxembourg Palace, we also could enjoy some statues and the famous Medicis fountain in the garden.

Jardin du Luxembourg

It was almost dinnertime when we were in the garden. Recently we read a review of an Indonesian restaurant in Paris. It was located on Rue de Vaugirard, in the front of the Luxembourg Palace. We were very close so we decided to have dinner there. We arrived at the restaurant few minutes before 7 and waited until it was open at 7 o'clock.
We were welcomed by the owner herself and had some nice chats while ordering our food. The menus were original Indonesian dishes. I ordered lamb sate (sate kambing). Originally I opted for gule kambing but it was not available.
The sate was nice, with sauce made only from sweet soy sauce, chilies, and red onions.

After the dinner our friend went back to Fontainebleau, but both of us stayed a bit longer at the restaurant. Enjoying the almost sunset time, we walked around in the area. We passed by the Pantheon and some small streets near the Sorbonne University. We stopped shortly at the Place de la Sorbonne, a small square next to the university building.
Because it was already quite late, we walked to the Metro station and back to the hotel.

Pantheon

Monday morning was started differently. It was cloudy and raining. Originally we planned to visit Montmartre but then we changed our mind. In the end we chose safer and drier activity: went to shopping center.
We took the Metro to Boulevard Haussmann where the big department stores were located. First we visited the Printemps, browsed around the cosmetics and clothes sections. Then we moved to Galeries Lafayette, mainly to check its foods section. The building of the store was impressive with a steel-glass dome and stylish balconies.

The dome of Galeries Lafayette

We supposed to meet our friend again for lunch at a Szechuan restaurant named Panda as he had suggested. Coincidentally we found that the same restaurant existed in the Galeries Lafayette, but unfortunately we suddenly had no mobile network so we could not contact him.
So we went to the restaurant at the address that he gave, at Blvd. de Strasbourg. We found a Szechuan restaurant but the name was not Panda! Nevertheless we entered and waited for him. It was quite a desperate situation because we still could not contact him. When finally we were able to do that, he said that the restaurant was not the one that he had expected. But since we had waited quite long there, we urged him to go back joining us.
The food turned out to be OK, typical spicy Szechuan dishes, except that they were not spicy enough for me.

From the restaurant we walked along Blvd. de Strasbourg and Blvd. de Sebastopol to Pompidou Centre. The building had a unique modern design, mainly built by steel and glass materials with a noticeable staircase tube. There was a wide square in front of the building, where at one side we could enjoy some street performers. A little bit further we saw the Stravinsky Fountain with some modern-art statues inspired by Stravinsky's compositions.
We entered the public area of the building, visited the souvenir corner and bookshop.

Street performer near the Pompidou Centre

After that we walked along the Rue Rambuteau crossing the Blvd. de Sebastopol to Les Halles area. We visited St. Eustache church at the end of the street, with a unique head-shaped statue on the park in front of the church, and then walked along Jardin des Halles. Les Halles was originally a marketplace area, which had been transformed into a modern shopping center.

From Les Halles we walked heading south along the Blvd. de Sebastopol, passed Chatelet area and reached the Seine bank. We crossed the river to the Ile de la Cite island and passed the Palais de Justice and Sainte-Chapelle, a chapel from Louis IX era with very beautiful stained glass.

We crossed the Seine at the other side of the island and walked along Blvd. Saint-Germain until the area near the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres. We visited Brasserie Lipp to have a coffee break. The brasserie was one of the famous cafes in the Saint-Germain area, where many politicians were regular customers.
It was quite empty when we were there. The interior of the brasserie was quite nice, the walls were a combination of wide mirrors and ceramics with floral pattern.

After the coffee break we walked around the Saint-Germain area. We went through small streets with old buildings and nice restaurants on both sides, for example along Rue de Buci.
After a while we ended up walking in the direction to Saint-Sulpice church. We entered the big church and found the meridian line and the obelisk, which had become famous due to Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code.

Streets in the Saint-Germain area

From the Saint-Sulpice we took part with our friend who needed to go back home. The weather turned out to be very nice that evening, so we decided to go to Montmartre.

From the Metro station we climbed the hill to the Sacre Cour. The view from above was wonderful, we could see the whole landscape of Paris. From the beautiful church we walked around the area that was quite crowded with tourists and street artists.

Sacre Cour Basilica

From the hilly Montmartre area we walked down to Blvd. de Clichy. We walked along the boulevard, passed the famous Moulin Rouge and further until we reached Place de Clichy.
We stopped at Brasserie Wepler for dinner. It was an old restaurant in the area with nice atmosphere and attractive foods. We ordered oysters for starters and I had duck confit for main course. The duck was very nice, crispy and a bit salty skin and tender meat.
After the very nice dinner we went back to the hotel.

The following morning we took the early train back to Rotterdam, with nice memories stuck in our mind. One day we'll be back to Paris!

Genesis Turn It On Again Tour

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 15:57:00 +0000

Amsterdam ArenA, 1 July 2007

Genesis is really an old friend of mine. I have known them since 1987 when I was only 12 years old. At that time I bought a cassette of Genesis called 'The very best of Genesis vol. 2', produced locally by Aquarius Indonesia. I still remember how I enjoyed their songs from Duke, Abacab, until Invisible Touch albums. I also had a copy of the Invisible Touch video containing clips of almost all songs from the album.

Several years after that I still followed their activities. I enjoyed We Can't Dance album, with nice songs like Driving the Last Spike and Fading Lights. It was even better when they released The Way We Walk live albums. From then on I was captivated by their 'ancient' songs from the 70's, thanks to the old medley.

Since that moment, it seemed like I traveled back in time. Slowly, in between my passion for music from that period like Metallica, Megadeth, Helloween, and other heavy stuffs, I threw myself back to the progressive-rock era by listening to Seconds Out, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and the Archive 1967-75 box set.
After that there was no turning back, I collected their official albums completely plus the Archive box sets and the official DVD releases.
In the past two years I also got the chance to watch their 'reincarnation', The Musical Box. I watched them performed The Lamb Lies and Selling England shows.

With this prelude, I think you agree that I was one who got excited and happy when last year Genesis announced to back on stage in 2007. Well, not the most perfect formation, but we couldn't always get what we wanted, could we?

On a Saturday morning in November last year, I was one of the people who queued at the post office to get the ticket for Genesis' concert in Amsterdam ArenA, the only show in Holland. I got two tickets at the tribune, great!
Not much happening until few months back, when I bought the first Genesis SACD box set and re-shaped my memory of their songs with the wonderful 'new' sound of their albums between 1976-1982 period. I must admit that I really love this new SACD mix (kudos to Nick Davis).
I also got regular updates from Germany Genesis Fanclub website about the tour preparation and rehearsals, until finally they kicked out in Helsinki last month. After touring some cities in Europe, there came the first of July, when Genesis played the Amsterdam ArenA, and I was there!

It was a mild Sunday in the summer. It was not too hot and luckily it was not rain. I took the train from Eindhoven with my wife to Arena. We arrived there around half past seven in the evening. There were lots of people outside the ArenA, also at the queue to enter the stadium. The entrance process was smooth, no one bothered about digital pocket camera in the bag.

It was the first time I entered Amsterdam ArenA, the biggest stadium in Holland. It took already quite some energy to climb the stairs to reach the corridor of the tribune seats. Before entering the tribune, I bought a Genesis t-shirt. They also sold some interesting stuffs at the merchandise corner, including Anatomy Of A Tour book and Phil's The Long Goodnight documentary DVD.

After bought soft drinks and french fries, we entered the stadium. We got seats at the right-hand side tribune. Not until I checked the row number when I realized that our seats were at the highest row! We had a full view of the stadium and the stage, except the wide screen on the left-hand side.

The main stage was still hidden behind black curtain, but we could observe the whole stage layout. It was quite wide, with a wave-shaped background and two oval screens on both sides. There were seven metal towers soared above the background for lighting support. The festival area was almost full with people and it was not much different situation at the tribune.

About half past seven, the black curtain was removed. The main stage was not so big and the layout was a Genesis standard: Tony's keyboards at the right, two drums sets on the raised floor at the back, two pedal sets for Mike and Daryl, and center microphone stand. While the whole stadium was almost full, we still had to wait for another 45 minutes before the band hit the stage. It was pretty boring except for the light and the big screens testing.

But finally it started! No spectacular entrance, just the complete background turned on as white dotted lights, they kicked in with instrumental medley of Behind The Lines and Duke's End. Phil played drums, Mike took the center stage, and Tony was calm and serious as always. This instrumental opening was pretty good, I would say it was like a warming up for the band, kind of jamming session.

Behind The Lines

The second song was Turn It On Again, where Phil took the center stage. His vocal was still OK in spite of his age. I found these two opening songs from Duke were a perfect choice. After Turn It On Again, Phil shortly interacted with the audience, introduced Mr. Tony Banks and Mr. Mike Rutherford, warmly applauded by the crowd.

The following two songs were from newer era, No Son Of Mine and Land Of Confusion. The background was turned to a huge display screen, showed the ticking clock at the beginning of No Son Of Mine and the puppets during Land Of Confusion. The oval screens on both sides helped us on the tribune to watch 'closer' to the stage. It was nice to watch old Mike and white-haired Tony in action.

After those 'pop' songs, the band got down to real business with Phil started the familiar "I got sunshine in my stomach" line of In The Cage. Mike used his double neck for switching between guitar and bass. I enjoyed this part, Phil's vocal was good and the music was flawless. In The Cage was the first part of medley, where the instrumental part was smoothly moved to the instrumental part of The Cinema Show. Phil back behind his drums and they ended the medley with another smooth transition to Duke's Travels.

In The Cage

Almost as a continuation of the previous medley, the band played the calm Afterglow. It was another enjoyable moment for me since I always like this song from Wind and Wuthering album.

To maintain the stamina, at least in my opinion, they played another slow song, Hold On My Heart. Phil sat on a chair and the lights turned into pink-purple nuance, kind of romantic.

After two slow songs, Phil told his story about a scary house to begin the wonderful Home By The Sea suite. This song was performed perfectly. The visualization was brilliant, with images of the house, the face on the wall, and the ghosts animation. The sound was powerful, especially during Second Home By The Sea with double drums. The lighting was great, with raising spotlights on the light towers at the end of the song.

Home By The Sea

After a short stop, they performed Follow You Follow Me. Phil was playing drums while singing. This song was performed softly, even better with a nice simple animation showing characters from Genesis' album covers such as the Duke, walking son from We Can't Dance cover, sleeping lawn mower from Selling England, and Cynthia with her croquet stick from Nursery Crime.

Then came the second medley: Firth of Fifth - I Know What I Like. The performance was perfect, sounds great especially the solos from Daryl. What I like most from this song was the background slide, showing pictures of young Genesis faces, very nostalgic and touching. There were many pictures, combination of photo shoots and live pictures (including Gabriel's flower face from Supper's Ready). During Phil's tambourine dance, the background slide also showed the same dance but from around 25 years earlier!
At the end of the song, with reddened stage, there was a net being raised between the light towers, which made the stage looked like a huge crown. This medley was definitely my most favorite part of the show.

I Know What I Like

Mama, the next song, was good. Phil's sound and act were still worth watching. Especially because of his older look, the light show during the laughter part was terrific.

Not enough of old songs, the band performed the beautiful Ripples. Mike again used his double neck. We experienced another good performance of classic Genesis song, with nice green-yellowish light nuance and trees image background that reminded me to Roger Dean's art from albums of Yes. The crowd gave very warm applause at the end of this song.

Ripples

Back to the new era, Phil Collins chanted the popular intro of Throwing It All Away and surely followed by the crowd. Regardless of its pop style, this song is one of my Genesis favorites. The big screen showed candid shoots of the crowds during this song, gave us a very nice entertainment similar to what we usually get on sport live coverage. It was great to see people sang, then smiled or waved once they had known that they were on the screen.

Throwing It All Away

Another interaction with the audience, Phil explained his domino principle. Finally I was actively involved in this domino effect after watched it so many times in the DVD. The light was great, and the crowd responded eagerly.
The song itself was great. I enjoyed the calm first part and the powerful second part. Phil's vocal quality was still good. The visual effects were wonderful, showing falling domino pieces and Phil's face surrounded with light waves.

After the powerful Domino, the crew set up bar stool that placed between two drums sets. Then Phil and Chester performed the drum duet, this time started with the bar stool. I think the stool had a leather surface, which made the sound quite different. They gradually moved to the drums and performed the powerful and tight duet. The drum duet directly continued by Los Endos, a wonderful instrumental song from Genesis' progressive era. Once again I enjoyed Mike's double neck action. The background displayed fire flame animation, brilliant support to give progressive nuance.

Los Endos

After that the band performed their standard live songs, Tonight Tonight Tonight followed by Invisible Touch. They were nice as usual and Invisible Touch was one of crowd's favorite. I saw many people danced with this song.

Ending the Invisible Touch, the band went off the stage. Surely no one in the crowd agreed with this, so we shouted, clapped our hands, until finally we heard the electric drum intro of I Can't Dance. The sound effects were great, the walking was enjoyable, but for me the most wonderful aspect of this song was the background, where it displayed big size white walking Genesis at the beginning and then turned to many colorful of them at the end. Though I never really liked this song (honestly I booed at the end of this song) but still the performance could not be ignored.

I Can't Dance

After his dance at the end of I Can't Dance, Phil thanked Chester and Daryl, who got very warm applause from the audience. Then he announced the last song, mentioned that the song was very special for them. It was the beautiful Carpet Crawlers. Nothing could beat this nice calm song as the ending of the show, with very nice vocal harmony from the trio at the refrain.

Then it was over. We waited quite a while until we could walk down the tribune and walked in a hurry to catch our last train to home.

To conclude, off course it was a great show. It was not perfect, though. First of all, the acoustic of Amsterdam ArenA was terrible. From our place the echoes were enormous, sounded like there were two bands performed at both sides of the stadium at slightly different timing. Another thing that I could not totally appreciate was the neighboring crowd. It seems like there was a generation gap between some of them. Some people enjoyed the new songs and chatted, unfortunately quite loud, between themselves during the old songs. Some others loved the old songs and luckily they were wise enough to just keep quite during the new songs. So in the end I tend to appreciate old progressive fans than the young pop fans. Long live progressive rock!

Nevertheless, it was indeed a great show. The production was great, the lighting and the visual were beyond my expectation. The band was still great performers on the stage. Chester Thompson still very discipline with his tempo and Daryl Stuermer still sharp on the strings. Tony, Mike, and Phil were still solid as a team after 15 years break.

In the end, as an old friend, I would always remember this as a great show (have I mentioned it?). I cannot wait until they release the DVD from performance in Rome and also the next SACD box sets.

Genesis are:
Phil Collins - Vocals, Drums
Tony Banks - Keyboards, Vocals
Mike Rutherford - Guitars, Bass, Vocals

Supported by:
Chester Thompson - Drums
Daryl Stuermer - Guitars, Bass

Set list:
Behind The Lines / Duke's End
Turn It On Again
No Son Of Mine
Land Of Confusion
In The Cage / The Cinema Show / Duke's Travels
Afterglow
Hold On My Heart
Home By The Sea / Second Home By The Sea
Follow You Follow Me
Firth Of Fifth / I Know What I Like
Mama
Ripples
Throwing It All Away
Domino
Drum Duet
Los Endos
Tonight Tonight Tonight
Invisible Touch
--------------------
I Can't Dance
Carpet Crawlers

Do you know me?

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:57:00 +0000

Create your own Friend Test here

Roger Waters Performing the Dark Side of the Moon

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 18:47:00 +0000

Gelredome, Arnhem, 5 May 2007

This was the second time for me to watch a concert in Gelredome stadium in Arnhem. The situation before the concert was typical. I arrived about one hour before scheduled time on the ticket and the Arnhem train station was full with people who wanted to go to Gelredome. As usual the special shuttle buses were ready and we timidly (well...almost) queued to get in to the bus. Slightly different with concert of Coldplay two years ago, this time the majority was older people because this was the concert of the legendary Roger Waters from Pink Floyd. I think I was younger than the average age, due to the fact that I even had not yet born when Pink Floyd released The Dark Side of the Moon, which was planned to be performed completely by Roger that evening.

After a short ride with the bus, we were approaching the stadium. There was even more crowds at the location, some were already queuing to enter the arena, some were still enjoying the sunny weather. I bought my second Roger Waters t-shirt (the first one was a gift from Brain Damage, thanks!) and then I need to walk around half of the stadium to reach the correct entrance gate based on my ticket. This time I chose a seat at the furthest tribune from the stage but with frontal view so I could fully enjoy the visual entertainment of the concert.

When I entered, the field was already half full of people and most of the tribune seats were already occupied. The show that evening was sold out anyway.
My seat was quite low and a bit to the right from the central line to the stage. The stage was far, I think it was about 100 metres from my seat. I had a wide view of almost every thing, the only obstacle was two thick speaker wires at the center of the field, hanging vertically to several huge speakers on the ceiling. I was surrounded by old and young audiences, mostly in groups. I think some of them were family and father-and-son pairs. It's nice to see that the progressive rock music was regenerated smoothly :).

The stage layout was really promising for visual entertainment. There were two projection screens at both sides of the stage and one huge video screen at the background of the stage.
The video screen showed still image of a radio transistor with an airplane miniature on top of it, a half full whiskey bottle, a half full glass, and an ashtray.

After waiting for almost an hour, the show was started in a real progressive style. We saw smokes on the screen, and then there was a hand turned on the radio and turned the knob to choose channel. We listened to some old songs, I recognized Hound Dog from Elvis and a song from ABBA that was switched almost immediately by the hand, meanwhile the hand drank the whiskey from the glass and the lights of the stadium were turned off.

Around 8 o' clock, while we were still enjoying the old tunes from the radio, Roger Waters entered the stage, walked and waved to the audience. Then he shouted "Lights! Turn on the sound effects! Action!", which started In The Flesh.
This powerful song was really perfect as an opening, with its theme, its loudness, and with extra fireworks at the end of the song. The video screen also helped a lot with the original animation from The Wall.

The second song was also from The Wall album, Mother. Roger played the acoustic guitar and the mother part was sung by one of the backing vocalists.

The next song was a Pink Floyd classic. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun was performed with a slightly different arrangement than the original, but tend to inherit the version from In The Flesh tour/DVD with the sax solo. I enjoyed a lot the animation during the song, started with image of sun flare, then old black and white shoots of young Pink Floyd members, and the psychedelic bubbles along the climax end of the song before finally showed again the sun flare.

While the sun flare on the screen was zoomed out and the video showed the wide universe with many stars, the familiar intro of Shine On You Crazy Diamond was played, responded by big applause from the crowd. This song was one of the highlights of the show, with positive response from the crowd and several pictures of Syd on the screen.

Shine on You Crazy Diamond

The show was continued with another song from Wish You Were Here album, Have a Cigar. I found the sound was a bit too loud on this song and Roger's vocal quality was a bit too perfect. Nevertheless, the ending of the song was brilliant. The guitar solo was ended abruptly, and then the screen showed back the radio and the hand switched channels, exactly the same effect as in the album, until the acoustic guitar intro of Wish You Were Here was played. It was great!!!
The WYWH itself was perfectly performed, with nice acoustic guitar solos from Dave Kilminster.

The show moved on with newer songs from Final Cut album that already became standard Roger Waters live songs, Southampton Dock followed by The Fletcher Memorial Home. Roger's emotion was intense, expressed on his face when he sang the songs. The guitar solo on The Fletcher was very good.

After songs from Pink Floyd era, the video screen showed the astronaut accompanying the intro of Perfect Sense. This was followed by the appearance of an astronaut balloon from left corner of the stadium, floating nicely along with the relax piano and breathing sound of the song. This song combined perfectly the perfect surround sound effect, thanks to the quadraphonic sound system, and nice visual especially the part where Roger acted as the submarine shooter destroyed an oil rig (also with a real explosion on the stage!). PP Arnold also performed her vocal part perfectly, supported with the crowd sang the line “Can't you see? It all makes perfect sense”.

As a 'new' song, Roger introduced Leaving Beirut as a reflection of his visit to Lebanon when he was 19 and being hosted with great hospitality by a family there. The lyrics expressed his story, combined with some political messages related to US influence in the Middle East. We could follow the complete lyrics as it was transformed as cartoon images on the screen. There were some interesting parts in the lyrics, for example 'That Texas education must have fucked you up', pointed to Bush, and a mention of Atticus Finch, a fictional character from To Kill a Mockingbird novel, which accidentally I just read.

The first set was closed with Sheep. This song gave ultimate ending for the set. The quadraphonic system once again used perfectly for the animals sound (the dog howling sounded so real!). And..off course, everyone expected the pig flies. It floated around quite long, with several writings on it such as 'Stop Bush Now' on the side and 'What an asshole!' on its rear.

Flying pig during Sheep

During the break, I could enjoy the satisfaction on majority of the audiences, especially the older people. Meanwhile the screen displayed image of the moon, which very slowly looked bigger and bigger until the lights were off once again and the heart beat sound filling the stadium. This sound was reflected as a red dot at the moon orbit, which grew closer and turned out to be a satellite, focused on the center of the screen at the screaming sound at the end of Speak To Me.

The second set was a complete performance of the Dark Side of the Moon.

Breathe was sung perfectly by Jon Carin. The sound effects during On the Run were brilliant, extended with several extra effects such as sirens, trains, and braking car sounds. The visual was pretty much the same as the original animation or the one showed in the PULSE DVD.

Time was another perfect performance from the band, started with very real ticking and ringing clocks, then with nice percussions. I always like the part when the song was blended back to Breathe..”home..home again..”.

Further on, Carol Kenyon performed a wonderful voice on The Great Gig in the Sky. She got a very warm applause by the audience.

Money was, as always, everyone's favorite. Roger Waters looked very much enjoy playing the bass and singing this song. Us and Them also was crowd's favorite. I like the smoothness and calmness of this song.

Any Colour You Like was also wonderful. The guitar sounds were nice.
During Brain Damage, there was a pyramid shape placed above the stage, which was turning and sending colourful laser beam throughout the stadium. The sound was also brilliant, the laughs sounded very real.
The DSOTM set was ended by Eclipse, a short song that closed by the heart beat sound as the beginning of the set.

The crowd went crazy, clapped and shouted when the band disappeared behind the stage. They would not stop until finally Roger and the other musicians back on the stage and performed the encore.

The encore comprised songs from The Wall, started with The Happiest Days of Our Lives followed by Another Brick in the Wall (part 2), where it seemed like nobody could not sing it. Snowy White played the solo almost as perfect as David Gilmour.

Vera was sung with lots of emotion by Roger and most of the crowds also sang along with him. As in the album, Vera was followed with Bring the Boys Back Home, with visualization of war scene complete with bomb explosions and smokes.

The show was closed with the classic ending song of Roger Waters' concert, the famous psychotic Comfortably Numb. The guitar solos were played nicely by both Dave Kilminster and Snowy White. The screen displayed again the radio transistor, but this time exposed the hand owner, a man seated almost laid down on the couch, smoking and staring to infinity, very good illustration of a comfortable numb.

Then it was over. For me it was the most spectacular concert that I ever experienced, in terms of the visual, the sound quality, and the whole integrity of the show production. On the other hand, maybe because of the size of the show, I missed the intimacy and communication between the musicians and the audiences that usually quite intense in the smaller shows.

Concert set list:

First set:
- In the Flesh
- Mother
- Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
- Shine On You Crazy Diamond Parts 1-5
- Have a Cigar
- Wish You Were Here
- Southampton Dock
- The Fletcher Memorial Home
- Perfect Sense Part 1 and 2
- Leaving Beirut
- Sheep

Second set:
The Dark Side of the Moon

Encore:
- The Happiest Days of Our Lives
- Another Brick in the Wall, Part II
- Vera
- Bring the Boys Back Home
- Comfortably Numb

Musicians:
Roger Waters – Vocals, bass guitar and acoustic guitar
Andy Fairweather-Low – Guitar, bass and backing vocals
Snowy White – Guitar
Dave Kilminster – Guitar, vocals and additional bass
Jon Carin – Synthesizer, guitar, lap steel guitar and vocals
Harry Waters – Hammond organ and synthesizer
Ian Ritchie – Saxophone, EWI and additional bass
Graham Broad – Drums and percussion
Katie Kissoon - Backing vocals
P. P. Arnold - Backing vocals
Carol Kenyon – Backing vocals

Texel Island

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 15:43:00 +0000

May 25-28, 2007

During the Pentecost weekend, we rented a bungalow with some friends in Texel, a small island on the North Holland. It was my second longest self-driving trip after the Zeeland trip on Easter. We started on Friday after office hour, directly drove from Den Bosch after I picked up Sri at the train station. Due to peak hour plus beginning of the long weekend, the traffic was quite bad. We drove through the busy part of the country, Utrecht and Amsterdam. Luckily the traffic was better on the north side of Amsterdam. We used the highway passing Purmerend and Hoorn until we arrived at Den Helder, where we took the ferry to Texel island. The trip from Den Bosch took about 3 hours and it was around 9 in the evening when we boarded on the ferry.

The ferry was huge, at least compared with the familiar ferries serving Java-Madura or Java-Bali routes in Indonesia. The Texel ferry had two floors for cars and another floor for passengers. I think the ferry could load more than 200 cars on one trip. The crossing was pretty short, about 20 minutes. The weather that evening was good and some people attracted the seagulls by throwing bread on them.

Landed on Texel, we drove through the flat landscape of the island in the twilight sunset. Somehow it was not so easy to find the bungalow, due to incorrect ending point on our driving route direction. We got lost in the middle of nowhere on a narrow village roads. Fortunately our friends already arrived in the bungalow and we got guidance via phone call until finally we could reach it.

The bungalow was actually part of a farmhouse, converted as a guesthouse by the owner. It was located near De Waal, a very small village in the middle of the island. The house was well maintained and clean. It had a spacious living room with kitchen and three bedrooms. We got a bedroom at the attic with slanted roof. One minus point was that the toilet was combined in the bathroom, not really handy for 6 persons.

On Saturday, all of us woke up pretty late. After brunch we drove to the nearest beach from the bungalow, on the east side of the island. It was called 'surfer beach', although no one surfed and in fact it was empty. There were several Texel sheep on the grass near the beach and there were lots of shells on the sea line.

Texel sheep

Next we went to De Koog, the most touristic village in Texel. The center of the village was quite big, with several restaurants, shops, and bike rentals. It was quite crowded by tourists. We walked in the center for a while and did small shopping in the supermarket.

The next visit was Ecomare, the nature center of Texel. It was located near to De Koog, in the National Park Dunes of Texel. In Ecomare we could see many things related to the nature life of Texel and North Sea. The building had three floors. After the entrance gate we could see several small artifacts of ancient habitat in Texel, animation of evolution of Texel land and sea for the last 1500 centuries, and some models of animals that live or lived in Texel including one real-size rhinoceros from many centuries ago.
The adjacent room provides information and animations about exploitation of the North Sea.

Outside the building we found seals and birds sanctuaries. The seals were located in several pools. We arrived in time to see the feeding time. While throwing fresh herring to the seals, the caretaker told some information about the seals. Some of the seals were already quite old and some were blind. The caretaker showed that a seal was blind by attracting a fish in front of it. The seal could not see the fish, only when the fish was close enough for it to smell, then it ate the fish. One big seal growled like a dog to attract the caretaker to throw a fish to it.
The seals feeding time attracted most of the visitors to watch, as well as some seagulls that competed to get fish with the seals.

Seals feeding

After watching the feeding time, we visited the basement floor. There were several aquariums with small fishes, starfishes, and crab. There was also a hole to watch the seals in one of the pools, and an information board about different kind of seals and their location all over the world.

The upper level of the building hosted models of birds that could be found in Texel. I did not visit this floor, just saw them from the ground floor.

At the backside of the building, next to the seals sanctuary, we entered the dune. There were three different walk routes based on the total distance. Not having much spare time, we chose the shortest route, which was about 1 km walk. Along the path we could see the dune landscape with its typical bushes and few sea birds. At several spots there were some explanations about the dune, how it stores water beneath the surface and how people in the past maintained and exploited the dune.

The dune of Texel

The walking path led us back to Ecomare. We entered the building again. Me and Sri visited a storm animation corner where we could experience the storm in Texel on large projector screen and the howling wind sound. After that we back to the car, right on the closing time of Ecomare.

We spent the evening back in De Koog. We walked through the city center to the seaside. The sandy beach was quite wide and very long. It's a pity that it was quite windy and cold, so we had no real interest to spend long time on the beach.
Walking back to the center, we found Noordzee restaurant and we decided to have our dinner there.

The dinner was pretty good. The restaurant served some interesting dishes. I chose Texel lamb trio: three pieces of lamb with natural meat sauce. The lamb was quite tender and had no distinctive lamb smell. We also had salad from the buffet, french fries, and fried eggplants accompanying the main dish.

After dinner we went back to the bungalow, then we played Carcassonne board game until quite late.

Combination of staying late the previous night, strong wind, and rain forced us to wake up late again on Sunday. We stayed inside the whole morning and only went out after lunch. We visited Oudeschild, a harbour village on the east side of the island, facing the Wadden Sea. We walked along the harbour, where there were several sailing trip operators to see the seals on a shrimp-catcher ship.
Next to the harbour, there was Maritime Museum. Unfortunately it was closed during the Pentecost weekend. We entered few souvenir shops before we back to the car and drove away from Oudeschild.

We took a route following the coastline of the island heading to the northeast. We reached another village at the north side of the island, called De Cocksdorp. We stopped for a while there and walked to the seaside, but the wind was so strong we could not stand it. We drove further to the north to visit the Texel lighthouse. On the way there, we stopped by in a restaurant to drink coffee and warm chocolate milk.
The lighthouse was not open for public, so we only saw it from a distance. Next to it, there was a wide sandy beach. But again it was too windy to play on the beach.

Texel Lighthouse

We drove back to the bungalow and spent the evening inside. We cooked for dinner, and played Carcassonne and Cartagena.

The weather was not improving on Monday, which was our last day in Texel. Again we stayed until lunch in the bungalow, finishing our food stock for breakfast and lunch. After packed our stuffs and cleaned the house, we spent another time to play Cartagena for the last round.
Before leaving the island, we stopped at a farmhouse to buy asparagus.

We took slightly different route when drove home. Instead of taking the highway, we drove through regional road via Alkmaar, passing green fields and saw few tulip fields from afar. After Alkmaar we switched to the highway via Schiphol and drove further south, back to Eindhoven.

It was a nice relaxing weekend, lots of sleep. It would be perfect if the weather were a bit nicer.

Easter in Zeeland

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 20:08:00 +0000

Vlissingen, Domburg, Yerseke, 7 April 2007

During the Easter long weekend, we spent the Saturday by visiting south-west seaside of Holland in the Zeeland province. We went with some colleagues of Sri and we drove to get there. We started around 8 in the morning in Eindhoven, heading west on the good highways network of The Netherlands until we entered Zeeland after about 1.5 hours driving.

Since it was still quite early for Saturday morning, we went to Vlissingen, a harbour city at the corner of the province. Originally we planned to stop by at one of the villages around Vlissingen, but once we arrived there, the village was so small and we could not find anything open at that time.
At Vlissingen, we strolled in the city center for a short while and then visited the seaside. It was the second time I've been there. The seaside was quite nice, with a long walking path on the dam that was built as a protection wall for the city center. There was a small windmill on the seaside and there were some old cannons pointed to the sea.
After enjoying the seaside we crossed the gate to the inside harbour and entered a nice cafe to have some nice coffee and warm chocolate milk.

Vlissingen Seaside and Harbour

From Vlissingen, we drove through the flat scenery of Vlissingen and some small villages to Domburg. Domburg is a small beach resort that was quite popular, reflected by the crowds when we arrived there. We parked the cars within walking distance to the city center and walked to the beach, passing the main roads in the city center. The city was full of tourists, mainly local and from Germany.

Domburg has a very long seashore, which was divided into blocks by wooden fences that have connecting gates between the blocks so people still can walk along the seaside.
We settled ourselves in the nearest block we reached from the city. Yang Yang, daughter of CK, directly played with sand and the adults directly played with Frisbee and fake rugby ball.
We stayed on the beach until around lunch time, invented new games and activities including running to the fence and throw-catch-jump movements with the rugby ball.

Some activities on the beach at Domburg

We went back to the city center for lunch. The choices for lunch were not so many, consisted of several touristic restaurants and one very crowded fish corner. Decided not to wait too long in the queue, we entered one of the restaurants. The menu listed several pasta and pizza selections as well as salads and lunch breads. In the end majority of us chose the Italian style. I ordered tuna pizza. Generally the food was OK, in standard of touristic food.

After lunch, we drove out from Domburg. Once again we drove through the small villages, this time to Neeltje Jans, part of the famous Delta Work dams. Reaching the Neeltje Jans (this is actually a tiny artificial island connecting two channels of Oosterscheldekering dam) from the south, we could see nice view of the two dam channels and the sea at both sides of the dam. We entered the Neeltje Jans Deltapark parking area, but it was not the perfect spot to see the dam. Sri asked for information at the ticket counter, and we were suggested to go to the other side of the dam for having a better view.

At the other side, which was the side facing the North Sea, we had a direct view to one part of the Oosterscheldekering dam. It was very nice view with several wind turbines in the surrounding area. We walked until quite close to the dam but we did not enter it.

Oosterscheldekering Dam from Neeltje Jans

From the Neeltje Jans, we drove back heading to the south-east. We visited Yerseke, a small village between Goes and Reimerswaal. The village is famous for mussel and oyster trading. Every year, usually in August, there is a Mussel Day festival in Yerseke. Unfortunately when we were there on late Saturday afternoon, the harbour was already deserted, while the restaurants had not opened yet. So we could not buy any mussel to bring back home, instead we went shopping at the open Albert Heijn supermarket in the city center.

From Yerseke we drove back home and we arrived back in Eindhoven around dinner time. It was short but very nice trip.

The Musical Box Plays Genesis - Selling England by the Pound

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 18:43:00 +0000

De Vereeniging, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
27 January 2007

Last year when I watched The Final Lamb Tour from The Musical Box, I read a promotion flyer with this information:
"The Musical Box - Selling England by the Pound Farewell Tour 2007". Very pleased with their performance in the Lamb Lies show, I really had expected the Selling England show especially because it is my favourite Genesis album.
Last autumn I found out that the ticket was already on sale and I bought two tickets for the show in De Vereeniging, Nijmegen. This time I planned to watch the show with Chris, my colleague who is also fans of Genesis.

Based on previous setlist of Selling England shows either by The Musical Box or Genesis, I prepared myself with the songs so I could be one hundred percent into the show. I played the setlist almost everyday until the big day. I appreciated more and more the Selling England album, the brilliance of the composition and melody of the songs.

The show in De Vereeniging took place in the cold winter Saturday in the end of January. I decided to travel by train from Eindhoven and walked the short distance from Nijmegen train station to De Vereeniging. The hall lobby was full of people because the show was sold out. I met Chris near the entrance. Before entering the hall, we put our jackets in the wardrobe and I also managed to buy a tour t-shirt and a CD of David Myers, the keyboard player of The Musical Box, who played Genesis songs on grand piano.

Entering the half-full hall, we climbed the stair to the right side balcony where our seats were. We got seats at the first row of the balcony and it turned out to be very close to the stage. The view was very great, no obstacle whatsoever to the complete stage. Even it was a second-class seat, I found it was better than my first class seat during the Lamb Lies tour last year. Moreover, we had good view of the hall from the balcony, from where we could see how the hall became full until its maximum capacity, about 1450 people.

Note: Since I believe that The Musical Box is almost as real as Genesis, from now on I will use Genesis members name in the story.

From the balcony I also had a great view of the stage layout. The stage had white-coloured nuance with nine hourglass shaped structure for the background.
The keyboard and mellotron set was located more or less under our seats. Next to that, a bit further back on the stage I could see the drums set with some percussions hanged next to it. More to the center, there was a microphone stand for Peter Gabriel, with a side table for his flute and tambourine, and a base drum on the floor. Next to the microphone I could see the bass pedal that would be used by Mike Rutherford. The famous Rickenbaker double-neck guitar (one neck is a bass and another is guitar) was also ready for action. At the furthest corner, a small chair was prepared for Steve Hackett surrounded by his complex effect pedals.

The show supposed to start at 8 o'clock, and it was late for about half an hour. But it was worth to wait when the lights were dimmed and Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett, and Mike Rutherford walked to the stage from behind the background. They all dressed in white, PC in a white overall like a carpenter.

After a short sound check, Tony Banks played the famous intro of Watcher of the Skies from Foxtrot album. In the darkness we could see Peter Gabriel entered the stage in his standard 'watcher of the skies' costume: colourful robe with a bat wing-shaped top and fluorescent goggle. When he started the first verse, the background showed images of eyes, perfect for the image of the watcher. This song was perfect as an opening although it was never my Genesis favourite song. I found that the live version was better, especially with majestic stage act from Peter Gabriel and the mellotron sound from Tony Banks.

At the ending of Watcher of the Skies, PG disappeared to the backstage until the song was finished and the crowd gave a very warm applause. He wore a breastplate with Union Jack image and a knight helmet. After a short greeting to the audience and short explanation about the next song (he mentioned himself as the "pride of the British empire"), he started the famous opening of Dancing with the Moonlit Knight: "Can you tell me where my country lies?..."
This song was performed perfectly by the band, from the sweet melodic beginning part, through the complex sections in the middle with nice sound combination from Steve Hackett's guitar (with the tapping technique) and Tony Banks' mellotron, until the calm ending. The powerful voice of Peter Gabriel also made this song sounded very great.

The show continued with another short narration from Peter Gabriel about Romeo, who put his 'mushroom' under his armpit and later on put it in his mouth that gave him high sexual sensation, and Juliet, who was described as singing on a balcony with playing her breast that in the end had attracted Romeo, who then asked her to go to the cinema. This narration opened another great song from Selling England album: The Cinema Show.
With very peaceful beginning and nice vocal harmony from Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins, this song was always one of my favorite. It really stuck in my mind when they started the part with the nice guitar harmony and Peter sang "Take a little trip back with father Tiresias...". On top of the great tune, the lighting show was great with the usage of a turning disco ball above the stage being lighted by two spotlights, which gave very nice green circling lights all around the hall.
The end of the song was fully instrumental part, where only the later-on-famous-trio played on the stage while Peter and Steve disappeared to the backstage. Three of them played the part flawlessly, especially the unique drums sound from Phil Collins.

After The Cinema Show, Peter Gabriel wore a British police hat with a straw in his mouth, acted as the lawn mower with the way he walked, and the band started the mowing intro of I Know What I Like. This popular song attracted the audience to join the singing meanwhile enjoying the act of Peter did the lawn mowing. Phil Collins also had good moments in this song with his percussions and backing vocals.

Same as the song order in the album, I Know What I like was followed with Firth of Fifth, opened with a short narration about the five rivers. The intro piano sound from Tony Banks as well as his solos in the middle parts were really wonderful, completed by great long guitar solo from Steve Hackett. For me the continuation from The Cinema Show until Firth of Fifth was one of the greatest parts of the show.

After those great four songs from Selling England, Peter Gabriel told a story about Henry and Cynthia. This led to another great song from Genesis that used as the name of the currently performing band: The Musical Box. I really enjoyed the performance of Peter Gabriel in this song, his theatrical expressions, his flute playing, and especially his act as the old man in the ending of the song with old man voice and final orgasm after singing "touch me now..now..now..now".
The musical part was also brilliant, with powerful guitar and bass sound from Mike Rutherford. I could see clearly how he moved his foot on the bass pedals.
The audience really enjoyed the performance and we gave great applause after the song.

The atmosphere was brought back to a quiet-calm stage when Steve Hackett performed Horizons. I expected this great guitar piece to be followed with the next song as in Foxtrot album. But it turned out that Peter back onstage wearing gangster stocking mask, an indication that they would perform a complex song from Selling England album: The Battle of Epping Forest. This lyrically difficult song was played brilliantly and stage act from Peter, punching and fighting with a stick, helped us to enjoy the performance even better.

After the Battle, Peter for the last time told a story. This time the story was about old Michael, which followed by majestic opening of Supper's Ready, a great combination of three 12-string guitars sound and Peter's vocal. This epic song from Genesis was performed with full emotion by the band. Musically it was perfect, with a chance to watch Mike Rutherford on his bass pedals again.
Peter Gabriel also gave us great acts. He changed costumes several times, wore crown of thorns during The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man section, flower mask in Willow Farm section (remember "A flower?" part), black robe with strange geometrical head mask in Apocalypse in 9/8, until open his black robe to reveal his shining white costume in the last section (As Sure As Eggs is Eggs).

Supper's Ready got the loudest and longest applause from the crowd, until finally the band back onstage for the encore. Peter Gabriel mentioned shortly, "The knife", and then the band played the heavy riff of The Knife from Trespass album. Having not many choices for the encore, The Knife suited perfectly with its heavy rock yet symphonic nuance.

Finally the show was ended. We were greatly entertained for about 150 minutes with wonderful songs and performance. I walked back to the station with the tune of The Knife playing endlessly in my head. It was a fantastic show!

Complete setlist:
- Watcher of the Skies
- Dancing with the Moonlit Knight
- The Cinema Show
- I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)
- Firth of Fifth
- The Musical Box
- Horizons
- The Battle of Epping Forest
- Supper's Ready
-----------------
- The Knife

The Musical Box are:
Denis Gagné as Peter Gabriel: Vocals, Flute, Oboe, Percussions
François Gagnon as Steve Hackett: Electric guitar, 6 strings acoustic guitar, 12 strings acoustic guitar
Sébastien Lamothe as Mike Rutherford: Bass, 12 strings electric guitar, Bass pedals, Back vocals
Martin Levac as Phil Collins: Drums, Percussions, Vocals
David Myers as Tony Banks: Keyboards, 12 strings acoustic guitar, Back vocals

Ten things that kept me happy in 2006

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 09:40:00 +0000

Triggered by Pangeran Panda, here I continue the reflection of 2006.

Thus, these are 10 things that kept me happy in 2006:

My wife..of course, for keeping me happy and healthy with her cooking, keeping the house warm, and throwing ideas to make our life even happier :)
Indonesia..went home again for about 1 month, enjoying time wth families and friends, and of course...the food!
Kids/babies near or far: Jonathan, Stella, Daniel, Cory, Alvin. I could make thick photo albums only because of them :).
Iron Maiden, for the concert in Den Bosch last November, made my childhood dream come true to watch them live. Oh, the other shows in 2006 also were my happy moments: The Musical Box, Sting, Jamie Cullum, BLØF.
Travellings during the year: Oslo, Hongkong-Macau, Blokart in Wijk aan Zee, Kaasmaken. It always nice to see and experience new places, people, and things.
Friends, close or far. All the ngumpul-ngumpul and makan-makan. Discussions in the mailing lists, especially insane people in i-Rock!.
Sony Ericsson W800i. My travelling mate with nice music player, nice camera, and some times phone calls from my wife :).
The joyful choir, the practices, the songbook preparation, the fun, and off course the singing.
New car. This includes the searching period, browsing on the Internet, visiting showroom, until finally found the one.
Saturday Kitchen from BBC. I always feel happy to wake up on Saturday mornings, make breakfast, relax, and watch the brilliant cooking masters: Rick Stein, Jamie Oliver, Rachel, and the host James Martin.
In general, all cooking programs on TV are great!

Those are the Ten. May be more...but let's keep it popular :).

A Matter of Life and Death World Tour 2006

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 13:12:00 +0000

Brabanthallen, Den Bosch, 27 November 2006

I have been a fan of Iron Maiden since I was 13 years old. Ever since I watched the Live After Death video, I always dreamed to watch them live. Earlier this year I got a chance to make my dream comes true when I knew that Iron Maiden would include Den Bosch, Holland in the end year tour. Luckily I got the ticket quite early, since after a while the show was sold out.

Waiting impatiently until November, my adrenaline pumped faster when Iron Maiden released the AMOLAD album last September. Listening to this great solid album only triggered me to imagine the great live concert that would come.

Finally, the longest day was come. I started the day as usual, went to Den Bosch to work although my mind already soared away with Bruce's voice. During the day I got e-mail from Aleksandar that he would go together to the show. Great, I had company!

I arrived at Den Bosch train station around 6 PM to meet Aleksandar. There were already some crowds in Iron Maiden and Trivium t-shirts gathered there. After had quick dinner and met Aleksandar, we walked to the Brabanthallen. On the way we met someone who also went to the show. It turned out that he just back from the show in Stockholm and he was in the Bruce Air from Oslo to Stockholm. Wow man...I can't imagine to be in the plane piloted by Bruce Dickinson himself. We discussed other stuffs while walking: the set list (which I already had known before), the chance to meet Janick and Adrian in an Irish Pub in town after the show, and the picture he had with Bruce on the plane (damn lucky he was!).

We arrived at Brabanthallen around 7 PM. As my-concert-visit-ritual, I visited the shirt corner and bought one tour t-shirt, then we queued for the ticket check and entered the hall.

The Brabanthallen was quite a big hall. A seat tribune was set at the backside of the hall, and there was a pit in front of the stage. There were two large video screens on both sides of the stage.
The hall was about half full when we entered. Lauren Harris already started her act. Her performance was quite OK, supported with old-looking guitarist, bassist, and drummer. The songs were standard heavy-rock style, quite fit to her voice. On top of that, she was a good-looking girl.

Lauren finished her act at about 7.30 PM and the stage was set for Trivium. We decided to enter the pit to get a closer look to the stage. The background slide of the stage was the Trivium logo with images of their album covers, quite cool. They started their show with an instrumental opening, similar style as the Iron Maiden's Rock in Rio opening.

Trivium Stage

Trivium's performance was good in general. I must admit that I was not really knowledgeable about their songs, but I enjoyed the power and aggression of their performance. The crowd was also enjoying the act, some were already headbanging and moshing.
I recognized they played two songs that I know: Like Light to the Flies and the final song Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr.
They had solid skills and performance style. I especially enjoyed the cool style of Paolo, the bassist, who was headbanging most of the time. Matt Heafy also was quite communicative as the frontman, keep asking the crowd to headbang and mosh. His command was "I want to see some movements!"

After about 45 minutes full of heavy powerful songs from Trivium, we had another break. We got out from the pit to grab a drink, and back inside the pit right on time when the stage was nicely set.
The stage setting was quite 'minimal' for Iron Maiden show. The nuance was about war, with both sides and the back of the stage being raised and decorated as barrack walls with camouflage leaves and nets. There were two war spotlights and wires at both sides, with a hanging para soldier at one side. The backslide showed a ruin in fire-red colour.

All of a sudden, they entered the stage. Steve Harris with his usual Fender bass with Westham United logo, wore the Eddie war logo shirt. Dave Murray and Janick Gers wore Maiden shirts, while Adrian Smith in his usual outfit: vest and leather pant, the three amigos with their Fender Stratocasters. Bruce Dickinson wore a black shirt with monster head image. Unfortunately I could not see Nicko at all, he was buried behind his drums :).
The only noticeable thing from Nicko was his famous screaming to open Different World.

Great for opening song, Different World was performed very solid by Iron Maiden, although Bruce had a challenge at the high tone part. The crowd started to sing and headbanging in this heavy fast song.

These Colours Don't Run had a slower speed than the Different World, but more powerful bass and drums sounds. The backslide was changed to Eddie in military outfit grabbing Union Jack flag.

Dave and Adrian in These Colours Don't Run

Iron Maiden played directly the powerful Brighter than a Thousand Sons and continued with The Pilgrim, a fast melodic song with a nice guitar intro, that triggered the crowd to bang our head and raise our punches to the sky. I mostly enjoyed the drums and bass parts of this song.

The Pilgrim

The backslide was changed to newspaper stories about World War II when they played The Longest Day. Wonderfully the crowd joined the singing in these five songs, especially in this war-epic song..
"how long on this longest day...til we finally make it through...".
Also the guitar solos were wonderful.

The Longest Day

After The Longest Day, finally we had a short break when Bruce did his conversation with us. Greeting us then informing that this was one of the biggest tours in Maiden's career with most of the shows were sold out, including the one in Holland. He also indicated that they would play the whole AMOLAD album. One surprising part was after he finished, the whole crowd started to applause, screamed, and then chanted "Maiden, Maiden, Maiden,..." for about one minute. It was nice to see Bruce's face expression on this occasion. That was one of the amazing moments during the show. I still shiver if I remember this. I could not find this mutual loyalty between the band and the fans in the other live shows that I have watched before. Totally amazing!

After the speech Bruce gave us Out of the Shadows (and into the sun). It was amazing ballad with nice lyric, where some people lit the zippos, plus very nice guitar solos from Dave and Adrian.
"there is beauty and surely there is pain...but we must endure it to live again.."
Bruce led the crowd to clap during the instrumental part after Adrian's solo.

Then the backslide was changed to Benjamin Breeg. This first single from AMOLAD album was very dark yet powerful to be performed live. The opening part really made a creepy feeling on me. Bruce brilliantly sang
"Let me tell you about my life...let me tell you about my dreams...
let me tell you about the things that happen...always real to me...."

The show was continued with dark stage with only a spotlight on Steve Harris playing the opening of For the Greater Good of God. It is one of my favorite songs of the album, with nice bass lines, guitar rhythm, and great meaningful lyric. Again the shiver back to me when Bruce sang the final lines.
"He gave his life for us, he fell upon the cross
To die for all of those who never mourn his loss
It wasn't meant for us to feel the pain again
Tell me why....tell me why...."

After some softer songs, the crowd was jumping and banging again in the Lord of Light. This song was really great in live version, with complex song progression, strong guitar sound, and powerful sound of Bruce.

For the last song of the AMOLAD album, there were three acoustic guitars prepared on the stage. The Legacy is again a wonderful song from the album, with Genesis guitar style in the intro and rich acoustic sounds thanks to Janick Gers who penned this song with Steve Harris.
In this song Bruce turned on the war spotlight and blinded us.

After Bruce said "that was A Matter of Life and Death"...we knew that it was the time to go back to the great old era of Iron Maiden.
The stage was dark, creepy feeling came again, because of Fear of the Dark. I could not imagine myself as part of the crowd singing this brilliant song when Bruce sang.."Fear of the dark....Den Bosch..."

The crowd went crazy when Bruce asked Holland to scream for him (yes...the famous "Scream for me...Holland") and the band played very familiar riff of Iron Maiden. This song still sounded very raw and energic after more than 26 years!
To make it even more special, a real size tank appeared at the back stage behind Nicko's kit. Off course there was Eddie at the top of the tank with binoculars monitoring the crowd from side to side.

Eddie with the tank

After this adrenaline-pumping song, finally Nicko appeared to the front, throwing away few drumsticks and frisbees, then disappeared to the backstage with the rest of the band.

Off course we knew it was not over yet. Screaming and again chanting "Maiden..maiden..maiden..." until they were back on the stage. Bruce thanked us for the great show, informing that they will tour again in 2008 performing golden years songs. I believe that will be the Early Days part 2 with Powerslave and Piece of Mind as menu....aaarrghhh...I cannot wait to watch them again.

After that great announcement, the band played 2 Minutes to Midnight, another great song from my youth when I first knew about Iron Maiden. The backslide was showing the single cover of the song. Now I cannot really remember the detail anymore because I was in total ecstasy enjoying the song live performance.

2 Minutes to Midnight

Not finished there, they continued the ecstasy with the familiar intro riff of The Evil That Men Do from Seventh Son album. Similar with Rock in Rio live show, during the guitar solo Eddie appeared on the stage, but this time in green military outfit and helmet complete with a rifle. Always a pal of Janick, they played the guitar together with the rifle.
The song was ended with the crowd chanted "Eddie...Eddie...Eddie..."

Eddie

After the energic Evil that Men Do, the stage was darkened again, same creepy feeling again, then Bruce magically sang the intro of Hallowed be Thy Name. It was an ultimate dream came true to sing together the calm intro of the song with Bruce and headbanging along the powerful rhythm of the song.

The song marked the end of the show. The band came together to the front, bowed to the crowd, and the stage was reddened and darkened again, until finally all lights turned on and the crew started to clear up the stage. I went out of the hall together with the very pleased people and walked back to the train station with Aleksandar. He was a damn lucky fans because he went to the front row and got a wristband from Adrian Smith himself!

In conclusion, the show was terrific, classic Iron Maiden show with unbeatable quality, style and power. On top of that, the fans loyalty made the whole show as incredible experience. I still had the songs played in my head until two days after the show!

Thank you for Iron Maiden to make my dream to watch their live came true. Until the Powerslave show in 2008, and while waiting..Up the Irons!!!

Set list:

A Matter of Life and Death
- Different World
- These Colours Don't Run
- Brighter than a Thousand Suns
- The Pilgrim
- The Longest Day
- Out of the Shadows
- The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg
- For the Greater Good of God
- Lord of Light
- The Legacy

- Fear of the Dark
- Iron Maiden
==========================
- 2 Minutes to Midnight
- The Evil That Men Do
- Hallowed be Thy Name

Nice pictures can be found at:
http://ironmaiden-trivium.fotopic.net/

Philips Concert 2006

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 09:03:00 +0000

Concertgebouw, Amsterdam,
October 12, 2006

Starting from year 2003, we regularly had been invited by Philips, the generous employer of my wife, for end-of-year concert in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. It had always been a classical music concert by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with qualified conductors and solists, performing fine classical pieces.

In the past years the concerts were held around end of October or in November, but this year it was a bit earlier. Fortunate for us, it happened exactly on our third wedding anniversary. A nice gift from Philips!

The event was started at 6.30 in the evening, and I arrived on time. I traveled by train from my office in Den Bosch and followed by tram in Amsterdam, alighted from the tram in the beautiful spot between the Concertgebouw and greeny Museumplein with nice view of the Rijksmuseum.

My wife arrived some moments earlier by the bus arranged by Philips in Eindhoven, and she was already in dinner queue when I arrived. It was the standard ritual: a buffet dinner at 6.30 followed by nice music at 8.15. We had the similar dinner as last year, with nice selection of appetizers: smoked salmon salad, beef carpaccio, tuna salad, and two different pasta salads. The main dishes were penne in mayonnaise, sausages, and meatballs in tomato sauce.

After filling our stomachs and nice chats during the coffee and tea, we entered the hall to start the musical part. It was still an amazing view entering the hall, with decorated ceiling and balcony and the grand organ above the stage.
That evening we enjoyed the 'Spanish-oriented' pieces by Wagenaar and Lalo before the break and Scottish Symphony by Mendelssohn for the ending.

After a short speech of Gerard Kleisterlee, the Philips CEO, the first piece was opened with castanets sound and we enjoyed the Spanish nuance of the Prelude to De Cid op.27 by Wagenaar, a Dutch composer. It was a pity that it was a pretty short piece.

The second piece was the famous Symphonie espagnole in D minor, op.21 for violin and orchestra, of Edouard Lalo. It was actually not a symphony, but a violin concerto. During his time, composers like to model their concertos after symphonies in which the soloist and orchestra were equal partners. Lalo went one step further, provocatively omitting the word 'concerto' in this piece, hence the somewhat misleading title.

The work contained five very colourful and highly virtuosic movements. All explored the beauty of violin to its fullest. The most symphonic movement, the first one, had a very catchy theme one would never forget once listened to it. The second movement started very light owing to the sweetness of the violin's high tone, but later developed back into similar Spanish rigor as the first movement. A sweet dark habanera rhythm dominated the third movement. The solemnity of the fourth movement, the only slow movement, was mostly sad although here and there sweetness and grandness appeared. The symphony final movement had a grand rigorous character of Beethoven alike and only managed a bit of Spanish flavour. The movement was closed with a special way of playing violin where the violinist simultaneously plucked (pizzicato) and bowed (arco) the strings.

After an uneventful break, the program continued with Mendelssohn 'Scottish' symphony no 3. Interestingly, the orchestra seemed to play the whole symphony without breaks. Perhaps they did not want hand clapping between movements as in the first part of the program. The symphony were very melodious but mostly very atmospheric. Apart from a familiar movement (probably the second), there was no theme easy enough to mumble home. Despite that, the audience honored the orchestra with a standing ovation at the end of the performance.

Cautious of missing the bus going back to Eindhoven, we hurried out the concert hall before the clapping died out. After queuing for wardrobe, we landed ourselves in the second bus back to Philips High Tech Campus Eindhoven and arrived back at some minutes pass midnight.

Blokart

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 09:00:00 +0000

Wijk aan Zee, September 30, 2006

My wife and her colleagues had been arranging some outdoor activities for several times. Last year they did hot-air ballooning, kayaking in Biesbosch, and tandem jumping. After vacuum for quite a while, recently they planned for blokart carting activity. Always fond of speed, I joined the event enthusiastically.

The activity was located at the Wijk aan Zee, a nice beach village near Haarlem. We traveled from Eindhoven by car together with two friends who did the tandem jumping. We arrived at the nice village around noon, and directly went to SunSeaBar cafe, the event provider. Waiting for other participants, we ordered drink and lunch. Finally we were complete, 10 of us, and we got introduced to the blokart.

The blokart was more or less the same size as the normal go-cart, except this one only had three wheels, one at the front and two at the back, bike-style steering bar, and no engine but a high sail above the driver seat.
We got explanation about how to enter the seat, and obligation to use the seat belt and the helmet. After that we were explained about how to steer and at the same time handle the sail. The basic principal was to pull the lower sail rope to accelerate and release it to slow down.

Ready to sail...

Having a sufficient theoretical knowledge, we were told that we would 'sail' along an 8-shaped route on the beach and we should take the corners against the wind direction on safety purpose. We got 5 blokarts so two of us need to take turn. I did the first turn, and the first long line sailing went perfect until I took the corner. Releasing the sail, I had no speed at all after the corner! Well, it happened to all five of us. After the same situation after few rounds, the instructor told us to reverse the direction, so we took the corner along the wind direction. It went much much better, although I felt we had not enough wind.

After about 15 minutes we changed turn. The second batch had stronger wind, and my wife happily took the corners in what seemed to be quite high speed. When I got my second turn, the wind was quite strong. With more experience, I could handle the blokart better and did fast-in fast-out on the corners. At that round I found out the best part of the blokart, which was the corners taking. It was fun to tighten the sail on the long track until the corner and release it on time so it would flap to get the wind force back and took you out from the corner fast. Another fun thing was to overtake on the corners and ensured that you would not hit the others.

Taking the corner

After changed turn one more time, we moved our track a bit because there were more people did the blokart. On that round we experienced the wind changed its direction, so we need to slightly release the sail on the long line instead of pulling hard. Luckily it gave stronger wind on the corners so we could take the corners in higher speed. Quite unfortunate for some of us, the wind was too strong and some blokarts were flipped over while turning. That made us understood the function of the seatbelt and the helmet.

Spending two hours for the blokart, we finished our event with some drinks back in the SunSeaBar. It was a fun experience.

Hong Kong and Macau

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 08:31:00 +0000

September 12-15, 2006

From our 22 summer vacation days to Indonesia, we planned 4 days to visit Hong Kong and Macau. For this plan we chose to fly Cathay Pacific from Amsterdam to Jakarta via Hong Kong and we decided to stop in Hong Kong on our way back to Amsterdam, as a nice wrap up of our holiday. There was a nice thing when we bought the ticket online at the Cathay Pacific website, we could directly chose our seats. So we could select the best possible seats for all our flights...although still in Economy class.

On Tuesday morning of September 12, we flew from Jakarta to Hong Kong, and we arrived around noon at Chek Lap Kok or Hong Kong International Airport. The airport was located on a sea reclamation area next to Lantau Island, the second biggest island in Hong Kong (after the Hong Kong island, unsurprisingly). After the immigration and collecting luggage, we waited a while before the bus took us to our hotel at Kowloon. Through a cloudy and rainy afternoon, we enjoyed the coast scenery along the hilly Lantau Island. To any Mickey and Donald fans, Hong Kong Disneyland is also located in this island.
After about 20 minutes we passed Tsing Ma bridge, the longest road-and-rail suspension bridge (2.2 km) in the world, heading away from the Lantau Island and not long after that we entered a tunnel and directly came out in a fully packed residential area of Kowloon. Finally the bus arrived at Majestic hotel, the place where we stayed, on Nathan Road, one of the Kowloon's main streets.

Not long after we checked in and dumped our luggage, we walked along the shops on the Nathan Road. There were just shops on both sides of the street, any kind of shops from electronic stuffs, clothes, until Chinese dried herbs and foods. We walked pass Park Lane shopping boulevard next to Kowloon Park, an area that reminded me of the Orchard Road in Singapore. After the boulevard we passed a mosque, quite a unique building in such area. After more shops and passed Tsim Sha Tsui MTR (Mass Transit Railway, Hong Kong's underground) station, we turned to Peking Road, a side street of the Nathan Road, which was also full of shops. We walked further to Canton Road, a street parallel to the Nathan Road and along the harbour of Kowloon, until we reached the seaside.

This southest end of Tsim Sha Tsui has several nice landmarks: Clock tower, old ferry terminal to the Hong Kong island, Cultural Center, Space Museum, Museum of Art, a nice long Avenue of Stars promenade, and a wonderful view of the skyscrapers on the Hong Kong island.

Hong Kong Island landscape from Tsim Sha Tsui in the night

After visiting tourist information center near the ferry terminal, we entered a shopping center to look around on souvenirs until finally we back to the Canton Road and further to the Peking Road, searched a place for dinner. I found a HMV store in that area, and managed to buy the newest Iron Maiden album there. Meanwhile my wife looked around and found a place that sold congee. So it was settled, congee for dinner. I picked the standard one, with shredded pork and century egg, plus the 'cakwee'. It tasted very good, the congee was soft and the egg was not too strong in taste.

Having our stomach full, we strolled back slowly along the still busy Nathan Road. The streets were nicely decorated with colourful neon signs in the evening. Near our hotel we visited a night market on the Temple Street. The whole street was packed with hawkers who sold many different things, from clothes until Chinese souvenirs.
After passing through the street completely, we were back to the hotel. We slept pretty well that night, saving energy for the next walk-till-you-drop adventures in Hong Kong.

The next morning we woke up and watched the heavy rain from our room window. After a filling buffet breakfast in the hotel, we bought a big umbrella at a small store in front of the hotel and headed to Jordan MTR station in the rain. We had planned to visit Po Lin monastery at the Lantau Island that morning. We took MTR to Thung Chung, the furthest point that reached by MTR in the Lantau Island. It was still raining when we reached Thung Chung. We went shopping for a while at a supermarket there, bought waters and a box of mooncake. From the bus terminal, we took the bus to the monastery. There was a new cable car track to the Po Lin monastery, but unfortunately it had not run yet when we were there.
The bus trip was through hills on the island, along a small up-and-down but smooth road. After about an hour we arrived at the monastery. The monastery complex was relatively big, but the amazing view was the giant Buddha statue in front of the complex.

The giant Buddha statue at Po Lin Monastery

Due to the rain and lunchtime, we decided to first visit the monastery to have a vegetarian lunch there. The vegetarian food was OK, made from very fresh ingredients. We also bought sweet dessert after the lunch.
After that we walked inside the complex, entered the halls and praying rooms full of incense smell. When the rain was a bit stopped, we climbed the Buddha statue. There was exhibition and archive room below the statue where we could see ancient Buddhism paintings and statues.

Satisfied with our visit, although we should be able to see more (for example walk the Wisdom Path) if it was dry, we took the bus back to Thung Chung and from there took the MTR to Jordan and walked back to the hotel.
After a short rest eating the mooncake, we took the MTR again, this time to Sheung Wan in the Hong Kong Island. From Sheung Wan we walked until we reached Mid-levels escalator, a walkpath along the old part of Hong Kong. It is a hilly area, so the walkpath was supported with series of escalators going uphill. We walked through Hollywood Road, along the pubs in Soho, and visited Lan Kwai Fong, an area full of restaurants. We stopped at Starbucks near the Lan Kwai Fong to plan the rest of the evening.

Finally we decided to move from that central area to Wan Chai, where we could see Tsim Sha Tsui (Kowloon) and Hong Kong scenery from the seaside. We walked from the Wan Chai MTR station via the walkpath over the main streets of Hong Kong between the high towers. Finally we arrived at Hong Kong Convention Center and outside the building we could see the Reunification Monument and Bauhinia sculpture, both were located near the seaside. From that point we also could enjoy the nice view of Tsim Sha Tsui and Kowloon area.

At 8 in the evening there was a Symphony of Light show, a combination of music, lights, and lasers show from the towers and buildings in both Hong Kong Island and Tsim Sha Tsui area. We could watch the show from Wan Chai, with complete view of the lights from Tsim Sha Tsui and laser from IFC Tower, the highest tower in Hong Kong.

The show was ended in about 5 minutes. After the show we took the ferry from Wan Chai to Tsim Sha Tsui. Strolling again along the streets in Kowloon, we stopped at a noodle house. I had noodle soup with inner parts of beef: stomach, liver, and intestine. It was nice and really filling.

On the third day we started early to visit Macau. From the hotel we walked via the Kowloon Park to the ferry terminal to Macau. The ferry was actually a jetfoil boat with many comfortable seats. The one hour trip to Macau was passed smoothly on the big nice chair.

Arrived at Macau harbour, we took the bus to the old town of Macau, passing some big casinos along the way. We alighted from the bus near Senado Square, the main square in Macau with nice classic European style buildings in the surrounding.
After collecting city map from the tourist information center we decided to visit almost all of the touristic spots in the old town of Macau. Near the Senado Square we visited Macau Cathedral, St. Dominic's church and Lou Kau mansion. The last one was a nice old Chinese house that still had original interiors and furnitures.

Walked little bit further, we arrived at the ruins of St. Paul's, the facade of a burnt church. It was located on a small hill providing wonderful view. Next to the ruins we saw a temple of Na Tcha and a section of old city wall next to the temple. Walked to the other side we visited Mount Fortress, the old military fortress of the city. From the top we could see most parts of the old town of Macau.

Ruins of St. Paul's, Macau

Getting further we visited St. Anthony's church and Casa Garden, a classic red-white color building. From there we walked back to the Senado Square and had lunch in a small restaurant in the area. They provided Shanghai style dishes, slightly different style than the Chinese food I know, but still delicious.

After lunch we walked to opposite direction from Senado Square, passing St. Augustine's church with its beautiful stone pavement, Dom Pedro V Theatre building next to the St. Augustine's, and St. Lawrence's church before stopped at Lilau Square, an old natural water source in Macau. A bit further we passed Moorish barracks, an old military building that now turned into office. Our final destination was A-Ma temple, which was quite crowded either with tourists as well as worshippers. From the A-Ma temple we took the bus back to the harbour.
In general I found Macau as an interesting place. There was strong Chinese lifestyle, but the Portuguese culture was still very rich as well. The mixture of these two styles made the place unique.

Arrived back at Tsim Sha Tsui, we spent the whole evening in Kowloon. Once again we watched the Symphony of Light show, this time from Tsim Sha Tsui with full view of towers on Hong Kong Island. After the show we walked along the Avenue of Stars, a resemblance of Hollywood Walk of Fame for Hong Kong stars. We found palms print of Sammo Hung, Jacky Chen, Andy Lau and many others. From the long avenue we walked to the Canton Road and visited Hard Rock Cafe to buy a cap, as always.
Near the Jordan area, we found a restaurant with fusion style. I tried curry noodle soup. It was OK but not as nice as the previous dinners.

On the last day in Hong Kong, we visited the famous place in Hong Kong that we could not visit earlier due to the rainy weather: the Peak. We took the ferry from Tsim Sha Tsui to Hong Kong Central, followed with a double decker bus trip passing the high towers until we arrived at the lower Peak Tram terminal. The ascending trip in the tram took about 10-15 minutes, with a nice view along the steep rail track until we reached the upper Peak terminal.

View of Hong Kong Island from Tsim Sha Tsui in the morning

From the top we could see the beautiful Hong Kong Island and Kowloon landscapes in complete view. Luckily we had no rain that morning. We enjoyed the view from both the modern Peak Tower and the old Chinese-styled Lions Pavilion. We spent the whole morning at the Peak by enjoying the view as well as shopping for souvenirs.

View from the Peak

Around noon we took the Peak Tram downhill. From the lower terminal we walked along the busy streets of Hong Kong to the Stanley Street. We ate dim sum in Luk Yu restaurant, because it was one of the first restaurants in Hong Kong that served dim sum. We ordered about 5-6 types of dim sum. In my opinion the taste was not very special, but maybe because we did not order the correct types.

After lunch we walked to the Hong Kong Central ferry harbour and back to Kowloon. During our visit in Hong Kong, it was the first time we were in Tsim Sha Tsui in the daytime. We once again walked along the Avenue of Stars.

the Avenue of Stars

Around 5 in the afternoon we walked back to the hotel. Once again we stopped for the congee and we also managed to shop a bit before arrived at the hotel.
At around 8 the shuttle bus was arrived and we went back to the airport, leaving Hong Kong in its beautiful evening lights.

Jamie's Picnic

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:27:00 +0000

Arrow Jazz in the Park
Zuiderpark, Den Haag, 23 July 2006

Last week I got a nice surprise when I checked my mailbox, I had won two tickets for Jamie Cullum concert in Den Haag! So that was my second concert visit this month after Sting in Bospop.

So, there we were, me and my wife, went to Den Haag on a hot Sunday morning. We managed to make appointment with some friends for lunch in Den Haag. After a nice dim sum, we spent some times in the shopping quarter of Den Haag to find some gifts for our trip home next month. Only after 4 in the afternoon we took the tram to the Zuiderpark where the concert would be held.

Zuiderpark is located in the south part of the city (as the name indicates that, 'South Park'), a big green park that really perfect for a picnic with nice jazz music. When we arrived there the Arrow Jazz event itself already more than half way because it had started since 2 in the afternoon. We skipped those parts since we did not familiar with the performers (no offence for jazz lovers :)).
After collecting our tickets at the guest list counter, we queued for the picnic box, and then we were completely ready for the picnic.

The stage was located on a square where already pretty full of people who were enjoying the sun. On the other hand we preferred to stay under the tree shades, so we chose to sit on a further side of the park on a nice grass, reading novels (what a picnic!). We could not see the stage because it was blocked by a tree, but still we could enjoy the music. At that time a band called New Cool Collective was performing some nice dynamic tunes with rich percussions and brass sounds.

About half past six we got up from the grass and took a nice spot at the far side of the square. It was still under the shades and there were line of bushes in front of us, protecting people stood directly in front of us so we had a clear view to the stage.
Some times after seven, Jamie Cullum entered the stage with his band. He directly sat behind his grand piano and played Photograph, a song from Catching Tales, his newest album. He was accompanied with his permanent musicians: Geoff Gascoyne (bass), Sebastiaan de Krom (drums) and two new musicians: Rory Simmons (trumpet, guitar) and Tom Richards (sax, keyboards, and percussion).

They performed nice songs from Jamie's two albums, including the hits Get Your Way, Mind Trick, and of course Everlasting Love. Besides that, Jamie was very attractive on stage. He chatted with the audience, jumped tirelessly..on the stage and from the grand piano, played drums during Frontin' - while Sebastiaan sang the song, played guitar in London Skies, led the audience for a choir, and splashed water to the audience - and of course received some back - during Singing in the Rain. In my opinion he was a good entertainer.

After a nice High and Dry and watery Singing in the Rain, the band disappeared to the backstage, then back and performed All at Sea, the classic I Get a Kick Out of You, and finally Jamie asked the audience to jump endlessly during I Could Have Danced All Night until the show was ended and they bowed goodbye to us.

I enjoyed mostly the jazzy tunes and some calm songs such as What a Difference a Day Made (with bit of Oasis' Champaign Supernova in the beginning) and All at Sea. Nevertheless it was also interesting to watch Jamie tapped his hands on the piano and performed medley of hip-hop songs. In general it was a very nice picnic, relaxing atmosphere, and good performance.

The show was ended around half past nine, so more than two hours of nice music. We went back by the tram, thanks for the extra tram provided by organizer so we didn't need to wait too long.

Set list (may contain some mistakes here and there, I do not know all Jamie's songs):
- Photograph
- Get Your Way
- What a Difference a Day Made
- These are the Days
- Mind Trick
- Next Year Baby
- Don't Cha/I Got a Woman/Golddigger/One Thing - Frontin'
- Lover, You Should Have Come Over
- London Skies
- Everlasting Love
- Seven Nation Army
- High and Dry
- Singing in the Rain
-----------------------------------
- All at Sea
- I Get a Kick Out of You
- I Could Have Danced All Night

Kaasmaken, klompengolf, en TanteLoes

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 08:23:00 +0000

(Translated: Cheese making, wooden shoe golf, and Tante Loes)

15 July 2006

In a very nice summer weather, last Saturday we went to 'De BoerInn', a recreational farm house in Woerden, a small city near Utrecht in the middle of the country. We arrived at Woerden around 10 in the morning and drove through nice green landscape of Holland before reaching De BoerInn. The old farm house was located in a polder surrounded by small dikes.

De BoerInn offers some interesting summer activities that have connection with farm life: Polder competition, polder tour, indoor polder sport, polder challenge, klompen (wooden shoes) golf, and cheese making.
Because there were only 8 of us and some activities require minimum 10 participants, we decided to do the cheese making and the klompen golf.

The cheese making activity was started around 11. We entered a small room and being welcomed by the farm lady herself. She was ready with a big bowl containing 10 liters fresh milk that would be used to make the cheese. During about one hour with her, she explained the process of turning the milk into cheese from the very beginning as well as interesting information about storing cheese, different kinds of cheese available, the difference between farm cheese and factory cheese, and possible side products from the cheese making process.
Naturally, during the same one hour we were also being involved in the process. We stirred the milk to separate the solid from the liquid until we had a nice white soft curd similar to tofu in texture. After that, one of us moved the curd to the cheese mold. The mold then placed under the pressing block to force the remaining liquid out from the curd.
In general those were the steps, and after that the curd would be salted and packaged. We could taste the difference between the curd with the finish cheese in terms of saltiness.

Pressing the cheese

In the end of the activity, we could pick one cheese block for free and we chose the young natural one. Some of us also bought another block for 7.5 Euro, my wife picked the one with Italian herbs. The free one was cut by the lady and was served to us for our lunch, yummy.

After a nice lunch, with the nice cheese, we went to the backside of the farm house to play the klompen golf. The golf field was a block of polder with a narrow dike in the middle and some cows that grazing on the field. Before started the real thing, we got explanation about the techniques and rules. The golf club was a wooden stick with a klompen-shaped head and the ball was about the half size of a volleyball. The rule was the same as the normal golf, we needed to finish 18 holes with minimum stroke. We could practice the swing and chose the best club before start.
The real game was really fun. We got variety of holes anatomy: easy long ones, some with bunkers and hills, few with waters in the middle, and majority with cows (and their residues) around. I hit one of the poor cow that blocked my shot. We finished the 18 holes in about 2 hours and the best of us got a winning yellow shirt.

Klompengolf...hit the cows :)

We spent the hole 19 (I've told you, it was pretty same with the normal golf) drinking at the farm house. Some of us preferred to take a shower for refreshment toward the dinner (yeah, sure, there must be a nice dinner in our activities). Unfortunately two of us could not join the dinner, so there were six of us who drove to Rhenen, a small town besides the river Rhine. The trip itself took about an hour via the highway near Utrecht and passing part of the green Utrechtse Heuvelrug.

The restaurant was called TanteLoes, a nice white building directly on the side of the Rhine. We got a table at the back terrace facing the river, a beautiful view with the church tower in afar. The food selection was quite fine, although not really special. I ordered onion soup for appetizer and a nice thick tender tournedos as the main course. Had no more appetite for dessert, I just ordered a cup of coffee meanwhile the rest were having more proper dessert :).

TanteLoes

After dinner we shortly visited the riverside and afterward we drove back. Me and my wife were dropped at Utrecht and we took the train back to Eindhoven. It was a nice day.

Sting at Bospop Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 08:18:00 +0000

Sting - Broken Music Tour
Bospop Festival, Weert, 7 July 2006

For these two years, 7th of July was a special date for me. July 7 2005 was the evening when I visited Coldplay concert in Arnhem. One year after, July 7 2006, I went to one of my dreams come true concert: Sting!

During summer of 2006 Sting toured in Europe with title 'Broken Music', the tour that was inspired by his autobiography, to back to his basic rocking music style. In Holland the show was part of Bospop Festival in Weert, south Holland. I went there directly from work by train in a nice cool summer afternoon. The festival was lcoated in Boshaven, a nice wide park about 20 minutes walking from center of Weert. I arrived there around 7 in the evening. The park was already quite crowded, people were sitting on the grass, enjoying foods and drinks. First I stopped at the official tour store to buy a Broken Music tour shirt, then I walked around visiting some interesting shirts and CD/DVD shops. I just realised there, in one of the shops, that Pulse DVD was already released officially, finally.

The main festival stage was relatively big for the park, giving a nice view from any spot in the park. I chose to stand on the front, first row, at the left side in front of the huge speakers (later on I realised that it was really loud!). The stage was already set for Fiction Plane, the first performer. Fiction Plane is a British pop rock band, fronted by vocalist-guitarist Joe Sumner, son of Gordon Sumner (aka Sting) himself. Joe and his three band mates were the opening act during his father's Broken Music tour this year.
They entered the stage some times after 7, relatively on schedule. Joe resemblance the look of his father, also bit of the voice and stage act. The songs were mostly in modern pop rock style, pretty similar with Coldplay or U2. It was enjoyable, fit perfectly for warming up.

After about an hour, they left the stage with nice applause from the crowd. The stage was rearranged for the second performer, The Charlatans. They are British band from 90's era with music style similar to Oasis. Some songs were pretty much the same as Oasis' songs with heavy-crunchy riff style, also the vocal style kept reminding me to Liam Gallagher. Some other songs had some reggae style. I was impressed with the bass sound, very deep and dynamic.

The Charlatans performed also about an hour. After that the stage was rearranged again. Being in the front row, I could say that the stage crews worked very good, efficient and fast. The crews from Sting were old guys, looked very experience. It was a nice view on its own to watch them set the instruments and did the sound check.

Around 10 o' clock, when the sky was already darker, I saw Dominic Miller (guitar), Lyle Workman (guitar), and Abe Laboriel Jr. (drum) entered the stage. They directly started with intro of Message In A Bottle, and Sting entered the stage and took the center position, ready to rock with his Fender Precision Bass. As promised, this song was really rocking, very energetic opening. Two thumbs up for powerful drum style from Abe Laboriel Jr. (Paul McCartney band).
After the blasting opening, Sting directly continued with Synchronicity II, another powerful song. It reminded me to the first time I knew The Police about 20 years ago.

Little bit slowing down, they performed If I Ever Lose My Faith In You, a song that could be easily joined by the crowd. Then back to the old time we got the Walking On The Moon. After a heavier style of Englishman in New York, Dominic Miller changed to acoustic guitar and they performed Shape Of My Heart. This soft song got a perfect nuance by the light rain poured down from the sky.

The rain was getting bit heavier as Sting back to heavier stuff: Driven to Tears, followed by old time favorite Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic. Sting really knew how to arrange the setlist, alternating fast and calm songs. We were little bit cooled down again by Why Should I Cry For You and the beautiful Fields of Gold. It's terrific to watch Dominic Miller's fingers dancing on his acoustic guitar.

Not letting the crowd getting too cold, they performed Beatles' A Day In The Life, If You Love Somebody Set Them Free, and some other songs from The Police era, with a nice solo sessions by Dominic Miller and Lyle Workman. I was pretty close to Dominic position and it was a wonderful view to watch his solo. At one point Sting also switched position with Dominic, and that was the time when I was closest to Sting in my life :).

Never enough with the classics, the crowd went crazy when Sting started "Roxanne...you don't have to put on the red light...". The song was getting longer than usual with a nice inclusion of So Lonely at the near end of the song.

After a short break they back to the stage with an additional Arabic percussion player. Yes, it was time for Desert Rose, a different tune from Sting. They played heavier version than the original with Dominic played the eastern melody. The crowd went more energetic after that when we heard the famous intro of Every Breath You Take. We were singing along, clapping, jumping, and shouting during the song because we knew it was almost the end of the show. The climax was reached when they performed another song from Outlandos d'Amour, Next To You.
It could be a perfect show with an opening and ending from the first two albums of The Police, but it was much better when I saw Sting replaced his Fender with an acoustic guitar. It was indeed couldn't be better to end the show by reminding all of us about how fragile we are. With a wonderful ending solo acoustic guitar, Sting ended the show. Four of them said goodbye to the crowd and that was it.

In my opinion it was a great show. The pieces were almost equally selected from The Police and Sting releases, and it was a nice feeling to be able to watch Sting performed the old songs. The sound quality was good (I found that The Charlatans was much noisier than Sting). The stage layout was nice, with brilliant but not overdone ceiling and background lighting. The weather was friendly as well, little rain but still tolerable. Overall, I had a very nice evening.

The complete set list:
- Message In A Bottle
- Synchronicity II
- If I Ever Lose My Faith In You
- Walking On The Moon
- Englishman In New York
- Shape Of My Heart
- Driven to Tears
- Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
- Why Should I Cry For You
- Fields Of Gold
- A Day In The Life
- If You Love Somebody Set Them Free
- Voices Inside My Head
- Solo
- When The World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around
- Roxanne/So lonely
-----------------------
- Desert Rose
- Every Breath You Take
- Next To You
- Fragile

Oslo, Norway

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 08:09:00 +0000

June 2-5, 2006

In a long weekend of Pentecost Day me, my wife, and two friends of us spent nice spring weather in Oslo, capital of Norway. It was not a really well-planned and well-learned holiday, we just booked the tickets and hotels and flew there. It quite different with our normal vacations, where we searched information about nice and interesting places to see at our holiday destination.

Me and my wife flew to Oslo from Schiphol on Friday evening after office hour. It was a quick flight, about 1.5 hours, after a long wait during the check-in. We arrived quite late in Oslo Gardermoen airport. Before landing we saw beautiful scenery of sunset over hilly landscape of Norway. The airport itself is quite small but nicely designed, especially for cold winter weather. Most of the external doors are double and it has wooden floor.

We took express train from the airport to Oslo central station. The train was very modern, clean, and fast. We travelled through green hills and small villages and some tunnels before reaching the city. The Oslo station building was not very impressive. It was shabby and looked quite old. We waited for our friends there before taking the bus to our hotel. For first two nights we stayed at Radisson SAS Park Hotel. It was located in nice green area quite outside the city, about 20 minutes by bus.

We started pretty early on our first morning in Oslo, full of spirit to explore the city. After a nice and filling breakfast in the hotel we took the bus and alighted near the Royal Palace. The Royal Palace is the residence of the Norwegian Royal Family. It is a yellowish big building with a park at the back and a nice view to Karl Johans Gate at the front side. From the palace we walked through the Karl Johans Gate, the main avenue in Oslo that laid from the palace until the train central station. Along the way we passed the National Theater building, university building, nice park with fountain and statues, and the parliament building.

From Karl Johans Gate we walked to the City Hall building. It is a big red brick building with twin towers, a good landmark located by the waterfront of the Oslofjord. The front side of the City Hall building has U-shape and is decorated with wooden friezes about Norse mythology. The inside part of the building is mainly a big reception hall where the annual Nobel Peace Prize ceremony is held. The walls are decorated with colorful paintings.

Oslo City Hall

Behind the City Hall we directly reached the Oslofjord with view of Akershus Fortress on the left side, modern harbour part Aker Brygge and Nobel Peace Center building on the right side. We had a wonderful bright shiny day on that morning to enjoy the scenery of the harbour.

Because of the perfect weather, we decided to visit Frogner Park and Vigeland Sculpture Park that is located inside the Frogner Park. We took the tram from the Aker Brygge that passed through shopping and residential streets of Oslo before reached the park. The Vigeland Park maybe the most famous park in Norway. It was designed by Gustav Vigeland, a Norwegian sculptor. There are 212 sculptures in bronze and granit that modelled by Vigeland himself. The theme of the sculptures is 'human life'. They were divided into several parts: the Bridge with mostly sculptures about children, the Fountain, the Monolith Plateau, and the Wheel of Life.

The Monolith in Vigeland Park

We already could see the Monolith from the bridge while we were enjoying the detail human interpretation in the statues. The most popular statue on the bridge is Sinnataggen, the 'Angry Boy'.

The Angry Boy in Vigeland Park

The Fountain is located more or less in the center of the park, very relaxing place thanks to the water fountain and nice wide green parks on both sides of the fountain. Some people were enjoying the sun on the green grass, also some were doing the sport and there was also a cheerleader group practicing there (who got some applauses from the tourists on difficult acrobatic movements).
The best part of the park is the Monolith Plateau. It is located higher than the other parts of the park. There are 36 granit statues arranged in 12 lines along rising circular stairs and the 17 m high monolith on the top of the circle. The circular shape somehow reminded me to Borobudur temple in Central Java that has similar circular shape.

A statue in the Monolith Plateau, Vigeland Park

The statues still have humanic theme, mostly showing adults in different poses. The monolith also carved with human shapes that intertwine with each other.
Walk further from the Monolith we saw a sundial that decorated with zodiac figures, and at the furthest part of the park stands the Wheel of Life, a sculpture of women, men, and children holding on each other as wheel.
More detail information about Vigeland (the person and the park) can be found here.

From the park we went back to Aker Brygge for a quick lunch. After lunch we took boat to visit Bygdøy, a peninsula on the west part of the city. There are several popular museums in Bygdøy. From the stop of the boat we walked through a street with nice wooden houses until we arrived at Viking Ship Museum. It is a small museum, showing three wooden Viking ships that were used for burial in the Viking era around 9th century. Two of the ships (Oseberg and Gokstad ships) were still in a good shape and we could see the detail of the boat design. The museum also displayed items that were found from the ships, for example the burial chamber, small boats, and several grave goods.

From the Viking Ship Museum we walked to different corner of the peninsula to visit Kon-Tiki Museum. This museum showed boats from Thor Heyerdahl expeditions, the Kon-Tiki raft and the papyrus boat Ra II. Ra II was located in the first room, where we also could follow the story of the expeditions, how the team designed and built the papyrus boats (Ra I and Ra II) as well as the expedition trip description crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Marocco to Barbados.
In the next room we could see the Kon-Tiki balsa raft, that was used by Heyerdahl and the crews crossing the Pacific from Peru to the Tuamotus archipelago. Besides these two main expeditions, we also could see some findings from Heyerdahl's later expeditions to the Easter Island, Polynesia, and Galapagos.
Personally I found the Kon-Tiki Museum was much more interesting to visit than the Viking Ship Museum.

There is another museum located in front of the Kon-Tiki Museum, the Fram Museum. It showed the Fram, a ship that was used by Amundsen to reach the South Pole. We did not enter this museum, just looked briefly the big ship from the entrance, before we took the boat back to the Aker Brygge.

Aker Brygge

The last trip on that first day was a short Oslofjord boat tour. We went with a boat circling the fjord with some explanations by the tour guide. We had a nice view of Oslo and the Bygdøy peninsula from the boat.

After a short rest in the hotel, we went out again for dinner. We aimed for a decent meal with reasonable price due to very expensive food price in Oslo. We visited the area near the train station and found a traditional Indian restaurant in a quite 'international' neigbourhood. They served quite authentic Indian food, curry and tandoori, complete with the traditional Roti Prata. After the dinner we back to the hotel to get our sleep.

The second day, again we started with nice breakfast from the hotel. It was the last breakfast in the Radisson hotel because we moved to KNA Scandic hotel that located nearer to the Oslo city center.
After got our room in the Scandic hotel, we went to the train station. We planned to go out from Oslo because we already visited most touristic places in Oslo on the first day. Unfortunately the train ticket price was quite expensive to visit some far places, so we decided to take local train to Kløfta, a village between Oslo and Gardermoen airport. With a very minimum knowledge about the place, we walked around the village, found nothing interesting at all, only in the end we arrived in a church on a small hill. The church had cemetery complex surrounding it, and we just sat on a bench enjoying the graves while eating our snacks. Quite an experience, had a picnic in cemetery!
From Kløfta we took the train back to Oslo and we stopped at Lillestrøm, a suburb of Oslo. It was bigger than Kløfta, and we spent a short time enjoying the peaceful riverside near the train station before we continued our trip back to Oslo.

In the evening we went to the area near the train station, again to find a place for dinner. We found a nice Vietnam restaurant that served quite real Vietnamese food. I found the pho was very good, more or less the same taste as the pho in Indonesia.
After dinner we walked back to the hotel via the Oslo Cathedral and through the long Karl Johans Gate until the National Theater.

Akershus Fortress

The last day, we started also with a nice breakfast from another hotel. We had a relax planning then because we only had about half day anyway before we need to go to the airport. After breakfast we walked to the Akershus Fortress. There is a castle inside the fortress, which was quite beautiful and had several rooms and things to see, for example royal mausoleum where King Haakon VII and King Olav V were buried with their wifes.
The fortress itself gave nice view to the Oslofjord as well as the city of Oslo.

From the Akershus at the seaside we took the tram continued by local train to visit a much higher place in Oslo, Holmenkollen hill where the ski jump arena is located. From there we could see the Oslofjord until far away in the horizon.

Holmenkollen Ski Jump

Back to the city of Oslo, we had lunch in a local restaurant. I had typical Scandinavian meatballs with mashed potato and peas. Actually it was the only time we ever had local food in Oslo. After lunch we picked our bags in the hotel and rushed away to get the train to the airport. In the airport we spent our last Norwegian Kroner on ice creams and a piece of bread. Then we flew back to Holland, enjoying the scene of the Oslofjord for the last time from the plane.

Rembrandt - Caravaggio Exhibition

noreply@blogger.com (Irwan) — Thu, 25 May 2006 08:08:00 +0000

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
20 May 2006

It's been a while since we visited Amsterdam the last time, and last week we 'need' to go to the big old city two times. The first visit was to meet my good friend from Indonesia. It was a quick visit on Thursday evening. We walked around the famous Red Light District and had a dinner in the Chinatown area. Then we walked to the Dam and went back to the train station. We got delicious pempek from Indonesia, thanks!

The following Saturday we went to Amsterdam again. We visited the Rembrandt-Caravaggio exhibition in Van Gogh Museum. The exhibition was an effort to compare the masterpieces from both great artists side by side, who worked using similar Impressionist style that use lots of light on their paintings.

Before went to the Museumplein, we had Chinese dim sum for lunch. It was not really special, but good enough so we decided to have dinner there after the museum visit. After lunch we took tram to go to Museumplein, and we arrived on time to queue. It turned out to be a popular event based on the long of the queue, and it was full as well inside. Sometimes we need to 'fight' to get to the front of the paintings.

They provided audio tour from where we got explanation in detail and background story for every paintings. The exhibition itself was located on two levels. There were several highlights on the first floor. There was betrayal topic, where we could see the Betrayal of Christ by Caravaggio placed side by side with the Denial of St. Peter by Rembrandt. On the other corner there was seductive women topic, which compared the Blinding of Samson by Rembrandt and the Judith and Holofernes by Caravaggio.

The second floor provided more interesting paintings. The Abraham's Sacrifice by both artists, the emotional expressions on A Schoolboy at His Desk by Rembrandt and A Boy Bitten by Lizard by Caravaggio, and the peaceful Jewish Bride by Rembrandt.

As an extra, there was another floor that filled in by stories connecting Van Gogh to Rembrandt. It was interesting to know that Van Gogh, who claimed that he could only paint real and current events and not something from the past, was still influenced by Rembrandt, artist from two centuries before him. It was known that Van Gogh used to stay in front of the Jewish Bride painting when he visited Rijksmuseum. In the end of his life he adapted the Raising of Lazarus painting by Rembrandt into his own style. It was known as his last work before he passed away.

After about two hours enjoying the paintings, we walked from the Museumplein to the Leidseplein. We stopped there to get some drinks at the nice outdoor seat, enjoying the spring weather of Amsterdam. Then we walked back to the China town area to have our dinner.

Exhibition website: Rembrandt Caravaggio website