David and Hubertina's wedding in Sloten!

So..we're now back from Sloten [a picturesque little town about an hour's drive from Amsterdam] and here are some pictures of the proceedings for the happy couple! David had gone to school with Jos for her Art education course, and have known each other for a good 8+ years..

[for something a bit different, I've decided to put up more pics and less words for this entry, so you get to see a bit more of the fun stuff we got to enjoy] -- i'm attempting to do five word descriptions for the day's events..

sloten, boat, waterside, picturesque, sunny

friesland, boat's name means adventure

happy couple on the bridge

[L to R]: Hugo, uncle, Roland, Jeanette, Josefine

Uncle peeking out of head

after the civil ceremony...lah

church where we had presentation

post wedding candid shot, hat

biodiesel in sloten! amazing amazing!

part1 : getting everyone to the side

getting the wedding cannon ready..

part2: david and hubertina approach cannon

part3: BOOM! loudly through the town..
part4: preparing the next shot, ears

part5: third and final cannon blast!

sloten map, 700 plus people!

ring road leading to town

dinner party, drinks, dancing, gezelligheid!

so as you can all see, it was a great celebration and we sure had a nice time at the day's activities..it was also a big highlight for us to catch up with friends from Amsterdam as well as to enjoy the nice weather out in the country..

[in case you were wondering, yes..there were fields of tulips and cows with windmill farms all along the way....but didn't get to take any pics lah]

that nautical almanac i was talking about

Apologies for writing this one so late - as you know, we've been in amsterdam for a wedding, and have been busy packing and meeting up with friends here as well..

but as promised, here is the almanac that we found in the book fair; pls see the previous entry for more info on our sunday morning book adventure last weekend..

here you see the front cover of the almanac...its from 1962, and is clearly quite weathered..
yup! its a ad for singapore in the 60s on the back cover, with a six digit telephone number!! must have cost Motion, Smith &Son quite a bit to advertise back then!


Look! whats this?

its seems really archaic to have measurements of distances in a book for reference - what with the internet and probably a computer that logs all this information now in the year 2008


you'll see that Bristol to Singapore is 8 000 nm via the Suez and 11 000nm via Cape Town...

amazing stuff ya? there's also illustrations of measuring sextets and old-skool ads for various services and parts for the shipping industry..all quite cool..

sunday morning

so there was a book fair yesterday [sunday] in front of the city library - which by the way has a COMIC lending section that is h-u-u-u-ge!~ and we went for a quick look around for some insightful reading material; in flemish, french and other various languages of course..


it was a great start to the day where we could just amble about the small square in the sun and look at assorted old books

i ended up with a heavily-discounted-from-bookstore-prices copy of jonathan strange and mr norrell, which so far has been an excellent read [for the first hundred pages or so..and its quite hard to put down]

and jos and i fished out a nautical almanac from the 1960s of which i will post pics the next time i write..got some cool suprises for you when you see them..

and of course, we headed off to the sunday bird market for a walkaround as well as to enjoy the weather....because everything else is closed, and it seemed a bit of a waste to stay in on the-radio-endorsed-weather of 16 degrees!!

in other news; jos and i are off to amsterdam for a wedding this coming weekend, and i am quite looking forward to seeing how the wedding-thing is done here in europe - amidst the packing of all of our remaining barang in amsterdam for the big move on sunday..more on those in the coming entries..

going underground!!

so yesterday [friday] we decided to treat ourselves to a little R&R after lunch...we spent a good 2+ hours re-exploring the city and found - amongst other things:-

1) a classic belgian waffle place called desiree de lillle...with all sorts of waffle-y goodness - deep fried dough balls in sugar, lacquemants and waffles everywhere

2) several 2nd hand shops with really nice furniture - we've pretty much gotten all our required things, so just looking around lah.. there was even one with park benches, school desks and even hospital bedside cast iron utility cabinets!

3) a place that only sold tiles...but some really nice stuff! there were full colour glazed ones and washed-out-finish ones and mosaics and they had a really cool range of plant motifs...

4) an animal friendly shoe shop that carried a brand called :

vegetarian shoes

what a cool concept, but also what an awesome name!!

[at this point, i realise it is a little lame without pictures and will be sure to include pics in the future] ----

so cool to know that the city still has so much more to explore..

but the biggest suprise for us was at the end of our jalan jalan session; where we chanced upon an old building in a small square along the waterside...and we found.,...

the sint anna tunnel:
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=Antwerp,+Belgium&ie=UTF8&f=q

this is a 530m underground tunnel under the Schelde for pedestrians and cyclist only! the photo below doesn't do justice to the tunnel...but the perspective you get standing at one end is amazing!!

here is a mosaic giving the basic info on the tunnel..

and this was the other cool part about this tunnel...the escalators were made of wood!!! not just the housing for the escalator, but they used wooden slats to make up each escalator landing!!!!
amazing!!

today, we will be running around a small area about 15 mins walk from our place where there are apparently art nouveau buildings everywhere!! [we spent a good 4+ hours doing up the painting for the small room in the apartment and have decided to leave the 2nd coat for tomorrow] -- so more pics on both those things in the coming days...

bits and bobs 1 - our green chairs

as promised, here is a introduction to our soon-to-be[hopefully] completed apartment in Antwerp...

in the coming weeks, you'll get to see some of our finds in kringloopwinkels [sorta like the salvos, but a lot cooler with retro ties, LP players and samsonite leather briefcases from the 70s for 5euros], ikea and other assorted places...

first up; our green chairs - if anyone has noticed, in the past months, i have had a strange gravitation towards green things -- my green wallet(which many people agreed was a strangely apt choice), several green things in my wardrobe and green apples (ok, maybe i exaggerate)

so imagine our combined disbelief when we came across these beauties in a kringloopwinkel barely 50m from our apartment!!


they look like they belong in an american diner or some throwback party to the sixties!! they appeared to be in good condition and sturdy - very important, as these chairs must be a good 20+ years old....but the best bit was; we got the lot of 4 chairs for 20 euros......altogether!! [take that ikea!!]

we've realised that we have an affinity for the slightly retro, definitely character-filled environment;

ok, so the truth is, we didn't have a choice with the safes at our seah street apartment, but anyways.....

so we've been on the look-out, and have already found a couple of nice things here in Antwerp..

as a side note, its pretty amazing the stuff they have at the kringloopwinkel - we've seen entire [about 3m in total!] wardrobes made of super solid wood with excellent ornamentation and craft in the design going for a measly 200euros - we imagine that its the sheer size of these that probably dissuades any takers.. but they also have things ranging from in-cabinet TVs to awesome lighting to even original-retro postcards from europe!!!

ok...back to the chairs

so far they've been our primary sitting arrangements in the house, but as things move along, they will be part of our dining suite...[more info on that later]...and we really like them!

on another note, here is a picture of us painting our master bedroom yesterday...

so we were at the cathedral in the old city centre

wow!





it's like we're really in europe!

we were at the Cathedral of Our Lady this past weekend, as a break from the painting and preparing for the apartment [pics of which will follow soon], and we had a great time at the thai fair on the grote markt - unfortunately no pics of this as we were to busy peering over shoulders to see what each of the 50+ stall had to offer [ranging from soap carving and 10 min massages to the ubiquitous pad thai and curry stalls], as well as the free museum day!

we'd taken some pics of the cathedral which houses 4 large Reubens paintings for your viewing pleasure below...[as you will see, i was so awestruck by the building, i forgot to steal a glimpse of the Reubens works..


tourists sitting in the pews, pillars that seem to defy the laws of gravity, amazing light coming through the windows...yup, we're in europe all right!

i couldn't stop taking pics of the stained windows because of the vibrant colours that were coming through as a result of the 4pm light, which in truth, as like a very rich 6pm magic hour hue of light...and this one is my fave! its got coats of arms, and decorative text and footwear!

if you look carefully, there's someone familiar in the middle of the picture...

AND...the weather's been great today; the blue skies and 15degree crisp air is really making this week a great one!

fast forward to the present::::::

its thurs afternoon as i type this entry, and big news for everyone - our flooring was completed today, and we will start on our furniture construction!!! [ikea nonetheless]...

and our fridge and cooker come in by next tuesday [we hope] and by the first week of may, we'll have the bed and sofa delivered, and we'll have a complete apartment!

finally , i'll be starting a series on some interesting bits and bobs which we've gotten to give our place a slice of our taste...so look out for that yah?

pics of our apartment [some only lah]

So...as promised, here are some pix of what state we [and our apartment] are in now..

first up, this is what you see when you make it through our main door and into the living room..we've just finished doing up the painting in this room, and will be embarking on a flooring adventure soon


i am a bit sqooshed in this pic because i accidentally resized it in blogger, and i can't seem to get it to look right...but anyways, thats what i look like on a ladder..

drumroll....and this is the groundfloor entrance to our apartment..

and more importantly......we're now officially at the parlophone!!

cool yah?

ok, will post a couple more pics in the coming days....just a warning, the internet cafe we frequent is closed on the weekend, so maybe the next post is on monday..

in other completely unrelated news...the weather today was excellent! it was hovering around 15degrees plus with sunny sun sunshine everywhere!! and also, it doesn't seem to want to get dark till about 8pm everyday, and jos was telling me that at the peak of summer, it might be 9pm before it gets dark!!!

we could be having dinner, under some sunlight!!

antwerp!

Dear Everyone who sometimes check on this blog,

yes, its been a good week and a bit since my last entry - but i have good reason for this; we now have an apartment in Antwerp! [thats in Belgium, by the way.....hey, i wasn't sure what in Europe was where in the beginning..]

and we've been busy running around getting assorted things for the house, as well as rolling up our sleeves for some serious house painting! Now we were house hunting almost 2 weeks ago, and narrowed our 10+ options to the last 2, the first of which was next to a church and a skip away from a nice - quiet square with restaurants and frituurs [that's a kebab shop - in a nutshell]. This one was ready to move in, but had a bit of a small living room (about the size of a HDB 3 room flat living room size), and didn't have a spare room for any visitors who want to bunk over..

the other option - which is obviously the one we have been eating, sleeping and painting in the past week, is along a small lane which is really quiet, but is about 40m from a pedestrian walkway which is a main artery into Antwerp city..in Orchard Road terms, we're sort of living in the Cairnhill area - near enough to walk into the main city, by far enough for it to still be quiet..

so our apartment is a good 50m2 with a healthy sized living room, a hall with built in coat cupboards, and, even a balcony out the back which overlooks a playground for the neighbouring kindergarten, with trees and a bit of space..

and its got the spare room lah, so you guys can head on over..

at this point, i need to say that the place needed a fresh coat of paint and some re-flooring, mainly because the surface, although in excellent condition, were by the previous tenant who lived there almost 40 years..so we are busy sprucing up the house..and that's also why i haven't had the impetus to take any pictures...hopefully by the next post, i will give you a room by room rundown..

so yeah, we're about a week or two away from fully outfitting the apartment with a trip to IKEA and the electronics store, but we're stoked!

--another thing, i realised that you can only leave comments if you have a blogger a/c - i think a gmail a/c also allows you to do this--

ok, gtg its 3pm here...and i've got to get back to some house painting..

more updates in a bit..

--Keefe and Josefine