this time it's thursday

02.08.07

so i was caught up on blogging for exactly 2 minutes. so now i'm backtracking to thursday. thuuuuursday. c'mon memory, find those thursday brain cells.

ah, thursday. there you are. elusive, elusive.

so, i present to you ---- thursday (ta-da!)

so, i just found out that apart from seating in the lecture room, there is a live feed of the lecture upstairs in a seminar room, which is for late-comers so they don't disturb the lecturer and the translators. but most importantly, you can eat & drink in the upstairs room. no more downing my latte in the lobby and feeling very dissatisfied with the experience. no more griping about how it's prehistoric and barbaric not to permit even water in the lecture room. in a plastic bottle. with a secure lid. seriously.

anyway, the upstairs seminar room has a little club of semi-slackers. people who did make it to class, but just couldn't be bothered to get there on time. but seriously, this room is going to revolutionize my morning lectures. the only negative is that there is no simultaneous translation of french into english. sux.

in a bizarre mind-meld moment, prof. reisman gave us a hypothetical situation which closely mirrors the russian action of planting flags in the seabed of the arctic and then claiming it as their territory. the hypothetical is funny ridiculous, but is also just purely awesome. and a total law school finals question. if you have a demented professor. in the best possible way! have i mentioned how much i am loving his classes.

after class, i went to the gem / den haag foto museum which is not too far from the peace palace. they have an exhibit running - yoshitomo nara's first solo show outside of japan. the exhibit was very well curated with an amazing set of installations -- little club-house/tree-houses that you can walk through, inside which nara's pieces are displayed. tremendous. the other thing that was super cool was that they had a dvd on exhibit -- playing on three screens - triptych style - each of them was playing a loop of undulating waves. i couldn't tell if it was three sets of waves from one body of water, or if they were from three different sources. anyway. it was unbelievably cool and you felt like you were actually swaying. the other main exhibit going on is of three australian photographers (tracy moffat, anne zahalka & bill henson.) the other main photography exhibit going on is koos breukel, a photographer from the hague. the exhibit shows about 55 photographs breukel has taken of his contemporaries, photographers & artists. accompanying breukel's portraits is one work by the artist being photographed - something that breukel finds inspiring or beautiful. breukel curated the exhibit himself and so got to choose works that he just plain ol' liked.

after art, i went home to pack up for my overnight trip to delft to see S again. i hopped the train and missed the station! missed the station!!! i went wayyyyyy past delft centraal (where i was supposed to hop off, which is like 15 minutes from den haag centraal). i went really really far past, past rotterdam. so i had to get off the train, call S, explain what a moron i am and backtrack. finally, i made it to delft. fortunately for me, the ticket checkers weren't on my train or in my car during this debacle. i'm sure they would love to know why i was traveling past delft on my cheap-ass ticket only to delft and no further. lucky lucky. i think they fine people immediately on the spot. & if you don't have the money, they throw you off the moving train! so when i hopped off to go back in the direction i had just come from, i was tempted not to buy a ticket. but i decided there's no need to be a badas* hero, so i bought a ticket. and lucky i did. because 2 minutes into the train ride, ticket checkers came around. whew!

once i actually got to delft, i had a lovely time. S and i walked around delft and i got to take pictures this time (my camera was all charged & ready). i saw the view of the old city gate that vermeer painted (which i saw in mauritshaus in the hague). we also went by the old church, where vermeer is buried. we wandered through beestenmarkt, where as late as 1970, animals were being bought & sold in the square. you can still see the posts for the pens the animals were kept in. we also saw the new church, where the statue of grotius is (you can BET i took pictures of him). and we went through to see a nunnery/convent (never been exactly sure of the distinction) which was the former home of william I of orange, and sadly for him, the site of his assassination. sucks to be him.

anyway. post exploring deft & eating at a non-mexican mexican place ("mexican" but not really, still tasty though), we went back to S's place and watched the movie "the prestige" - it was gripping. i thought i'd fall fast asleep, but i didn't (yay! how novel!)

the bed was super comfortable, i slept well and the next morning hopped the train back to the hague, and then on to the peace palace, without incident.