almost somewhere

ive been instructed by his holiness the dalai lama up in mcleodganj, been a celebrity at the golden temple in amritsar, seen a food poisoned blur of the taj mahal in agra, some buildings from james bond in udaipur and somehow we have found ourselves on a sun-and-trance-soaked-beach in goa. kingfisher makes great beer, good aeroplanes and pretty average bottled water. ok i give up trying to describe my indian experience, hopefully these pics will help otherwise lets have a chat, ill be in cape town on the 6th of december! see you on a bike

red bridges

this is what we did on the last sunny sunday of amsterdam summer


2 more weeks till india baby

almost a fake-enger

its almost there, one gear, new colour scheme and it rides like a dream...



pity the streets of amsterdam have holes thicker than my tires and the tourists ride soooo damn slowly! haha jokes, we love them really... :-)



now i just have to stick to the origional plan of selling it before i go cos im kinda getting attached to it, aah 1 more bike wont hurt will it?

the bike project

wow, its been a while... i have been to and come back from south africa, pretty much finished a thesis and started a new bike project! in amsterdam there are far too many uncool bikes (yes yes thats my opinion) and i have owned a few of them, so now its time to make an uber-cool bike, as only those who ride bikes all day can do, its time for the messenger bike! or rather, cos i may never be hard/cool enough to be a messenger, its time for the fake-enger bike! only a few rules, low budget, low number of gears (preferably just one), low chance of injury (so it will have brakes)... after scouring the online marketplaces i found just the bike, it was a half hour train ride away, the right size and not very expensive... i bet you dont know what 1985 shimano 600 looks like, i give u a hint, 5 gears, i think ornate is the word



so its gonna be a 4 maybe 5 phase process, these photos are at the end of phase 1, ie i had pumped up the new tires and straightened the saddle etc... just wait for it, oooh its going to be shweet!

writing on the wall

any ideas what it means? saw it on a wall opposite from a great curry in cambridge




choc chip banana muffins anyone? mmm good...

racing again, at last

so i think i have a little theory about fitness... its got to do with there being a difference between being 'in shape' and being 'out of shape', ja ja i know thats pretty obvious, but especially obvious to me now that i have finally raced a bike again! i think being out of shape is like having an engine limiter, u got plenty of power but ur never gonna be able to use it all. well at least thats how i felt when i had to sit down and swallow half way up a few hills during the race... hmmm humbling! but fun! so i rocked up thinking i would be the only guy who knew which way to wear a helmet at the amateur section of the benelux (belgium netherlands luxembourg ie international) championships only to find 160 other guys on flash bikes with sponsored kit all looking really fast (and some of them werent only fast in the parking lot), amateur my ass... so i got thumped, but i still beat a good few of them so its all good, the best part about it was that my knee held out fine so... its time to get out of my 'out of shape' state, into an 'in shape' state so i can train properly and get fast, oh ja that was the rest of my theory.

barcelona

wow that was a sneaky holiday! whats the best part about your girlfriend getting a new job? when she books you tickets to barcelona to celebrate! even the bus driver was cool, im almost ashamed to say id never heard of 'cat power' before, but it made for the most mellow bus ride from an airport into a major city i ever had, and then the bus driver busted our some kruder and dorfmeister for good measure, nice... after that it was a blur of sun, tapas, spanish beer, gaudi and remarkable short spanish people! or is that just cos the dutch are remarkably tall... there was a great system of bikes that you could drop off and pick up where ever there were stands (www.bicing.com) only it was all in spanish so i had no idea how it worked other than that. what a cool city!

bye bye bicycle

thanks for all the comments on my last post, im looking forward to seeing and riding (not racing) with you all again soon too! is it something in what i say that makes everyone want to race me? or am i just so over-competitive that i am hyper-sensitive to any kind of challenge..? hmmm i bet i can still eat more pancakes than u! hehe
well they say you havent lived in amsterdam until your bike has been stolen, ok... so now that i have lived, can i have my bike back please? no no dont worry, it was just my crusty city bike (sniff sniff and ill miss the rusty ol bugga) that has been recycled... maybe there is a limit to the number of bicycles one can have imposed by the universe, cos no sooner had i built the sycip again and poof there goes my crusty bike... oh well back to walking!

a well spent monday night

after the complaints about the lack of racing on my racing blog and in response to the cocky emails about how strong i will need to be when i come back to south africa, i thought i would post a few photos to show you what i think of all that... jip, those are very light rims, crazy light spokes, xtr hubs and there is a drop of lube in each alu nipple: just for you dobinson! he he bring it on fatboy, yes... im still hungry :-)

making candy

my job is giving candy to strangers... cool huh?

maart roert zijn staart

iiiits snowing!





last week it was almost summer, but in retrospect it was a bit early for that summer haircut... (the title means: march wags its tail - i think the ducth have a joke about the bad weather for every month actually)

2 quick things

(1)i just read something on the MIT OpenCourseWare site (http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Science--Technology--and-Society/index.htm - if you enjoy the site youre also a nerd!) regarding sociology of knowledge... you see now iv been wondering just how is knowledge created - more specifically: how are objects of knowledge formed? - and it was put so simply that i feel a bit stupid for wondering: by experiments, by theories and framing questions and by ethical presuppositions...
(2)but back on earth iv also been thinking about how to wash my bike living on the 6th floor of a building without a garden... just how angry can a landlord get if he catches you washing your bike in the shower (or a girlfriend for that matter)? at least the grease seems to leave a slightly sticky layer on the floor rather than a slippery one... anyone got a good recipe for bike wash from common household cleaning products?

why stress?

in all my stressing about writing a masters thesis i have forgotten to write anything here about it, which is stupid cos seeing your own words on a subject most of the time allows you to think about it more clearly, or realise that you are completely stuffed and need to start again, what ever the case, write it down, it really helps... i have been thinking off adding guest writers to this blog, anyone keen, just post a comment and ill contact you. So the one thing I have realised while stressing about thesis writing (you see i decided to force myself to finish by the middle of july by buying a flight back to SA) is that interesting topics are not hard to come by, there are plenty of controversies in science and loads of inconsistent policies in the political and scientific arena, but how (the big H word) on earth does one approach it from a science dynamics or sociology of science point of view? ok ok i can almost see all the engineers cringing at the use of the 's' word (sociology) but its not all up in the air here, there is some wild hugely computer intesive quantitative research going on even in the realms of the sociology department, i could recommend a paper (have u read it yet dave?) but im not sure ud read it... back to the plan: i have meetings with two potential supervisors today and im not going to leave their offices until i have 3 examples of great methodologies that will work for a 4 month thesis projects in my hand! oh an i maxed out the credit card and bought lots of xtr too...

a new day

having a laptop, especially a shiny silver one, is very cool, but with each new technology seems to come new problems... has it satisfied my consumer tendencies? i think not, it seems merely to have wet my appetite! well im not going to go on much more about this, but i would never have thought that having a laptop would actually exaggerate the lack of internet connectivity frustrations, its kind of like getting buyers remorse before youve even paid... is it?
but really, i have thought about white picket fences for a while and im not sure they can make a come back, things have changed (just read steve's comment) and thinking whether it is for the better or not is irrelevant...
now im thinking about what to write a masters thesis on... i started out being totally sure that i want to write about health and food and maybe even specifically sugar, but then climate change and political rhetoric just got more and more interesting... (heres an interesting article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6335899.stm) the important thing to consider is that i am not to investigate specific technology but rather how a specific technology is interpreted by society, we all know that sugar was invented pretty recently (do we?) and some of us know that it is present in larger and larger proportions in all our food, even few of us know that it may be this sugar presence that causes grumpiness, lack of concentration, diabetes, obesity to name but a few... but what does this mean? why do i react differently to this information to you? again, no better or worse distinction implied, im just finding what is truth for me... any ideas? its gotta be done by july so i can race the imana again!

something other than bikes and pancakes

you want to know a little more about what im doing up here in the north west of europe do ya? well i just finished a marathon of 5 essays in 5 days! nope thats not how hard they work you here in amsterdam, thats just how hard i made it for myself by having a holiday at an inappropriate time... but all that writing (it was somewhere near 6000 words) did make me think just a little bit, and there was one particular thing that i felt was share-worthy... its a concept that a guy (actually a really famous british sociologist) called anthony giddens came up with that just keeps bouncing around in my head, it may do the same if you're one of the 'just-about-everyone-i-know' people in a relationship, well, actually i think it affects all of us but here goes: he talks about how the institution of family is becoming more flexible, how we are increasingly free to choose our mates and how we relate to them, sounds good huh? in fact he goes on to say that this creates unparalleled opportunities... but and its a big butt... it also creates a lot of work, because a relationship becomes a reflexive project which has to be interpreted, maintained and at times worried over... no those arent all my own words, but you get the point, no? cant we go back to the simple days, i want a white picket fence... i think... you happy now, davo?

the italy experience

start with cold pizza in the park... then walk along a big old river



to a reaaallly famous old building (or is it a reaaallly old famous building?)



but make sure u watch out for the italian traffic...

shiny things

aah i nice shiny apple laptop sure keeps you warm at night... nope its not mine, although i should have mine in a day or three, im just house sitting for a friend and in return for taking care of the kittens i get to play with her laptop, and wireless internet, and that has taken up just about all of my time! well, apart from it being 2 degrees outside, actually that has something to do with it, it might snow... i was going to say that apart from that, things are looking pretty peachy up here in north western europe, the sycip is on its way back home, all shiny and new, they even fixed the dents, those nice men at the bike factory are quite something huh..? pictures to follow

is it too late to say 'happy new year'?

so we're back from italy feeling over pizza-ed and a little broke, what a cool experience tho! new years eve was spent with a bottle of champagne (and thousand or so other people also with bottles of champagne) on a hill overlooking rome watching the fireworks, then we were prevented from going to a party a long way away by the diabolical taxi system in rome, we just couldnt get one... but all ended well cos i got to eat a donut that was to big to hold with one hand! well anyway, its a new year and i wish you all well! i got an appointment with a coach at the university of amsterdam sport centre, its time to get back into shape!