About Me

I have done a lot of things in my life and have also worked in many different jobs to make a living and to experience life. This blog is just some of my musings, sometimes funny, sometimes inspirational, sometimes sad, sometimes angry, sometimes simple but all the time, it's just me.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Wifey's here

Wifey arrived on Thursday morning - a little jet lagged and tired and having her bags opened and checked but safe and well.

I had bought a bunch of red tulips from the airport shop and arrived at Schipol at 6:47am from the 1st train out of Rijswijk at 5:51am.

Also, my reliable ex-cop driver Frans also had shown up to pick wifey and send us back to The Grand Winston.

After arrival in hotel, I packed some breakfast and wifey ate somethings and then decided to take a nap as she only slept 3 hours and had a bit of jey lag.

In the afternoon, she went to In de Boogard - the Rijswijk shopping mall.

And as Thursday is late shopping day, we then went to The Hague in the evening and walked around the shopping area and then had a nice Indonesian food.

As the sun stays out till about 9:30pm, you don;t even realise how fast the time flies.

Anyway, slept around 11:30pm and slept like a log, both of us in general.

On Friday, had breakie with wifey and showed her how to get to Amsterdam. She went on her own to the Van Gogh museum and I then went there after work.

The museum is open until 10pm today and it gave me the opportunity to visit the Van Gogh by night additional exhibit that I missed the last time.

Also, after my previous post, I had to re-look at poverty and among my favorite Van Gogh paintings, the Potato Eaters. It is about peasants eating potatoes and drinking black coffee. The painting seems sometimes like Van Gogh actually used mud rather than oil colors to paint it.

The Potato Eaters is a painting by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh that he painted in April 1885 while in Nuenen, Netherlands. It is housed in the Van Gogh Museum of Amsterdam.


During March and the beginning of April 1885 he sketched studies for the painting, and corresponded with his brother, who was not impressed with his current work or the sketches van Gogh sent him.

He worked on the painting from April 13 until the beginning of May, when it was mostly done except for minor changes which he made with a small brush later the same year.

Van Gogh said he wanted to depict peasants as they really were. He deliberately chose coarse and ugly models, thinking that they would be natural and unspoiled in his finished work.

Van Gogh deliberately chose a composition which would challenge his growing prowess as a painter. And like the French master Jean-François Millet, Van Gogh wanted to be a true 'peasant painter.'

"I wanted to convey the idea that the people eating potatoes by the light of an oil lamp used the same hands with which they take food from the plate to work the land, that they have toiled with their hands—that they have earned their food by honest means."

This meant Van Gogh tried to paint his subjects with deep feeling, but without sentimentality. He spoke of them leading "a way of life completely different from ours, from that of civilized people."

He strove to paint the faces, "the color of a good, dusty potato, unpeeled naturally," and to convey the idea that these people had "used the same hands with which they now take food from the plate to dig the earth […] and had thus earned their meal honestly."

Van Gogh thought this piece was a failure.

I guess some people are never happy, and as such, they cut their ears or shoot themselves and bleed to death over a two day period.

I am happy, because I choose too and of course wifey is here too.

Take care and be well.

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