an artist not an engineer

i got up this morning at 6:30a and went for a run. fortunately, it wasn't raining, but you could tell that it had recently. everything is very green here, and the hotel i'm staying at happens to be near a park with a fairly extensive trail system, so i got to see a lot of trees...and breath a lot of very clean air. at one point, i was running up a narrow dirt path on a land bridge (?) between two canals. being a bit of a water fanatic, i thought that was great.

today was the first official day of the conference. there were a series of talks and poster presentations throughout the morning and early afternoon. around 2p or so, we had a guest speaker appear. his name is theo jansen and he is an artist. i was curious as to why in the world there would be an artist coming to speak at an engineering conference, but i quickly found out why. mr. jansen "builds animals," for lack of a better way of describing it. in fact, he builds sea creatures...out of plastic rodes, string, bottles and small pieces of wood fasioned as nails. before you start thinking this just sounds silly, check out his talk at TED for some examples of his art (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b694exl_oZo) or just search for his name on youtube. his creatures really walk, and they are some of the coolest pieces of art i think i've ever seen. he also built one of his creatures out of metal. it weighs in at 3.2 tons and is apparently on permanent display in amsterdam. i didn't get to see that one today, but he did take us to his workshop, which, it turned out, was a 25 minute walk from the hotel at which we are staying. the image to the right is of one of the critters he built, which he had walk for us. the "wings" that you can see actually help harness energy from the wind for the creature to use to move. i have actual video footage of this too (just got a video camera!), but you'll have to wait for footage as i don't have the cables yet to hook it up to my computer. mr. jansen made a comment that i really liked and which i think bears repeating. he told us that we were really all artists but that we called ourselves engineers because we were paid to create something useful. having always been attracted to the arts in various forms, i appreciated his observation.

we saw more art after our visit to mr. jansen's workshop. art is everywhere here apparently, and i was particularly impressed by the street sign shown to the left. for din KNUS for a bbq--netherlands style. apparently, chicken satay is a specialty of the netherlands. i always thought it was something from southeast asia, but apparently i was wrong. i didn't try any, but was told it was delicious. the rest of the food was fantastic. i tried cinnamon tea for the first time and it was pretty good. ice cream made with real milk is also delicious. over dinner, i asked if anyone could tell me why the holland was used synonymously with the netherlands (i realize that this may seem like an ignorant question, but i really didn't know). for those who didn't know, holland is actually a province in the netherlands and happens to be the province in which amsterdam is located. apparently because most people only know of amsterdam, people assume that if you are going to the netherlands you are also going to holland. well, i'm not in holland. i'm currently in another province though i'm not sure what the name of it is. tomorrow, they will be taking us to holland to see another lab and to have dinner in amsterdam. the other thing i learned over dinner was the solution to the large window situation i mentioned in my post yesterday. apparently the concept for the large windows comes from protestant teachings which mentioned that anything that happens in the home should be completely above board and able to be seen by anyone. not only do the dutch have large windows in their homes, but they also either do not have drapes in them or they keep the drapes open all the time. oh, but you're not supposed to look in the windows because that's rude. apparently people also use this tradition as a way to show off their nice living rooms, kitchens, etc. if you move here, just make sure you're not doing your dishes naked. apparently though its rude to look in the windows, everyone does it anyways...and doing your dishes naked might not be considered "normal" by the locals.

back to dinner though, i wanted to stop in the restroom before we started our walk back to the hotel, but in mentioning that i was going to do so, two of the guys in our party looked at each other and asked if the other was scared of the bathroom. now this made the rest of us a wee bit curious. the women's bathroom, it turned out, was normal. the door to the men's bathroom was open, however, and from the open door, all you could see were the urinals. seeing them was enough to know what our male dining companions had been discussing though. in case you can't tell from the picture at left, the urinals were painted to look like giant mouths. i think i would be disturbed too if i had to pee into that.

all in all, it was a successful first day of the conference. i learned a lot and met a lot of new people. this group seems like a good bunch, and i'm excited to get to know people better over the next few days. hopefully too, i'll be able to get some good feedback on my work. for now though, its off to sleep for me!