It's been strange getting accustomed to European culture, but I do feel like I am doing well. Still cannot wrap my head around the fact that I am living here. We had a busy first week in Switzerland, but we did have a lot of time to travel around the country.
I am not so much in the mood to write right now so instead I will leave you with a video.
Being media coordinator is not as strange as I anticipated to be.
Hola. It has been a long day/few days and I guess this may be out of the blue, but I am now in Lausanne, Switzerland and will be here for the next year or so. The depart from LAX was so very emotional. I wanted to cry more than I did but then we would all drown and I didn’t quite feel like killing anyone that day.
I quite enjoy flights. I especially like flights when going through turbulence. I did replay a scenario in my head of our flight crashing into the ocean and my life becoming an episode of Lost. It was glorious while it lasted.
Turns out Sarah & I get one of the only rooms without a view of The Alps and Lake Geneva. Blows, but whatever. I was already #blessed with my ocean view last year. We get to look at graffiti and a basketball court. Even more #blessed. I do love a good game of basketball.
We walked to the International Olympic Committee Museum. It was on a boat and the boat was on the lake. It was cool.
There were a lot of great photo ops. I’m the Media Coordinator this year but I feel too much of a creep to film people I don’t know very well. I wonder why I was made so unexplainably unable to talk to people. Sometimes I hate myself. #lol
There is an automatic espresso machine in the kitchen. Last year, I would be so very excited about this, but working this summer as a barista has made me such a coffee snob. That’s not okay because now I can’t enjoy coffee as much as I used to. Wow, that was really very extremely pretentious and ungrateful. THANK GOD FOR THE ESPRESSO MACHINE OKAY.
Lausanne is a very cute and quaint city. I like it a lot.
Took a shower and came back. Fuse went out from Sarah’s iPhone charger. No lights, yay.
Now I am sitting in the dark and listening to I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston. Some girls walked by and now I’m really embarrassed. What is life.
Any who, I sound stupid and ungrateful but really I am extremely excited for this coming year. I will somehow break out of this cocoon and become a social butterfly (quote verbatim by Joanna Samuel).
Dancing In The Dark by Bruce Springsteen is playing now.
It's amazing how I have not updated my blog in a year. Since I have been gone many things have happened. I may write about them, I may not. Who knows at this point. Anyways, Jon and I built a hanging table this weekend and I just wanted to share our process!
I saw this picture on Pinterest and Jon always has recycled wood hanging around in his backyard so we decided to go for it.
1. Find some recycled wood.
2. Pick out your planks.
3. Cut them to the length of your liking.
4. You got the pieces to your table top!
5. Use a stain to refurbish the planks.
6. Then attach the wood together with smaller pieces of wood and nails.
7. Get your table top and rope together.
8. Scout out a tree to hold the table.
9. Jon took a small piece of wood to hang the wood from so it'd be easier to put up and take down the table. He drilled two holes on each side and put two hooks in the middle to tie around the tree.
10. This is what our hanging thingamajig looks like.
11. Be careful when putting it up.
12. And try not to hit yourself with the rope.
13. Drill holes in each corner of the table and double knot it. Tie it tight.
14. Make sure all the ropes are equal.
15. Then hang that shit up.
16. And behold, the hanging table.
So that was my first attempt at being crafty. One step closer to making Ron Swanson proud.
Speaking of Ron Swanson... look what came in the mail.
This post is long overdue, but I still haven't written about the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco. I got to see Arcade Fire and The Decemberists on the 3rd day which was unbelievably exciting as I love them both dearly. My brother and his (now engaged) girlfriend took me, and we brought a mat and had a picnic while we were waiting.
There didn't seem to be a massive amount of people there for The Decemberists, so it gave me a pretty good view of the screen for the most part. I also found a window in which I could see Colin Meloy perfectly. They were so great live- one of the funniest performances I've ever seen.
1. The Decemberists ending with The Mariner's Revenge Song
2. Colin Meloy on the screen
3. The perfect, perfect window
If you haven't yet, youtube their concerts. They were wonderful. Also, Jenny Conlee wasn't touring with them, because of her cancer treatment, but Sara Watkins was filling in for her, and she is seriously the cutest thing ever when performing.
Arcade Fire was next, but we waited a little close to an hour until they came out. The crowd grew exponentially, and my 5'1 frame really was not helping me in terms of breathing or seeing. For the entirety of Arcade Fire's set, I stared at the back of this really tall guy's plaid shirt. He also kept elbowing me in the face, and I swear to God I was about to kick some plaid ass. They were really amazing, of course. For a few songs, my brother put me on his shoulders, and I had the most beautiful view of them and I almost cried when I had to come down, because people behind us were getting pissed. It was great though. I can't begin to describe how happy I was right when they stepped back on stage for an encore and played Sprawl II & Wake Up.
Things have been a little hectic lately as I'm moving back and forth between both of my brother's apartments. I'm currently watching Criminal Minds reruns- one of my favorite shows, so excuse me if I sound a little distracted. I really wanted to update though. I've been putting it off so much.
As some of you know, Mika came from Bangkok to stay with me for a week. It was a lot of fun showing her around, shopping, eating good food, and doing touristy things. I'll be brief as I have an entire week to cover (or because I probably can't remember details that far back). Also, consider yourself warned- I am going to talk about food a lot.
Day 1: We picked up Mika from SFO. It wasn't hard to spot the pale Japanese girl among all the baked tan blondies coming back from vacation in Florida. We had burritos at this Mexican place that had the funniest advertisements posted everywhere. After settling in, we had dinner at an Indian restaurant that just opened called Curry Up Now. It's pretty damn good, and the interior of the restaurant is so cute! Mika and I proceeded to wander around, but realized everything was closed, so we hung around in a grocery store to looking at all the cereal they had in order to keep warm.
1. Too funny
Day 2: This was our major shopping day. We took the BART downtown and shopped at all the major shops down there. There were instances where I was certain I'd lost Mika (a few times in Forever 21). We also stared at shoes in Urban Outfitters for a while. It was painful. Afterwards, we crossed the street to Rasputin Records, which was probably the absolute highlight of my day. Flashback: I was here last summer and on almost ALL OF MY FAVORITE ALBUMS, there was a sticker that said "Matt's Recommendation" on it. If you look back at my music post, you'll remember me going on about how I left this guy a note claiming we were musical soul mates. So when I came back last week, we found that the note was still there and this guy wrote a message back. It was pretty cool. Mika actually went up to one of the workers and was like "Does a Matt work here?", but he was like "Uhhh, I'm new. I dunno." I ended buying a Decemberists record, Elliott Smith's either/or and... something else. I don't remember which CDS I buy on what day. I think it might've been Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It In People. I go crazy with CDs here cause you really can't find anything in Thailand. After getting pulled in by those people at Lush, we had a late late late lunch at Cafe La Taza. I used to come here almost everyday.
1. Riding on BART 2. Powell Street 3. Inside of paninis 4. Cafe Sport in North Beach 5. My Decemberists record and Mika's Villagers record
1. Mika in front of Rasputin Records 2. Cafe La Taza 3. Iced Tea & Panini
4. Inside Rasputin Records 5. Mysterious Matt and our musical soulmate-ness
Day 3: We spent the day in Haight Street which was full of vintage shops, smoke shops, record stores and a massive amount of other interestingness. I ended up buying a lot of stuff there including a red cashmere sweater for $6 and some boat shoes. We also spent a good amount of time in Amoeba Music and Booksmith (this bookstore was really awesome). My friend, Victor, I met last summer met up with us afterwards and we stuck these unicorn stickers on everything that Bigger Things In Mind sent to me to put up around the city.
1. Mika and our mini-mes 2. Sometimes forgetting to adjust lighting turns out cool 3-5. Unicorn stickers taking over the city
That's Part 1 of me and Mika's adventures in the city. I'll try to get on Part 2 soon. I also wanted to mention that I was at Barnes & Nobles the other day and this creepy man came up to me and said something along the lines of "I see you like books. I have a lot at my house if you want to come take a look. You can keep all of them." I got really scared because I just watched a program about Jaycee Lee Dugard's abduction. People are so nice here, but at the same time there are some real sickos. Don't talk to strangers. Please. I also have some really exciting news, but I want to wait to tell you guys until it's set in stone! Even though it's so cold and windy here, Best Coast can always make me feel warm.
