The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

Holland, Amsterdam,
31 Oct. 2010.

So finally a drawing of the tourist hotspot Numero Uno in Amsterdam, the Anne Frank House...on the "To-Do" list of nearly every visitor to Amsterdam - down and out young coffeeshop habitues excluded I guess.

The original house itself is the one in the middle, colored in green...the house on the far right behind the tree used to be a student's home with me hiding behind that infamous long line of tourists waiting for their turn to enter, selling my games without and before I acquired the benefits of my street selling licence, hiding from the police while making a bundle on funny handmade little Asian games that can be shaped in a multitude of different shapes, Mandala games that brought in all that black undeclared dough that enabled me to make my big and long backpack trips across Mother Earth in my younger years...

Not that the Dutch Amsterdam police were ever really Un Gran Problema with me keeping them informed of pickpocket and street robber activity in the neighborhood...now that I have the licence we are just more open about it with coppers on bike or foot patrol often stopping for a chat...

The student's home is nowadays part of the Anne Frank House and the tree in front of it is where you can find me on any sunny summer day selling and or making my games, answering typical tourist questions, looking after huge backpacks not allowed inside the House, having a chat with members from the nieghborhood, my friends, the Anne Frank security people or the coppers...

In short, a very free and happy life with me wintering in far-away Asia when snow and rain have chased me out of my beloved Mokum... 

Mary from Bangkok.

Holland, Amsterdam,
30-oct. 2010.

So there she is, an artistic version of Mary from Bangkok, a Leuk Kreug lady from Bangkok whose father she never got to know but was apperently an American Black marine, who was a  maybe twenty minutes acquintance of her mother, an Isan lady of the night who worked in one of the numerous bars that were to be found on the Patpong Sois off Chilom Road...twenty minutes were all that it took to father a mixed-race child that the black marine in question most likely never got to know about, a small little gift to the mother on top of the three hundert Baht shorttime before returning to his mega tonnage aircraft carrier...

Mary got an English/American name  which is not all that unusual in Thailand for Leuk Kreug babies and grew up in the bar her mother worked for surrounded by dozens of Hot Mommas from the impoverished provinces in Northern Thailand where she herself never set foot due to her mother being banned from her native village by parents and neighbors...

In her adult life she decided to work for a fast-cook noodle soup street shop off the backpacker's paradise hostel area called Khao sarn Road near the royal Palace in Bangkok where I first met her and did my first sketches of her in my scarpbooks...

Years later I saw her parading up and down on the Pattaya boulevard working out of the PS Guesthouse in rowdy Soi Yamato, working out of the biggest shorttime hotel in all of Pattaya situated in the rauchiest of all Sois in that crazy BIG PARTY resort place...

I guess she decided that working as a Thai Hot Momma was more provitable then waiting on tables for a street fast-cook restaurant surviving on a meagre salary and hoping for a even more meagre tips...following in her mother's foot steps and even getting beyond that.

My fat Pensionado neighbor

Holland, Amsterdam,
27 Oct. 2010.

So there he is, the fat Pensionado neighbor I blogged about the other day, the man that always groans and moans under his breath when he mounts the many steep stairs to his third floor appartment due to arithmic pains in his old bones...

That old survivor on his weird O-shaped legs always willing to tell me the latest gossip of the Spaarndammer Barrio where I live here in good ole Mokum...

The old fatso who always wants to hear about my latest trip to King Bhumipol's Asian realm, trying hard to steer our conversation in the direction of the Thai Hot Mommas walking up and down the Pattaya boulevard, their platform shoes - high heeled lady boots, you know, they call them platform shoes over there and are very popular - going clicketyclack on the pavement...the disappointment clearly visible in his reumy old man's eyes when I steer the conversation topic back to the teachings of Lord Buddha, and the merrits of living your life accordingly, even for us Farangs...

That old but friendly fat neighbor who always has time to spend while watching the world go by from the entrance of that old tilting typical Amsterdam house he lives in...ten minutes of his not so precious time and the prilimenary sketch was finished with the colors done later during the night...thanks old man.. 

Korte Prinsengracht plus gallery Van Slooten in Amsterdam

Holland, Amsterdam,
26 Oct. 2010.

Some houses on the Korte Prinsengracht in the heart of good old Mokum, my beloved Amsterdam...

The little house on the right belongs to Carla van Slooten, a Dutch/Amsterdam artist who does nudes, nature and portraits and The Funny Little Cat as well as workshops in aura reading and healing...

The groundfloor is her personal artelier and open to the public each saturday from 14.00 h. till 18 h.

Mother Theresa in her younger days

Holland, Amsterdam,
25 Oct. 2010.

I love to spend some time in front of my house after my late afternoon sort of daily jog in the park, admire the Yings of the Amsterdam Multiculti society walking by on high heels and throwing provocative smiles in my direction - yeah I knew I needed that shave this morning - , the fat Pensionado from next door always willing for a daily dose of gossip before mounting the steps of his third floor appartment, panting heavily and groaning under his breath due to the arithmic pains in his short O-shaped legs....always reminding me old age comes with a certain price tag.

My lady neighbor, the smells of freshly washed clothes and expensive shampoo invading my nostrils while I keep myself busy with Hannes, her three year old son who she has picked up from his playground, Mon Grand Petit Ami as I always call him in French though soon enough the roles will be reversed I fear...

An unshaved and dirty clothed Rob, bringing me back the dough he has been borrowing this month, reminding me that today was the social wellfare pay day...stale beer smells and a walm of cheap tabacco engulves me before he rushes up my stairs on the way to my toilet, good ole alcoholic's diarrhoae once again getting the better of him...I guess I will have to spend some more time out here admiring the street live of the Amsterdam Spaarndammer Barrio to let the stink evaporate and I can take my shower.

The painting is of a woman I saw today at the Tweede Mijl and who reminded me a bit of Mother Theresa in her younger days...

Random thoughts on the Muslim faith

Holland, Amsterdam,
24 oct. 2010.

Some random thought flashing through my head while reading the saturday newspaper...an article about the present court trail for racist remarks, hate mongering, ect, against Mister Wilders, a populist, rightist Dutch politician who is on a personal crusade against the - what he calls - excrescenses of the Muslim faith...

In the present Dutch political world he is the leader of one of the biggest parties in Holland and though not openly participating in our new governement, but according to many the pupet master though officially only giving it popular support...

Anyway here are some of my flashing thoughts...with the danger included that this will make me the next Danish cartonist to suffer from Muslim hate.

The Muslim fanatic; you must wear Burka!!!
The Muslima: me not like, is too hot, is not sexy.
The faithfull: Wilders or Allah, that is the question.

Waiting for internal problems, or was it interior shit.

Holland, Amsterdam,
22 Oct. 2010.

The waiting room at the OLV Hospital in Amsterdam Oost is full with sorry looking characters, despair and hopelessness beaming out of faces that have quite obviously already given up believing in the miracles of "modern medecine'...this being the waiting room for internal health it seems a fair bet most of these people suffer from cancer, ulcers, heart and artery related diseases, the sort of internal problems that one could quite happily do without...

Maybe long time smokers that have come to the conclusion that life time decisions have in later life become quite cancerous, s*x addicted johns that loved to do the "act" withouth the dreaded rubber but now feel sorry for themselves due to HIV related bodily complains, maybe too much sitting down in sterilised offices with rivers of strong daily coffee and stress to the max making their haerts go boom-boom-boom in the dark and their blood pressure seriously out of hand...

The little spider hanging high overhead in its web seems to pray on all this human mental suffering...

The pages in my sketchbook fill up fast and furious, more despair with each page I fill up before the results of my yearly medical health check will be made public to me...not that I feel all that worried...nearly a year without pot or tobacco, minimum amounts of booze and daily running in the park have given me mental peace and physical comfort.

 

After all, we are Africans

Holland, Amsterdam,
20 Oct. 2010.

This is luchroom and cafe Saloon, on the corner of Lijnbaansgracht and the Korte Leidsedwarsstraat near the famous Rijksmuseum, better known as the Rembrant Museum among the foreign visitors to Amsterdam because of the Nachtwacht - the Nightwatch in English - painted by Rembrant when Holland still controlled the spice trade in the Far East.

When I first arrived to Amsterdam in the mid eighties of the last century and was still selling my funny little Mandala games, my acrylic city paintings in glass frames and my handmade leather bracelets under the Rijksmuseum tunnel, I used to take my lunches in this cafe, sometimes alone and sometimes with illegal African ambulant vendors trying hard to sell fake gold and silver jewellery to the tourists passing through the tunnel on the way to the nearby Van Gogh Museum after admiring the handiwork of Dutch Masters from Holland's golden Age inside the Rijksmuseum...

I still vividly remember the many stories these young black fellows from that hopelessly impoverished continent told me about their homes in dust ruled African villages where their mothers used to do the laundry in the nearby rivers and their dreams of marrying Dutch s*xbombs - preferably blond - for the passport and good cooking, "never mind the sex, we can get that outside the marital bed plenty, plenty", "they told me repeatedly, after all we are Africans"....whatever that was supposed to mean...

In the end the Dutch Amsterdam police kicked them all out of the city.

Big ugly motherf*cker at De Tweede Mijl

Holland, Amsterdam,
19 Oct. 2010.

Oh, I have seen this ominous looking character before at De Tweede Mijl, always giving me ugly hostile looks, trying to impress me with threatening twisted smiles, trying to make me sh*t my pants with pure agression coming out of bayou blue colored malignious eyes...not that I have ever exchange a single word with this big ugly motherf*cker, but I know perfectly well were the hostility comes from...

It is that time of the years again where I move through the city with ease and a certain sef-assurance, c*ck sure of my yearly wintering place, tropical beaches, cold to the touch Leo beers, good Thai food and local Yings all clamouring for my Farang attention while all these street alcoholics, druggies, yunks and equally assorted losers from the inner city, Amsterdam West and the Westerpark ask themselves the same questions that has been plaqueing them since my sorry exsistence in their hopeless lives...

"How does he do it?", "Hoe doet-ie 't?", after all the news is out, Mister Shiva the crazy street seller at the Anne Frank House will be off again for his three month stint in an oriental tropical paradise, with all the aforementioned little pleasures in a single male Farang life...

I smile back at Mister Big Ugly Motherf*cker benignly while sketching him in my drawing journal, trying hard to make him look even more ungly as he is in real life, having no doubt whatsoever he detects the little speckles of absolute - almost orgasmic - amusement beaming back at him from my own bayou blue shiners...

When I show the result to some of the Tweede mijl more friendly habitues, I have the certain feeling I have a near nuclear explosion on my Gringo hands here.

Three houses in Kolksteeg, Amsterdam centre.

Holland, Amsterdam,
17 Oct. 2010.

These three houses in the Kolksteeg in the heart of Amsterdam centre, I did yesterday returning from my one Euro breakfast at the Hema in the Nieuwedijk - special offer.

They tend to tilt a bit to the left which is normal in old Mokum with the city being built on marshland...the second entrance doors are for the people living overhead the steakhouses and the coffeeshop Boop.

The two steakhouses have been there for as long as I can remember but coffeeshop Boop on the right used to be a bar where I drank pints of Heineken while watching American wrestling on their ancient telly, together with a friend from Liverpool, good ole England, in the mid eighties when I had just moved to Amsterdam.

The original sketch was done with black pen out in the street...once back home I finished it with my markers and the aquarel pastels I bought last week.

Mexican Gran Hombre at the Anne Frank House

Holland, Amsterdam,
16 Oct. 2010.

This being late autumn with the Dutch weather way to cold to do my little one-man Mandala business at the Anne Frank House, still having to sit it out for my next stint in Asia, I have plenty of time on my hands and still feel inspired by this endless long queue of people from all over the world, obsessed with the idea of seeing poor Anne Frank's hiding place...

Fear of Nasi swines was making the Jewish family Frank go Tip-Toe around the Achterhuis during office hours - part of the house was used as an office - and the admosphere thus created is still tangible in the air...probably the main reason the Achterhuis is still so popular since in reality there is very little to see inside...

A Sigarillo smoking man with flanel suit and lightbrown hat attracts my attention, looking latino and somehow standing out in the crowd outside this world famous house, looking a bit like a mexican stately Haciendero...a good character for my sketchbook...

A lone ederly Mexicano male doing a six week tour of Europe and originating from Distrito Federal as he told me after I showed him the sketch when finished...    

The Amsterdam Westerchurch tower

Holland, Amsterdam,
14 oct. 2010.

The Amsterdam Westerkerk tower  as seen from the Second Anjeliersdwarsstraat, in the heart of the city centre and visible even from Westerpark where I do my daily jogging, always reminding me of all these comfortable summers selling my Mandala games right underneath the tower of this old Amsterdam protestant church....

The Amsterdam Westerkerk tower inside the Amsterdam canal zone and the subject of countless tourist photos, visble from most of this aforementioned canal zone and a still witness to the brutal invasion f hordes of Nasi swines...the same Nasi swines that eventually invaded the Jewish Family's Frank hiding place, shipping them off to the polish extermination camps where only Otto Frank survived the horrors and hardship that every so often plaque the human race...

But still the same tower that whenever I see it, reminds me of all the summer days sitting outside sun in my face and selling my Mandala games, enjoying myself and generally feeling happy with my life, peace in my heart and tranquility inside my gray brain mass...being dwarved by the Numero Uno monument of Ancient Mokum.

Hope you like the drawing.

Ying from China

Holland, Amsterdam,
12 Oct. 2010.

This is an artistic version of Ying who occupied my couch last weekend before heading back to Uppsala after finishing her graduation trip, back to the Land of the Swedes where she has been studying for the last two year and parttime waiting on tables in a local Chinese restaurant to make ends meet...

 Ying is a very positive lady with a big heart that loves travelling and telling people all about her native China...I enjoyed our short time together enormously and had a great time taking her to the volunteer-run petting zoo where I work as well as giving her a bicycle tour around the city...

Thanks for the great dinner we had at the Kam Yin and the nice talks we shared, Ying, I enjoyed hosting you.

A distracting painting

Holland, Amsterdam,
11-Sept. 2010.
I wake up in my chaotic appartment, no sounds any more from my front room where my latest http://www.couchsurfing.org/ guest slept on my couch only mere days ago, no cozy chitchat with a young lady from the other side of the globe obsessed with seeing a bit of this world before her time is up reminding me of my countless backpack trips across this crazy antheap when I was so much younger, no charming lady to take to the petting zoo where I do my volunteer job twice a week shovelling cow shit and goat manure for the benefits of smiling neighborhood children, no lady backpacker who found her way to my couch to take on comprehensible bicycle tours across my beloved Mokum, ending the tour in my favorite Kam Yin for a well-deserved Nasi special with pork and a pint of frothy Heineken to wash it down my Gringo throat courtesy of my latest couch surfing guest...

I wake up to my chaotic appartment where my cans of paint, jam jars with dirty water and stained pensils, my markers and my countless sketchbooks lying around at random...a big canvas I found with the rubbish the other day, finally having found a destination in the form of a slender colorfull naked lady done while Ying was happily chatting on my computer with her friends in far away China, the painting that made paint fly all over the place staining my old blue jeans and my dusty carpet, but the same painting that seemed to impress Ying so much it distracted her from her precious chatting sessions on Facebook...

The painting itself can be seen in this entry...enjoy or not, it is up to you.

My mental solitary monk's prayer cell

Holland, Amsterdam,
10-10-2010.

My paint is once again flying around wildly in my house, naked women in provocative poses coming out of my Farang hands, bringing me back to my room in Pattaya, or maybe back to to that crazy Casa de Putazas in Kowloon, Hong Kong all these years ago...these places far away from my native Holland, several thousands of kilometers from my beloved Amsterdam...

I go into a frenzy with colorfull art bringing my f*cked-up Gringo head to higher levels of excistence...I feel like adding cacti and Chinese reeds, magic signs and Thai newspaper script...back to my solitary life, feeling like I am locked up inside a monk's prayer cell with nothing in my gray brain cells but the art I am working on, my God being the paint, canvas and pensils lying at random all around me...

I am indeed well inspired having yet again another young Asian lady in my house who has found the way to the couch in my living-room by means of http://www.couchsurfing.org/...

I have to really keep up hosting these beauties from the world over, taking them on comprehensible cycle tours around the historic heart of the city, a free meal at the Kam Yin in the Warmoesstraat, charming company, the feeling of being young again, my neighbors and friends wondering where the hell does he get all these good looking babes from....but most importantly getting all this great motivation, this Numero Uno inspiration to return to my mental solitary monk's prayer cell and have paint flying all over the place, staining my carpet and my old blue jeans, bringing me back to the Hot Momma rich room in my New Star guest house in King Bhumipol's Asian Realm...

Holland, Amsterdam,

Sven frân Sverige, a young backpacker

Holland, Amsterdam,
07 0ct. 2010.

This is Sven from Sweden, a young backpacker who I met at the Anne Frank House today while selling my Mandala games, not that he bought any games but was surely interested in my little one-man Mandala business, believing it to be a good way to travel around the world and support your hotel and food expenses, have enough money left over to take public transport to your next destination instead of having to do auto-stop as he had done from Malmö, Sweden which took him five days...

He told me he had decided to make a world tour that, as far as he was concerned might as well takes his whole life, no interest whatsoever to return to his native Sweden but instead try to make it all the way to Japan and beyond...having no Pengar - money in Swedish - though was quite the problem, little knowledge of the Queen`s English even worse since it stops him effectively from getting jobs abroad...

No wonder he was so interested in my games...but then even selling Mandala games on non-Swedish speaking foreign soil takes a certain degree of English at least....

Thai female faces from the dream world (part six)

Holland, Amsterdam,
04 Oct. 2010.

Funny indeed but ever since I started with this project "Thai Female Faces From The Dream World", these Thai faces belonging to my countless encounters with the Thai Sisterhood of Hot Mommas, have come to an abrupt end, leaving me long and cherished deep medicated sleep...

Though giving me the feeling something is missing, not there anymore where it should be...namely inside my fucked-up Farang mind, making me feeling as though I am incomplete...

Still...yet again a face from my dream world...

The identity of this lady remains a mistery...after all, they refuse to resurface to the more active part of my gray brain cells these days though I have no doubt they will be back with a vengeance.  

A haughty lady

Holland, Amsterdam,

03 Oct. 2010.

I am not really sure I like the look of this lady in the infamously long Anne Frank House queue, the one I have chosen to immortalise in my sketchbook, her big head and long semi red-colored expensive jacket, her blueish net stockings and long yellowish boots all breath an air of upper class American society, a certain admosphere of contempt for those waiting with her in this endless long line of foreign tourists, all patiently awaiting their turn to visit the Numero Uno tourist destination of Amsterdam...

Almost as though she is afraid of being touched by the those she considers a much lower level of the human race...

And then their is this freak, sort of character out of a long gone hippy era, obviously having taken her a make-do model for his sketchbook, nothing else to do, no customers and absolute boredom setting in...

Must be hard these in these days of equality to belong to the upper class and travelling in far-away countries.

Irena from Italy

Holland, Amsterdam,
01 Oct. 2010.

October, the month of autumn but still, the weather here in Amsterdam apperently decided to give in to the demands of the sun worshippers, a few last of sunny days that will continue untill after the weekend if I can believe the weather forecast...a few last days at the Anne Frank House keeping myself busy with my treasured one-man Mandala business...

"Io Voglio Soltanto Un Mandala, Signore", a young redhead Italian lady tells me, maybe her first time out of her Maffia-ruled home country believing Italian is as widespread in this crazy world as the Queen's English...and though my Italian is basic it suffices for my little handicraft Negozio...I even manage to get the message across, convince her to pose for me, Dieci Minuti of sitting down on my old and worn little camping chair...

In the end I sell 16 games...definitely better as feeling bored in the house watching the Dutch rain batter against my windows