Painting Dutch Flowers

 Acrylic paint on wood, 35 cm by 35 cm

People in da street

today at the AHA, Amsterdam

Helpt Amsterdammers 

 

Nude female drawings

 

People in da street

 

The death of an arch father

My words still feel like a drag, my poor powers of description a bit like hindsight sarcasme when I reread my blog stories...Phom Nongshao seems to do a better job with her words though...

"Dad passed away early morning in his sleep at 85 years of age"...

No, that is what I call writing to the point, short and simple, no drag here but a clear message coming across the sacred internet and into my Yahoo inbox...

Twenty-five years of Pas De Contact, running away early in my adolescent years, across Europe on the cheap and with forged interrail tickets, surviving in the streets of international capitals in Ancient Europe, visiting the garbage belts of Third World countries where a stupid foreigner with a Rooi Nek had no meaning or purpose, an endless quest to understanding of the rodential nature of the human species but in reality running away from my roots and fucked-up background, the tormental upbringing in a nutcase boarding school...

I look at the Facebook pictures of a grown up family coming together with beers and sweet Dutch pancakes that I never was a part of...no recognition of brothers or Nongshao, never was a part nor did I want to...
I live in a live where the only reality is ilusion but the ilusion is reality, the live where the only fear I have is reality in itself, a fear that has only one purpose, to be conquered.

An eternity of anticipation for the next existence but no wish to ever again see those that are next of kin, not even in these trying times of losing the arch father of the family...

A sleep well and see you in that next existence sentence seems therefore out of the question for me.

Daily uploads for survival

Pattaya, 19 Jan.2012.

Another lazy beach chair session might be well in order for today, maybe another mental image of a metamorphosed, sanitized and modern Pattaya beach resort, maybe watch another 400 Hamburger pounder being pleasurably tortured by the hands of another dimunative masseuse with malignant eyes, pummeling parts of the man's body he has only seen in a mirror's reflection these last twenty years...

I watch two backpackers slashing it out verbally with a Songthaew driver, a heated arguement over a ten Baht bus drive...if these youngsters from ancient Europe have a Gran Problem with a ten Baht fare and a low budget, Pattaya as their Numero Uno tourist destenation will have a few nasty surprised for them yet!!!

I still see hope inside my Farang skull for my own survival though, how outrageous my Pattaya excistence might be with Miss Rath knocking on my door this morning, dozens of text messages on my cell declaring her never ending love for me and her desire to travel to Ubonthani together, meet the folks and pay a hansome Simsod dowry for a Isan lady who has seen her better days already at the age of forty-one, a free shorttime a good investment for a Holland related new life...

Sorry Miss Rath but it isn't about to happen...

Remembering vividly Miss Ramong, the Bamboo Girl who had pretty much the same ideas about our mutual future and whose friend left us to live it up with my friend, Mister Porn, a jealous English bloke blowing up his chest like he had just watched Gorillas In The Mist and felt like a male version of Jane Goodall....Miss Ramong who had to cope with a Mau-Mau German Arschloch mistaking my 507 room with his own 504...Nah, dass ist toch mal nett, eine hubsche einheimische Dame in meinem zimmer, lassen wir mal Spass haben - hey this comes in handy, a good looking Thai babe inside my room, let grope around and have fun - the Dutch kick in the German butt was not calculated for though, nor was the arrival of Miss Jiff much later in the morning, nearly all her teeth gone in a motorbike accident last summer but still willing to start a massive arguement with my latest Bamboo conquest....Yeah after just ten days pattaya I know for sure I am back!!!

Still, the seed of hope for my survival is still present however outrageous and harsh the situations might be that assault me here in this mistaken beach resort, requiering desperate solutions to survive them, formulating action plans that need daily uploads and modifications, a ruminant of an idea in the back of my head telling me on a subcounscious level Bangkok might be a much better place of domicile...still, I might be able to stay in Pattaya instead!!!    

An idyllic Pattaya

Pattaya, 19 Jan. 2012.

Pattaya Beach in front of pattaya Festival, one of the latest major shoppin mall adventures of international investors, is enjoying a nice crop of visitors despite the cloudy threat of rain overhead...my thirty bad beach chair is confortable and I relax after a filling buffet breakfast at the apex hotel.

next to me a petite Thai lady is busy massaging an enormous pinkish colored Farang male, grotesquely fat, especially so around the mid section and I wonder if this dimunitive masseuse is charging him by the hour or by the centimeter, the latter would be more profitable...

Mister Fat Farang cries out in pleasuably pain while the lady streches and contorts his limps, excited giggles from a few beach ladies nearby who watch the proceedings with keen interest...the eyes of the local masseuse beaming sadistically while she pummels away at various white bodily parts of her client's anotomy...I silently wonder how long it has been since Mister Fat farang has seen these, big rolls of European fat obscuring his more intimate of physical male pride!!

In my mind pattaya is turning ito a more idyllic version of present day's reality with inpecably honest locals and incorruptible Thai coppers, the Thamnuat with beaming Thai smiles at every Hot Momma on the beach, not harrasing the incountable street vendors, roads that are clean and well maintained, Adios to all the girly bars and exotic lewd shows, where the eligible and available beach ladies dress modestly instead of the ultra short cut off jeans and see through T-shirts, no more orphanages for Leuk Kreug children sired by irresponsible sex tourists from the not so rich anymore Western World, no more noxioux urine smells on every street corner and misshaped beggers with little dirty babies to make the Thai Baht come in all that faster, no more Missionaries Of Ideological Madness searching among the hopeless, no more dealers of Yaba intoxicating young ladies of the infamous Pattaya night life wit their mind poisoning wares, aggressive stray dogs something of the past, crime and rip-offs belonging to a far away memory, no pick-up trucs blaring away the latest Mauy Thay fighting matches, no more Hot Momma suicides or Farangs drinking themselves to Kingdom-com....

The sort of buddhist Nirvana millions of light years away from the real here and now, where I sit in my thrity Baht rented beach chair amusing myself with the sight of a white-skinned Farang being massaged by a dimunitive masseuse with a sadistic beaming smile on her Asian face!!!

The Death Of The Sheriff

Thailand, Pattaya, 09 Jan. 2012.

I guess I had ample time to dwell upon the miresable death of that street scum no-good nicknamed The Sheriff, on the long and boring flight from Amsterdam to Suvarnibhumi New Airport, east of Bangkok and conveniently closer to Pattaya than the old Don Muang airport which with the passing of years became pretty much a intergral part of greater Bangkok...

Back homer in my house in Amsterdam, the night before my sceduled departure, enjoying a last bottle of my treasured alcoholic beverage, Red Wine, three Euro table wine from Appie Heyn, hoping in vain as it turned out that The Deviler Of My Toilet would keep a low profile, hoping in vain that my night would pass in tranquility before drifting off to a well deserved sleep of the innocent...but no such luck for me during my last evening back home, not with Rob nearly raping my door bell, fried chicken and all that, another bottle of Red Wine as a farewell present...I mean he means well but I JUST WANTED TO BE ALONE< TREASURED ALONE!!!

Not with Cesca on the phone, " Hey Hans, the Sheriff has passed away!", only three weeks ago, never woke up again, not that his miserable death came has a great surprise t most of us, with hime being the Numero Uno Borracho, twenty alu cans of cheap cerveza, a couple of bottles of Vino Tinto a day, hell watever contained alcohol was good to the Sheriff, a pack of tabacco and some little balls of Crack would come in handy as well...

Shit, the first time I heard his nicknamed being mentioned, at least twenty-five years ago, I though he would be a giant of a man, over confident and over muscled, but no, he was a frail and insicnificant individual, always nervously dragging on the wed end of his hand rolled sigarette, nicotine stianed fingers shivering with a near nervous breakdown, always feeling sorry for himself, to a point where a couldn't even fall asleep despite his life wrecking hobbies, instead whining the night aways untill sheer exhaustion and the approach of a new day would find him in a state of couple hours of comastose oblivion....

Shit I can probably forget about the hundert-odd Dutch guilderds he still owned me for what seems like centuries already...at least he died peacefully and painless which was not what one could say of his life..

Another Muslima in the Amsterdam streets

The OccupyWallstreet movement in Amsterdam

Amsterdam,

Sorry to say this but the OccupyWallstreet movement's demonstration in Amsterdam reminds me a bit of my visits to Osho's discourses in Puna, all lot of shit being said but very little real action, a lot of misguided martyrs talking like chicken do their cackle but very little real sense, sitting around in circles smoking pot and drinking beer...

Degenerates, homeless acoholics from the street and drug abushers in their habitual ragged street clothes, many of whom I recognise at first glance, drinking cheap luke warm beer and enjoying the show, probably happy in the knowledge that finally the city's finest can't giving them a ticket for sleeping in the street, drinking booze or causing public disturbances, mêlee to the max and only a single fat cop walking his beat...amazing....

Beursplein 5's walls are covered with demands, colorfull cartons and rain drenched papers, banners of all types, depicting the outrage of the impoverished masses, outrageous cries for freedom and economic rights for foreigners, the fall of the Euro and American green back, release Malcom X from the United States' torture cells one placate reads (????) , I can make no sense of most of it, just that no real solutions are being offered...

Better I leave this hippy enclave in the Amsterdam centre with that handfull of small tents and their fanatic owners alone and continue my long walks around good old Mokum

Miss Xia

                                                        Amsterdam,

Miss Xia, the lady who was posing at Peter's studio during our  wine drinking evening.

Mister Friendly Looking Chap

                                                Amsterdam,

I did this portrait of  Mister Friendly Looking Chap a few days ago in a bar, taking a break from my long walks around the Amsterdam city, preparing myself for my Santiago De Compostella trek, having a coffee and apple pie...

Markers and aquarel on an edition of the free Metro newspaper, the green acrylic I added later in my house.

Railway station people

                                          Amsterdam,

People rushing to and fro, working stiffs in expensive suits and leather shoes that shine as a mirror, hurrying to catch their train in time, on the way to their office and a dominant boss...

A couple of alcoholics, raggedly dressed in unwashed clothes that probably originate from the rubbish of any big city, finding shelter from the slight rain outside the railway station, nervously looking around for rail company coppers while taking quick swigs from their alu cans of cheap supermarket beer, flea ridden and moth eaten dogs dozing at their feet, that help to make the begging come in easier, good protection at night too while their owners sleep on public park benches, the sleep of the booze induced comatose state known to drunks the world over...

A bunch of old gays eyeing me curiously while walking by, their overly feminine behaviour reminding me of the Katoys in Thailand...

An old bag lady sitting forlornly in a corner, her greasy belongings in plastic Appie Heyn shopping bags laying around her at random...

My fingers holding my black pen and colored markers, run across the pages of my sketchbook, visual expressions of the human species all around me, turning them into quick drawings...

About wild roosters

                                                  Amsterdam,

This is Mark and his twelve year old son, Arjan,  from London who found their way back to my couch after a week of typical father/son bonding cycling the Hoge Veluwe, a big forested nature reserve in the middle of The Netherlands, far enough away from unruly London where young hoodlums with too much English ale down their Brittish throats and keen on a bit of lagerloud fun set the English capital on fire, a bit like a second German Blitzkrieg but then the lagerloud/football hooligan way...

Telling me about their cycle tour in rainy Holland, the couchsurfing addresses where they interacted with their local hosts and about the confusion they experienced with some of the Dutch traffic signs...

Like the ones telling them about animal gratings across the road, stopping big grazers like Scottish hedgeford cows and semi stray ponies from leaving their forested enclosures, animal gratings which are called Wild Roosters in Dutch but they mistook for wild roosters in the Queen's English, the wild roosters they spent days trying to spot before a friendly Dutch http://www.couchsurfer.org/ host helped them out of their English Babylonian dream world... 

Rene De France

                                                  Amsterdam,

Unfortunately Rene spook Pas D'Anglais and my french has been known to have seen some better days, like when I did my backpacking in former french colonies of the continent of L'Homme Noir...

Still, as a well-experienced streetseller of the Amsterdam city centre with years of interactions with nationalities across the globe, customers from Todas Las Partes de Este Mundo - oh wait...that was Espanyol though I am sure the meaning got across - I managed to convince Rene with his heavily accented French to give me some of his precious tourist time for this sketch, and sold him two Mandala games...even send him and his little rowdy family on their merry way to the Sara´s Pancake House in the Raadhuis Street, right next to the Nadia Hotel, in no tourist guide but the tastiest pancake house in good old Mokum, once they came out of the Anne Frank House..

Merci Beuaocoup, Rene and Bon Voyage back to that obscure little hamlet in the south of Franch you claimed to come from...   

A personal quest and the trap it represented

Amsterdam,

In Lord Morpheus dream world I still travel the countries of this crazy world as I used to do in my younger years, my worn backpack and mouldy sleeping bag, sweaty T-shirts and dirty bleu jeans - no Mum back home with a washing machine and personal care and love - , my only possessions, a sketchbook full with city sights in aquarel, ready to sell in the world's capitals for a few Pesos, French Franks or German Deutschmark, Tatty Indian Rupees or maybe the worthless Turkish Lira, money so necessary for the daily exspences like food, Bratwurst and Sisj Kebab, never mind a hotel, the bridges in Italy's capital will keep me dry and out of a way from a windy night sleeping under them in the company of down and out winos, raggedly dressed homeless and assorted dregs of any society in this so-called civilised world...

Always on my personal quest, the understanding of the human mind, or maybe enlightenment to the reasons behind the violence I personally witnessed in countries that Mister President Bush would still like to call the Axis of Evil, invade them at a moment's notice...sketching locals in the street for a few meagre local Yen, a caricature for Thai Baht or Mexican currency, the Burrito so much necessary for my physical wellfare...can't affort a local hospital without my non-excistence travel insurance...always asking my customers, my my models for personal info, well placed questions to creep into their minds unnoticed, try to incoporate their private news in my drawings...

Now that I about to enter the autumn of my life I have a house, a place to get back to, but still doing my street "thing", selling my funny little games, making sketches of my models and customers, city sights in aquarel, my fingers holding my pens, markers, pensils ect, high tailing across white colored paper, my tongue still asking way too many questions, creeping into my models' psyche...not caring much any more about that hopeless quest but having fallen into the trap it represented!!! 

 Ah yeah, and apart from all this crazy personal B*llshit, I hope you like these houses on Singelgracht here in my beloved Amsterdam...I cycle by them nearly every day...  

Li Fang from Beijing

Amsterdam,

Li Wang is actually part of a tour group but unless most Chinese I have met over the years at the Anne frank House selling my funny little and very profitable Mandala games, Li is not too shy to come over and have a look at my handicraft stuff...my open sketchbook showing my latest models, two Thai monks last week in their tradional orange colored robes instantly cathes his Chinese eyes...a long search through the other pages showing all my other models anex customners plus as a bonus thrown in: still some pages with my Thai models from last winter, some of them in the nude, makes his yellowish colored roundish oriental face light up...

Maybe I can do his portrait too, even willing to pay me some old Dutch guilders his neighbors back in his huge Beijing apartment building brought back from their trip to our windmill ruled country - De Kinderdijk and De Zaanse Schans must have been on their Must-Do-List I realise while I listen to this comical description of my native Holland...

I do his portrait for free, one for him and one for my blogspot and sell him four games for 12 Euros - sorry Li but Dutch guilders are out and Euros being the newest currency - and get the whole of the tour group buying my other games...

Good business for me on a rainy and windy Dutch sunday morning in good old Mokum!!!

Unknown character at the Anne Frank House

Amsterdam,

I saw this unkmown but friendly looking character at the Anne Frank House today, waiting in a queue that was remarkably short...  

Madame Stoeptegel ( part three )

Amsterdam, 11 May 2011.

Found this sketch the other day of Madame Stoeptegel aka Tui aka Miss Heineken...well, I did several sketches of her, quite a few modelling session in my room with this volatile Asian Hot Momma posing for me in the nude, big bottles of Chang and ashtrays full with Burmese sigars her only vices when she was with me...

Though I have to admit quite a few of my friends where scared out of their Farang heads of her...

Like Kees who got "send" away from his Dutch Bench, "I have been sitting here for 15 years already", he protested. Tui's respond was a serious attempt to smash his Dutch Farang head in with her favourite weapon, her Stoeptegel...Kees took the warning to heart!!!

Ronny from Belgium who we call Rambo despite his diminutive skinny body and who was called Baby Man by Tui who didn't like his piercing eyes, "his eyes are like Indian arrows going through my Chai", she would tell me adding "one day I will take them out of his sockets"....

I guess I could bring forward another bunch of examples but let it suffice to say she deserved her Nick!!!

Me and some of my couchsurfers

Amsterdam, 10 May 2011.

From left to right...Janet from Taiwan, me - of course - , Petra from Slovenia and Ana from Colombia.