I’m leaving the Netherlands today; our bus back to London goes at 11 and then we’ll be stuck in there for 10 hours. Ugh. Glad to be going back, but not looking forward to the trip at all. So for these last few hours that I’m here, here’s the only “Dutch”; photo I’ve made during this holiday: Chocomel!
I’ve been lucky this Christmas; I’ve gotten lots of lovely presents:
Loving these earrings, although I did pick them myself. The pair that I got (also pretty) were broken, so I had to take them back to the store. They didn’t have those ones in stock anymore, so I got to choose from their remaining collection.
Besides this little puzzle “box”, my brother created a cool treasure hunt to figure out how to open the box. I’ll blog about that some time later this week, cause it’s worth more than just a quick mention.
I got this nail polish from my Mum. It looks pretty red on the photo, but in real life it’s actually a colour much more similar to the red on this blog.
I’m not used to wearing make-up, but I do want to start slowly into it this year. I got this set from my sister and it’s exactly the type of colours I was looking for. Not too flashy, nice and light, and natural. Now if I only knew how to actually apply it properly…
I still have to see if I can get it working with my mobile, but if it does I’ll be able to get my GPS location on my mobile. Great for geocaching!
I got these two fantasy books from Cristiano’s parents and sister. Phantom from Terry Goodkind is the tenth book in his Sword of Truth series. Melusine is the debut from new writer Sarah Monette; I’ve heard a lot of good things about it and the plot sounds pretty interesting.
I’ve had the idea of a startup (I’ve mentioned it before here) for some time now, so Cristiano gave me this book to take my first step to making it a reality.
One of my plans this year is to do A Movie A Week from the top 250 movies on IMDB, mainly because there were so many films I still hadn’t seen yet. I told my brother this a couple of days before Christmas, so he made sure I at least got two of them.
Two comics! The first one is the second episode of The Ultimates (can’t wait to see the movie next year, and who they will cast for it). The second is an Angel comic, based during the second season of Angel.
Cute pink fuzzy clogs! This will definitely keep my feet warm this winter!
This leather jewelry bag will really come in handy. It’s got separate compartments for earrings, rings, necklaces and bracelets.
I got two bags this year (one from my parents and one from Cristiano’s parents), and they actually complement each other great. The first one fits my wallet, camera and notepad (and most probably a netbook too).
The other is much smaller, but perfect for when I only need my wallet and some small items.
This is a cool and handy item: it’s a take-along-with-you table hook, so that you can hang your bag on it at restaurants etc.
Last but not least, I’ve gotten money to get a new laptop! I haven’t decided between a MacBook or a MacBook Pro yet, but I guess I’ll wait until MacWorld first. I am thinking of getting a netbook for travel besides it though; whichever MB I choose I won’t be taking it a lot with me (even the 13″ MacBook I find too heavy).
So care to share with me what your presents were?
I love how this photo of a candle turned out. Looking at it reminded me again of Carols by Candlelight (although this photo is taken inside). I’m not sure if it’s only an Australian tradition (I don’t think it is), but the idea is a city-wide gathering, usually outdoors in a park, to sing carols on Christmas Eve by candlelight. Quite fun, but then again Australia’s December weather is much more enjoyable than that here.
Before I do my New Year’s resolutions post, I thought I’d take a moment to step back and take a look at how I did with my resolutions from last year.
1. Work out more, be healthier.
Kind of “check”? I did start running this year, but I can’t really say I kept to a weekly schedule. Food wise though, I do feel as if I started eating better. Let’s put it this way: I worked out more and was healthier in 2008 than I was in 2007. Overall, I still think I could improve a whole lot, but it’s a nice little start.
2. Work more organized and more regularly.
Again kind of “check”. I am much more organized than last year, but there is still room for major improvements on the “more regularly” part.
3. Stress less.
Check! If there’s is one thing I’ve improved in this year, is the amount of stressing I do. I used to get really worked up about all kinds of things, stressing out about stuff in my life that wasn’t going completely to plan (the plan in my neurotic-slightly-overachiever mind that wants to do everything perfect). This year I realized and accepted not everything goes the way you want it to, so there’s no reason to stress out about those things.
4. Start organizing events.
Check! Since February I’ve been involved with organizing the London Geek Dinners and have created some spin-offs like the London Geek Meet and the London Girl Geek Coffees. I still don’t put as much time into each of those events as I wish I could (haven’t organized a Girl Geek Coffee since June), but I hope I can do more of these events next year.
5. Finish my degree and get a job.
Ehm. Pretty much “Fail”? I’ve made some progress with my research thesis this year, but I still haven’t finished it yet. There have been some serious issues which caused the delay (like my wisdom tooth removal), but it’s no excuse: my main priority of 2009 should be finally getting my degree.
6. Get a “real” camera and learn more about photography.
Check! Since Cristiano got a second DSLR, I’ve been playing more and more with his old one (although I like the lens on the new camera too). One of my resolutions of this year though is to actually process the photos I take and not keep them lying around untouched for ages.
I’ll be writing about this year’s resolutions some time later this week. So how did you guys fair with your resolutions from last year?
It’s still the Christmas Holidays, so I’m still allowed an attempt to finish my 12 Posts of Christmas series (this is post #6, do you still think I can finish it all on time?). To celebrate the holiday season, I’ll be giving a couple of cool books away in the next couple of days here on my blog.
The first one is Night Play from Sherrilyn Kenyon. It’s from one of my favourite romance series, the Dark-Hunters, and I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about it. In short, it’s a vampire and shapeshifter world, but with Greek mythology and it’s gods thrown into the mix.
All you have to do to win this book, is leave a comment behind here with what your favourite book is. Entries must be left behind before next week Monday (so deadline is 23:59 Sunday 4th) and is open to all countries.
Happy New Year, everyone!
One of my New Years resolutions is to upload more photos, and much more quicker after I’ve taken them (instead of a couple of weeks later; I still have photos from half a year ago which I still haven’t processed yet). So to start off this new year right, here are some of the photos of the fireworks yesterday night in Almere:
It’s already a couple of days after Christmas, but it’s still the Christmas holidays and I wanted to finish my 12 Posts of Christmas (wow, lot’s of Christmas’s in that sentence). Here are my favourite Christmas songs:
This is one of those songs I wished I could sing properly. I still don’t have the right technique to sing it without paining others. Here’s one version from Josh Groban:
[Watch the video on YouTube]
I love this song, but I never realized how cheesy the clip (unintentionally?) is:
[Watch the video on YouTube]
“I feel in in my fingers… I feel it in my toes… Christmas is all around us… And so the feeling grows”. One of the main reasons I love Love Actually:
[Watch the video on YouTube]
This is one of those songs that so many artists redo, most people won’t even know from who the original is.So, for your continuing education: it first appeared in Meet Me In St. Louis starring Judy Garland. Here’s a clip from the movie with her singing it:
[Watch the video on YouTube]
I love the Bing Crosby version, but the one from the movie White Christmas with the whole cast singing always brings me that much more into the Christmas spirit:
[Watch the video on YouTube]
Ugh, December has just been too busy! Too many events, meet-ups, trips and other stuff to go to; I’ve been swamped with busyness.
I’ve been to a couple of London Bloggers meet-ups now and I like the format of them. This time it was sponsored by a couple of winery bloggers, who each donated a bottle of their wine for some wine tasting. Robert McIntosh from WineConversation.com organized it all, and also gave a little presentation about wine and how the one thing he wanted to achieve with this evening was to get people talking and thinking about wine.
Now I’m horrible with wine; the names, grapes, everything. Most of the time I let Cristiano choose, cause I really don’t know the difference between the types (or I’ll just order a sweet white wine or something down that lines). This evening hasn’t really helped me yet, but I think I should read up a bit more about wines and figure out what I exactly like.
That evening I tried seven of the ten wines they had and a couple really stood out to me. I started with the wine I liked the most: the Riesling Auslese 2003. It was a nice fruity white wine, very light and sweet and easy to drink. The second white wine I tried was a Riesling Kabinett 2007, which was much drier and less tasty in my opinion than the first one I tried, but still way better than the usual fair I have. The final white wine I tried was a Vivanco Viura, but that too was quite dry compared to my first one.
From the red wines, none of them really spoke to me. I tend to prefer white over red, but this time all the red wines (at least the two that I tried) were slightly too heavy for me. Those were the Cortes de Cima Syrah, and the Dinastia Vivanco. Looking at the blog posts from others at the meet-up, I think I should have tried Higuerela wine or the Morellino de Scansano.
The last two wines I tried were a port and a sherry. The port was a Quevedo Reserva Tawny Port and I really the nice strong taste of this wine. As I expected, I didn’t like the sherry; it’s just not a taste I can appreciate (my Spanish flat mates come from the Sherry region in Spain and brought us one of their wines last year. Never finished that bottle, cause I really didn’t like it).
Here’s the complete list of wines at the tasting:
Photo 4 from my Liverpool walk. I loved the architecture in Liverpool, especially all the different sculptures you could find everywhere. This angel stood out to me though, and I like how I’ve captured it partly in the darkness. You can’t exactly see it in detail, but the silhouette is gorgeous.
Interesting links for December 4th through December 18th:
GMail/Melinda Seckington
Twitter/mseckington
Upcoming/Melinda Seckington
Flickr/mseckington
Facebook/Melinda Seckington
YouTube/mseckington
Del.icio.us/mseckington
Wishlist/Melinda Seckington
Blog/Melinda Seckington
