Merry Christmas everyone!

We hope you're all having a wonderful day, wherever and whenever you are! Lucy and myself are very happy (you couldn't have guessed from the photo).

Have a great day, get yourself some great presents and enjoy the day in the company of family and friends.

With much love to you all.
Evyn & Lucy.

hi all :)

it's been a while i know but we're a lazy breed we are .

just thought i'd share an amusing story about the joys of language barriers and intercoms with you.

first you should know that we live in one of those security blocks where people buzz you from the street to be let into the building. now you should know that we often get a few people pressing the wrong button and ending up confused as i am about the situation.

ok. i'm going to write this like a script to save writing "he said" and "i said" alot.

Lucy: hello?

Guy at the door: (along stream of dutch ....... )

L : i'm sorry, my dutch is not very good. who were you looking for?

G : errrrr.. i'm from the newspaper.. i have presents... please open the door, i need to give them in person.

L : i'm sorry... you are from the newspaper and have presents? for me?

G : for everyone, i need to come in to give them in person.

L : you have presents for me? what name are you looking for? are they for someone at this address?

G : it is called " ........................" in dutch i need to come in.

L : i'm sorry but i don't feel comfortable letting you in unless you can give me a name... who are these presents for?

G : oh ok........

so, i'm pretty scared because it sounds like one of those scams and i'm telling evyn via messenger about it just to make sure i haven't lost it.... and i hear that he's rung another buzzer and has been let in... so now i'm thinking it's either a normal thing over here for the newspaper to send a guy round after dark with presents, or someone in our building is gulible.

i resolve to not answer the door... despite the fact that he knocks ( i know i sound paranoid...) because i saw through the eyehole that our neighbour handed him money in exchange for something.. so now i'm really confused. is he selling something?

after enough time has elapsed i check outside the door to find a package left there addressed to one of our housemates.... and the penny drops

what he ment was that he was delivering the post and had parcels and deliveries for people in the apartment block and probably was supposed to collect signatures for them..... with the maddness of christmas that has engulfed the city he used the word 'present' instead of one that made more sense and the language barrier between us grew about a meter.

just goes to show you how different things are over here than in sydney as well. the packages that have arrived here for us, we have gone down to the door to sign for.... but apparently the thing to do here is to take their word for it that they're delivering a package and to let them into the building unchecked..... i can't imagine many people doing that in sydney.

ah well.... enough about me making life difficult for the postman :) i'll let you alll get back to what you were doing.


love, lucy

Prompted by lucy's post earlier today. My turn to update!

We've been here for a month or so now. Last week saw my one month probation period end at work. I am now a full fledged game developy bumble bee (as according to lucy). This is a good thing(tm).

I'm currently developing levels for the killzone 2 online project. Thus far I have developed one level that has been approved and is currently undergoing full production. During the selection process for this level an argument occured between those present (minus myself) as they couldn't decide which of two level proposals was the better.

Ego boost much?

Thus I am happy with work. I feel the need to use the word 'hence' since It's been rolling around in my mind all day, hence I am writing this sentence - mission accomplished.

Today lucy and I agreed to move into a sharehaus (or shareflat) with two fellow designers from work, PJ and Steve. They are two rather quiet british lads. We'll be living about 20 minutes by tram from work and about 30 minutes from centraal (I know lucy has posted this already but this is my post - goddamnit!)

Moving on. This weekend we bought stuff! A few necessary odds and ends that people can't live without (speakers for my computer, a dvd writer, the complete scream series on dvd and world of warcraft game cards, and at lucy's request. pants)

Also this weekend we managed to get out of amsterdam by night, we journied towards Utrecht by train. We were actually heading to a club so I can't speak much about utrecht itself. On the way back we were accosted by several dutch youths. At one point I think I declared myself part of the dutch navy. The trick is to use as many australian words that nobody else knows the meaning of ('grouse' and 'schmick' are good weapons here) to confuse your enemy.

Yes. I will get you a sandwich.

In case people were wondering. I'm not foaming at the mouth or inhaled some strange dutch flora, i'm in a good moond! (deliberately mispelled as it sounds funnier).

Lucy and I are still unable to speak a word of dutch. Shame on us. No. Shame on you all for not teaching us dutch when it is obviously a dire essential for australian living. Something like that.

Thus ends my rant.

My affections to all those stuck in australia land where according to the dutch exists three things. Snakes. Spiders and Steve Irwin. Apparently he's not dead according to some dutch. Well, there you go. Send out the reconnaisance, he's doing a christopher skase on us!

Rant Over.

101000100110101110010101011...

Hi all!

Hope everyone is well and happy :D

The rainy season has started here which is fine for the likes of evyn and myself, although i feel i should have myself waterproofed! It's quite beautiful really. It only gets really cold at night at the moment, so we're grateful for the central heating... although where we are in the campus the heater makes a crazy banging sound at odd intervals for some reason... the joys of old buildings and new renovations i suppose!

One of the other joys of living in the old trade town is the mice! One or two have taken up residence under our kitchen ( there's quite a large gap) and come out at night to try and get into our bin! This isn't quite as bad as it sounds though... we have had the landlord in to try and sort them out, but they are proving rather resiliant! Ah well, we will be moving out of here quite soon.

We've chosen to move in with some of the guys that evyn works with. The place is really nice and is just outside the city.. about 20 minutes by tram. Hopefully we'll be able to show you all in the not to distant future... i know we keep promising photos... but we'll get there!


The place we're moving to is a really good find... again it's fully furnished, and there's already internet and cable tv. It might not prove to be a permanent move, but it's certainly a good one!

Other news... unfortunately i still can't work! They need more documentation from me. Thankfully this only includes sending our marriage certificate to the department of foriegn affairs and trading in australia for an apostle's stamp which is the expensive part (which we might have to do to our birth certificates as well) and getting a proof of residency from the town hall here. It's quite a bit of leg work, but we'll get there! and then we do it all again when we move...

Any way... I'll finish by saying that i'm keen to hear what's going on over there, so feel free to email me! Mum and dad have the address..

Love to you all!

Well, we've had our first official night on the town! Laura (who we know from home) was here for the weekend- she's over here visiting family in England.

We went out to a good (psy)trance club and didn't get in untill quite early. :D

Lots of fun had by all! Only downside was that we hadn't been dancing for months and i guess we were a little out of shape as i managed to hurt my knee.

Still, anyone that knows me knows it doesn't take much for my ankles or knees to give way! Ah well.


Other news is that we now have a computer to call our own again (although the monitor is the tv at the moment untill we buy a proper one) so there's no more over heated internet cafes for me! Woot!

Well, thats about it for now. You'll hear more once something else worth sharing happens.

Love to all!

Today I will show you all exactly where Lucy and I am in Amsterdam. Having no camera to work with (or the ability to fly) I will rely on the satellite images of google earth to show you where we are hiding.



Firstly, a map of europe to show you all where we are in relation to other countries. As you can see we are located on the north western tip of europe. The Netherlands is an incredibly small country, half the size of tasmania. It is also incredibly flat. To describe it as flat as a pancake is actually rather inaccurate, it is actually much flatter than a pancake if you shrunk the netherlands down to pancake size.

Moving on.



This aerial view of the city of amsterdam gives you some reference points as to where we live. We are located in the south west of amsterdam. You can see my work - Guerrila Games as it sits along the Herengracht ('Gentlemens Canal'), the third of the 5 major canals that runs through the city.

The campus where we are staying lies only a few blocks to the west. It sits on the Prinsengracht ('Princes Canal') and the Looiersgracht ('No idea') just on the outside of the main canal belt.

A better image.




It's not actually that green at the moment as we head into winter, but it gives you an idea.

That's my bit of information for today.
A real update is to come soon.

- Evyn

as evyn said... museum fun was had today! although i nearly throttled another tourist for using flash photography repeatedly on a 13th century painting.... tisk tisk! however i really don't feel like being banned from museums or blacklisted for smashing cameras so i gritted my teeth and moved away! lucky her is all i can say...

in other news, thanks to mum and dad's generosity i am now the proud owner of sensible boots! they are (for the benifit of mum) like a cross between my old roc boots with the laces and evyn's boots; my new ones are the same brand- new rocks. they are lower to the ground than my old ones though and are extreemly comfortable everyday type boots... so a job well done!

anywho... were still looking around the realestate market online and elsewhere.. which is fun :) but it's a bit tricky to decide just yet.. thankfully we have a few people to ask around before anything gets set in stone...

as for everything else .. its all falling into place nicely :) missing everyone though..

till next time!

lucy

Lucy and I spent a good portion of today visiting the Amsterdam Historic Museum. It was throughly enjoyable and quite stimulating of the mind.

There is a large collection of wonderful items and displays from the history of this rather odd city. We only managed to see a third of all the displays in the four hours or so we spent in there.

Now we are spending some time wandering the markets in the hunt for food and anything that takes our fancy. Lucy has just purchased some lovely boots for herself which I thoroughly approve .

I'm sure Lucy will post images and talk with more detail about our adventures today when she has the opportunity.

We still as yet have no camera. Hopefully one will be in the works soon.

For the moment,
Evyn out.

Welcome to the blog of our adventures

Welcome to the blog of Evyn and Lucy for our adventures in the lovely city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

We will be posting up pictures and information of our travels around. Mostly it will be boring things that are of interest to our family and friends. If you like what you see here feel free to post us a comment.

Neither Lucy or I have a digital camera that we can use to post up pictures (aside from our phones - of which only Lucy's phone works but cannot be connected to a computer easily) so you'll have to make do with text adventures for the moment.

Look forward to getting pictures in the future once Lucy and I manage to purchase a camera.

Now I must get back to work.
Check back here in the future for updates and amusing tales.

Evyn