Strange and unexpected: those are the first two qualifiers that come to my mind for this evening.

For a start, I was not expecting such a successful date. The energiest, pretty and extra-ordinary girl I planned to have dinner with reached me with her life projects. As we went through our groceries, my mind slowly stopped wandering around with recollections of my working day (plenty of good stuff in store for tomorrow!) and eventually focused on the conversation with my host: while our previous encounters had prepared me to a relaxing evening, I found her daring enterprises unexpectedly surprising and inspiring. This, in addition to the discovery of a remote part of Amsterdam which proved to be in reality more welcoming and civilized than what the local urban culture would otherwise suggest, soothed my busy mind and left it open to appreciate the beauty of a well-decorated interior. Such a reception! It really made my day.

As an expression of my gratitude I tried my best to prepare something edible — unfortunately likely a failed attempt, given the polite lack of feedback, but we fed nonetheless — and we had otherwise a pleasant and entertaining conversation, about experiences past and to come.

Meanwhile, rewinding this story a little, as I was initially waiting for my host to pick me up I wandered around one of the busiest areas in the neighbourhood; either the idle atmosphere or out of some desire for entertainment (not knowing yet how agreeable my date would be) instilled in my the idea of a visit to the nearby cinema. She accepted.

And zo was het, a boy and a girl having a good time after a dinner together, in a wonderful mood, and going together to the movies, and planning to enjoy a film and each other's company in the anonymity of obscurity…

As we sat down, I was already thinking: what will I say to people? What will people think of this? What am I doing?

We watched Brüno together.

As we sat up, I was now thinking: what will I say to people? What will people think of this? What have I done?

But then I was not taking myself seriously any more. My company was barely hiding her putting back her brain and her senses together after the exposure to more skin than she was expecting. I was still laughing, of course. Note to self: educate friends, especially females, with the basics before bringing them to the advanced courses. Because that's what Sasha Baron Cohen has made there — and I didn't know before tonigh, I swear! — although I wonder how she understood it; alas we did not take the opportunity to talk about that since she was busy stating and rehearsing her disbelief that anyone could even imagine such a concept… I was happily thinking: honey, there goes your sanity; denial first, we'll see to the rest later. We parted, I laughed again, and I took the metro back to the city.

What a nice movie. What a nice take on all I've ever been thinking personally about culture on the other side of the Atlantic. Would I ever myself have expected to identify so much with the message of a movie whose main character is so exaggeratingly, undoubtedly, painstakingly and obnoxiously “over the top”? Whatever, life is like a box a chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.

Still, this day will be difficult to summarize.

Amsterdam is a city of many surprises — not. As I was unlocking my bike, the most derelict shadow of a human being I have ever met in person asked me if I knew my way around the city. His hat, sunglasses and scarf were hiding his face; his heavy winter clothes the rest of his body; except for his hands and his nose. The latter was wearing a piece of stainless steel; the former were spotted with open sores, although they were surprising clean.

Only years of experience in Paris allowed me to detect the slightly rehearsed side of an otherwise brutally honest, straightforward and heartbreaking conversation. He needed help, and his opening line was merely asking for it. Do you know places in Amsterdam where I could get help? City shelters for the homeless were my blind guess. They don't accept non-EU citizens, or you need to pay a small amount of money upfront. A hospital? That's where a friend died of an overdose yesterday. They provided the list of all the shelters, but it doesn't work out. The police? They are friendly and understanding, but they don't provide the most important: some money and/or a trip. I was honestly searching for more ideas. The guy genuinely sounded despaired, and why should he not? Even if his story is rehearsed, his trump card is certainly his honesty and his clarity. Despite the many recognizable scars over his veins and arteries, he was rational, polite and relatively well-mannered; he only needed a few coins either for a dose of whatever drug he's on, or to get into the only shelters that would accept him. And he was tired, visibly so.

“What would Jesus do?” My immediate previous experience had not prepared me for this. But the following scene still plays in my head:

— look, I don't have any cash on my. I usually don't anyways. But it happens I have some free time, and I'm in a good mood.

So we go to the nearest shop and I get two beers with my debit card. We sit. He tells me his story, not surprising and yet so human. I get an idea:

— I lied earlier. I have these two English pounds in my wallet from a previous trip. Those are the only coins I have. But I have an idea: you tell good stories. So why not making a show of yourself in Amsterdam, telling about your life and the mistakes you've made? Propose to answer questions; challenge tourists to guess what your life looks like, amidst the prejudice of what they think about how drugs work in the Netherlands. And then ask friendly a British visitor to change these pounds for the same denomination in Euros. Given the exchange rate they might accept.

In a way, I fathom it can be difficult emotionally to live isolated from society when one dragged themselves this way out of it. There was not much left in that human to let others identify with him in any way. But he was telling a good story, so how could I not spend a few minutes of my time with him, offer and let him feel honest and sincere attention for a little while? As any decent and moral social person ought to do, as they would expect others to do the same in return?

As this scene was forming in my mind, I was reflecting on my own mess. On the one hand, I socialize with wonderful and passionate women and I have absolutely no first-hand experience of the myriad of feelings they try share with me; yet I persist because the invisible wall that clearly separates us and establishes our mutual trust gives me a slight sense of control that my abysmal relational ignorance would otherwise shatter. On the other hand… Here should come a sentence with "men", but also "invisble wall", "mutual trust", "abysmal relational ignorance" and "myriad of feelings", although in quite a different order that I haven't sorted out yet. Every day, as the sun sets, I am scared. While a beautiful job and an exciting social life get me out of bed happy every morning, they are merely pushing away the nagging call of my hormones: seduce! couple! settle! breed! cherish your elders, so your offspring will cherish you as well!

An isolated life is a battle to fight every day, and I am proud to dominate my biological urges more often than not. If I can, why shouldn't he? Or maybe I was contemplating myself, twenty years down the line?

This world is a jungle: as I was unlocking my bike, I instead closed our conversation saying that I was coming from Rotterdam, and that I didn't know the city enough to answer him. I wonder if I can look at myself in a mirror tomorrow.

Still, this day will be difficult to summarize.

There is a quality to the urban sidewalk at night after a rainy day nowhere to be found otherwise, except maybe on a very quiet night with bright moonlight on a lake border.

This quality is the reflection of city life in puddle pools.

The eyes of the casual observer looking up in a city at night while walking or biking would see buildings, trees, city lights and only somewhere in between patches of dark sky where the stars become invisible, by contrast. When looking down, most urban surfaces have a texture and color that will make them appear dull in dry weather, but somewhat bright and sparkling with reflections of city lights when wet. The more remaining surface water, the more reflections of city lights are to be seen; areas with running water become particularly noticeable through the luminosity of the combined reflection of many light sources.

That is, except around areas where the surface water is sufficient to create a still pool, i.e. an area with no apparent texture. There, unless the angle is right and the inverse path of reflected light from the observer's eye crosses a city light source — an unlikely occurrence in moderately dense European cities, given the relative rarity of city lights — there is perceptively nothing to be seen in the pool's reflection.

Only the Universe, through the small frontier of stars created by the pool's borders. At day, these patches of whater would appear white or blue from the sky colors... At night, they make reality vanish, and make the city darker.

Next time you go walking or biking at night after a rainfall, please take a few seconds to look at the ground. Look at the bright areas, and notice how the pool in the middle of the bright area is more black than any other surface in the city landscape. Then consider, as you would with reflective surfaces otherwise, what the world “on the other side” looks like.

As far as the stereotype about urban gay men approaching their forties goes, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren do not deceive while adding a pinch of seriousness to their worldly concerns by means of glasses with thick black frames.

I have never been a fashionista myself, and will probably not become one. The thought of spending any significant amount of my time hunting new designs and attending the mass leaves me totally unphased. Yet, a one hour excursion on the third floor of the Barbican Arts Centre in London proved to be both a refreshing and enlightening experience.

A friend, dear among the dearest, brought me to a fashion exhibition in the City of London. He intended this experiment both as an initiation and as a test for my taste — I would hear “I wonder if you will like it” at least thrice before we eventually squeezed the last hours of our trip together in the Barbican Centre.

The key works of Dutch fashion designers Viktor and Rolf were on display in a two-floor exhibition hall. Visitors are there invited to follow a sequence of rooms around a central doll house, where each of the hall's rooms would match a room in the doll house and contain a couple models and a projection screen.

Describing the collection and its qualities would far exceed my vocabulary skills, so I will not dwelve into details here. However, the purpose of this note today is to stay as a reminder of how touched I was by the amount of creative work and creative diversity that was concentrated in these fifty-something models. Unexpected in a fashion exhibit, I felt more respect and admiration for these tailors than I have for many painters in art musea.

Add this to the brutal style of the estate of which the Barbican Centre is part, its stained grey ragged concrete walls and columns contrasting with the lush and lively yet constrained small lake that it contains, and you get a picture of a foreign urban world of sorts — obscurely pure and devoid of irregularities, where nature is enclosed, and where the only form of art is worn somptuously as unique and breathtaking clothes.

I discovered a world of dreams, made for and by them. London is a city of many surprises.

One of my favorites pastimes when procrastinating: looking up unusual ways to travel by train. Using the journey planner with the largest database that I know of, I set myself imaginary goals and I search:

• the longest journey that can be achieved within a day: Marseille-Malmö
• the longest journey in a single night train: Hamburg-Villach, Paris-Barcelona, Amsterdam-Milano
• the longest journey that can be achieved at high speed within a day: Marseille-Berlin via Brussels and Köln
• the longest journey that can be achieved without changing trains: Amsterdam-Moscow
• the longest journey with only one change: Amsterdam-Beijing via Moscow

The following quote summarizes roughly a number of ideas I have a lot of troubles explaining. However, I feel that many people emigrate for the wrong reasons, one of them being simply unsatisfied with living in the previous place. Here it goes:

[…] Emigration is no small business. In addition to a serious commitment to somehow integrate into the new place as a citizen, emigration involves also commitment to stay, integrate culturally and contribute to the society. I have made my own commitments in this respect - I am actively learning the language; I enjoy paying the due taxes; I have a traditional housing […]; and so on. If you were to emigrate, what are your plans?
[…] When I was considering emigrating, what was most important to me was how I would feel when I would arrive to the "right" place. This had to be considered independently from my feelings as a French citizen, and more by understanding the position of the various candidates relatively to their geographical neighborhood. […] My way of making my choice was to take a map of the world and imagining myself living in various areas. Primary concern was filtering out those places I would not feel secure in. Either because I am not protected by family (financially or otherwise), because I'm gay, because I often use my right to say what I think (is bad) about things, or because I have no religion. Next concern was filtering out those places I would be considered as a stranger for the rest of my life, whatever I would do, such as because of the color of my skin or the language difference. Then I tried to match my personality with the cultural expectations, such as avoiding warm-blooded countries where lots of talking are required to get things done (in business or private life), or liberal countries where your social value as an individual is proportional to the amount of money you're worth.
Using only these ideas, not much was left standing on my world map. Most world countries, and several European countries such as Poland, Greece, or Italy were ruled out by the first criterion. France, the UK and most other "western" countries were ruled out by the last criterion. Nearly all the rest of the world got ruled out by the middle criterion. I ended up with the Netherlands mainly because Canada is a bit too close to the USA, because I do not speak German (and German-speaking countries are not very English speaking), and because I think it's a bit early (for me) to go to Scandinavia or other other northern parts of Europe - life there is easy, but it is tremendously difficult to start friendships with people and I am still very shy. And note that the Netherlands does not quite match my last criterion (very liberal, very capitalistic) so it was a match only because I had a kind of fondness for the place, fondness that grew during some trips in the past years.

Hope this helps.

Quote from ArticlesBase :

Bucket-wheel excavators are heavy equipment used in surface mining and civil engineering. The excavation component itself is a large rotating wheel mounted on an arm or boom. On the outer edge of the wheel is a series of scoops or buckets. As the wheel turns, the buckets remove soil or rock from the target area and carry it around to the backside of the wheel, where it falls onto a conveyor, which carries it up the arm toward the main body of the excavator. Additional conveyors then may carry it further; in some cases, several long conveyors are placed end-to-end, each supported by a large vehicular base.
Especially large bucket-wheel excavators, over 200 meters long and up to 100 meters in height, are used in German strip-mining operations, and are the largest earth-movers in the world. These tremendous machines can cost over $100 million, take 5 years to assemble, require 5 people to operate, weigh more than 13,000 tons, and have a theoretical capacity of more than 12,000m³/h. Specifically, the RB293 bucket wheel excavator manufactured by MAN Takraf is recognized by Guinness World Records as the largest land vehicle.

The Bagger 288 is built by another manufacturer (Krupp) and is nearly as large as the RB293. About the Bagger 288:

Over three weeks it made a 22 kilometer (14 mile) trip to the Garzweiler mine, traveling across Autobahn 61, the Erft, a railroad line, and several roads. The move cost nearly 15 million German marks and required a team of seventy workers. Rivers were crossed by placing large steel pipes for the water to flow through and providing a smooth surface over the pipes with rocks and gravel. Moving Bagger 288 in one piece was more economic than disassembling the excavator and moving it piece by piece.

See for yourself:

Look at the tiny dashes at the bottom right of the picture. These are people. The thing is huge!

There are plenty of them:

I had a bucket wheel excavator in my head since I was 10 or so. I discovered the name of the thing only today. What a relief!

At 6 this morning I woke up panting and sweating from a terrifying nightmare.

It all started with a quite long dream with an intricate story. The dream was about me being on a road trip to reconnect with old friends, and I was on my way back with the updated knowledge that my friends' families were not doing well, and that I should start taking care of my own family to avoid the bleak future my friends are facing.

Not a meaningless dream, but not a nightmare either.

The creepy side of the story started when I arrived at a place were my mother, brother and I were to take tea with an old friend of my mother. The place was this friend's house, on the seaside, with a veranda just above sea level.

While the other people were merrily chatting on the sofa, I approached the window to look outside. Then it struck me that the veranda was flooded where I expected to see dry planks. When I realized that the water level was steadily rising and the house was tilting on the side towards the water, I shouted “everyone outside, now!” and jumped out of the window into the water.

As dreams allow, I was then seeing myself and the landscape from a different perspective. The house I was in was at the top of a dyke which was slowly crumbling. My brother was already out swimming but my mother was painfully trying to push herself out of the window while the water was pouring inside.

The current was intense. Water was flowing freely into the valley behind the dyke. My mum started crying that she was not strong enough to swim. My brother and I swam to her side and held her by her arms, trying to accompany the flow towards the valley.

Then my perspective changed to show me how the landscape was slowly and strongly replaced by the flood. I could see people trying to get out of houses from the windows in the roof, imagining the fate of those people in houses already below water level.

Somehow my family and I managed to land on a dry piece of land. We were in a part of an urban area above water level, but I had no idea of the precise location.

At that point I started to decide that I had enough and that it was time to wake up. But before it happened, I could dream my mother complaining how she needed some medication and food and me having no idea of how to get that in a flooded city.

Waking up was painful : I did not sleep enough and the nightmare left me shocked. I fixed myself a glass of water and a piece of bread, and I tried to sleep again while brooding over how relationships between civilians in a flooded country would be affected by such a precarious situation.