It’s been over a month since first setting back in Sydney. So naturally, i feel compelled to write this journal what i dearly miss about my experience abroad to that fascinating and philosophically challenging city.

Utilitarianism
By definition, utilitarianism means functionality over extravagance or design. All things must serve a rational purpose or else it would be deemed irrational and extravagant. Some may say it’s just very conservative economic rationalism and this mentality of ‘why fix if it ain’t broke’. I view it as post-modern perspective considering that Amsterdam does not feel threatened by not keeping up with other societies. Modernity can be perceived as over-hyped and unnecessary for function of society. Thus, bikes, drawbridges, clocktowers and canals are still in use. It may feel nostalgic to old times but in my view, it is just customary make things simple as it is.

Furthermore, speaking on the notion of function, utilitarianism also views that everyone has a function in society. No matter if you’re a carpenter or doctor or lawyer, each and everyone has function in the general fabric of society, since we all serve some purpose in duty and capitalisation. Thus, everyone should be treated as equal. What’s the point of having everyone as doctors or lawyers when there are no ganiters to mop the floors or construction workers to build hospitals? I guess, through this lens it gives a magnificent clarity why there’s such tolerance in prostitutes and not allowing the state to dictate individual concerns. This includes euthanasia, homosexual recognition, no age in alcohol consumption, stem cell research or any other issues that are considered ethically controversial. Empowering individuals as a node of functionalism ensures liberty that we, through our own rationality can base our own judgement without hindrance.

There is a natural tendency for a sense of order. Although the state itself doesn’t show such authoritarian statehood to bind the living within its realms together, nationhood still remains as a profound movement to serve that order. Simply, the collectives of the people through their own participation and motive of collaborating with its distinguished interest serves greater order than any authority put down by the state. For instance, the urban planning in Amsterdam has been basically built in the Golden Age where it considered at the time that all decision-making will have lasting legacy for future generations. Many may consider this as a conscious deliberative system. Canals were built and so were the outer ring of park which originally served as a defence system from outside invasion. When viewed from above, the historical centre of Amsterdam is shaped as a half spider web, where it psychologically would gravitate to the centre in terms of trade and expression on information.

To be continued…

Over the past two months, i have been travelling around Sydney metro to use different Fitness First gyms. From CBD to North Sydney, North Strathfield, North Sydney, Chatswood, Parramatta and St Leonards.

I do have a feeling that FF customers closer to the city are tend to be more reserved and resistant to people talking to them. They would quickly help you and after that, they don’t want any more communication. They are far more independent, self-responsible and resistant to any form of influence from others as they wish to be impartial and not peer pressured.

In Parramatta, much of the participants are segregated to their racial background. So you’ll have students who are Chinese who go to gym together and still around in big groups and rotate using the same machine until all have sufficiently used them. Same goes for Afghanis and so on. Gyms outside of Eastern Suburbs, North Shore and City are very messy. For example, the weights are not placed back on racks and weights are still on bars on benchpress.

I usually go to Carlingford FF because it’s the closest to where i live. People are more open during non-peak hours. In peak hours, its a lot more challenging and busy, and the last thing they want to do is to talk while trying to finish their routine asap, after coming straight from work.

I had a long conversion with a few members in Carlingford FF and were pretty keen to work with me next time. I need support when doing weights because i’m hesitant to using heavy weights in case of injury. So if i have a supporter, i can go aggressively and push hard, such as bench press. I won’t really improve unless i have a support.

So there’s my analysis. It’s very basic, but that’s just my opinion

In my honest opinion, i think you can discover the town in a day. Three days is pretty long, but i took that duration anyway. Keeping it steady paced and chilled.

My first impression was that the town is very small. More of a village feel. It is very touristy and i wouldn’t want to live there. However, it is indeed well maintained and cleaned while keeping the original and authentic feel of the city. It is UNESCO heritage listed for historical reasons.

From the station towards to Markt are lined with chocolate stores, candies and souvenir merchandise retails. You may also come across fast food joints such as frites (French Fries) and Belgian waffle kiosks.

It is a walkable city. You can hire a bike for your time of stay but it isn’t necessary.

This is my favourite place to chill. Underneath the propeller of the windmill.

The school i want to go

I’m in Singapore at the moment. Last two weeks has been hecktic and haven’t had a relaxing ample time to write up posts. But to summarise what i have done in a fortnight…it’s pretty much made up of trips to Belgium and Germany. I will type them up for the record when i’m back.

My plane leaves at about 6pm 30th July, which is tonight.

My last leg of journey overseas. Will be back to Sydney on 6am 31st July.

Cheerio

Introduction
It was generally a decent party, but certainly not the best i’ve been to. This view was shared by my friends who has been to other major hardstyle parties in the Netherlands. There is a mixed reaction amongst the group of friends depending on whether it’s their first Dutch hardstyle party or one of many.

The Aussie Meet
In Amsterdam on the day of the party, there was an unpredictable precipitation which hindered the logistics or having to effectively organise the meet in general. It was only when i had to take chances by temporarily vacating myself away from the place of meet and search for the nearest internet cafe as another form of communication, was when trouble started. I quickly strolled to the Amsterdam Bibliotheek (library) and logged onto my email to send details on how to reach to me by phone. Just before my natural reaction in composing a message, i already got email from Louise citing to contact them through their Australian mobile number. My instant reaction was ‘is it possible? Can i actually contact their Australian number while they reside in Amsterdam?’.

After my brief email reply, i travelled back to Centraal Station’s concourse and protected from the rain, and gave them a quick phone call citing a new place of meet. About ten minutes later, i met them and gave them a tour of the library and had a quick bite at the restaurant.

After lunch, we descended to the City Centre near Damrak and meet the other crews from Australia. They were sitting in front of a coffeeshop on a bench just chilling, after, if i should guess, some joints. There were five blokes originally from Perth who travelled to Europe for a party and continuous festivities. One was studying in Germany and from my re-collections, i think the rest visited him as a chance to ’see’ Europe. They saw Europe alright. Staying in Amsterdam for a week doing what most bold tourists does. Many rounds of joints mushrooms and pub crawl within the confounds of the city canals. They said that a week of Amsterdam in Amsterdam is far too long…? That doesn’t help me at all considering that a year of residing in Amsterdam is too short?

All of us had a brief stop at the mushroom store (no prizes in why) and another coffeeshop were we all sit around this small corner at the front of the ’shop’. Pretty much chatting for an hour and eventually we split up with the guys from Perth wanting to have a nap and the Louise and friend wants to continue the tour.

Black Denim Shorts
We eventually met up with another bunch of Aussies who were residing in London and Greece. They both were in desperate need of new clothes from head to toe. So i scrammed them around the pedestrian mall in the City Centre finding what was indeed impossible. A black denim short that stretches to the ankle. I stopped counting after 15 shops we visited. Poking our heads in each stores, asking series of questions to the staff, and in many cases they didn’t have a clue what we were talking bout. Any stores which has the word ‘denim’ in their store description would be inspected by the Black Denim Shorts patrol. Yes fellas, the Dutch men don’t wear black denim shorts. Anything that exhibits skin from ankle to the feet is considered indecent and would be swiftly be taken to the Dutch etiquette class. Or was that the conclusion we inconclusively thought up?

Just 30min before the official store closing at 6pm, these two blokes had to make drastic decisions. Whether to buy the black jeans and cut it up or not be allowed entry to Black at all. Quick decisions lead to some results…till the last minute. Just buy the black jeans, and tell the staff to cut it up in front of us. Then came the shoes, black socks searching. Finally completed about 6.10pm, when a bloke refused to get out of a shoe store unless he found a pair he wanted.

Arrival
Just fast-forwarding the story…(yes, it was an exhausting day before the party)… we arrived in Bijlmer ArenA station at 9.10. Everyone was split depending on the gates that are designated by the ticket from A to J. I couldn’t join them because i had to collect the ticket from the box office. Just when i thought that the crush capacity is over after that train ride to the station, i now had to face another exhausting and frustrating time for 2 hours. When Europeans are desperate, they quickly step-aside the etiquette and just push ahead. Six lines eventually meet up in front of the box office’s window. Just when i thought it cannot be worse than this, many women almost got squeezed off or totally sandwiched by Europeans at least 1.90m tall and having to endure the almost suffocating experience of breathing their cheap deodorant originated from their armpits and from their back. How indignifying.

I never thought it would take such push and shove just to get my ticket. Furthermore, the blokes who landed in Schiphol Airport at 10pm actually were waiting behind the entrance gate J until 11:10pm. Drew whisked me to the locker room and so i shoved my belonging and my hoodie inside. Then strolled to the dancefloor to finally get the party started, with me included.

The Party
Once i got there, the music was great. Wonderful pure hardstyle from Fausto and as natural the crowd reacted with enduring lapses of dances and spontaneous hands in the air moments.

This is by far the most energetic crowd i have ever seen in hardstyle parties. I really don’t care about them taking drugs since its their personal thing, but at least they are having fun and not making any trouble amongst them.

Interior Design
I will give credit that they have put effort in the interior design. The floating jellyfish looking like bunch of space ship tripods beaming their three lights onto the crowds below. They bounce around vertically with strings attached. The centre stage looks like a Van de Graaff generator (look it up if you don’t know) with electric spikes beaming out.

There are also catwalk like paths spanning across the long-width of the football field. Not just walkway but about ten water-jets on each side of the centre which are choreographed depending on the melody. Some jetstreams can be sprayed radially and images are projected with spotlights as if the waterjets are projector screens. Pretty much the dancefloor was split into two with a walkway underneath the spanned catwalks on each side.

The bottom level of the stadium seats are open for public. You can sit there and watch or dance by folding the seats if you desire. But the vast majority did stay in the dancefloor until in times of grieved pain, they need to sit down.

The Music
As noted in the introduction, the music receives a mixed blessing from our group. Louise, Drew and I didn’t really like it. In fact, it was one of the worst hardstyle party when based purely on music. The amount of cheese inserted into Donkey Roller’s set is just insulting to the hardstyle movement in my honest opinion. The re-mixed tracks from Coldplay, U2 or whatever and then adding pounding bass just to give the crowd a head kick in dancing. We can admit that we had high expectations for this party. I considered this to be the pinnacle of all hardstyle parties without reservation. Purely based on the hype and the scale of capacity of course. But ID&T doesn’t sound like they have interrogated the DJs well enough to get some previews and check which tracks go in and out. Sort of like filtering the plethoria of crap many DJs seem to be playing. Us were more purist in form, and never liked how the hardstyle scene seem to be trying to bend over backward in attracting new members. Just like the sixteen year olds in Power House Production parties in Sydney only going there because of the cheese and happy hardcore.

At least there was a concession. Good that Dana was not playing on the night. Her repeated performance over the years is below average and should stay away from meddling with the equilizer. Nobody likes distorted music.

Evidently, three of us went out with a sour note. But as a complementary side at least we can say we have been to Amsterdam’s Sensation Black.

On the other hand, the guys who just came to Amsterdam from Down Under thoroughly enjoyed it. I can imagine that the pairs from Sydney and the group from Perth really got blown away by the magnitude and crowd of the party. Yes, there is nothing compared to what’s going on in Australia and i am empathetic to their reaction of disbelief and in trance.

I would like to finish up saying that i think over the last 12 months in Europe, the best moment in hardstyle party was in Qlimax Belgium and Sensation Black Antwerp. Both were not in Holland coincidently, but the vibe i got especially from the crowd and the will of the DJs of making the scene as conventional as possible. No more happy hardcore or cheesy rock band tracks, just humble and thrilling hardstyle tracks for us Old Skool…

Photos…finally
Here you see the centre stage and the revolving DJ deck around that white trunk in the middle. That MC sure is glued to that mike screaming or pretending that the crowd really cares.

Here are the waterjets. On each side of the waterjets were flame-throwers.

Floating jellyfish with tri-lights

Tri-lights at work

…and the crowd are lovin’ it.

Massive speakers and distortion-free as expected

Uncommon to see glowsticks. Not readily used in hardstyle parties.

Simultaneous arm gestures

Sun about to rise…after 5am

Illuminated waterjets

Just when the sun was rising and the stadium was lighted up, people call it a day. It was way bigger crowd than this.

Just a sense of proportion of the props and the designs

A bloke repairing the light

At 6.30am

Videos
Evil Activities playing ‘Nobody Said it Would be Easy’. You can see the waterjets and flamethrowers.

Technoboy

Crowd getting into the tunes…

I’ll edit this while adding more videos. Stay updated!

It’s one more month till i leave for Sydney. It’s unfortunate really. Still want to stay for 6 more months and travel a bit more. But in my scholarship it says that i have to be back by the beginning of Semester 2 in Sydney.That contract cannot be broken, no matter how desperate i may be.

Time has really passed. I have squeezed in so much activities more than i could have imagined before i boarded the plane bound to Amsterdam. Never thought that i would travel around Europe that extensively and do stuff i wanted to in Amsterdam.

Some moments:

Considering i have only 1 month to go, i will travel again around Europe and go to heaps more parties. One big farewell moment all for me…

]]> http://miliux.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/1-month-to-go-till-farewell/feed/ miliux http://miliux.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/reviewdefqon12008/ http://miliux.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/reviewdefqon12008/#comments Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:47:17 +0000 miliux http://miliux.wordpress.com/?p=113

I think this party was the first hardstyle festival on a beach at daytime. I cannot recall any previous other hardstyle party where it was on daytime anyway. 40,000 squeezed in a beach…

Met some friends from London at Schiphol and travelled together to Almere. Only noticed just when everyone left the train that a temporary train station was built just for the DefQon-1 festival. Yes, a temporary station with two platforms, rail lines, a ramp and fences around it with crowd control security personnel.

We arrived around 3pm, when the party begun on 10am, so we quickly got processed in the gates for screening and off we go. Circling around this massive beach for about an hour to get ourselves being familiar to this bizzare place. Everything felt tinted yellow because of the gentle breeze washing the sand side-by-side and there were jetskis and boats patrolling the coastline for any people drowning while intoxicated.

There were ten venues all scattered on this beach:
Red: Mainstage
Silver: Industrial
Black: Hardcore
Orange: Hard Trance
Purple: Upcoming Hardstyles
Grey: Oldskool/Early Rave
Blue: Hardstyle
Green: Techno
Brown: Belgium Beats/Frenchtek

Most of these venues were held inside circus tents with the roof supported by the steel pillars. Then the speakers piled up on the pillars at the front and middle. I found it so interesting the industrial design and all. Using scrap metals such as disused metal oil barrels, car tyres and other scrap metals, all moulded together into an industrial sculpture ready to be admired by followers who were swashed in drugs.
We then approached the merchandise stand. Damn, these stuff were selling like hot pancakes. Streams of people lining up throughout the day purchasing from hoodies, to flip-flop sandles, caps, DJ deck mats, keyrings, jackets, shirts and so forth. I came back to this stand and people were still queuing up about 10pm purchasing them. It goes to show that Q-Dance made this remarkable brand movement almost to a point of cult-figure.

The main stage was way at the Western edge of the beach. The stage was 20 storeys high piled with massive amounts of oil barrels and alike with speakers on either end. No point of turning the lights on in the middle of daytime…until about 10.20pm when the sun finally descends down.

There is a ferris wheel at the rear making a full rotation in every 4min.

The deck

The tower of mischievous

The sides

Is it just my observation or is Zany getting more chubby on his every appearance in parties? I remember he was lanky a few years back…

Playful lots under the sun…

Let’s not mention about the trash we dump ay? Once i got my jeans soaked by a bloke behind me with beer. In this weather, my jeans got dried up in a few hours. Life goes on…

Smoke, smoke smoke!

The orange stage, aka Hard trance

Met some blokes who were going on a Contiki tour around Europe. Will be back for Sensation Black…

…and here is the Purple venue, aka Upcoming Hardstyle

How dandy

This is the hardcore stage

Making a blockbuster for the upcoming DefQon-1 DVD

Over-exaggerated speakers…

So how do we dance in the beach you say? All tents are sitting above a wooden platform connected with wooden walkways all connected up. Yeah, it’s impossible to dance in sand…and i would not bother trying…

High octane chicks selling bikes

It literally costs a leg to dance endlessly… Just bringing a spare leg for insurance purposes

Wazzup you say?

Almost sunset

Sculpture by the sea

Nice towering arsenals

That’s all folks!

Here are some scanned papers:

Map of the beach with venues, etc

DJ Schedules for each venues

]]> http://miliux.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/reviewdefqon12008/feed/ miliux http://miliux.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/just-two-more-essays/ http://miliux.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/just-two-more-essays/#comments Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:46:05 +0000 miliux http://miliux.wordpress.com/?p=112

I have just two more essays to complete and i’ll be set to start my European holiday.
- EU Law
- Global Poverty

These essays are not that difficult, but it takes effort to research and concisely express it in a small essay.

I’m also in the middle of packing my belongings and start shipping them to Sydney because it will take up to 2 months to be delivered.

]]> http://miliux.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/just-two-more-essays/feed/ miliux