March 3, 2012

• Amsterdam, Netherlands

  

  As I walked towards the supermarket today, I looked around towards the house and much to my surprise I noticed some changes. No longer was the scaffolding blocking the entire façade of the building. The top part had been removed now. And the little statue of a lion at the very top of the building was now visible again. The pointing between the bricks was also visible, and quite frankly looking good. Where previously the layers between the bricks had been crumbling or even missing altogether, there was now a fresh layer of pointing visible.

  The biggest change was that that layer was quite white, completely changing the look of the building, and even more radical was that the lion had been painted white as well. The neighbours from the third and fourth floors had mentioned that they would like the lions painted white in our meeting earlier this year, and I had said at the time that I didn't care that much about what they turned out to be as long as the necessary maintenance work on the house would have been done properly, but I was a bit shocked by how white the lions turned out to be today. What's more, also the horizontal stones left and right were now white. Radically white. I'm not sure yet how this is all going to work out, but as long as the façade will be done completely and the house will look brand new again when this is all done, then I'm OK with it.

  In the afternoon I went to Deco for the first time this year. I used to go almost every weekend, at least those weeks when I was in Amsterdam, but I've been cutting down on my visits to Deco (and to Spijker for that matter), a bit for financial reasons, but mostly because it seems like I've gone into hibernation a bit. I need to increase my social contacts a bit again, and going to Deco today was a first, nice step.

  • 2:57 am
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