firenze

so this is where the great renaissance started roughly 700 years ago. one wonders, really, what florence must have been like before all those basilicas have been built and those frescoes, painted, to have ushered enlightenment and a new age at such a grand scale. what a beauty and inspiration it must have been to have spawned artists, scientists, writers, and philosophers of the likes of michaelangelo, botticelli, donatello, brunelleschi, da vinci, galileo, machiavelli, and alighieri (whose divine comedy i'm still struggling to read past page 30, still stuck in inferno after all these years :P). the city itself is not as grand as rome nor as romantic as venice, but its simplicity (and food) left a huge mark in my heart. i marvel at the experience of walking through small alleys, quaint bookstores, family-run leather shops, grand pantheons and even grander basilicas or looking at art and finally meeting my david face to face. and having rubbed the nose of the porcellino, my return to florence has been guaranteed. the only questions that remains now are when, and with whom? ^^

Basilica di Santa Croce

Fontana del Porcellino

Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral and Ponte Vecchio at night

Mercato de San Lorenzo ^^

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lichtfestival 2015

word was that the previous light festival in 2012 was such a huge success amassing more spectators than the 10-day summer festival. so this year they spread over 40 displays all over the city in a 5-km course and extended the celebration into 4 days. i cannot say how beautiful the 2012 festival was, but this one? definitely superb!

i love unconventional photobooths, haha.

dorobou training ground. train 'em while they're young!

reflections.

yay, bunny!

dora, stachuu?

apart from the main attractions there are also these random signs scattered all over. i made it my mission during night #2 to scout all of them out.

thanks, fred.

onegai, huhu.

dou iu imi kana?

yes. okay.

..and alice found the big, fluffy rabbits a few minutes later.

hahaha, this one's my favorite. dedicated to all fellow coffee fanatics.

omg.

simple and complicated.

dancing!

boop!

rares, we both follow the tech. of ic and microsystems course. found him doing the #selfIR and we ended up going through the  rest of the route together. good thing i saw someone i knew or else i'd have jumped on my bike and went home the moment snow started to fall. had i done that i wouldn't have seen this mobile in the snow which was really awesome! he's romanian, of dracula's blood. lels.

so this is how fielding is done by the enlightened :P

purty doodels!

the exact moment a neutral portal was captured for the resistance. go smurfs!
(and below: my rather pathetic attempt at reconstructing the book tower. ugh, weak!)

i'm so lucky to have witnessed this awesome event and may the upcoming light festivals be as beautiful!

[link to the rest of the unprocessed photos]

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paris 2014

click to video link :)

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nacht van de musea

trick or treatin' for information during the nacht van de universitaire musea.

ready for the night!

Plantentuin

extra extra large asparagus!

*ting! lightbulb!* look for me here in the tropical zone when winter gets unbearably cold haha.

Museum voor Dierkunde
there's something homey about zoology museums despite the extraordinary amount of dead bodies, bones, and detestable worms and insects. probably because iit's museum was very accessible to us as little kids and it's where we spent most of our time while waiting for our parents. there were two injured philippine eagles which was brought to the biology department for treatment one time and they built a massive cage spanning almost three stories for them in what is now the csm atrium. i've seen them a few times but one didn't make it and they had it stuffed up and put on permanent display in the museum. it's one of my favorite displays, the others being the cheetah, the huge pearl-making clam which is now long dead, the horse skeleton, and the sunfish.

anatomy of a lobster.

not sure if saying hi or wants to eat me,

baleen whale.

elephant.

zee camel en zee annoying hooman.

narwhal! haven't heard about these guys for ages!

Museum voor de Geschiedenis van de Wetenschappen

a collection of measuring and characterization instruments. i gotta say, old, analog devices, despite the lack of multi-functions and extremely limited resolution, looks waaaay cooler than the modern touch-screens and automatic machines. old devices are definitely the way to go when you want to capture the interest of young minds.

candies. because what is trick or treat without the sweets? haha.

germanium wafer.

measuring devices for crystallography.

x-ray diffraction patterns. and then i started thinking about fourier transforms >.<

silicon wafer.

kinder activities.

theorized the structure of aromatic rings.

ngano naay keyboard? haha.

analog GIF. say "plateau" and the first thing that comes to mind is, "ha, naay clase? which auditorium?" >.<

huwaaaw! i didn't know plateau also studied this first.

plateau's instruments for studying polarization and irradiance.

jozef plateau (1801-1883)

the famous blue led.

phosphors.

Etnografische Verzamelingen
not very fond of taking pictures of stuff enclosed in glass..but there's a lot of interesting stories behind each display. there's a necklace from a cannibal tribe where each bead represents how many persons they've killed. there's also a carving of the god, vanatu, from india on display. the point of the whole exhibition was to show different cultures as well as to show how migrations and colonization affects these cultures.

hoi, watcha doin'? haha.

Archeologisch Museum

i was expecting dinosaur bones, not pots and pans, bwahaha.

Museum voor de Geschiedenis van de Geneeskunde

..or what i'd like to call, exhibit of torture devices. look at these! without the doctors and friendly nurses they all look like medieval torture devices. eeech.

sinaunang prosthetics.

thank God for anesthesia, i wouldn't need to be strapped down and made to bear the pain while doctors do their stuff.

what does your baby put in his mouth? stuff doctors find in babies' stomachs.

eeeek. you want women to practice safe sex? show them un-romanticized videos of a woman at childbirth. like, the real, gory kind starting from the labor pains, to broken water bag, to slitting the vagina (T_T), to even more labor pains, and where you can feel the pain from the other side of the viewing screen. kids, sex leads to this. nya, manganak pa ka? :P

happy creepy halloween.

even the contraceptive displays look like torture devices >.<

Volkssterrenwacht Armand Pien

view of the "three" towers of gent (sint-baafs kathedral is darker than the night) from armand pien.

3000 kg telescope on top of the plateau. sooo pwetty, complete with the movable dome and everything :">

the maan. the thing everyone's looking at last night.

and finally, yes, i might have taken the opportunity to hack as many portals as the bus route passes. LEVEL 4! oh, yeah :D

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