Thursday, 24 May 2012
Monday, 7 May 2012
The end of the saga
Dear all,
Yesterday I didn't blog, becaus I was flying back from Manchester to Amsterdam.
However I first enjoyed most of my day at the Lego Show, were it became apparent that we would have a guiness world record certified measuring person for the mosaic. If you remember the logo's I have posted about earlier, I have had those signed by Megan, Mark, Alex and Lee, all Lego professionals, and gave them to Warren and Kitty and Sonja and Dirk as to thank them for all the wonderfull experiences. It has been really amazing helping out at afolcon and the Lego Show. I would like to thank everybody who has helped me to participate.
I arrived back in the Netherlands at 9 o'clock local time, which meant that my WisWex ended.
Yesterday I didn't blog, becaus I was flying back from Manchester to Amsterdam.
However I first enjoyed most of my day at the Lego Show, were it became apparent that we would have a guiness world record certified measuring person for the mosaic. If you remember the logo's I have posted about earlier, I have had those signed by Megan, Mark, Alex and Lee, all Lego professionals, and gave them to Warren and Kitty and Sonja and Dirk as to thank them for all the wonderfull experiences. It has been really amazing helping out at afolcon and the Lego Show. I would like to thank everybody who has helped me to participate.
I arrived back in the Netherlands at 9 o'clock local time, which meant that my WisWex ended.
Saturday, 5 May 2012
The Lego Show
Dear all,
Today was the first day that the Lego Show was actually open for the general public and we have had a lot of visitors. The day turned out to be a less stressful than I initially expected, because once everything was running there was not much more work to do, than to keep it running. The fist half of the day I was situated at the information desk and helped at a train display. The second half of the day I was in charge of the museum, which did however did not require full-time attention. So I bought the last few parts I needed for my MOC, which I designed yesterday using the bricks in the Legoland Discovery Center. The MOC is actually a Lego version of the The Lego Show logo, a lego man named Sid. Below I will upload some pictures of the logo and my model
The Legoland Discovery Center was extremely cool yesterday, all adults going on rides originally intended for children. Furthermore when one of the employees challenged one of the afols to build as high a tower as he could, within a couple of minutes the tower was (LIKE A UBER BAUS), so high that it nearly touched the ceiling of the building. It was therefore that the same employee was urging (or shouting at is probably more true to reality) us to put the tower down due to safety issues. Furthermore there was a workshop where the afols were told how to build a small model of a bee. One of the afols again viewed this as a challenge and started (LIKE A UBER BAUS) building a huge bee. I hereby imply that this bee was significantly bigger than the t
model!
Now jumping back to the present we also had another afol session today Signe Lonholdt, she works for the new Lego fan platform Rebrick. So she explained the working, purpose and fun of Rebrick. You can find Rebrick at rebrick.lego.com.
Tomorrow will be my last day here and I will take the a flight back to Amsterdam, but first I will enjoy another great day at The Lego Show and I will hopefully be able to upload pictures of some of the great MOC's at the show. For anybody that is still wondering weather of not to come to the show, it is absolutely worth it and amazing ....
Today was the first day that the Lego Show was actually open for the general public and we have had a lot of visitors. The day turned out to be a less stressful than I initially expected, because once everything was running there was not much more work to do, than to keep it running. The fist half of the day I was situated at the information desk and helped at a train display. The second half of the day I was in charge of the museum, which did however did not require full-time attention. So I bought the last few parts I needed for my MOC, which I designed yesterday using the bricks in the Legoland Discovery Center. The MOC is actually a Lego version of the The Lego Show logo, a lego man named Sid. Below I will upload some pictures of the logo and my model
The Legoland Discovery Center was extremely cool yesterday, all adults going on rides originally intended for children. Furthermore when one of the employees challenged one of the afols to build as high a tower as he could, within a couple of minutes the tower was (LIKE A UBER BAUS), so high that it nearly touched the ceiling of the building. It was therefore that the same employee was urging (or shouting at is probably more true to reality) us to put the tower down due to safety issues. Furthermore there was a workshop where the afols were told how to build a small model of a bee. One of the afols again viewed this as a challenge and started (LIKE A UBER BAUS) building a huge bee. I hereby imply that this bee was significantly bigger than the t
model!
Now jumping back to the present we also had another afol session today Signe Lonholdt, she works for the new Lego fan platform Rebrick. So she explained the working, purpose and fun of Rebrick. You can find Rebrick at rebrick.lego.com.
Tomorrow will be my last day here and I will take the a flight back to Amsterdam, but first I will enjoy another great day at The Lego Show and I will hopefully be able to upload pictures of some of the great MOC's at the show. For anybody that is still wondering weather of not to come to the show, it is absolutely worth it and amazing ....
Friday, 4 May 2012
The set
Dear all,
Today the setting up for tomorrow (the first day of the actual Lego Show) and the AFOLCON sessions continued. Kevin and me put up some more banners, I assembled the children's play tables and monitored the sound system during the sessions.
There was however just one main event the grand unveiling of the one of the preview sets that had not yet been shown to the public in real-life and was built by me a couple of days ago. This means that I am finally allowed to tell you all which model I have been building. Now I know the you are all really curious as to what this model is so i will probably tell you in a minute. Would you like to guess first? Perhaps that is a good idea. By the way the weather is really interesting isn't it. Have you ever done a multilingual-coldfrontstudy? No neither have I. I could also tell you what the set is right now. Or I could tell you some extremely interesting facts about floors, the most significant and scientifically interesting of these being that there is absolutely no interesting facts about floors. Floors are boring, just like goldfish actually. This of course raises the philosophical question weather all floors are equal to goldfish. However easy it may be to raise this question, finding the answer is rather difficult: You just call the plumber and build a huge stack of bricks on top of it. A connected issue is the bending of birds by Benjamin Bubbins, about which I would like to say the following:
A-well-a everybody's heard about the bird
B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word!
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a...
A-well-a everybody's heard about the bird
Bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody's talking about the bird!
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird...
Surfin' bird
Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb... [retching noises]... aaah!
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Oom-oom-oom-oom-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-oom-oom-oom
Oom-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-a-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, ooma-mow-mow
Papa-oom-oom-oom-oom-ooma-mow-mow
Oom-oom-oom-oom-ooma-mow-mow
Ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, ooma-mow-mow
Well don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word!
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Now enough nonsense, enjoy the french cheese.
So when I built this set I first sorted all the part by color of which you see a photograph below. Not that I am usually this organized, I am just a bit weird (Internal voice: "ahahaha, a BIT?"(Internal Internal voice: "well you shouldn't say that on a blog you fool!"))
Now dear OVER NINETHOUSAND little Lego bricks (actually 883 to be precise),
I order you to TRANSFORM!
Jup there it is, I am one of the few people on this planet to have already built a the new Lego Sopwith Camel, which will be on display at the Lego show. Two of the millions of reasons this set is "significantly awesome", is that first of all I already have the old historical plane series in my collection, The Kitty Hawk, Red Baron and the old Sopwith Camel.
One of the coolest features of the new Lego Sopwith Camel is that there is a fully operational control column. Which means that the control surfaces move as they do in a real plane if you put the stick forward/backward and/or from right to left. It was also revealed today that there will be a Lego Lord of the Rings video game and a mini Sopwith Camel. Yes you heard it correctly, there will be a Lego Lord of the Rings video game!!!!!!!!!
Below some more pictures of the Camel, just because ITS AWESOME........
Today the setting up for tomorrow (the first day of the actual Lego Show) and the AFOLCON sessions continued. Kevin and me put up some more banners, I assembled the children's play tables and monitored the sound system during the sessions.
There was however just one main event the grand unveiling of the one of the preview sets that had not yet been shown to the public in real-life and was built by me a couple of days ago. This means that I am finally allowed to tell you all which model I have been building. Now I know the you are all really curious as to what this model is so i will probably tell you in a minute. Would you like to guess first? Perhaps that is a good idea. By the way the weather is really interesting isn't it. Have you ever done a multilingual-coldfrontstudy? No neither have I. I could also tell you what the set is right now. Or I could tell you some extremely interesting facts about floors, the most significant and scientifically interesting of these being that there is absolutely no interesting facts about floors. Floors are boring, just like goldfish actually. This of course raises the philosophical question weather all floors are equal to goldfish. However easy it may be to raise this question, finding the answer is rather difficult: You just call the plumber and build a huge stack of bricks on top of it. A connected issue is the bending of birds by Benjamin Bubbins, about which I would like to say the following:
A-well-a everybody's heard about the bird
B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word!
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a...
A-well-a everybody's heard about the bird
Bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody's talking about the bird!
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
A-well-a bird...
Surfin' bird
Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb... [retching noises]... aaah!
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Oom-oom-oom-oom-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-oom-oom-oom
Oom-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-a-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, ooma-mow-mow
Papa-oom-oom-oom-oom-ooma-mow-mow
Oom-oom-oom-oom-ooma-mow-mow
Ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, ooma-mow-mow
Well don't you know about the bird?
Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word!
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird's the word
Papa-ooma-mow-mow, papa-ooma-mow-mow
Now enough nonsense, enjoy the french cheese.
So when I built this set I first sorted all the part by color of which you see a photograph below. Not that I am usually this organized, I am just a bit weird (Internal voice: "ahahaha, a BIT?"(Internal Internal voice: "well you shouldn't say that on a blog you fool!"))
Now dear OVER NINETHOUSAND little Lego bricks (actually 883 to be precise),
I order you to TRANSFORM!
One of the coolest features of the new Lego Sopwith Camel is that there is a fully operational control column. Which means that the control surfaces move as they do in a real plane if you put the stick forward/backward and/or from right to left. It was also revealed today that there will be a Lego Lord of the Rings video game and a mini Sopwith Camel. Yes you heard it correctly, there will be a Lego Lord of the Rings video game!!!!!!!!!
Below some more pictures of the Camel, just because ITS AWESOME........
Thursday, 3 May 2012
The first day of AFOLCON
Dear all,
Today I got the spare laptop working, which means I won't be using Kitty's Mcbook (: anymore. Not that there was anything wrong with the machine, it's just that me and digital aples aren't the best combination.
The spare laptop, which I am using right now was however a rather old one, so 3 attempts and one reboot later I had finally reached google.com.
This morning the first AFOLCON sessions started, the form is simple: about 100 grownups, 1 speaker (Lego designer, Lego official). Especially the keynote session by Matt Nipper a senior Lego official, was extremely interesting, motivating, authentic and inspirational. During this session I discovered that, behind the scenes Lego is experimenting with bioplastics from wood and lactic acid, which I find extremely exciting! When I asked when we may expect the first bioplastic-bricks to appear, he explained that the long term durability of the materials still needed investigation and that further development would thus take quite some time, but he reassured me by saying "As soon as we are sure, we will put it on the market".
The session by Mark Stafford (AN ACTUAL LEGO DESIGENER!) about the design process for the second year of the Ninjago series was also very interesting. He told us at the end of the session that he thought Ninjago was extremely cool, but that the new theme he was working on for next year was absolutely mind-blowing. Ofcourse he wasn't allowed to tell us anything and as if to rub in that fact he was wearing a shirt on which a huge question-mark and "2013" were printed In between the sessions the setting-up for the Lego show continued, however today almost all the exhibitors(most of the AFOLCON attendees) were setting-up as well. I spent most of my time trying to assemble huge frames and putting huge Lego banners on them, together with Kevin one of the volunteers.
Furthermore the (NOT the olympic) stadium was assembled, on which Dirk and I earlier did some urgently needed repair work. Below I have posted a picture of me and Mark Stafford Together and a picture of the stadium.
Tomorrow there will be a half a page advertisment in The Sun, furthermore the Lego show will be a topic on Key103 radio for the full story see:http://www.key103.co.uk/charity/Legoshow/ . Furthermore the AFOLCON sessions will continue and last but absolutely not least the preview sets (incl. Lord of the Rings) will be revealed.....
Today I got the spare laptop working, which means I won't be using Kitty's Mcbook (: anymore. Not that there was anything wrong with the machine, it's just that me and digital aples aren't the best combination.
The spare laptop, which I am using right now was however a rather old one, so 3 attempts and one reboot later I had finally reached google.com.
This morning the first AFOLCON sessions started, the form is simple: about 100 grownups, 1 speaker (Lego designer, Lego official). Especially the keynote session by Matt Nipper a senior Lego official, was extremely interesting, motivating, authentic and inspirational. During this session I discovered that, behind the scenes Lego is experimenting with bioplastics from wood and lactic acid, which I find extremely exciting! When I asked when we may expect the first bioplastic-bricks to appear, he explained that the long term durability of the materials still needed investigation and that further development would thus take quite some time, but he reassured me by saying "As soon as we are sure, we will put it on the market".
The session by Mark Stafford (AN ACTUAL LEGO DESIGENER!) about the design process for the second year of the Ninjago series was also very interesting. He told us at the end of the session that he thought Ninjago was extremely cool, but that the new theme he was working on for next year was absolutely mind-blowing. Ofcourse he wasn't allowed to tell us anything and as if to rub in that fact he was wearing a shirt on which a huge question-mark and "2013" were printed In between the sessions the setting-up for the Lego show continued, however today almost all the exhibitors(most of the AFOLCON attendees) were setting-up as well. I spent most of my time trying to assemble huge frames and putting huge Lego banners on them, together with Kevin one of the volunteers.
Furthermore the (NOT the olympic) stadium was assembled, on which Dirk and I earlier did some urgently needed repair work. Below I have posted a picture of me and Mark Stafford Together and a picture of the stadium.
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
In the venue
Dear all,
Today the all the necessary things for the event arrived at Event City: lots of models, tv-screens, computers, printers, banners, WiFi accesspoint, even more models, a stadium (which is NOT the Olympic stadium) and an endless number of other important things. So the first thing we did when we were able to enter the venue was to unload all these things. However during the delivery some of the boxes in the pods fell onto a part of the stadium, which was hereby, as you can easily imagine, severely damaged. Therefore Dirk and me spent a large part of the morning reconstructing a part of the stadium. The process of doing so was sometimes rather frustrating, however the end result was extremely rewarding, the stadium looked fabulous. Next we continued to unload the pods and set up the office, from which I am actually blogging right now.
After lunch work started on the conference room for the AFOLCON. While Warren and Kitty worked on the sound- and display-system. Meanwhile Dirk and me struggled to up a wall made out of Lego banners. Warren was experiencing trouble connecting with a webcam, which will be streaming during the show. It turned out that the ethernet cable was not connected to Warrens PC, however this still did not fix the problem. Next we distributed all the stuff across the entire hall and marked all the different areas on the floor using gaffer-tape. Using the left over tape I constructed a ball about the size of a tennis ball, however the ball was rather hard, which was discovered by Warren when he tried to head it.
I have posted some pictures, first some of the venue at the end of today. Next a picture of one of the most impressive Olly's out of Dirks impressive collection, a chrome plated one.......
Today the all the necessary things for the event arrived at Event City: lots of models, tv-screens, computers, printers, banners, WiFi accesspoint, even more models, a stadium (which is NOT the Olympic stadium) and an endless number of other important things. So the first thing we did when we were able to enter the venue was to unload all these things. However during the delivery some of the boxes in the pods fell onto a part of the stadium, which was hereby, as you can easily imagine, severely damaged. Therefore Dirk and me spent a large part of the morning reconstructing a part of the stadium. The process of doing so was sometimes rather frustrating, however the end result was extremely rewarding, the stadium looked fabulous. Next we continued to unload the pods and set up the office, from which I am actually blogging right now.
After lunch work started on the conference room for the AFOLCON. While Warren and Kitty worked on the sound- and display-system. Meanwhile Dirk and me struggled to up a wall made out of Lego banners. Warren was experiencing trouble connecting with a webcam, which will be streaming during the show. It turned out that the ethernet cable was not connected to Warrens PC, however this still did not fix the problem. Next we distributed all the stuff across the entire hall and marked all the different areas on the floor using gaffer-tape. Using the left over tape I constructed a ball about the size of a tennis ball, however the ball was rather hard, which was discovered by Warren when he tried to head it.
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
Building the biggest (and the most awesome)
Dear all,
Today I woke up in the Etap Hotel in Manchester, here I had breakfast. Then I went over to the Copthorne hotel (also in Manchester), where I met the other staff members of The Lego Show.
Next we split up into two groups, Dirk and Kitty went to the Legoland experience center (in the Trafford center) in order to provide minifigs of three radio hosts which will complete a part of our record breaking mosaic, Warren, Sonja and me went to pick up some additional stuff for the show. We also visited the Lego UK building where all the in-store displays are stored.
While driving to and from we discovered that the satnav on Warren's phone was experiencing gender issues, for it was using both a female and a male voice. Furthermore we bought some supplies for during the event, it must however be noted here that only 1/3 of all the sweets we bought will actually be consumed at the show, for the rest is now residing on a Marko parking lot .
When we all arrived back at the hotel, I discovered that Dirk and Kitty had also created an entire radio station as well as the minifigs, next we started building the exclusive preview sets!
Including the Lord of the Rings sets and one set which was "significantly awesome" .
This was a considerable honor! Sonja did however found out by experiment that the largest Lord of the Rings set "The battle of Helm's Deep" takes several hours to build and she has still not yet manged to complete this epic build. This is mainly due to the dense building style which is reflected in the entire Lord of the Rings series, this makes the sets look solid and extremely detailed. In the afternoon Warren and Dirk had to pick up and drop of some things and they, I quote "Got lost loads and loads of times in the van", which I assume may have caused some frustration. During dinner we discussed the entire run-book of the show, so that the entire organization may function as a well-oiled machine.
Tomorrow we will be handling deliveries inside the Event City venue, hopefully we will also be able to start to setting up stuff for the show....
Above a picture of the impressive radio studio, for Key 103 on friday.
Today I woke up in the Etap Hotel in Manchester, here I had breakfast. Then I went over to the Copthorne hotel (also in Manchester), where I met the other staff members of The Lego Show.
Next we split up into two groups, Dirk and Kitty went to the Legoland experience center (in the Trafford center) in order to provide minifigs of three radio hosts which will complete a part of our record breaking mosaic, Warren, Sonja and me went to pick up some additional stuff for the show. We also visited the Lego UK building where all the in-store displays are stored.
While driving to and from we discovered that the satnav on Warren's phone was experiencing gender issues, for it was using both a female and a male voice. Furthermore we bought some supplies for during the event, it must however be noted here that only 1/3 of all the sweets we bought will actually be consumed at the show, for the rest is now residing on a Marko parking lot .
When we all arrived back at the hotel, I discovered that Dirk and Kitty had also created an entire radio station as well as the minifigs, next we started building the exclusive preview sets!
Including the Lord of the Rings sets and one set which was "significantly awesome" .
This was a considerable honor! Sonja did however found out by experiment that the largest Lord of the Rings set "The battle of Helm's Deep" takes several hours to build and she has still not yet manged to complete this epic build. This is mainly due to the dense building style which is reflected in the entire Lord of the Rings series, this makes the sets look solid and extremely detailed. In the afternoon Warren and Dirk had to pick up and drop of some things and they, I quote "Got lost loads and loads of times in the van", which I assume may have caused some frustration. During dinner we discussed the entire run-book of the show, so that the entire organization may function as a well-oiled machine.
Tomorrow we will be handling deliveries inside the Event City venue, hopefully we will also be able to start to setting up stuff for the show....
Monday, 30 April 2012
The official start of the WisWex!
Dear all,
Today I woke up in Centerparcs, packed my stuff and hopped on the train at Ely station.
The only day the English weather decides to be good, I am stuck on a train to Manchester for 3.5 hours!
Near the end of the ride the train got so hot it was probably possible to successfully cultivate tropical plants inside it. When I arrived in Manchester I was met by Dirk, who dropped my off at my hotel.
Then I met Sonja, Warren and Kitty in the lobby of the Copthorne Hotel.
Here we had a little meeting, during which I was officially named "staff" of the Lego show. We also spoke about all the jobs that still need doing in the days leading up to the event and on the event itself.
Furthermore we discussed all the exclusive previews of new sets during the show, for anybody who hasn't bought tickets yet, these previews are definately worth it!
Next we visited the Trafford centre and Event City. I have never visited Manchester before,
I was amazed at the huge neoclassical bombastic building that is the Trafford centre. Next we enjoyed all lovely meal, while watching a huge television screen and waiting for our The Lego Show commercial to show on it. For anybody who hasn't seen it you should look at it on Youtube: http://www.thelegoshow.com/our-tv-ads. The commercial is rather funny and contains a rather pointless bit of stop-motion-animation including a steak shooting out of someones head....
Today I woke up in Centerparcs, packed my stuff and hopped on the train at Ely station.
The only day the English weather decides to be good, I am stuck on a train to Manchester for 3.5 hours!
Near the end of the ride the train got so hot it was probably possible to successfully cultivate tropical plants inside it. When I arrived in Manchester I was met by Dirk, who dropped my off at my hotel.
Then I met Sonja, Warren and Kitty in the lobby of the Copthorne Hotel.
Here we had a little meeting, during which I was officially named "staff" of the Lego show. We also spoke about all the jobs that still need doing in the days leading up to the event and on the event itself.
Furthermore we discussed all the exclusive previews of new sets during the show, for anybody who hasn't bought tickets yet, these previews are definately worth it!
Next we visited the Trafford centre and Event City. I have never visited Manchester before,
I was amazed at the huge neoclassical bombastic building that is the Trafford centre. Next we enjoyed all lovely meal, while watching a huge television screen and waiting for our The Lego Show commercial to show on it. For anybody who hasn't seen it you should look at it on Youtube: http://www.thelegoshow.com/our-tv-ads. The commercial is rather funny and contains a rather pointless bit of stop-motion-animation including a steak shooting out of someones head....
Sunday, 29 April 2012
Elveden Forrest
Dear all,
Yesterday I woke up early on a boat, I was woken by a loud "don't worry be happy" on the intercom.
The effect of this was that this song was stuck in the head of every individual passenger (over one thousand!) on the boat, which resulted in a whisthling concert. Then we drove to the centerparcs village located in the elveden forrest. While we were waling throug the parc we directly noticed an unusually large number of squirrels, especially arround the litter bins. Below I added a picture of one of these squirrels, not that this photo serves any particulair purpose, it's just that squirreles are incredibly cute, especially when being fed by me. When
we arrived at the little cottage, I did the same thing everybody does: look in all the cupboards.
I was amazed when I found sitting in one of these cupboards a packet of chocolate sprinkels (hagelslag).
Unfortunatly this amazement did not last, when it turned out my dad had already started unpacking our stuff. Furthermore I also found out, that althoug the dutch political party CDA may not be populair with the dutch people, they are succesfull on a whole different level. For all the electrial apliences in our cottage had apparently been produced by them (see picture below). Later that evening we met up with my old exhange family and we had a lovley dinner with them.
However I have probably had one of weirdest toilet experiences in my life. It started when the restaurant had decided to advertise food on the toilet door, which I thik is a little weird but also convenient in a way. " As soon as you are empty you can start thinking about your next fill up" . Then when I opened the toilet door I was greeted by a loud noise, as if an airplane engine had just started right next to me, which scared my socks of! Several seconds later I found out that I had accidentally started one the blowdriers. After enjoying this lovley meal we went home and went to bed.
*update I have posted the pictures, the deer turned out to be muntjack-deer
Friday, 27 April 2012
The journey begins
Dear all,
Today started early, when I left school together with an coach filled with first graders (avec mon petit frere), which I was supposed to supervise during their school trip to Blijdorp zoo in Rotterdam. When the students had all set off to complete their assignments about all the different zoo animals, the supervisors decided to enjoy a cup of coffee/tea. Luckily when some of the supervisors that did not posses any background in the biological sciences, tried to crush the small black ants that had started to walk over the table, this was prevented by the biologists. This made a couple of small worker-ants extremely happy. When the caffiene had hit everybody's system the supervisors set of to explore the zoo and ,when necesarry, help the students with their assignments. First we all enjoyed watching a young polarbear try to eat people under water, unfortunatly for this polarbear there was thick layer of glass preventing him from doing so. This once again established the fact that polarbears do not seem to posses complex reasoning and observational abilities. While walking through the zoo we were hit by an extremely nasty odor, originating from a rather teritorial maned wolf. Next we were informed by a little sign that this smell had actually been the cause of a search warrant being issued by the police to look signs of hemp cultivation, however as stated before this smell was originating from the maned wolf.
When all the first graders left the zoo, I set out to the Hook of Holland where I boarded the rather big, or to be more precise huge, or to be more precise gigantious Stena Britannica, the ferry on which I currently reside. The ship has just started to sail to Harwich and will arrive there at 5:30 (Greenwich time zone) tomorrow morning. I will thus have to sleep on the ship, there is just one question remaining, why dear National Geograpic magazine did you just publish a magnificient issue of your marvelous magzine containing a feature article on the Titanic disaster....
Today started early, when I left school together with an coach filled with first graders (avec mon petit frere), which I was supposed to supervise during their school trip to Blijdorp zoo in Rotterdam. When the students had all set off to complete their assignments about all the different zoo animals, the supervisors decided to enjoy a cup of coffee/tea. Luckily when some of the supervisors that did not posses any background in the biological sciences, tried to crush the small black ants that had started to walk over the table, this was prevented by the biologists. This made a couple of small worker-ants extremely happy. When the caffiene had hit everybody's system the supervisors set of to explore the zoo and ,when necesarry, help the students with their assignments. First we all enjoyed watching a young polarbear try to eat people under water, unfortunatly for this polarbear there was thick layer of glass preventing him from doing so. This once again established the fact that polarbears do not seem to posses complex reasoning and observational abilities. While walking through the zoo we were hit by an extremely nasty odor, originating from a rather teritorial maned wolf. Next we were informed by a little sign that this smell had actually been the cause of a search warrant being issued by the police to look signs of hemp cultivation, however as stated before this smell was originating from the maned wolf.
When all the first graders left the zoo, I set out to the Hook of Holland where I boarded the rather big, or to be more precise huge, or to be more precise gigantious Stena Britannica, the ferry on which I currently reside. The ship has just started to sail to Harwich and will arrive there at 5:30 (Greenwich time zone) tomorrow morning. I will thus have to sleep on the ship, there is just one question remaining, why dear National Geograpic magazine did you just publish a magnificient issue of your marvelous magzine containing a feature article on the Titanic disaster....
Wednesday, 25 April 2012
Introduction
Dear all,
This most magnificient (if I may say so) page you are on is my blog for the
WISWEX project, for which I will be volunteering at The Lego Show/AFOLCON in Manchester.
On this blog I will post updates every day during my WISWEX, I sincerely hope you and my future me will all enjoy reading about my endeavours that are yet to come...
This most magnificient (if I may say so) page you are on is my blog for the
WISWEX project, for which I will be volunteering at The Lego Show/AFOLCON in Manchester.
On this blog I will post updates every day during my WISWEX, I sincerely hope you and my future me will all enjoy reading about my endeavours that are yet to come...
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