Leersum (December)
Boxing Day at my parents’. Cooked Indonesian meal.

Paris (December)
It’s hard to pick favourites in a year of many highs, but I did like this one a lot. A bit of family. A lot of G. Everything was small and intimate. Saw ‘Handsomest Drowned Man’ again and it worked so much better than in Brighton.

London (November)
Saw Scott Walker’s Drifting and Tilting twice. Lovely time with Hg, Pixeldiva, B. and R. Traveled by Eurolines coach. Really, surprisingly comfortable. And cheap.

Galway (October)
Didn’t like staying in a hostel (hell very definitely being other people), but other than that it was good to get away and I think I shot my best picture of 2008.

Dublin (October)
The Dublin/Galway trip was my ‘summer holiday’. It was freezing, of course, but sunny anyway when the rest of Europe was awash with rain. Had an amazing time in Killiney filming G. and listening to his new songs.

Antwerp (August)
Unplanned trip to compensate for not getting the Lowlands festival photo gig I’d been promised. Bad karma… nearly got my head kicked in taking pictures in this Belgian city. And that’s no joke.

London (July)
Rogue’s Gallery at the Barbican. Only got photo access to the soundcheck. Light was bad, vibe a little dull, but the gig was good. Really enjoyed staying around Brick Lane. Quiet lunch with G. at morose Italian place.

Dublin (July)
Rogue’s Gallery in the Dublin Docklands. Fa-bu-lous experience. Great access all day, fab to hang with Davey, Gugs and G., lovely vibe in the photo pit, nearly killed myself shooting with the 70-200 for four hours.

Paris (July)
Quick trip to see the deafening My Bloody Valentine. Loved it.

Paris (May)
Became my nephew Louis Gustave’s godmother. Pretended to be Catholic. Everything in French of course. Lovely, but strenous.

Brighton (May)
Brighton was relaxed, just enjoying sea, sand and sun. The gig (‘The Handsomest Man in the World’) was unremarkable.

London (May)
Rather fraught and confused start as I was given the wrong medication hours before my flight and I felt poorly and disoriented. Fire alarm at Gatwick on my return.

Cologne (April)
Birthday trip. Didn’t enjoy this much. Party town, stag nights, large groups. No fun on your own. Crap weather too.

Dublin (Feb/Mar)
Sick as a dog, but I went anyway and coughed and sneezed and dripped through a Marc Almond gig (meeting Gini Ball backstage) and lovely dinner with G. at Eden. Also… Bambi!

Dublin (Jan)
No particular reason. Scouted some photo locations. Saw 30 seconds from Mars on a whim.

I don’t think I will be travelling quite this often in 2009.

I didn’t see a lot of gigs, but Leonard Cohen, Elbow, dEUS, My Bloody Valentine, Scott Walker’s Drifting and Tilting and the Rogue’s Gallery shows were very memorable. While many reviewers dwelt upon the alleged darkness of Walker’s Drifting and Tilting, the one thing I took away from the show was its wicked humour.

Musically often impenetrable, these lighter moments were brought to the fore by Walker and show director Ann-Christin Rommen’s staging. Afterwards, Walker’s albums, Drift, and Tilt, didn’t seem quite as ‘difficult’ to deal with and the show stopping ‘Patriot’ became my most played track of the year’s final three months.

Musically I mostly stuck to old favourites, but I enjoyed newcomers Duffy, Rachel Unthank, Sam Sparro, The Aftermath, and welcomed the return of Tricky and Grace Jones. In the last few months of the year, I mostly craved Hi-NRG beats. Hercules & Love Affair, Sparro, The Potbelleez, Ne-Yo and Robyn all scratched that particular itch. I’m not an album listener anymore, my iTunes/iPod is always set to ‘shuffle’, but judging from my iTunes and Last.FM stats, Duffy’s Rockferry was my favourite, or at least the most played.

I spend more time watching TV-series than I do listening to music and genre shows came out on top this year: Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, The Sarah Connor Chronicles were unmissable. Comedy came second, with 30 Rock and The Office constant features on my list of weekly downloads. My favourite drama series of the last two seasons is still the awesome Friday Night Lights.

I’ll spare you the full list of the shows that I watch, it is endless. I think watching TV-series (and following some of its complex stories) has replaced watching films and reading books for me. I don’t do either much anymore. In fact I haven’t read a book in years, certainly not since I stopped commuting. I find most (Hollywood) movies disappointing and have not made an effort checking out arthouse flicks as I would have in the past. Films I did enjoy this year included Burn after reading (One of the few Coen Brothers films I liked), Iron Man (I’ll watch anything with Robert Downey Jr), Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (same goes for Philip Seymour Hoffman) , and In Bruges.

On a personal level, while the economy plummeted, my health improved steadily and I lost quite a bit of weight and dropped from a size 18 to 12. To compensate for no longer being able to tuck into Chinese roast pork and other such delicacies, I picked up a serious on- and offline shopping habit, partly necessary as I had to replace my wardrobe, partly pure indulgence. (Six pairs of new shoes? Really?) Consequently I rekindled an interest in fashion and started reading fashion magazines and websites.

I finally got a job that seems to agree with me, in a place where I can learn things. I made a bit more money, spent it even more. I travelled a lot. Four great trips to Ireland, three to the UK, three to Paris and two trips to Cologne and Antwerp.

I’ll remember walking along the Salthill promenade in Galway, hanging out with Ben in Coffee @ Whitecross Street, becoming my nephew’s godparent in the Eglise de la Trinité, sitting in a park in Brighton with Stuart, looking for chickens in Gav’s garden in Killiney and, of all the time I spent with him this year, our mad dinner in that dingy cellar in L’Ecurie in Paris.

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In 2009 I hope to continue doing well in my job, which is going to change slightly as our project moves out from development to production. I’ll have to travel less, because I really can’t afford what I did last year. I need to pick up the camera again, didn’t do enough of that in 2008. I intend to stick to my food regimen, drop another stone or so and hopefully be taken off even more of my medication.

U2 is releasing a new album and will be touring, so that’s going to create a bit of work over at u2log.com, even if I don’t know why I’m still doing that. Whedonesque.com will enjoy a traffic spike as Joss Whedon’s new series Dollhouse will start airing on Fox on February 13. But there are other things afoot on Planet Prol that eclipse Whedon (easily – I’ve kind of lost interest, really) or U2 (just as easily) which are going to be as time consuming as they will be rewarding. I can’t wait to tell you more about that.

Engage! So say we all!

Delighted to find Google’s Paris street view. Memorised the way from my hotel to the venue (Centre Culturel Irlandais) using this application.

Morning, beautiful, originally uploaded by Caroline.

Although my hotel on Osborne Street in London gets bad reviews on travel sites, I didn’t have a problem with it at all. Yes it’s a little run down and I’m sure some people may not find the area attractive. But I like Brick Lane with its vintage clothing shops, cool record store (Rough Trade), Bangla Deshi restaurants, ‘beigel’ bakeries and photo opportunities. Plus some excellent coffee at Coffee@.

Some photos taken in the Tower Hamlets area.

If I ever go again, I’ll skip Nice. I should have remembered that from 2004. I don’t really like the place very much. I could have spent a lot more time in Marseille, somewhere I feel quite at home. I wish I had. I could have spent more time relaxing too.

It wasn’t until the final days that I started to be not so stressed. Maybe I was a little too active. Up at the crack of dawn to take pictures. Walking everywhere, even if the locals said where I was going was too far to walk. It never was.

I’ll remember the stunning Cocteau church in Villefranche and the evening boat trip off the coast of Marseille where, for a short while, I befriended a Parisian English-teacher who said ‘actually’ every other sentence. The teacher, the  Polish lecturer with the weirdest speech impediment – imagine the Welsh LL-sound, every other word – and I drank our complimentary wine while the sun set slowly behind the Frioul Islands.

Perhaps the best part was the 1st class train ride back to Paris and from there to Brussels. Will absolutely choose to do that again over flying, if time permits. Trains are good.

But now I have started my new job. I am soaking in a new environment and new tasks to do. It doesn’t quite feel like I have a shorter commute just yet, the extra hours sleep are needed for my brain and body to recover.

It looks like I’ll want to be in Dublin about three weeks from now, it’s that time of year again. I haven’t got the date yet, but unless it’s on a weekend, I’ve no chance of going. I’ll be there in spirit.

In France I woke up early most mornings, sometimes before dawn. I’d break fast soberly with some french bread and a few bites of Comte cheese, or a little bit of yoghurt. By noon, I would have been out walking and taking pictures for four hours or more. After lunch, I would pick another part of town to explore. I’d walk around till dinner time, feed myself, chill out a bit and be in bed before 10pm.

I do everything arseways.

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From there I have two options. Go straight on to Amsterdam, which is another three hour trip, or stay over in Brussels, and the next day go photo hunting and have lunch at Scheltema before catching the train back home.

… can’t seem to make up my mind.

Did you see what I did there? Embedded a Google Map.

Ma Nolan’s [6] – Right in the heart of the ‘Old Town’ and next to the opera, Ma Nolan’s has everything you would expect from an Irish pub and more. Live music every night, major sporting events on 4 screens, really good food and very friendly staff. This place is a must.

Why anyone would want to go to an Irish pub outside of Ireland in the first place I find less and less easy to understand as I grow older, but really… four screens of sporting events?

Thanks, I think I’ll pass.

A Flemish waiter and customer discuss the rowdy Brits in the square. ‘I thought the Dutch were loud, sir, but the English, they are worse, eh?’

The Filipino barman in the hotel lounge starts talking to me simply because he can see I am ‘Asian’. An ex-policeman, he isn’t proud of his former employers and corruption in general. Glad to be making an earnest living, aiming for citizenship in four years time. Very American dream-ish. But in Belgium. Says he: ‘You were lucky to be born here.’ I am?

Young Englishman on stag night sticks head around the corner to tell us, restaurant guests, to go ahead and hurl abuse at the Brits at the other tables. Followed by older Englishman who says: ‘That’s not my son.’

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Long, rambling and mostly unintelligible monologue by James Hong look-a-like, trying to get me to eat in his recently opened restaurant: ‘seats 120′ and ‘from Hong Kong’ is just about all I understood of his broken Flemish.

A 12-minute film by Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken at the Photo Museum. Shot, by himself, during the final stages of his illness, he prepares to say goodbye to the viewers. He has become too weak to work: ‘Be well, all of you. Be strong. Do your best. Show who you are. Bye.’