Hello everyone,

I should already be in bed by now, but I still have a few things I want to write down... This is probably gonna be another late night. But since I'm a bit short on time at the moment, I'd have no other choice but to do it right here and now.
 Because those of you who still remember my last update would know what I'm talking about: my time here in Hawera is almost up already! Can you believe it? Because I sure can't. Less than 900 left, here in New Zealand. Tomorrow will be my last day of internship, leaving me with a few hours to clean up my caravan and pack my stuff for my upcoming trip, and then it's off to Wellington that very next morning! Where the fun really begins... I'll be celebrating my freedom with the Kings of Leon, and things will only get better from there on... I can't. fuckin'. wait. I'm actually getting a bit nervous, I didn't think I would be! I haven't felt this nervous since I got on my plane here. ;) Nonetheless, I think I'm really gonna miss this place, and this family...

But let's not get too far ahead of myself. I'll start off with wishing everyone back home a fantastic 2008.
I hope your New Year's Eve was at least as great as mine! Although I kinda doubt it - as mine was pretty hard to surpass ;) Seriously, I would not be exaggerating if I told you that this one has been the very best that I've ever witnessed! Well maybe not "ever", just until now - I still hope to be able to surpass this one, at some point in my life ;) I won't write down such a huge detailed review of the entire festival like I did with my first Lowlands or Pinkpop, but I really need to write down some of the bigger things that happened; I think it's safe to say that I'll never forget it.

The first thing that would need explaining is that the actual New Year's Eve festival, Rhythm & Vines, only lasted 24 hours. 12pm to 12pm. The surrounding campsite however, opened on the 27th and didn't close until the 2nd of January. Meaning I've been up in Gisborne for exactly a week's time. And what a week that's been!
 Now, Gisborne is New Zealand's most Eastern city and with that, it's one of the first cities in the world to see the sunrise. On top of that, it also sees the most sunlight of the whole country. What better place to celebrate the New Year? I was one of the first people in the world to enter 2008 this year! And if I was to go down to Hawaiï for next year's New Year's Eve, my 2008 would have lasted exactly 366 days - a day longer... Quite a funny thought, isn't it. Could even reach 367 in a leap year ;)

Anyway... The whole trip just started off perfectly. I was gonna be spending my first night in Taupo, because 340km is quite a distance to be traveling in one day. I'd booked to go parasailing that afternoon and was quite looking forward to this, but I'm afraid this got cancelled due to the weather... Quite a shame really, because the weather really did look quite good! ...If it wasn't for that big hailstorm that followed. :x A bit of a disappointment, but this was fully compensated in the evening! I got to see the Black Seeds yet again! I've already seen them twice, but they still managed to blow me away yet again! AMAZING show! This was the first of their New Years tour, and with this, I was also one of the first to hear some of their new songs. GREAT stuff, the guys back home would've loved it..
 I met a few fellow-Europeans at this gig who'd never even heard of the Black Seeds, but I was proud to tell'm I'd already seen them twice and that they were in for quite a surprise... I actually felt proud of "my guys". They absolutely loved it.
 But here's the best part!! After the gig I managed to work my way backstage and had a good word with Daniel and the rest of the whole band, do you believe that?! :D Even shared a pipe with them all. I had a blast... They really seemed to appreciate my presence there that night, and even let me in on a little inside information: they're coming back to Amsterdam this year! Hahaaa :D
 So yeah, guys? If you're reading this; we're going!!

A great start of a great week... That next day I took the bus to Rotorua, spent about 2 hours there and had my lunch in a tree in the park (yes Hannes, in a tree!). Was quite funny too, some Dutch people walked and one of them goes: "Ey kijk, 'zit een gast in die boom" - "Wat?" - " 'Gast zit in een boom!". Letterlijk wat ze zeiden! :P Keken wel even vreemd op toen ik reageerde "En lekker dat't zit!". Lachen man.
 From there on, it was on to Gisborne. The bus was already packed with other Rhythm&Vines-attendees, which made for a great atmosphere in the bus. 3 hours later we arrived at our destination and I already made my first festival-buddies. Me and two girls I met on the bus worked our way to the main campsite, but these girls were real stereotypical women: terrible sense of direction and WAY overpacked! Helped them out with both of these issues but they were on a different campsite... Ow well!

After that, I went to my own campsite, set up my tent, and moved right on to the festival area, where the Opening Ceremony was taking place! I was quite eager to try out my newfound photography-knowledge to get some good concert-shots. And I did, but... Well, one the most important things I've learned about photography, is that experience comes first. I don't want to let those photo's cost me my experience of the gigs, y'know? Or whatever you're shooting - enjoy it first, photo's come afterwards. I've already decided that I'm not gonna be taking any photo's of bands that I really like. Even when you leave the camera in your backpack - you feel... Almost handicapped! You take up almost twice as much space with that thing on your back, and you can forget jumping!
 I always see this certain friend of mine taking photo's at many of the same gigs where I go to. Cosmo Vloedbeld. My respect for this man has doubled, ever since I tried concert photography. Especially when you're in a jumping, moshing, crowd-surfing or beer-throwing crowd... It's a nightmare!

With this in mind, I decided to "evacuate" my camera, halfway throughout the concert. Took it back to my tent, dropped it off, and as I was about to head back, I noticed my neighbors were playing Queens of the Stone Age! So I thought, what the heck, why not join them for a few minutes? And I'm so glad I did, they turned out to be a great bunch of guys. Quite generous with their beer that night, we really had a great time. I spent the rest of my whole week with these guys and they kindof reminded me of my guys back home, actually! Except for one of them, he just kept reminding me of "Billy the Kid" from The Green Mile. You know who I'm talking about! He talked almost the exact same way, especially when he was drunk :P Which happened to be the case on more than one occasion.
"Barbecuuueee! Me and yoouu. Stinky pinkyy, pew pew peeww..."
 On the second day I mostly spend the day getting acquainted with everyone around. By the end of the day, half the bloody campsite knew me as "Jesus" or "André" (André the Giant). Oh, and "Lion Man" by some other group, because of my manes ;) I was a bit hesitant about going to a multi-day festival on my own, but I think that it was exactly this, that made this whole festival for me. If I'd gone with anyone I knew, then I probably would've stuck with them most of the time, but... No, being on my own really made it a completely different experience - in the best way possible!

The third day was almost even better than Rhythm&Vines itself... So many different experiences, met so many different kinds of people, in a city I've never been before, on the other side of the world. I had a good chat with some guys who turned out to be the security for the festivals over breakfast, then headed off to the beach and on to the city where I jumped off the railway bridge into the bright blue river. No better way to wake up in the morning. Dried up in the sun for an hour and followed the rails to a restaurant next to the harbour where I enjoyed a wonderful blueberry-banana-muffin with a banana smoothie on the patio overlooking the harbor while they were playing Jack Johnson on the speakers. Great summer music bringing up a few memories. After that I went up the hill just on the edge of the city, with an amazing view over the ocean and the city...
 On my way back to the campsite, I followed the rails back to the beach past a hotel when I heard someone going "Hey sexeeeyyy!" from one of the balconies. "You got any juices you wanna put in us?!". I look up to where the sound is coming from and two girls on a balcony staring back at me. "Excúse me?!" I reply, surprised and confused.
"You wanna come up here?"
I couldn't believe my ears..! What the hell?! Most guys reading this right now would declare me insane for this, but...
"Tchah! Sorry, I don't think so.." I said, as I kept on walking.
I could barely finish that sentence or the other one already went "We're on room 308!".
"Look, why don't you go back inside, huh?"
"Why don't you go inside?"
(...WHAT?! XD)
"...Sorry, I'm just not like that okay? Just keep looking for someone a bit more shallow to pass by"
"There's four of us!" the second one persisted. I just waved my hand without turning around, following the railroad tracks. Confused... What the hell just happened?

It really got me thinking though... Most guys would never understand what the hell was the matter with me, turning down something like that, while most DECENT women wouldn't expect you to do any different. I was also a bit surprised by my own reaction - I loved the fact that these (let's be honest..) really attractive women invited me up there, but a part of me even almost felt... insulted..! Just how shallow do you think I am? Or am I just making too big of a deal out of this? Should love come with meaning?
 I didn't get to think about it for too long; as I was strolling along the beach, back toward my campsite, I found two of my neighbors digging a big hole on the beach... Yeah, some 20-year-old guys digging a hole, hoping to fill it with water... I laughed at them at first, but it didn't take long before I was right next to them - digging for Hell, we didn't really know WHAT we were digging for! And the funny thing is, I really enjoyed it! I haven't dug a hole in over a decade, I think. I just felt good, and it was a nice activity to be doing while talking about all sorts of things. Of course I couldn't help but bring up what just had happened and at least one of them, Kelham, seemed to understand. I was really quite pleased with that... I've had that discussion with quite some people by now (about love and it's meaning, or the lack thereof) and not many people my age seem to know better.
 After having dug for about an hour, the other two decided to go and buy some actual SHOVELS! For some real digging - they had some big plans with this hole, apparently :P Must say it felt pretty weird, standing in the hardware store looking for shovels and a big bucket with which we could fill the hole with water :P It was like we were buying some mature sandpit toys! But yeah, they went through with it :P Didn't get very long until we headed back to the campsite to finish the hole some other day. When I got back on the campsite, people started yelling "Jesus" already and of course I had to make a little round through the campsite ;) It was quite interesting to see all these different kinds of people that this festival attracted; you had the beer-drinkers, the hippies, the jocks, the hip-hop-gangsters & maori's, the travelers, the arrogant hot-chicks and... Well there were barely any people who were just there for the music, really..! Which can be a bit of a bad sign, if you ask me, but I found a few of them. The best part though, was that I somehow managed to appeal with all these different kinds of people! The rugby players seem to like me because of my height (Fuck, you're tall..!!), the hippies like me for the hair (Do you guys have emo's?), the gangsters like me because of my nationality (Amsterdam?! 'You smoke pot over there?!)... Even those arrogant "hot-chicks" seemed pretty interested, which was a bit of a surprise but that interest just wasn't mutual. Arrogance is one of the biggest turn-off's for me, but the strange thing is - the more of an uninterested dick I was toward them, the more questions they started asking :S

Some guys even built this pretty impressive tipi! Had to go have a word with these guys of course, and before I knew it I was sitting inside it with them and this turned out to be quite an interesting experience... Does anyone know what a "bucket" is? Just another one of those things that made this day so incredible; so many different kinds of influences, it was amazing. Eventually I decided just to walk back to the beach to try and process everything that'd happened in this one day. Rather lightheaded, I sat down near the hole we dug that afternoon and within 30 minutes I was staring at the most amazing sunset that I've seen in a long time...
 And as I was sitting there, I saw all different kinds of people having a great time with that very hole that we'd been digging that afternoon. A father and his son were having some great fun with it, followed by 3 drunk guys who started running circles in it (looked pretty funny :P). Later a mother couldn't seem to get her son to willingly come out of that hole and... Aah, it was great. It really felt great to watch those different people have so much fun with... With that pointless hole we dug. I can still see those 3 guys running circles in it, with that amazing sunset behind them. They were really having a ball :P
 It wasn';t until this moment that I really stood still about the fact that... I mean, here I was, on the other side of the world, about to finish off 2007 on a mid-summer night on a festival, right next to the beach, meeting so many people and... Just everything that'd happened that day - and still so many other things to look forward to. Couldn't help but feel so incredibly lucky... Lucky, and alive :)

The remaining days of the festival were spent in that same fashion; you get burned out of your tent, get back to life with the neighbors, jump off the railway bridge, have breakfast with a brownie and a banana smoothie (better combination), hanging out at the beach with who ever, and finish the day off with some bands playing! That's life, man!!
 At this rate, it wasn't long until the 31st was already there. Rhythm&Vines itself was held at a different site, on a vineyeard. AMAZING venue! 4 stages hidden between some hills and vineyards... Really something else. I got there at about 5pm, and from 6 until midnight I... I danced my socks off, moshed my head off, broke up a fight between two guys in the moshpit, kissed some random girl whose name I didn't even know flat on the lips, witnessed my first "death circles", lost a tickle-fight against two other girls... And that was just ONE of the concerts: the Mint Chicks! I had a blast :D
Before midnight, I headed over to the "Forrest Stage", a new stage in the middle of a small forest. A lovely pine-smell and an amazing looking stage: they had like this big carpet hanging from a few trees as a ceiling... I saw two bands here: the Ben Throp Trio and Jakob, which had been my initial reason to even GO to R&V in the first place. That first band was a HUGE surprise, they were SO GOOD! And there was actually some decent room to dance - I LOVED that venue!!!
 Jakob was going to be ending that stage and it was just amazing... Some of you might know how much I love Explosions in the Sky, this is like the New Zealand version of them. Was amazing live, and somewhere halfway through their gig, the sky just lit up with fireworks. Almost everyone was at the main stage at the main countdown and there were barely a hundred people left watching Jakob. JUST the people that really knew their music and really wanted to be there. MY kind of people! I couldn't have thought of a better place to be. (well, home maybe, but... Aahh you know what I mean!!) They had a bit of a speech when the fireworks started and they just resumed playing afterwards. I turned around and watched the fireworks through the trees, while still under the spell of that amazing music, it just felt perfect... Perfect. After the fireworks, as they were building up to one of their harder songs, I felt all memories and emotions from this last year building up with it and I just... I just lost it. The good and the bad; everything that'd happened with Elise this (that) year, the loss of my grandfather, my being here in New Zealand, Lowlands, Pinkpop, all the other concerts this year - everything just got blended into the music as I was absorbed in with it. It was wild.

Then, after the gig, some girl walked up to me asking if I "was that guy from last.fm who's... ...q... I don't know how to pronounce it". It was someone I'd spoken on last.fm and she recognized me from my avatar, apparently ;P Great surprise! I really love how internet is adding this whole new dimension to travel and meeting people. Last.fm has been invaluable to me here in New Zealand and I'm loving what it's done for me so far. I spent the rest of the night with that girl, Palay, dancing and talking... That's just what I was still missing about the whole thing, you know? I'd been meeting so many people, but actually getting to know someone... That's a different story. It really completed my whole R&V-experience... We eventually called it a night at about 5:30 in the morning, when her friends seemed pretty eager to go home ;P 'lotta people just fell asleep in the hammocks or in the grass by then. For me, the fatigue didn't really kick in until I was waiting for the bus in this huge line. No good looking sundawn that morning, I'm afraid, but that DID bring the advantage of just being able to get some sleep in the morning without being burned out of your tent again.
 I spent that last day and night jsut cruising around Gisborne for a bit, for the last time. Say goodbye to the people at my lovely smoothie-restaurant, and to that amazing city. I also managed to shoot one of my best photo's yet on this night, I'll add them later! I'm SO proud of it! You'll see what I mean...
 That night, as I was walking down that beach, I found some people about to make a good beach fire. They're forbidden, so I kinda missed that part, but hey... Last night in Gisborne for everyone... What're you gonna do? It was a perfect ending to a perfect week... A lot of people came to sit around the fire, music playing on some speakers that one of the people brought, even some old fireworks with it... I couldn't have wished for much more.

Well! I have about 3.5 hours of sleep left right now, I should call it a night! 5:15am right now... Damn! It was worth it though :)

Just keep in mind; I'll be off the radar again from this upcoming FRIDAY, the 11th of JANUARY. I'll barely even be checking my email while I'm on the road, so... Well, wish me luck :) And I'll see everyone in about a month!! 22nd of February... Won't be long now! Time flies ;)