Pizza Bracelet?

Last night at 9:20pm, I felt like ordering pizza. Since I'm in Europe, I figured delivery was out of the question, but I at least wanted to call ahead and order so that it'd be ready when I picked it up. Having heard good things about this pizza place near me called Da Portare Via, I decided to google their phone number. I found the number and quickly called since I noticed that they closed at 10pm. This convo ensued...

Guy (unidentified foreign language): blah blah blah blah
Me: Hello? Hi, I'd like to order a pizza.
Guy: A pizza?
Me: Yes, a pizza. Is it too late to place an order?
Guy: No, it's not too late. But, I don't make pizza. This is a jewelry store.
Me: Oh, sorry. Wrong number.
Guy: I have bracelets?

So, I tried to re-google the number, but apparently they don't have a phone at the pizza place! No delivery is one thing but no phone??! I ended up walking the two blocks to the place, and they made me a pretty tasty margarita pizza in about 5 minutes.

Precipitation Mayhem

The weather in Amsterdam of late has been rather nuts. Here's today's weather until now:

10:45am I wake up to plentiful sunshine.
11:15am Heavy snow (none of it ever sticks though) and wind.
11:45am Bright sunshine. I figure I better run to the grocery store before it starts snowing again.
12:50pm Hail. This stuff hurts. Good thing I already bought food.
1:25pm Partly Cloudy with sun peeking through. Unclear what will happen next.

Expectations of Privacy

I had a discussion today with my best friend D about privacy. She was surprised to learn that I allow my photos that I've posted on Facebook to be seen by all of my networks and friends. Although I don't think there's any privacy issue here, she said that I should change it to a stricter setting to take into account the privacy of people who are in my photos. I disagree. People are responsible for policing their own privacy. I do and think it is appropriate to consider the privacy of my friends to a certain extent; I filter based on reason. For example, I am unlikely to blab on my public blog using first and last names of friends who have done something mortifying and also unlikely to post photos of friends who are doing incriminating things or look terrible. Beyond this reasonable filter, however, it's not my job to protect the privacy of my friends. People should assume that anything posted online is essentially publicly available. Anyone can right click on any photo and choose "copy image location" and then send it to a friend who doesn't have access to that photo. Thus, it's up to individuals to either untag themselves or to ask the person who posted the photo to take it down. As your friend, I will happily comply with any such requests. However, it's NOT my job (beyond the reasonableness test I outlined) to censor myself and try to predict how you will react to my online activities.

For the record, I did change my settings to allow only friends of friends to see my photos because it doesn't really matter to me so why not make some people happy. However, I don't think that I should have had to do so on principle.

Mirror, Mirror

Are we currently in the golden age of vanity? Looking through people's photos of themselves on Facebook, I was thinking about how the internet is such a huge outlet for shallow self-indulgence. From blog posts (like this one) to youtube videos to the decision whether to tag or untag ourselves in pictures, where do you draw the line between a healthy level of self-appreciation/self-exploration and vanity? I saw a girl who had posted an album of 37 photos of just herself on Facebook, and my first thought was "wow, she's vain." I may be overly judgmental in this respect because I think I'm a little too into myself. But is what she did all that different than spending time to choose a nice profile picture, posting say 5 photos of yourself, or allowing a friend to post a ton of photos of you? If you consider that people our age are at or near the apex of their attractiveness in life (although for many, the apex was high school), maybe it's ok to really be into ourselves now before we get old and wrinkly.

If it's ok to be vain now, was it ok in the pre-internet days? What sort of things could you even do to display your pride? Hang up pictures of yourself in your house? Send letters about your life to your friends? None of these seem all that self-indulgent. But there is evidence that the current vanity we are experiencing is nothing new. Museum trips show us how the rich have put themselves on display throughout time by commissioning portraits of themselves. Maybe we should be thankful for the enduring vanity of human beings for it has left us with masterpieces by artists like Rembrandt that teach us how people lived in different ages. Or maybe vanity has been detrimental because it's left us with too many paintings of unattractive, dead people.

Growing Up

My parents just visited me in Amsterdam this past weekend. As an only child, I am very close to them and get particularly attached right after spending a lot of time with them. When I am with them, I feel very comfortable reverting to the child's role (although they feel more like best friends to me now than parents), and I miss the times when we lived together in one household. Once they leave, it always takes me a few days to re-adjust to life on my own and to appreciate my independence again. Going through this process is always a bit strenuous emotionally especially when I am confronted by my greatest fear that they won't be around some day. I have a proclivity to get overly-attached to people, places, and things in general and suffer from the overwhelming nostalgia for the past. I want to work on this because I don't think it's very healthy, but I'm not sure how.