Fauna of Belarus cards

It's been a while since I've had any time for Postcrossing, or blogging, so blogging about Postcrossing has logically suffered exponentially. But with the Christmas holidays in full swing, and the first holidays in about 10 years where I'm not either working or restoring a home to livable conditions, I've finally managed to send out all 23 possible cards I can send out at the moment (two are technically still waiting to be send, but all the mailboxes have been removed because of possible firework damage, so there's no possibility of mailing them anyway).
Apart from sending cards, I've also been receiving lots of them. One of my favourite categories is turning out to the 'Fauna of Belarus'  series, that features animals living in, you guessed it, Belarus. And luckily for me, most of these cards depict birds.

This is the first I received, an Osprey (Pandion haliaetus):

BY-392166 received 24 March 2012

There followed several others, including a brown bear, a nuthatch, and a bullfinch, but my absolute favourite has to be this one of a little bittern (Ixobrychus minutus):

BY-682628 received 3 December 2012

Because bitterns are simply the coolest birds ever, and by far the bird species I most want to see. If not for real in a reedbed somewhere around here, then a postcard will do nicely.

Sadly, there are no puffins in Belarus, so no puffin postcards, but they do have owls, including this Boreal owl (Aegolius funereus):

BY-779339 received 1 March 2013

Finally, for some reason, the last two cards from this series that I've received have been paintings. They show another Boreal owl and a Pygmy owl. No idea why they switched to paintings, they are kinda nice to look at, but I prefer the real pictures.

If any of you Belarussian Postcrossers are reading this: keep the fauna cards coming! I love them! Also, great to see that you still have so many of these animals that we can only see in zoos, roaming around freely. Makes me wonder whether I should plan my next trip in the direction of Eastern Europe, and that is exactly one of the reasons I'm Postcrossing for!

Sports action live

We Dutch love our ice skating. The best part is when it freezes outside and we get what is called 'natural ice' (as opposed to artificial ice in the skating halls) and everyone drops whatever they're doing and goes ice skating. The absolute high point of the mania is when there might be an Elfstedentocht, which is a 200 km long track touring the 11 (historic) cities of Friesland.
But even without outdoor ice, things can get pretty exciting on indoor ice skating. There are two kinds: long track and short track, and the former is by far the more popular (although short track is catching on quickly). Apart from soccer, speed skating is probably the most popular sport in the Netherlands (which could be exemplified by the fact that Jeremy Wotherspoon didn't qualify for the 500m in Sochi was the second item on the news yesterday). It's one of the few sports we're actually pretty good at on the Olympics, apart from that other thing to do with water - swimming (and dressage, but somehow horse-related things never really catch on here).

Anyway, for the past 5 days, the qualification tournament for Sochi has been taking place, and it's been a fierce battle. The problem, if you can call it that, is that we have too many good skaters. We can only send 3 or 4 people for most distances, and we have about 8 good ones you want to send (some distances are better represented than others, but still most are pretty well covered). The qualifications are taking place in Thialf, which is the Dutch Valhalla of ice skating. And last Friday, I was there to watch the action.
This is probably the time to mention that I am not really a sports fan in the true sense of the word. To stick to skating: I cannot tell you what would be a good or bad time for any given distance. I cannot tell you the name of all the skaters. And when given a name, I could not tell you which team they're skating for, or who their coach (all old skating pros) is.
But I do like to watch. So far, I'd only watched the skating on TV, but now I was going in for the live thing. I'd never seen a real sporting competition up close and in person, and to tell you the truth, I've never really understood why people would go sit/stand in a cold windy stadium where they can only see a very small part of the action (or only very small players) while they could watch the same thing at home from different camera angles with meaningful commentary. Now I know: it's the atmosphere.
The distances we watched were the 500m for the men and the 3000m for the women. The 500m always has to be done twice, so that adds a lot of extra tension: a person having a good first go may falter on the second go around and still not qualify. Also, the skating was very, very good. Michel Mulder rode a track record on the 500m, and several other skaters were very very fast too. And most importantly, the whole stadium becomes one giant, living, breathing organism that can almost literally push a skater that little bit further by their shouting, cheering, clapping, and hammering on the wooden panelling. This sense of togetherness, of seeing a few individuals push themselves to the limit, carried by our cheers and well-wishes, and seeing them perform the things that we could never do, creates such a great atmosphere of beloging and togetherness and possibility, it's impossible not to join in the shouting and jumping and other crazy things. To me, at least.

So now I do understand why people go to sporting matches, even when it can be cold and uncomfortable and crowded and you can't see half the things you could if you were snugly at home. The thing that you don't get at home, the sense of belonging, makes up for all of that. So would I go there again? Definitely, but not too often. There are people who come to Thialf every day, who write down the times and know everybody's personal record by heart: that's not me. To me it is more of a special outing, and special things should be taken sparingly to keep them special. But it has given me new insights, and a great experience I will remember for a while to come.

The Quest

I've finished Hard Times (a bit slow in the middle, but picking up nicely towards the end) and before diving into the next classic, I decided to read a novel I'd gotten for my birthday from a friend who likes to give me novels by people I've never heard of before, which then turn out to be things I absolutely love (The Eyre Affair being a great example). In this case, the novel in question was The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. It's about a guy who suddenly decides to leave his home behind and go on a 'pilgrimage' across England, on foot.
Sounds familiar? Maybe because it reminds you of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, last year's great hit. Somehow, the idea of men suddenly dropping out of their lives to go on a great quest appeals to readers.
Now the theme of 'the quest' is nothing new, of course. Classical and medieval literature is littered with examples, and also many modern day novels include a quest of some sort, be it a physical journey (The Hobbit, to name the most obvious example), a journey of social acceptance (most post-9/11 novels), or a coming-of-age story (most young adult fiction, ranging from The Hunger Games to the diaries of wimpy kids). In short, there has to be some sort of development, some sort of journey (The Hero's Journey is one of the commonest narrative elements) for a novel or story to function.
All this is very well, but the surprising thing in the novels mentioned above, is that this journey is taking place in our world, in our time, by people who could be us. No super-natural events, alternate universes or even parallel worlds (like in Harry Potter), but actual named and described places. Almost as if the event could be taking place right now. And almost as if we, the readers, could be part of that event. That is what got me thinking.

Literature (art in general) functions as an escape from our 'real' lives, I think everybody knows that by now. But somehow, that escape resembles those real lives ever closer. Instead of a hobbit going on an adventure, it's Harold Fry, a simple guy who could just as well be living next door. This can mean two things: either our own imagination is coming up short and we need help by authors guiding us through the 'real' world with 'real' people (I don't think so), or we want to be shown that an adventure is possible in our day and age and life, if only we had the chance. We don't have that chance, because contrary to Allan Karlsson and Harold Fry, we do have jobs and kids and mortgages, and basically no room or time or motivation, but if we were hundred-year-olds or retired and bored, we could just walk out the door in search of adventure. In that sense, it's a consolation: even those guys, who have all but 'left' the world, are still out there doing these great things and travelling these great distances.
Which is kind of sad, really, when you think about it, because it makes me imagine all these people desperate for an adventure or journey or something out of the ordinary, but thinking that they're having to wait until their life is almost over for it to happen. So instead of escaping into literature, I'd advise them to put down the books and go out and have an adventure themselves!
But of course that isn't the main reason for reading these kinds of novels, so if you think your life is quite adventurous enough (as in fact Alan and Harold do, because they never really search out the adventure, it somehow happens to them), do read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, because it really is a fun book, even if you're happy to just let it happen to someone else.

Christmas decorations

It's the dark days before Christmas, when the weather seems to be foggy and grey every day, and the sun refuses to rise before 9 and leaves before 5 (so much for a 9 to 5 mentality!). When it's cold and dark outside, we have to make it warm and bright inside. Which is exactly where Christmas decorations come in.
(Some people seem to be confused about the 'dark outside - bright inside' thing and put up massive, blinking, colourful light contraptions in their gardens or on their roofs. Although I do appreciate sharing your brightness with the rest of the world, one can go too far in this, very quickly.)
As we used to live in a very small home, with two very energetic cats, we'd never really had the possibility of buy a real Christmas tree. We had a small artificial one that was slowly getting over-loaded with the extra decorations I kept either buying or making every year. But since we now have a real big house to call our own, we could get a real big tree to go with it.
With Christmas trees it's the same as with furniture and electric appliances: they get bigger between the store and your house. We had this same experience this year: it didn't look too big, we even debated maybe putting it on a small table, but when we got home it somehow was taller than I am, and barely squeezed into the space we had allotted it.
Apart from the tree itself, we also bought lots of ornaments, including lights, stars, 'ice pegs' and the normal round ones. All in either shiny or matte silver. Also, we'd received some bird ornaments from Sinterklaas, so these went in as well.
The result, I must say, is one of the most sophisticated 'first trees' I've ever seen. With friends putting up decorations in every colour of the rainbow, or sticking flashy pink ornaments in a white Christmas tree, we're somehow very mature (except for the cute robin ornaments with little red bow-ties, of course). Should I be worried? Are we getting old before our time?
To be honest, I really like this 'classic' Christmas tree. Call me old-fashioned, but I think it looks good, it brightens up the house, without being too flashy or 'out there'. It makes me happy and warm inside, and that is what we're doing these things for.
We've put up some other small, things, like a ribbon to hang our Christmas cards on, and a Christmas star plant, and I'm considering buying a wreath for the door, but that's about it. The rest of the warmth and brightness we'll provide ourselves.

Dickens

So last night, I read my first bit of Dickens. Ever.
Yes, I somehow managed to get through 4 years of English literature without ever picking up a work by Charles Dickens. Slowly let that sink in. Several of my fellow former students of English were baffled and appalled when I told them. But somehow I managed to evade him all that time.
And I actually took a course called 'The long nineteenth century'  which dealt with nineteenth century literature (and a bit before and after: it started with the Romantics and went on a little bit past 1900, hence the 'long' nineteenth century), but there was no Dickens in that. There was some Austen, and Bronte, and Hardy, and Dracula, but no Dickens.
And anyway, I've never really been that interested in Charles Dickens. I watched some Oliver Twist adaptations, of course, and A Christmas Carrol whenever it is around, but to actually read anything? Somehow Dickens struck me as a pompous Englishman feeling rather too good about himself, possibly because most people who persist in telling you that they've read all of Dickens are pompous Englishmen who feel rather too good about themselves.
But as I am in the spirit of 'reading the classics', I decided to give Dickens a chance. I've been pleasantly surprised before, I hoped to be so again. I got A Tale of Two Cities for my birthday, and Oliver Twist and Hard Times for Sinterklaas (all in the beautiful Penguin hardcover cloth bound editions, which make me want to re-buy a lot of books I already have). I decided to start in the latter, as I didn't really know anything about that one, and I felt it was best to start with as clean a sheet as possible (prejudice-free). I read the first three chapters last night, and really, it was not what I expected. Man, that guy is funny. Also, he has these long flowing sentences which run on for about 10 lines but still make sense and don't need you to go back and re-read them again. Which is one of those things I love in Ian McEwan's novels (and many others, Watership Down also has several of those nice long descriptive ones), and I have to keep reminding myself that Dickens wrote them first, even if I am the one who has first read all of McEwan and is now starting on the nineteenth century guy.
Also, you have to feel for those poor people who had to wait for the next chapters to come out every week, as Dickens's novels were first published in magazines. It's like watching a TV-series weekly, instead of just getting a whole season at once, as we're now so used to doing. Actually having to wait for the next instalment of something: how many of us are actually still capable of doing so? Might be a nice experiment to do that with one of his novels, but not this one, as I'm far to curious to know what will happen next!

Speculaas

The weeks prior to December 5th are always a busy period in the Netherlands, because on that day, or rather evening, it is time for Sinterklaas. On the eve of Saint Nicholas's birthday, we exchange presents in his honour. This is one of the biggest Dutch holidays, an evening on which people exchange presents, badly-written poetry, and interesting 'surprises' (Sinterklaas, incidentally, was the inspiration for the American Santa Claus, and there are several similarities between the feasts). It also involves lots and lots of candy, of the type you only eat around this time of year (although supermarkets have started stocking things earlier and earlier, with some shops selling pepernoten as early as September). The important ones are pepernoten (or kruidnoten), speculaas (of which kruidnoten are also made), suikergoed, borstplaat, and taai taai. All Dutch oddities sometimes found in Belgium or Germany, but no further afield than that. Which is a shame, because they're all very tasty.
When I was kid, I loved to make my own pepernoten (a standard thing in primary school), but I hadn't made them for years. When we were in Belgium, we picked up a speculaasplankje, which is a wooden board with figures cut out. Mine has a windmill shape and a rooster shape, figures which undoubtedly have some traditional meaning that I don't remember. But you don't need a speculaasplankje to make speculaas, you can just use a cookie cutter instead.
There are a wide variety of recipes, but I used the following:

175 g plain flour
100 g butter
75 g brown muscavado sugar
baking powder
speculaaskruiden (mixed spice: cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, cardamom and pepper)
2 tablespoons water
almond flakes

I have not specified the amount of speculaaskruiden as I think these should be added according to taste: it can be quite spicy if you put in too much).

Preheat your oven to 160 C.
Mix all the ingredients together until they form a firm ball. This may take a while. If your dough has become too soft and runny, put it in the fridge for a while to firm it up.
Now you can roll out the dough and cut out the shapes, or if you're using a speculaasplankje, you first put a but of flour in the shape, then press a ball of dough in the shape until it is completely filled, cut off the superfluous dough, and then 'tap' the shape onto a prepared baking tray (this may take some practise).
Sprinkle the almond flakes over the top and bake for about 20-30 minutes until they are firm.

I used my remaining dough to make pepernoten: just roll a small amount of dough between your hands until it becomes round, and press it down gently onto the baking tray. These may need a little bit longer in the oven.

Both are great eaten warm just out of the oven, but you can keep them if you store them in an airtight container. Otherwise they will go soft and chewy pretty quickly.

To kill a mockingbird

There was a time in my life when I decided I would not read any of 'the classics', by which I didn't mean the ancient Greek or Roman texts, but the novels 'everybody should read'. I was going to be different, and original, and only read contemporary stuff that was different, and original.
At some point I realised that to know whether something is original, it might be nice to have read older stuff as well. Also, after reading some of 'the classics', I realised that they are classics for a reason: they actually are pretty good, and still relevant. Since then, I've been trying to mix new novels with classic novels, and have started on Yates and Steinbeck (somehow, I appear to have read more British than American classics, probably due to the British-oriented university I attended), and several 'classic' Dutch authors (Hermans, Mulisch), and acquired some other novels I still have to read.
Upon admitting that I had owned To kill a mockingbird for about a year, but still had not read it, several friends drew a collective intake of breath, so I decided that would be my next novel. I had absolutely no idea of what it was about, and the blurb on the back didn't really help me any further, so I was a complete blank slate going into it.
And again, this novel proved to be worthy of the caption 'classic'. It is one of those novels where everything comes together: plot, style, characters, themes. You just know that the character mentioned in the first line, as a side remark, will come back at the end of the novel to neatly complete the circle. It is completely understandable that this is one of the most important novels in American education, and that it has not been out of print since its appearance.
As you are probably all better familiar with the content than I was, I will just finish by sharing some interesting surprises I discovered while reading some background information on the novel (for me, the author is definitely not dead). First, I discovered that Harper Lee is in fact a woman. Second, I discovered that she is still alive (albeit 89 years old). Thirdly, that the novel is partly autobiographical, and that the Dill character is actually Truman Capote. Finally, that Harper Lee never wrote anything ever again, and has hardly ever spoken publicly about To kill a mockingbird after finishing it.
To me, all these extra tidbits of information just add to the novel's depth and complexity. Without them, the novel is great and brilliant and special as it is, but with them, it just gets an extra layer or shine. Although it does make me sad that there are no other novels by the same author to devour.
Ah well, now it's on to another contemporary novel (Dominion by C.J. Sansom) and then on to more classic literary education.

In Bruges

Things have been a bit quiet over here, because we have been away on a short holiday. Or to be more exact: a city trip. We visited Bruges and Ghent, two beautiful cities in the Flemish part of Belgium.
Now many things are the same in Flanders as they are in the Netherlands: we share a language, many cultural aspects, opinions, and habits. But there are some small things, things that you generally take for granted as being 'normal' the way you are used to them, that made me realise that I really was abroad.
And I don't mean the general stereotype that Belgians are more friendly, polite and welcoming than the Dutch, although in general, that did prove to be the case once again.
No, I'm talking about small things like having to pay for toilet use, even in cinemas where you've paid 9 Euros for a film ticket, or in restaurants, or in department stores. This may be Dutch thrift, or it may not: I read an outraged review by an American visitor who complained heartily about this.
Then there is the complete lack of proper directions on the road: it seems like every department or city council can just decide whether they want to put signs before or after the exit (or not place them at all), and without our satnav, we would have been lost several times. The Netherlands may be overfilled with rules and regulations, at least you can find your way by just relaying on the signs.
In a more positive streak: Belgians do take the time to go out for lunch, generally accompanied by a glass of wine. Even people who have their lunch break alone go to a restaurant or take-out and sit at a table and eat their lunch. In the Netherlands, this is highly uncommon: most people just eat their lunch at their desks, or run errands, or possibly have a short lunch walk: actually taking an hour to go lunch in a restaurant not attached to your building is a rarity. This is one area in which I hope we will copy our southern neighbours.

I could mention many more things, all small and seemingly 'normal', which show the subtle difference between two countries so alike and so well-connected. I wonder whether it's these little things or the big things like religion or politics, that in the end define us more.

Birthday baking

So my birthday was last Saturday (I had a great time, received lots of nice presents and will need another lifetime to get through all the novels I received) and as always I made the cakes myself. To be on the safe side, I decided to make 3 cakes. I made a the carrot cake, which is my favourite cake, an apple pie, which turned out to be everybody else's favourite, and an American chocolate ripple cheesecake. This last cake is a bit like the double chocolate cheesecake I made a while back, but then with Mary Berry's twist. Here's how I made it:

Ingredients:
200 g crumbly biscuits (can be choclate digestive, if you want to be really festive)
100 g butter
200g cream cheese
400g mascarpone
100 g sugar
2 eggs
200g milk chocolate , melted


Line the bottom of the spring form tin with baking paper.
Mix the crumbled biscuits with the melted butter. Press the biscuit mixture into the base of the tin. Leave to cool in the oven.
Preheat your oven to 180C.
Mix the cream cheese with the mascarpone until it becomes soft. Add the sugar and keep mixing. Add the eggs, one at a time.
Spoon half of the mixture on top of your crumbly base. Then fold the melted chocolate into the other half of the cream cheese mixture and stir well.
Spoon the chocolaty half of the mixture on top of the other cream cheese, and "stir with a knif to create a marbled effect". If the bit in quotes does not work for you, you're in good company. It never works for me, nor did it this time: I just had a two-layered cheesecake, yellow on the bottom and chocolate on top.
Level the top and bake in the oven for about 1 hour. Towards the end, the cream cheese will be fluffy and puffy and rising over the top of your baking tin like a souffle.
When done, leave to cool in the oven with door closed. The cake will shrink back on itself to about the same level as before it went into the oven.

This can be a tricky one to get out of the tin, so I cooled it in the fridge over night to make the bottom and sides become more solid, and then I managed to get it out whole.

Now this proved to be the least popular cake last Saturday, but that may also be because I baked the apple pie on the day itself, and carrot cake is just always immensely popular. Anyway, that leaves more for me, so I'll just go downstairs and have another slice.

The Circle

So for the past couple of days I've been reading The Circle by Dave Eggars, and it's been freaking me out ever more.
Freaking me out in a good way, that is, because if a book grabs you so much that it leaves your heart pounding and your head spinning and yourself wondering whether you shouldn't be going around with a camera hanging from your neck recording your every move, then that book is really getting to you. And it's been a while since a new author (new to me at least, I'd never read anything by Eggars before) got to me like this.

I bought the novel because it had some great reviews in the newspaper. Later I checked the Amazon reviews, and although most of them are very positive, several complain about the book being badly researched and full of unnecessary dialogue. I don't understand those reviewers, because to me, the dialogue is the best bit.
In short, the novel is about a 24-year-old woman who starts work at the Circle, a Facebook/Google conglomerate proud of its community and transparency. At this job, you're not expected to go home at 5, you're expected to participate in community events, and then 'zing' (= tweet) about it to everyone else. Starting off with just one screen in front of her, the protagonist quickly upgrades to one of the most social and busy people in the company, constantly monitoring 5 screens, a headset, a microphone in her ear, and two wristbands.

If that alone isn't enough to set your heart racing, there is the ever increasing 1984-like surveillance. Children with chips implanted so that their parents will always know where they are, and they can't be abducted. Cars with logs so spouses will know where there other half has been. Cameras everywhere, in public and private spaces. People (especially politicians) with cameras around their necks recording their every move, meeting and conversation.
Scary as this may all sound, there are so many convincing rationales in the novel as to why this is a good thing, why having privacy is actually stealing someone else's experience, why not being transparent must mean that you have something to hide, and why having cameras record your every move will ultimately set you free to become a ' good person', that you almost start to believe it yourself. Those few characters in the novel talking sense, warning the protagonist of things to come, are quickly dismissed as lunatics. Interestingly, they proclaim those things that most of us take for granted.

In a society that is ever more discussing the value of privacy, the value of information, this novel came at exactly the right time. It has made me question why I do the things I do, why I want to share the things I share, and what privacy is actually really worth. It's one of those essential values that you only miss once you don't have it any more, and then it will be so hard to get back.

In short: read it. I'm about 2/3rds through and I have no way of predicting the ending, but if it will be anything like the rest of the novel, it will be something I will think about for quite a while to come.

NaNoWriMo 2013

NaNoWriMo time is almost upon us again. I've been receiving lots of emails from the Office of Letters and Light already, several from 'my novel' asking to be written, and one from 'the future' in which I have already written my novel.
There must be a parallel universe out there somewhere, because in this one, I will not be writing a novel in November. They mention the 'ideas at the back of your head' and the 'storylines and characters you work out before you fall asleep at night', and this is all very true, but they will also have to stay inside that head for a little while longer.
I am simply too busy. Not only physically too busy, in that I don't have the time to sit down behind a computer and write for an hour to get the 1667 words you need each day, but also mentally too busy. And it is true that I will be taking a week holiday in November, but that will be to relax and free my mind from stuff, not to add more stuff to it.
So apologies to 'my novel'  and 'my future self', but the answer is no.

However, if you, dear reader, do have the time and space, I can only recommend participating in NaNoWriMo. I've done so for several years, I've also won several years, but I can tell you that even without winning it is a great experience. Apart from finally letting go of all those stupid controlling mechanisms and just writing that novel, you get to meet lots of great and interesting people during the parties and writing events. Plus, they have nice goodies. Two weeks is more than enough time to prepare (I once decided that I was going to join on the 30th of October), and even if you can't make it, they have several 'Camp NaNoWriMo'  sessions throughout the year.
Give it a go!

Eat to live

In the Netherlands, people generally bike a lot. Looking at the 'bike basement' at my job, and the parking lot in front of the building, I'd say the ratio is pretty much 50-50, with those coming by car usually living more than 10 km from work and/or having to drop off several small children at day care before they come to work (lots of people also bike around with a small child in front and one in the back, but if you're working in a place that expects you to arrive relatively wrinkle and sweat-free, this isn't really an option).
I'd say most of us are a pretty healthy bunch: hardly any smokers, most people use the stairs when moving between floors, and a lot exercise or walk or move in any other way. The other company in our building is a health insurance company, which ironically has a larger percentage of smokers, and more elevator-users, although to be completely honest we do work on the 5th floor whereas they might be on the 11th.
Anyway, apparently, we're not healthy and sporty enough. Last week, there were leaflets in the canteen, stating that coming to work by bike was healthier than driving a car (which I'm sure most people know, and those able to bike generally already do so). The leaflet ended with a table of foodstuffs, and how many minutes one would have to bike to 'lose the calories' in that food. You come across these lists quite a lot, especially in women's magazines. There are several things that surprise, and maybe even worry, me about this development.
Firstly, it somehow emits the messages that when you bike, it's okay to eat these fatty things. You've biked to work? Great! Have a packet of crisps! As if it is somehow a reward you deserve for undertaking the great exhausting move of coming by bike.
Secondly, there are only unhealthy things on the list: crisps, candy bars, chips, other fried foods (egg rolls etc) but also hamburgers and other 'whole meal' options. Why not show how little time you need to 'lose' an apple or a wholemeal cracker? Wouldn't that be more motivating?
Finally, it makes it seem as if the only reason we eat, is to lose it as quickly as possible. As if you don't actually need the vitamins, protein, and fat (yes, fat) in your food. As if the only reason you're eating is to have something to do in your lunch break, and it's only purpose is to run through your body as quickly as possible and then be gone.
Now I know these leaflets won't really get much attention in our canteen, as most people already eat fruits, yogurt, salads, wholemeal buns and other healthy things. But I cannot help but remember the colleagues I had at the sandwich shop at the train station, who would literally tell each other 'I can have cookie today, because I came by bike!'. If that's the way we're treating food these days, not as something you need to survive, but as a treat you give yourself for doing a normal thing like move around, then I don't think we're going in the right direction. Having a piece of chocolate or a bag of crisps is nice every now and then, but just to enjoy it, not because you've already worked off the calories it contains.

Classic Dutch apple pie

Autumn is now fully upon us: the wind is howling through the trees, scattering wet leaves everywhere, and the rain is hammering against the windows. For me, this means it's apple pie time.
Now there are many, many different types of apple pie, but the one I prefer to make (apart from a quick apple crumble dessert for dinner guests) is what the Dutch call 'classic' or 'grandmother's' apple pie. In my case it's more like 'mother's' apple pie, as apart from the standard loaf-shaped cake, it is the only pie I could make at an early age.

Ingredients:
300 g self-raising flour
175 g sugar (can be any sugar: I prefer muscavado)
200 g butter
1 egg
mixed spice (optional)

Filling:
apples (I have no idea of the apple quantity I use: generally it's 2 large ones)
sultanas (soaked)
chopped nuts (whatever you like, I had some pecan nuts left over from my pecan pie)
lemon juice
sugar
cinnamon

Make the dough by combining the flour and sugar (and mixed spice if you have some) and then adding the butter in chunks. Some recipes specify cold or room-temperature butter: to me, it makes no difference. I generally mix these three ingredients together using a mixer and then add the egg and continue by hand. Knead the mixture until it becomes a proper dough, then set about 1/5th apart.
Take a buttered and lined springform baking tray and put the big part of the dough in the middle. With your hands, move and shape the dough so that it covers the bottom and most of the sides, creating an even, flat top by putting your finger on the top and running it all the way round. Don't worry if your dough looks woefully thin at this stage: my dough was about 3 mm think and still came out in a nice crust.
Pre-heat your oven to 180C.
Now remove the core of the apples and dice them. I like to keep the skin on for extra texture, but you can of course remove it. Dry your sultanas off and mix them together with the apples and chopped nuts. I generally add a splash of lemon juice to keep the apples from colouring and to add some freshness to the mixture. Generously sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, and mix again.
Put your apple mixture in your dough casing, making sure the top is level with the top of the sides and that no apple bits are sticking out (they will burn).
From the remaining dough, shape a casing to go over the apples. You can do this as fancy as you like (rolling the dough out flat and then cutting strips), or just by rolling out some doughy worms in your hand and putting those over the top. They will at least double in size in the oven, so don't worry if you only have very little of your apple mixture covered. You can brush some egg mixture over the top of the dough if you want a nice shine.
Bake in the oven for about an hour. If you've used muscavado sugar, the dough will become brown pretty quickly, but don't take the cake out of the oven too early or you will have a wet, under baked dough. Just leave it in the oven with the temperature turned down to about 140C.

Fresh from the oven

We ate it hot from the oven, with the apples still soft and melty and the crust firm and aromatic. The combination of the apples, mixed spice, cinnamon and nuts really gives it a great autumny feel.

But even after being stored cold in the fridge for a couple of days, it still has a nice taste and great texture. Just make sure your dough isn't underbaked, as that will give it a chewy, doughy taste that isn't very pleasant in any thing but American cookies.

Running

About a month ago, my boyfriend and I decided that we were going to run. We've both got jobs that make us sit still in chairs for the better part of 8 hours a day, and although we cycle to work, we had the feeling that our physical conditions were not what they used to be when we were students (and usually went for a long walk 3-4 days a week). To cover the same distances in less time, running seemed to be the solution.
Now I had done some running about 5 years ago, using the famous and fabulous program called 'Evi', in which a friendly Flemish lady tells you when to start and stop running. This kind of interval training was very effective, and in just a couple of weeks I could run 5 k in one go. Sadly, Evi requires you to run 3 days a week, if at all possible the same 3 days every week. This is easily done when you're a student with only 9 hours of classes every week, but not so when you've got a job that requires you to have meetings until 21:00 at night on various days of the week.
So we set our goal a bit lower: 2 days a week, usually Tuesday and Thursday, as those are generally meeting-free days. We found a nice  little loop to run, cutting through some fields and next to a canal, with a rail bridge thrown in for some altitude training. We both don't own any proper sporting clothes, apart from running shoes, so we put on some loose-fitting clothes from our DIY jobs on the house. And so we ran.

It is amazing how quickly you loose your stamina if you don't keep it up. After only the shortest possible space of running, I was huffing and puffing and bright red in the face, with my feet and legs begging me to stop and just go walk like any normal person would. This was to be expected. The annoying thing is that you know you're going to have to start out that way, and that it will take a couple of weeks before things will get better. It's so easy to stop and just think 'running is not my thing' and leave it at that.
But I kept at it, and we've done some nice sessions of interval training, lenghtening the period we run and shortening the walking period each time. We've also added another traffic bridge to our course, one which is steeper and therefore harder. Our pace is not very high, and we're not covering any great distances or training for any specific goal, but it still feels like we're doing something good, for both body and mind.

You often hear people talk about a 'runner's high'. I too have several colleagues who run marathons and are skinnier than should be humanly possible, who are always going on about 'the zone'  etc. Now I don't know about that, maybe I should be running more and longer, but I've never had that endorphin like experience. What I do feel, however, is that my thoughts tend to go more quiet and organized as I run. After getting home from a stressful 10 hour work day in which nothing went as expected and I am feeling like 'I should jump behind a computer and fix this right now, right this minute!', running is liberating. Your mind concentrates on just one thing (well, maybe two, as controlling my breathing seems to take up a large chunk of mental activity too), and when you're done you have this nice relaxed feeling of simplicity: take a shower, eat, don't work, just sit still and do nothing. Counting Crows tells us in their song Hard Candy: Time expands and then contracts, and that is exactly how it works for me: the running seems to go on forever, in a void somewhere, and when you get home you discover that hardly any time has passed, that you still have a whole evening ahead of you, and that your mind is now magically cleared.

So yes, I think we will try to keep up the running for quite some while to come. As long as our progression remains as slow as it is, it won't go eating up more time than it should, given the benifits we want to gain from it. We don't want to become the uber fit, overly competitive marathon type, we just want to be healthy, happy, and relatively stress-free.

PS: The Oatmeal wrote a series of comics about running great distances, and although I recognize very little of his story (he does ultra runs in mountains, I clomp away at city pavements) it is still an interesting read.

Pecan pie

So Sunday is my new standard bake day, and last Sunday I attempted to face my old nemesis: sweet pastry (or actually: pastry in general, be it sweet, short, crumbly, or any of the other 3 varieties I have not yet attempted). I decided to bake Mary Berry's pecan pie. This choice may have been inspired by the fact that it let me buy maple syrup, something I completely fell in love with while we were in the US last summer, but which is very very expensive.

Mary's recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:
175g plain flour
15g icing sugar
75g butter
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon cold water

25g butter
175g light muscovado sugar
3 large eggs
200ml maple syrup
150g pecan halves (or less, if they're as absurdly expensive as they are here)

You make the sweet pastry by mixing the flour and icing sugar and then rubbing in the butter with your fingers until the 'fine breadcrumbs' stage. You then add the egg and water and 'quickly' knead it to form a firm dough. Wrap in clingfilm and rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
(It's these magical stages that determine whether your sweet pastry works or doesn't work: you should work the pastry too much, and it should be chilled properly.)

Take your pastry out again, role into a circle on a flat, lightly floured surface and then put into a lose-bottomed fluted flan tin. Of course, my pastry broke all over the place, so I had to assemble the bits in the flan tin. This does not really matter, your pastry will still come out good. Prick all over with a fork.
Scrunch up a bit of baking parchment, unscrunch and put into the pastry casting with baking beans to hold it down. Blind bake for 10 minutes at 200 C and then bake without the paper for another 5 minutes.

Now after the blind baking, my pastry looked great, but after the 'real' bake something was terribly wrong: there was a Grand Canyonesque ridge running through my casing, separating one bit of the pastry from the other. Now as the filling was going to be pourable, this would mean everything would run out of the bottom and into the oven. As the filling consisted mainly of sugary things, I did not think this was such a good idea. I therefore quickly mixed another small bit of pastry and used that to patch up the gaping gap.

On to the filling: mix the butter and sugar together, and then add the maple syrup and eggs, beating well. Pour the filling into the casing and arrange the pecan halves on top (Mary tells you to do it the other way around, but that makes no sense to me, as pouring in the mixture will result in all the pecan nuts flowing to one side). Bake at 180C for 30 minutes, and leave to cool.

Pie in the oven: notice the light colour of the maple syrup mixture.

I baked my flan tin inside another baking tray, which was a good idea, as my patch up job did not work. Upon returning to the pie after 20 minutes of baking, it was bathing nicely in a whole sea of bubbly, melty sugar. When the pie was done I very quickly detached it from the baking tray and set to scrubbing said tray for about 15 minutes until all the blackened sugar had come off. The same will have to be done for the flan tin (the top part of which I could only extract from the pastry casing with great difficulty), but as that is not something we use almost every other day, I could not really be bothered to get into that quickly. Anyway, it came out mostly in 1 piece, with some additional pastry bits to nibble on.

Darker pie, with a cracked pastry casing. Still tasted great!

Now the thing I had not mentioned about this pie is that it is American. Very American. Meaning that it has more calories than a normal person will eat in a couple of days, possibly even a week. So make sure to make the portions of the pie very very very small when serving (about 1 pecan width), or people will go 'I'm full!' with more than half of their piece left over, which would be a shame, because it really is a very very nice pie. It tasted very good, not too sweet, not too sticky.

It did nothing to resolve my fear of pastry, however, so I will have to try something else. I'm thinking about maybe doing some choux pastry, which is even more difficult but will be very rewarding when it goes well, but maybe that's a bit too ambitious. For now, we still have more than half a pie waiting in the fridge, so we'll get through the cold days nicely.

175g (6oz) plain flour
15g (½oz) icing sugar
75g (3oz) diced butter
1 large egg yolk

for the filling

25g (1oz) butter, softened
175g (6oz) light muscovado sugar
3 large eggs
200ml (7fl oz) maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
150g (5oz) pecan halves - See more at:

To have or not to have

Now that Netflix has finally arrived in the Netherlands, lots of newspaper commentators are going on and on about the 'new society'  in which people no longer want to have certain things, they just want to have access to these things. They no longer want a rack full of CDs, they'll just listen to their music on Spotify. They no longer want row upon row of DVDs, they'll just watch whatever they feel like on services like Netflix. They no longer need a bookcase full of books, they'll just have one eReader/Kindle with thousands of copies, with more ready to be downloaded online. Homes will be come empty spaces, filled only with the devices needed to access the outside world.
I think this is true to a certain extend, namely the extend of the young and hasty, who do not have time to go out and buy books or other objects, but do want to have them ready and waiting at those sparse moments they actually have time to read a book/watch a film/etc. And as it is the young and hip we hear most about in the media today, this makes it seem as if everybody is living this way.
But there is one important factor that these enthusiastic article writers are forgetting: people who will just order a film on Netflix could just as easily have bought it. To them, there is no difference. They have enough money and means to buy both the object itself or access to that object. To those people who do not have the money to buy these things, the actual posession is still very important. When they loose access to Netflix when they are not able to pay their fees, they still want to have that DVD laying around. They need the security of knowing these things won't go away when the money tides turn against them.
Not needing to own things is a new way of saying; I am able to buy all these things, but I'm not, because I don't have to. In that way, it's falls in the same category as so many expressions of wealth and 'better than thou' actions over the centuries.
Moreover, all those young and hip people not buying books and films are the same young and hip queueing for the new iPhone or GTA V coming out. So the 'access is enough' thing only goes so far.
Finally, there are of course still many people who do want to own a certain novel, LP, or DVD, for whatever romantic reason (not wanting to live behind a screen the whole day is a good one for me). Only its those romantic 'lagging behind'  types that you don't often read about in the media. Which does not mean they don't exist. Even stronger, I'd say most people belong to this latter category. And the fact that you're not reading about them all day is another clue that those 'not owners' are in it partly to show off their ability of not-possession. We don't need to tell everyone how well off we are not owning things: we'll just keep quiet about the stuff we (can) have.

Apple cinnamon cake

Autumn has really arrived, in the shape of long, grey, rainy days and cold nights. Also, several colleagues mentioned their large apple crop this year, which made me think back to the year my parents had box upon box of apples, which we turned into all kinds of apple pies and tarts and cakes.
Having this afternoon off, I'd thought I'd do some apple baking. Instead of an apple pie I decided upon an apple cake, as featured in Mary Berry's recipes. We used to make this kind of cake at home, by just spreading out cake mixture on a baking tray, pressing in apple parts, dusting the whole with cinnamon and sugar and baking it. But Mary's apple and cinnamon cake is a bit more sophisticated:

225 g softened butter
225 g light muscavado sugar
225 g self-raising flour
3 eggs
baking powder
sultanas
400 g apples, diced
100 g walnuts, chopped small
loads of cinnamon

As I forgot to buy the walnuts, I replaced them by almond flakes I had laying around. Also, I added some mixed spice to the cake mixture, because  mixed spice makes me think of autumn and Sinterklaas, and it's that kind of weather.
Pre-heat the oven at 180C and grease/baking parchment-line a baking tin.
Mix the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder and eggs together at high speed. Spoon in the sultanas and walnuts/almond flakes and spoon half the mixture into your baking tin. Spread the apples and cinnamon on top, and spoon the other half of the mixture over the apples. Sprinkle the top with the remaining walnuts, and some cinnamon and sugar.
Bake for 1.5 hours, leave to cool with the oven door open and then turn out on a wire rack.

For some reason I didn't really have enough mixture to fill my cake tin, so I had to press down on it quite hard to make it fit. This knocked most of the air out of it, and when I added the apples on top I was sure this cake was never going to rise. The top also proved difficult, with some apples still sticking out at the sides where I couldn't quite make the mixture reach. Nevertheless, about 10 minutes after I put it in the oven, the cake was already rising and spreading, with no apples visible anymore. It is amazing what the combination of self-raising flour, baking powder, and properly beaten eggs can do to the airiness of the cake.

Slightly burned on top, but still more rise than expected!

As it is still baking at the moment, I can't really tell what the end result is, but the smells coming to greet you as you enter the kitchen promise nothing but autumny apple goodness.

The end result, with a dash of icing sugar on the top. It tasted great!

Writing in German

So my Postcrossing has been a bit on-off for the past few months, with me only sending out cards one or two days a week, 3-5 at most, and as a result I haven't really received many cards either. There were some spectacular ones, including my first postcard from New Zealand and a nice card from India, but on the whole, it's been a bit quiet.
But one strange thing I have been noticing that most of my cards from Germany (incidentally also the country most of my cards have been coming from) were written in German. Now this is no problem, I can read German perfectly and write an adequate response in return, but it's very typical that all of a sudden all German people are only writing in their own language. Is this a new trend? Have I missed something about going back to basics? Is this a new form of national pride springing up?
Probably it's just a coincidence, with several of the senders being between 8 and 14, and therefore probably unable to write in English. Also, yesterday I received another card from Germany in perfect English, although the text on the front was a German joke (which sounds like a contradiction in terms).
Also, I've received a card from Belgium that was written in English, Dutch, German and French, which was nice. Nicer at least than the people from Asian countries who include characters in their postcard that I simply can't read, or the Finnish girl that made a joke about calling her cat 'Humpuuki', which I thought was just a funny name but turns out to mean 'fake'. If I cannot understand what you're saying without opening Google Translate, it kinda takes away from the message.
So I'll take the German ones any day, at least those I can read.

Revolutionary Road

For the past couple of days, I have been reading Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I sort of came to it by chance: it was mentioned in the Nick Hornby columns and I was ordering something from Amazon and needed an extra thing to qualify for the free delivery (only starts from 25 pounds to the Netherlands), and then I thought: why not? I'd seen the film, so I already knew the story, and 92 5-star Amazon reviews should be enough, right?
Definitely right. In fact, I've started to slow down on my reading so I will be able to read this novel for longer. The depth of character, the smallness of their world and the experience of reading about their lives and seeing how very wrong they are, how very annoying and stupid and short-sighted, but still bewitching in their own way, is fascinating. Since I've seen the film I know how it's going to end, but still, the plot is not the most important thing in this novel, it's the way things are being said, the way the characters develop. That is of course part of what makes something a classic, but it has been a long long time (probably since reading Saturday*), that I've had this experience in a novel.
Also, I've been spending several minutes before falling asleep at night pondering how on earth this could be someone's debut novel. I mean, if this is the first thing he ever published, then I can't really wrap my mind around what he will have written after that. I must definitely read more by this author.
Also, reading this novel has made me put some of the other things I've read into new perspective. The scenes from The Hours that are set in the fifties somehow make more sense after reading this. Same is true for On the Road. It is so interesting to see the widely divergent ways that the fifties were experienced in the US, and it makes me wonder which (if any) of the novels that are written today will make the 50-year mark, shaping the ideas of future people about the time we're living in now.


* I never do these little asterisk thingies but this time what I'm going to say is so widely different from the rest that I can't really help it: a fellow student of English wrote his MA dissertation on post-9/11 literature, and he included Saturday in the lot. This made me very confused at first, because in my mind, the novel is about almost everything but 9/11. But then I talked about it with him, and he explained some points, and now I feel like there is this whole layer to my favourite novel that I'd never noticed or knew about before, and I will definitely have to re-read Saturday some time really soon, but first I have to come to terms with the fact that there is still more to be found in something I've already read and loved 5 times over. Literature is hard work, sometimes.

Millionaires and chocolate chips

Apart from finishing a book in one day (note: not the magical 'one sitting' that Nick Hornby keeps going on about), I did something else last Wednesday that I hadn't done for a long time: baking!
I had promised to bring some baked goods to work that day, as a colleague and I have been swapping baking recipes, and she has brought both rhubarb cake and zucchine bread to work, whereas I had brought nothing to show for my baking skills. Of course, the next day I forgot to actually bring my baked goods to work, so we (alas!) had to eat all of them ourselves during the following weekend, but I've got pictures to proof I actually made something.
Also, the fact that The Great British Bake-off has started again may have had something to do with my baking, as I of course used Mary Berry's Baking Bible.

Firstly, I decided to make millionaires' shortbread, because I love millionares' shortbread. Mary lists the following ingredients:
250 g plain flour
75 g caster sugar
175 g softened butter

100 g butter
100 g light muscovado sugar
2 tins of condensed milk

200 g plain or milk chocolate

She wants you to make the shortbread in a 33 x 23 baking tin. I happen to have only a 25 x 25 baking tin, and I felt this meant that my shortbread would become quite high (which would be a bad thing for something called 'shortbread'). So I halved all the quantities, and still ended up with a massive amount of shortbread (2 of the squares are still sitting in the fridge wrapped in cling film). Mary says the recipe will make about 24 squares, and even with half the amounts I still could make 24 pretty stomach-filling squares, so unless you need to fatten up for some reason, I'd suggest half the amount anytime.

Anyway, you make shortbread by rubbing the butter through the sugar and flour mixture. I've mentioned this before, I'll mention it again, I have a mighty loathing of this kind of dough, but surprisingly, it went quite okay this time.
When you have the magical 'fine breadcrumbs'  stadium, somehow gather up the whole and press down into the baking tin (which you have either greased or lined with baking parchment). Prick with a fork so the air can escape and bake in a pre-heated oven (180 C) for 20 minutes, and layer one is done.

Layer two is a bit more of a challenge, as it involves boiling sugar without burning the pan. I did not manage to do this. I did burn the pan. Luckily, the resulting caramel magically did not have a burnt taste (only some burnt bits in it, which I scooped out as best I could).
Also, you'll notice that it says 'light muscovado sugar', and not 'white muscovado sugar' in the ingredients. I also managed to use white instead of the yellowish sugar, with the result that my caramel came out white rather than caramel-coloured. It still tasted good, though.

You put the butter, sugar, and condensed milk into a pan which you heat until the sugar has dissolved. You then bring it to the boil, and then reduce the heat and simmer "for about 5 minutes or until the mixture has thickened slightly. It is important to stir the caramel mixture continuously - if you leave it for even a second it will catch on the bottom of the pan and burn". You see, Mary did warn me, and I still managed to burn it. Anyway, once it's thickened, pour over the shortbread and leave to cool, before you pour over the melted chocolate for layer three. This cooling time will give you plenty of time to make the second thing I made: chocolate chip cookies.

Mary warns the reader that the cookies are not "as crisp as traditional biscuits", which is the tip of a whole American cookie vs. English biscuit divide that I won't go into right now, but which made me smile when I read it. Incidentally, did you know that the word 'cookie' comes from the Dutch 'koekje' (which is pronounced 'cookye', so pretty similar despite the (for English speakers) baffling spelling).

To make these, you need:
100 g softened butter
75 g caster sugar
50 g light muscovado sugar
1 egg
150 g self-raising flour
1 packet of baking powder
100 g chocolate chips

I altered the recipe somewhat, as it also calls for 'vanilla extract', but I have never used that in anything and won't start now. Also, I don't really trust my self-raising flour to still be self-raising after sitting on the shelf for half a year, so I added some baking powder. This may or may not have been a good idea, as you will see later on.

Pre-heat the oven to 200 C and grease or baking parchmentize your baking tray.
Beat the butter and two sugars together, then add the egg and beat well. Finally mix in the flour and stir in the chocolate chips.
Resist from eating the whole of the dough in one go (Ben and Jerry's ice cream flashbacks!) and spoon dollops of the mixture onto the baking trays, "leaving room for the cookies to spread". Sadly, Mary does not tell you how much room you should leave, only that the recipe "makes about 20 cookies". That means I put half of my mixture into 10 dollops on a baking sheet, and do the same for the other half. The result you can see below.

Chocolate chip cookie madness.

Yup, that's basically one big cookie.
It may have been the extra baking powder I added, or it may have been the fact that Mary probably expects people to have normal-sized ovens and normal-sized baking trays whereas we're still living with a small-sized oven and an even smaller-sized baking tray.
Anyway, you bake the cookie dollops for 8-10 minutes, while you "watch them like a hawk, as the will turn dark brown very quickly". As a result, I probably took mine out a bit too early, so they are not really as golden as you'd like them to be.
Leave to cool on the baking tray until they are a bit firmed up and then leave to cool some more on wire racks ('wire racks' always has a hint of medieval torture instruments to me, but maybe I've been reading too many Hillary Mantel novels lately).

So that was my re-entry into the baking world. If the cold and rainy weather continues much longer, I will probably bake some more, although I do not have as much time for it anymore as I used to have. Ah well, we first need to finish the millionares'  shortbread anyway.

How to get filthy rich...

There used to be a time when I would finish a novel in one day. Acutally, that isn't really as long ago as it seems, because I finished The Ocean at the End of the Lane in one day at well. But that's not a proper novel, more like a novella, so it doesn't really count. I'm talking about a novel novel, a book heavy with symbolism and layers and importance and meaning.
Anyway, last Wednesday I had a day off to compensate for a ludicrously busy week, and I both started and finished How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid.
Short intermezzo here, because most of you probably have not heard of Mohsin Hamid before. He has only published three novels so far, the first one I haven't yet read, the second The Ruluctant Fundamentalist, which I read for a course (we were supposed to pick a post-9/11 novel, and almost everybody went for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close or The Terrorist, but I'd already read both of those, so I went for the novel nobody else picked). It is a long monologue by a Pakistani man to an American tourist in Pakistan, and it leaves you completely bewildered as to who is the terrorist and who is the tourist, and also as to what is right and wrong in the world. And then How to get Filty Rich in Rising Asia.
Hamid knows what he's talking about, as he was actually born in Pakistan, although he is not your average Pakistani in that he actually lived in the States for quite a while because his father was a university professor (how many of us can say that, anyway), and he did go to Princeton (same thing), but in order to become a recognized Pakistani writer you will need some sort of credentials or the world will just ignore you.
And his novels are, in fact, really really good.
Anyway, How to... is in essence a self-help book, telling the reader how to get filthy rich in rising Asia. That is to say, there is no main character. The main character is 'you', the reader, and you follow all the steps set out for you to become filthy rich (move to the city, get an education, learn from a master, and typically, don't fall in love). There are no names in this novel, the characters don't have any names, but also the cities and countries you move in remain typically name-less. This gives the universal feel of people moving from their villages to the city to carve out a life for themselves, and it is a novel of universal truths.
At the same time the novel analyses its own function of self-help book, coming to the conclusion that it may not have been entirely honest with you at some point. In a weird way that makes it a meta-meta novel, breaking down the forth wall in so many places it feels almost impossible to read another 'normal'  third person narrative. But the fact that the full title is How to get Filty Rich in Rising Asia: a novel should say enough: although clearly a self-help book, this remains a novel in the end.
I read about this novel in a Dutch newspaper, because it has been translated into Dutch (loosing most of its poetic language and style, according to the reviewer), which I think is great, because more people should have access to this great author. And as I've shown, even though it is heavy with importance and symbolism and layers and everything, it is possible to finish it in one day.

The Polysyllabic Spree

The Polysyllabic Spree is a literary column that Nick Hornby wrote from 2004 until 2006. At that time, I was studying biology and thus completely uninterested in "Stuff I've Been Reading", but even if I had been interested, the columns were published in the Believer, a literary magazine published in the US and (according to Hornby) only read by men.
But thankfully, his columns have also been published, which gives me in an insight into the difference between writing reviews and writing about literature and writing about reading. And has also made me realise that what I generally do is write about reading, whereas in my essays for English, I wrote about literature. Which is good, in a way, because way too many people write way too many things about literature as it is, and also, I couldn't actually say that I know enough about literature to say anything sensible about it without having the whole university library to use as a source.
It is also quite a depressing read, as the first book I actually recognised and read appears on page 86 (We need to talk about Kevin, which I only read because of a course I was taking), there is 1 mention of Jane Austen in the whole thing (to state that in her days, it was perfectly normal for cousins to marry), and only one mention of a McEwan novel (Saturday, I haven't yet reached the part where he discusses reading this, but I'm already dreading the moment). But as Hornby buys about 10 books each month, and reads about the same amount (usually different novels from the one he's bought), I think the most important conclusion from reading this book will be: I still have a lot left to read.
Which is partly depressing but also good, because I've been filling up my birthday wish list with "want to read this one day but haven't really gotten round to buying, let alone reading, it" novels.
The second conclusion is that Nick Hornby is a fun writer whatever he writes, be it novels or autobiographies or columns, and that if you are a good writer you can make people enjoy reading about books they haven't actually read themselves.
But generally, reading about another person reading novels is ever only interesting for people who read a lot themselves, and want to read more. The same group of people who actually read author's biographies and letters, and listen to the director's commentary on DVDs. I'm just happy that I found something that caters to this pretty peculiar obsession of mine.

Realists and dreamers

We have this self-sufficiently book, The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency by John Seymour, and today for the first time I noticed the sub-heading: "for realists and dreamers". Which struck me as very apt in our case, because we have been thinking about growing more veg and fruit, and also planning to live in a more rural setting and maybe having some chickens and/or a goat and trying to 'live off the land'  more for quite a while now, but so far it's mostly been dreaming. And also, were realists enough to see that it will remain just dreaming for quite some time to come. So in a way, we're both realists and dreamers.

Dreaming isn't bad, I love to dream about many things: taking a year off to sail around the world, or just backpack around it, or going to Africa to film things in the Big Cat Diary way, or doing a fantastic internship at Penguin or just moving to the English countryside to write novels, or to New York and be a sort of Desmond Morris-like city-biologist/anthropologist, or any other variation that does not involve the job I currently have, the house and city I currently live in, and the things I currently do every day. And I know there are people who actually quit their job and sell their home and start up a little farm/restaurant in the middle of France, or start a diving school in Mozambique, or write novels on a mountaintop in China. But then, that's not really me. I'm not the one to leave everything behind and start somewhere new. I need a firm base, a mother ship so to speak, to return to. Also, I'm not the kind of person who can just drop their cats and books and tea off at someone else's and not return in a year. I need a lot of things to keep me happy and comfortable. So even though I would love to do all those things, I'm both a dreamer and a realist, and I see it's not really going to happen any time soon.

But that does not mean I'm not a little bit jealous at those people who actually do do these things. But I comfort myself with the thought that in the case of the little cottage/farm with the vegetable plot, fruit trees, and chickens, there is the smallest chance of it actually happening one day.

September in the air

Joe Fox: Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. On the other hand, this not knowing has its charms.

Famous lines from a famous film (You've got Mail, in case you were wondering, which is still the only proper film Tom Hanks ever made, maybe apart from Forrest Gump).

Strangely enough, the atmosphere it conveys, of autumn and falling leaves, of crisper air and new beginnings, that atmosphere has been hanging around for the last week. Somehow, it's September weather in the middle of August. The nights are getting properly cold again, the air smells wet and faintly rotting, and somehow all around people are talking about new beginnings, about changing things in their lives, about doing things differently.
Now autumn is still my favourite season of the year, so I'm not complaining, but it is a bit worrisome that somehow this years summer only lasted about 3 weeks. We had cold and snow until well into May, then we had cold and wet, then we had some heat, and now we're down into cold and wet again.
Also, I am still feeling faintly worried about not having re-applied to university, as this is the first time in 9 years I won't actually re-enroll, because I've graduated, but the nagging feeling of I-still-have-to-do-something-really-important-but-I-can't-remember-what-it-is is still lingering.
About the new beginnings: several colleagues are planning on eating less sweets, exercising more, etc, with the really ambitious planning to work less the coming year (by 'less' I don't mean 'less than they're supposed to work' but rather 'less outrageous overtime'). I like this atmosphere of new chances, it is always more energized and hopeful in September than in January, when the obligatory New Year's resolutions come around. We all know it's not going to happen, but the motivation and energy it brings is helpful to us all.

But still, I wouldn't mind a couple of days (maybe a weekend?) of nice, sunny, warm summer weather!

Holiday novels

Someone asked me whether I'd had a relaxing holiday and read lots of books. I said yes to both, but when they (jealously, as they had been on holiday with 3 small children) asked me which books I'd read, I couldn't remember any of them! They were quietly amused, and I sat there cracking my head at which ones they were all through the rest of the conversations.
Finally I managed to remember 3, and including the one I'm still reading now that makes 4. Somehow the fifth book has completely disappeared from memory.
I think that is quite interesting, because I remember liking, enjoying, and maybe even getting a little emotional at all novels I read. So they had some impact while I was reading them, but not enough impact to actually remain with me?

One of the novels I can remember is a Dutch book by Bert Wagendorp called Ventoux. It is supposedly about the 'magic of male friendship', and the author has stated in several interviews that he thinks male friendship is deeper and more special than female friendship, because only men could not talk to each other for 30 years and then meet again, pat each other on the back, and go drink a beer. Which is probably true, but that does not mean female friendships (or male/female friendships, of which I tend to have more) are not as deep as the full male bonding, it just means that the author is male and had enforced his male perspective.
While a fun read, it was not really life-changing.

I am currently still reading Wolf Hall, because I read Bring Up the Bodies and then discovered that this is actually the sequel to Wolf Hall, so I decided to read them in the wrong order because the main plot line is known anyway: Henry VIII kills or disposes of everyone in his way to marry Anne Boleyn, and in the sequel he does the same to marry Jane Seymour. Also, the novels are great anyway, whichever order you read them in.

The novel that made the most impact was Ghostwritten by David Mitchell, which can be seen as a sort of study for his real masterpiece Cloud Atlas. You can see the same sort of techniques and interweavings at work, but also where he will improve and how he will learn to give his characters more depth of personality. Still, a brilliant novel.

Then I read a non-fiction work about how the digital world is destroying all our mental capacity, which was fun and disturbing. And then there was the fifth book, which I cannot remember.

So really, the novel that had the strongest impact on me recently must be The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, even though I bought that as an afterthought and finished it in an afternoon. I even cried a little towards the end, which is in my eyes the mark of a really good novel. And it just goes to show that great authors keep on getting better and producing better things, even when it's just a novella, even when it's fantasy. Which makes me very hopeful about David Mitchell's upcoming works.

Not dead!

So every blogger has to do one of the obligatory "I'm not dead, just really busy!" posts, and this is my first one here, so that's pretty good considering I've been going at this for 1.5 years. Even though I haven't posted anything for the last 2.5 month (seriously, didn't realise it was that long!), there are still quite a lot of viewers, mostly Postcrossing-directed. Don't be afraid, I will post more in the (near) future!
But for the last couple of months I was just too busy with work (36 hours a week, plus 8 for the editing work I'm still doing), and then we went on holiday to France. Which I will probably write some stuff about sometime, but not now, otherwise this wouldn't be a not-dead post anymore.
So keep tuned.

Queueing

This year's Eurovision Song Contest has come to an end again. For the first time in 9 years, 'we' (= the Netherlands) actually took part in the final, and we became 9th, which is pretty respectable for 'the worst performing Eurovision country ever'. Maybe now the Dutch organisers have realised that sending music that 'most' Dutch people like is also sending music that 'most' other people do not like, and that sending a good artist with a good song will lead to better results. Probably not, but for the first time in 10 years I didn't cringe with shame when our singer went on stage.
I love to watch these kinds of things, can't really say why, but must be the same reason I watched the Royal Wedding or the queen's abdication: feeling like you're part of something. And I am a member of the television generation, after all.

One of the things I like about Eurovision is the self-promoting videos of the countries in between. Sweden had a long stage section with dance and music, with the presenter telling us stuff about Sweden. This year it was extra fun, because ironically, the stuff that makes Swedes feel like real Swedes is apparently the same as what makes Germans feel like Germans, or British like British, or Dutch like Dutch. Not showing your emotions in public, being polite, and standing in line were the things that were emphasised. I always thought the British were the ones who liked to stand in line most, and as for the other things, almost any Scandinavian or western-European country can relate to them.
So the things that a people feel really 'define who they are', are the same things that define at least 10 other peoples. We're more alike than we think. Which is of course wholly in line with the 'We are one' slogan.

About queueing (I love that word), there is a poem hanging around the office I did my internship in, used to promote our British-oriented school books. Since I like the poem, and we could all do with more poetry in our lives, I'll end this post with the British fascination for queueing:


Q by Roger McGough

I join the queue
We move up nicely.

I ask the lady in front
What are we queueing for.
'To join another queue,'
She explains.

'How pointless,' I say,
'I'm leaving.' She points
To another long queue.
'Then you must get in line.'

I join the queue.
We move up nicely.

Heide-Park

As some of you may know by now, I am a bit of a roller coaster enthusiast. And I don't just mean building them in RollerCoaster Tycoon (although I still enjoy doing that too - crazy how a game can still be fun after at least 10 years of playing it!). No, I like the real thing too. Which is why we went to SixFlags Great Adventure while we were in the US, and went on Kingda Ka, even though it is crazy and your mind cannot get around the sheer speed you're going at and you're wondering why-on-earth-you-are-on-the-thing-in-the-first-place until it ends and then you're so full of adrenaline you just want to go again (or well, I did. My boyfriend not so much, so we only did the one trip).
US coasters are completely different from European coasters, we discovered while we were there. Another coaster, El Toro, is a wooden coaster, which is nice, but usually means 'bumpy ride'. Not so in the US, all coasters are smooth and sleek and last more than a minute, which is not something you can say for any European coaster I've ever been in (the new George and the Dragon wooden racing roller coaster in the Efteling tries, but it's still pretty uncomfortable compared to any American coaster I've been in). Anyway, wooden coasters are still my favourite, and I like to try as many different types of coasters I can find, which means we have to leave the Netherlands to find them, as there are only 2 good theme parks here and they're done building coasters.
So when I discovered that the highest wooden roller coaster in the world lives only 2 hours across the border in Germany, I had to go there. Luckily, my boyfriend also likes coasters, and we have a friend who loves them since we dragged her to the Efteling about a year ago, so we were all set.
The theme park is called Heide-Park, and it has 8 roller coasters. 3 of those we wrote of immediately, 2 because they were kiddie rides, and 1 because it has the exact same lay-out as the Python in the Efteling, and I've been going on that since I was 10 (and technically speaking a bit too short for it). No, we came for Colossus, the big wooden one. Which was really nice, really high, really fast, but still, a little bit uncomfortable, with the cars jumping around on the track in that well-known European way. A lot better than most wooden coasters, but still.
Then there was Desert Race, a launched roller coaster that was pretty nice, but after the initial 'launch' part is over very quickly, again, typical of European coasters. Then we went on Schweizer Bobbahn, which is really a family roller coaster, pretty old, but pretty cute. I know the Bob roller coaster in the Efteling, which is older end extremely uncomfortable, so this one had to improve our views of bobsled roller coasters, and it did. Then there was Limit, an inverted roller coaster which was pretty nice, lots of loops, but without banging your head against the headrest too much.
Four perfectly decent roller coasters would make anyone's day, but there was one left. The newest of them all, Krake, a dive coaster (the only one in Germany and also, incidentally, the first dive coaster I've ever been on). We had to wait the longest to get on it, with a rain shower threatening to burst overhead, but finally, we made it. It's one of those coasters where the support is underneath, but still your legs swing freely, which are the best kind in my opinion. The 'dive' part is about 41 m high and the sheer drop is amazing. We weren't sitting in the front row, as that line was even longer, but still, hanging up there while you can't see the actual track is quite terrifying. This was actually the first time (after Kingda Ka) that a roller coaster had me genuinely afraid again, with your stomach dropping down to your toe nails and then back up to your throat in about 3 seconds. After the drop the coaster breaks through water and goes through a loop, leaving a nice curtain of water in your wake. Then it's just 2 more banked corners and you're done. Great coaster, but so sad that it's over so quickly. The dive thing is the main part, I know, but any coaster that has to break that hard at the end has too much energy left over!
Next on my list is Alton Towers, with Nemesis, Oblivion and The Smiler, which I hope will be more US-like, but I'll take any coaster I can get in the meantime!

The Birds

As you may know by now, the garden that came with our new house isn't really a garden in the true sense, it's more a patch of yellow sand and clay with some tiles dropped in. We've tried very hard to change that, and some nice plants are starting to grow, but it will be at least a couple of months before it can really truly be called a garden (I will add pictures!). And even then, it will be one of very very few in the neighbourhood, as most people just pave the whole thing over and throw in some expensive 'lounge' furniture and an oversized barbecue.
Which is why I am so very happy that one little sparrow has found its way into our garden and is hopping around the (small, just coming in to leaf) birch tree. We left the bird feeder up because it was still quite cold, and the sparrow has been spreading seed husks all over the surrounding area, in a great show of appetite. Our first bird! Apart from the colony of jackdaws living next door, of course, but they don't really visit the garden, they just hop around on the shed and in the raingutters.
But there has been some activity in our birdhouse as well: small twigs are now sticking out of the creaks in the bottom. We're not sure whether it is the same sparrow (they tend to nest in groups) or whether a lonely blue tit or great tit has found it, but we're keeping our fingers crossed that we may even get a bird-in-residence.
And then yesterday we were sitting outside in front of our house, because that's where the sun is in the late afternoon, and we heard this frantic chirping by little chicks, and discovered that there are several nestboxes under the raingutters of the houses on the opposite side of the street. They're of the type more commonly known as 'sparrow flats', with several openings for sparrows to nest together. One family had clearly already hatched, and both parents were flying in and out bringing food.
All of this made me very happy.
One of the first things I learnt when I started my biology studies was that most biologists study birds because they're a) not nocturnal and b) one of the last patches of nature that can actually withstand the pressure of the city. This area is not extremely bad, naturewise, there are lots of trees and bushes next to the railroad tracks, and if you cross the ring road you're in the middle of the fields (with complementary manure wafts if the wind turns that way), but it's no bird heaven, especially with all the cats and dogs and small children running around. But, as ever, nature finds its way, even if it is with the help of some man-made nest boxes.
And then to top it all off: yesterday evening we had a bat in the garden, gracefully swooping around to clear out the mosquitoes.

Chocolate Almond Cake

Last Saturday we had our housewarming party, and this was the ideal opportunity to start baking again after quite a long pause. I decide to bake a carrot cake and a key lime pie, as these are two strong favourites.
Sadly, and also quite upsettingly, the key lime pie failed. I have never really had an entire cake or pie fail on me, but this was just completely inedible: the inside was still liquid after a full night in the fridge, soaking through the entire biscuit base (which was actually one of the best I'd made in years! ah well...).
After the sad disposal of said pie in the dustbin, I quickly had to come up with another cake to make, or we would have had lots of hungry guests. I flipped through my Mary Berry's Baking Bible, desperate for a recipe that didn't include things I didn't have, and I found the Almond and Chocolate Chip Cake.
Now the ingredients that Mary Berry lists are as follows:
175 g self-raising flour
175 g softened butter
175 g caster sugar
3 large eggs
50 g ground almond
175 g plain chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
flaked almonds, for sprinkling

Of this list, I used exactly 2 things in the same amount as she ordered: the eggs and the flaked almonds. As I didn't have any ground almonds, I used some almond paste I still had left over from Sinterklaas. As this consists of equal amounts almonds and sugar, I dispensed with the caster sugar, upped some of the amounts, added some other stuff, and came to the following:
200 g self-raising flour
200 g softened butter
250 g almond paste
25 g cocoa powder
3 large eggs
100 g chocolate chips
1 packet backing powder
flaked almonds

Just throw everything in a bowl, mix thoroughly, put into a prepared baking tin (buttered and with backing parchment on the bottom), sprinkle almond flakes over the top and bank for 1 hour at 180 degrees C.
I added the baking powder because the almond paste was pretty heavy and dense, and I was afraid the cake wouldn't rise properly. In fact, it did rise, and it was nice and moist on the inside, sweet, chocolaty, with a hint of almonds. Pretty good, for a I-need-a-plan-now! cake.
Sadly, no pictures, as this was kind of a rush job, but I'll probably make it again some other time, and show you then!