So I've been wearing my glasses more often lately, because I've been spending long stretches of time behind a computer screen and your eyes get kinda dry and itchy after a while, and it's nice to just be able to scratch. Also, hay fever. Also, I got some new glasses in February, so I now have some that I would actually wear in public, as opposed to my small, dirty, old ones (which I've had since I was 12).
So I have been wearing them out in public, and I've noticed that people react differently to me when I do. When I wear them, men tend to treat me as if I need help, as if I can't figure things out, or as if I need them to be sweet and kind to me. I get a lot more smiles when I cycle or walk through the city, and some will actually greet me, even though they don't know me. They will come up to me in shops asking whether I need help, offer me an extra bag, let me go in front instead of cutting me off... it's amazing. It may be because I look about 10 years younger when I wear glasses (which would put me at 16, not too bad), or maybe because I look like a big-eyed helpless girl. The effect is more pronounced when I wear a skirt, by the way, so maybe it does generate some sort of "damsel in distress" signal that men respond to.
Women, on the other hand, give me the cold shoulder. They give me a "look at her, trying to look smarter than she is"-look, and then deliberately cut you off or ignore you. Again, more pronounced when you're wearing a skirt, as if you're trying to impersonate some sort of "feminine power woman". This does not go for women of about 50 and above, who will act the same as men, but most women under that age do suddenly turn up their noses at you. Which is interesting, because I have a classmate who sometimes wears glasses and sometimes doesn't, and when she does bring them I catch myself thinking "tsss, trying to look more intelligent are we?"
Why do women do this? Why do we always push each other down when it comes to looks? It's the men who should be fighting for us, not the other way around (biologically speaking, don't go calling me an anti-feminist now). I've heard from several people that my glasses actually do look good on me, but if I'd go by the response I get from women in the street, I'd throw them in the bottom drawer and then run a car over it.
So anyway, just something I noticed and wanted to share, if you have any thoughts on how and why and so forth please share them, because I'm still undecided whether I should or should not wear my glasses in public.
Friday, 18 May 2012
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Common Era
During one of my classes last week, we discussed methods of time keeping and counting years, including our Christian-based system, but also the Muslim, Jewish, Chinese, and Buddhist calendars. At some point, one of my classmates declare that she refused to use BC and AD, but chose to use BCE and CE; Before Common Era and Common Era (or Current Era). She refused to use the "Christian system" because she "didn't believe in it" and because she thought it "arrogant" to impose your religion on the world like that. Our lecturer kindly argued that he thought that that was arrogant, as the whole CE system still uses the Christian time reckoning, it just removed the religious element. Before this could turn into a real (and probably painful) discussion we moved off to something else, but it kept me thinking.
Somehow a conversation I had today turned to the subject, and I found out that Jews have been using the Common Era annotation for longer, because they do not like referencing to Christ. Fair enough. But then I was reading a paper (actually, I'm in the middle of reading it, as I stopped to type this), and they mentioned the Greeks doing something in 500 BCE, and that just somehow went the wrong way. I mean, the Greeks have absolutely nothing to do with the Christian faith, but it just feels so contrived to put it like that. So look-at-us-going-out-of-our-way-to-look-secular-and-scientific-and-disinterested.
So I started looking for more information, and the Wikipedia page as usual came in handy. Apparently, I'm very late coming to this, because it's already standard practise in many American textbooks, and the Brits are going that way as well. Soon, nobody will use BC and AD anymore (except for Christians, of course, who are very offended by all this), and we'll all happily use BCE and CE.
So what's next?
Do these people realise that our days of the week are named after a mixture of Germanic and Roman gods? I mean, Thursday is named after Thor! And Wednesday is derived from Wodan, or even Mercurius if you're living in a Romance language country Off with their heads! We don't believe in Thor or Mercury anymore! Come to think of that, most of our planets are named after Roman gods as well! Do we believe in them? No way! Bye bye Mars and Venus, from now on it'll be Manplanet and Womanplanet. But it gets worse; the whole continent of Europe is called after someone from Greek mythology! Quick, change the name, before everybody thinks we still believe in it!
But it doesn't stop there. It's not only names, before you know it, you won't be able to say "the powers that be" or "the writing's on the wall" or proverbs such as "you reap what you sow" and "the blind leading the blind", because all of these are from the Bible, and you don't believe in that, do you? Will we still be able to say "We're not in Kansas anymore" even though we don't believe in The Wizard of Oz? Will in that near future anyone be able to remark "Curiouser and curiouser" without being branded as an "Alice-believer"?
I think I've made my point clear. Everything, or almost everything, we say has some background, some history, some connotation. If you look at the English language, many words are derived from Shakespeare and other literary giants, but many also come from the Bible. If you don't belief in the Christian religion anymore, does that mean you can't use words related to it? I think that's nonsense. Any religious connotation it may once have had has disappeared for most of us, until you put the spotlight on it, like these people do.
Moreover, if you're going to abolish a system, don't replace it with exactly the same thing only with a different name tag. If they'd generated a new calendar, a new way of counting the years, and argued that we're now living in year 4,548,489,932 or something, I'd be happy to change to their system (also, you'd get rid of the whole Before Something and After Something debate). But this way, nahhh. It's too contrived, it's too look-at-us-being-clever-and-secular, and there's no point. You either change it all (and the list I mentioned with all the days and planets etc is veeeeeery extensive) or you keep things as they are. You wouldn't go knocking down the Parthenon just because we don't believe in those Greek gods anymore, would you? Then don't do it to words. They're just words, after all.
Somehow a conversation I had today turned to the subject, and I found out that Jews have been using the Common Era annotation for longer, because they do not like referencing to Christ. Fair enough. But then I was reading a paper (actually, I'm in the middle of reading it, as I stopped to type this), and they mentioned the Greeks doing something in 500 BCE, and that just somehow went the wrong way. I mean, the Greeks have absolutely nothing to do with the Christian faith, but it just feels so contrived to put it like that. So look-at-us-going-out-of-our-way-to-look-secular-and-scientific-and-disinterested.
So I started looking for more information, and the Wikipedia page as usual came in handy. Apparently, I'm very late coming to this, because it's already standard practise in many American textbooks, and the Brits are going that way as well. Soon, nobody will use BC and AD anymore (except for Christians, of course, who are very offended by all this), and we'll all happily use BCE and CE.
So what's next?
Do these people realise that our days of the week are named after a mixture of Germanic and Roman gods? I mean, Thursday is named after Thor! And Wednesday is derived from Wodan, or even Mercurius if you're living in a Romance language country Off with their heads! We don't believe in Thor or Mercury anymore! Come to think of that, most of our planets are named after Roman gods as well! Do we believe in them? No way! Bye bye Mars and Venus, from now on it'll be Manplanet and Womanplanet. But it gets worse; the whole continent of Europe is called after someone from Greek mythology! Quick, change the name, before everybody thinks we still believe in it!
But it doesn't stop there. It's not only names, before you know it, you won't be able to say "the powers that be" or "the writing's on the wall" or proverbs such as "you reap what you sow" and "the blind leading the blind", because all of these are from the Bible, and you don't believe in that, do you? Will we still be able to say "We're not in Kansas anymore" even though we don't believe in The Wizard of Oz? Will in that near future anyone be able to remark "Curiouser and curiouser" without being branded as an "Alice-believer"?
I think I've made my point clear. Everything, or almost everything, we say has some background, some history, some connotation. If you look at the English language, many words are derived from Shakespeare and other literary giants, but many also come from the Bible. If you don't belief in the Christian religion anymore, does that mean you can't use words related to it? I think that's nonsense. Any religious connotation it may once have had has disappeared for most of us, until you put the spotlight on it, like these people do.
Moreover, if you're going to abolish a system, don't replace it with exactly the same thing only with a different name tag. If they'd generated a new calendar, a new way of counting the years, and argued that we're now living in year 4,548,489,932 or something, I'd be happy to change to their system (also, you'd get rid of the whole Before Something and After Something debate). But this way, nahhh. It's too contrived, it's too look-at-us-being-clever-and-secular, and there's no point. You either change it all (and the list I mentioned with all the days and planets etc is veeeeeery extensive) or you keep things as they are. You wouldn't go knocking down the Parthenon just because we don't believe in those Greek gods anymore, would you? Then don't do it to words. They're just words, after all.
Sunday, 13 May 2012
Double chocolate cheesecake
For our trip to Paris, we'd bought several small snacks to gobble down in a tight moment of hunger, but inevitably these were never eaten, as there are always so much more attractive possibilities at hand (Starbucks, for example). Now one batch of these, "LU Timeout speculaas", had an unfortunate time in the bottom of one of our backpacks, and now all the biscuits have turned into crumbly bits. What a shame, we could say, or better; what an opportunity!
What do you use crumbly biscuits for? Crumbly biscuit cake bases! And what better cake to make than a cheesecake, and what better cheesecake to make than a chocolate cheesecake! Hurrah!
Now I'd never made a chocolate cheesecake before, so I looked at some recipes (you have baked ones, unbaked ones, ones filled with booze or fruits that aren't in season or whatever), and I ended up with the double chocolate cheesecake recipe of the BBC. However, some of the amounts in there didn't work out for Dutch shoppers (you can only buy mascarpone in batches of 250 g, and I didn't want to be left with 50 g of mascarpone which you can't use in anything) and because I think 50 g of butter isn't enough, and because I used a bigger cake tin (24 cm), I adapted the recipe as follows:
Ingredients:
200 g crumbly biscuits (can be digestive, or other crumbly ones)
100 g butter
400g cream cheese
250g mascarpone
300g milk chocolate , melted
100g dark chocolate , melted
Mix the crumbled biscuits with the melted butter. Line the bottom of the spring form tin with baking paper. Press the biscuit mixture into the base of the tin. Set to cool in the oven for about 10 minutes.
Mix the cream cheese with the mascarpone. Fold the milk chocolate into the cream cheese mix and then stir in the dark chocolate so that it looks streaky.
Line the sides of the tin with more baking paper. Spoon the cake mixture into the tin, level the top, and let cool for at least 2 hours.
Now the whole "stir in the dark chocolate so that it looks streaky" didn't quite work out for me (as it did for most people, looking at the comments on the recipe page), but other than that everything worked fine. The bottom is a bit crumbly, but what do you expect with so many crumbly biscuits?
The taste is great though; chocolaty, rich, with some spices coming through from the speculaas. The harder bits of dark chocolate give it a little bit of a crunch. It is very very heavy though, so while it says 8 portions in the recipe, I've turned it into 12, which just makes the goodness last that bit longer!
What do you use crumbly biscuits for? Crumbly biscuit cake bases! And what better cake to make than a cheesecake, and what better cheesecake to make than a chocolate cheesecake! Hurrah!
Now I'd never made a chocolate cheesecake before, so I looked at some recipes (you have baked ones, unbaked ones, ones filled with booze or fruits that aren't in season or whatever), and I ended up with the double chocolate cheesecake recipe of the BBC. However, some of the amounts in there didn't work out for Dutch shoppers (you can only buy mascarpone in batches of 250 g, and I didn't want to be left with 50 g of mascarpone which you can't use in anything) and because I think 50 g of butter isn't enough, and because I used a bigger cake tin (24 cm), I adapted the recipe as follows:
Ingredients:
200 g crumbly biscuits (can be digestive, or other crumbly ones)
100 g butter
400g cream cheese
250g mascarpone
300g milk chocolate , melted
100g dark chocolate , melted
Mix the crumbled biscuits with the melted butter. Line the bottom of the spring form tin with baking paper. Press the biscuit mixture into the base of the tin. Set to cool in the oven for about 10 minutes.
Mix the cream cheese with the mascarpone. Fold the milk chocolate into the cream cheese mix and then stir in the dark chocolate so that it looks streaky.
Line the sides of the tin with more baking paper. Spoon the cake mixture into the tin, level the top, and let cool for at least 2 hours.
 |
| "Level the top" they say. It never works. |
The taste is great though; chocolaty, rich, with some spices coming through from the speculaas. The harder bits of dark chocolate give it a little bit of a crunch. It is very very heavy though, so while it says 8 portions in the recipe, I've turned it into 12, which just makes the goodness last that bit longer!
Thursday, 10 May 2012
Older films
So I was watching A Streetcar named Desire yesterday, the 1953 film version (for a class, sadly enough, the last time I could watch an entire movie just for the sake of watching it must have been months ago. Actually, come to think of it, that must've been The Hunger Games, somewhere in the middle of March. The only things I now actually make time for are Game of Thrones and The Apprentice. Ah, the joy of being busy...), and then it struck me: old(er) films are just much better than the ones we have today.
Now I should immediately put in a disclaimer here, because I don't want to sound like someone who knows her stuff when I don't. I haven't watched that many "old" films. I'm one of those people who keeps saying she wants to watch Casablanca and Gone with the Wind and The Graduate and never really does it. But I do think I've seen enough old(er) and new(er) films to make some kind of judgement.
Now with Streetcar, you can clearly see that the set is not that realistic, that the camera wobbles, that most of the sound effects were added later in a studio, and that the acting is just a little bit over the top. But that doesn't matter. The story, the characters, they draw you in every time, even though you know the plot, even though you know exactly what's going to happen. It keeps you on the edge, it makes you wonder, it does everything a good film or play is supposed to do.
Does this mean that actors were just that much better in those days? I don't think so, because we still have some great ones (although it is of course telling that Marlon Brando also played in what is regarded as the best film for a long time now, The Godfather). I think they did have the advantage of also having acted on stage, which calls for a different kind of acting than film-acting, because the audience is that much farther away and not inside the camera shoved next to your face (although it isn't really, in these older movies, because it couldn't be. So that may also be one of the differences; actors had to act with their whole bodies, their whole selves, not just with that tiny bit showing on the close-up).
No, I think the main difference is that it is real. The people are real, the situations are real, the behaviour is a close enough approximation of real, and the story is told in a clear, not-too-forced manner. What I mean is this; Stanley and Stella and Blanche and the house they live in and their friends and the situations they find themselves in, they're all recognisable. We've all played poker or had an unexpected guest stay too long or known someone who kept up appearances even though inside she was crumbling. They all look real, too, not too much make-up (they even had to make Vivian Leigh look older, because she was too good-looking to play Blanche), and obviously no digital touch-ups. Stella is nice and plump, not the too-skinny kind of actress you have today, and Stanley's friends are big and small and tall and unshaven as real people would be. The filming is kinda wobbly, but that is okay, because in real life you don't have a steady vision of things anyway. The camera is in those places a real person could also be, we don't see the action as if we're "in the wall" or whatever. So, in short, it looks real.
Now compare this to the latest film I've seen that actually came close to gripping me for its entire length; The Hunger Games (yes, I keep coming back to this film, but as I said, it's one of the last I've actually seen and can properly discuss). The situation is unrealistic from the outset, but that's a given in a post-apocalyptic dystopian movie, so we'll let that one go. However, the characters are also unrealistic. Katniss is way to muscular for how little food she has been eating, same goes for Gale. Their faces and clothes are too clean, overall their cloths are just too expensive (Katniss has a pair of leather boots that would cost more that her entire family has in a year). And finally, of course, they look too perfect. Their faces have been made completely smooth by make-up, their hair is always perfect, they are thin but muscular, or broad and muscular in the case of the guys, and they just are unrealistically pretty. Otherwise, the acting is realistic, the responses to situations seem real and are understandable, even though they are situations that we've never found ourselves in. The camerawork is nice and wobbly, "because we wanted to show it was Katniss's point of view", as the director said, even though the camera sometimes occupies a place no normal person could have been (extreme close-ups, extreme overview shots).
On the whole, if you compare these two films, the main difference is the physique and looks of the actors and the camera positions. No matter how good your story is, if your characters look unbelievable or you tell it from a point of view that people couldn't have in real life, people won't follow your story.
Does it matter? Of course it doesn't. Most people don't watch a film to be drawn into the story, to experience highs and lows, to gain new insights into Life, the Universe, and Everything. They watch a movie to relax, to enjoy themselves with friends, to keep the kids quiet. And in response, that's the kind of film we're getting.
However, as Aristotle said (oh my, doesn't that make me sound presumptuous), emotional catharsis in the audience is one of the most important elements of tragic theatre (as you'll see, I'm leaving out comedy for the moment, partly because it's a totally different thing and partly because I don't like 95% of all comic films being made right now, so I don't watch them, so I can't talk about them). For me, it is definitely important. If I'm going to invest my time and attention and energy (and money) into a film, I better get something out of it, or I better be drawn into it in such a way that I forget about everything else for a while. Maybe that's why I haven't been watching that many movies lately; they just aren't good enough. Not for what I want to get out of them.
So perhaps it's time to get some of those oldies, hunker down with some popcorn, and be swept away in black-and-white for a day.
Now I should immediately put in a disclaimer here, because I don't want to sound like someone who knows her stuff when I don't. I haven't watched that many "old" films. I'm one of those people who keeps saying she wants to watch Casablanca and Gone with the Wind and The Graduate and never really does it. But I do think I've seen enough old(er) and new(er) films to make some kind of judgement.
Now with Streetcar, you can clearly see that the set is not that realistic, that the camera wobbles, that most of the sound effects were added later in a studio, and that the acting is just a little bit over the top. But that doesn't matter. The story, the characters, they draw you in every time, even though you know the plot, even though you know exactly what's going to happen. It keeps you on the edge, it makes you wonder, it does everything a good film or play is supposed to do.
Does this mean that actors were just that much better in those days? I don't think so, because we still have some great ones (although it is of course telling that Marlon Brando also played in what is regarded as the best film for a long time now, The Godfather). I think they did have the advantage of also having acted on stage, which calls for a different kind of acting than film-acting, because the audience is that much farther away and not inside the camera shoved next to your face (although it isn't really, in these older movies, because it couldn't be. So that may also be one of the differences; actors had to act with their whole bodies, their whole selves, not just with that tiny bit showing on the close-up).
No, I think the main difference is that it is real. The people are real, the situations are real, the behaviour is a close enough approximation of real, and the story is told in a clear, not-too-forced manner. What I mean is this; Stanley and Stella and Blanche and the house they live in and their friends and the situations they find themselves in, they're all recognisable. We've all played poker or had an unexpected guest stay too long or known someone who kept up appearances even though inside she was crumbling. They all look real, too, not too much make-up (they even had to make Vivian Leigh look older, because she was too good-looking to play Blanche), and obviously no digital touch-ups. Stella is nice and plump, not the too-skinny kind of actress you have today, and Stanley's friends are big and small and tall and unshaven as real people would be. The filming is kinda wobbly, but that is okay, because in real life you don't have a steady vision of things anyway. The camera is in those places a real person could also be, we don't see the action as if we're "in the wall" or whatever. So, in short, it looks real.
Now compare this to the latest film I've seen that actually came close to gripping me for its entire length; The Hunger Games (yes, I keep coming back to this film, but as I said, it's one of the last I've actually seen and can properly discuss). The situation is unrealistic from the outset, but that's a given in a post-apocalyptic dystopian movie, so we'll let that one go. However, the characters are also unrealistic. Katniss is way to muscular for how little food she has been eating, same goes for Gale. Their faces and clothes are too clean, overall their cloths are just too expensive (Katniss has a pair of leather boots that would cost more that her entire family has in a year). And finally, of course, they look too perfect. Their faces have been made completely smooth by make-up, their hair is always perfect, they are thin but muscular, or broad and muscular in the case of the guys, and they just are unrealistically pretty. Otherwise, the acting is realistic, the responses to situations seem real and are understandable, even though they are situations that we've never found ourselves in. The camerawork is nice and wobbly, "because we wanted to show it was Katniss's point of view", as the director said, even though the camera sometimes occupies a place no normal person could have been (extreme close-ups, extreme overview shots).
On the whole, if you compare these two films, the main difference is the physique and looks of the actors and the camera positions. No matter how good your story is, if your characters look unbelievable or you tell it from a point of view that people couldn't have in real life, people won't follow your story.
Does it matter? Of course it doesn't. Most people don't watch a film to be drawn into the story, to experience highs and lows, to gain new insights into Life, the Universe, and Everything. They watch a movie to relax, to enjoy themselves with friends, to keep the kids quiet. And in response, that's the kind of film we're getting.
However, as Aristotle said (oh my, doesn't that make me sound presumptuous), emotional catharsis in the audience is one of the most important elements of tragic theatre (as you'll see, I'm leaving out comedy for the moment, partly because it's a totally different thing and partly because I don't like 95% of all comic films being made right now, so I don't watch them, so I can't talk about them). For me, it is definitely important. If I'm going to invest my time and attention and energy (and money) into a film, I better get something out of it, or I better be drawn into it in such a way that I forget about everything else for a while. Maybe that's why I haven't been watching that many movies lately; they just aren't good enough. Not for what I want to get out of them.
So perhaps it's time to get some of those oldies, hunker down with some popcorn, and be swept away in black-and-white for a day.
Sunday, 6 May 2012
Carrot cupcakes
So after all that Frenchiness, I decided to make something really British, namely carrot cupcakes (which are basically carrot cakes, only smaller). Somehow we'd managed to avoid every salon du the in Paris (not actively, I had even looked some of them up, but there's just too much to do in Paris), and I was craving for some good old cupcakes.
Now I checked on line for several recipes but none really suited my purpose, so I created my own by combining several other recipes. It is mostly based on the BBC Good Food recipe for carrot & cream cheese cupcakes, but as I have no clue what "brown muscovado sugar" might be, and bicarbonate of soda still isn't something you just find in shops around here, you will see I've made some changes.
Ingredients:
175 g brown sugar
100 g plain flour
100 g self-raising flour
3 tablespoons of mixed spices (this is called "koek- en speculaaskruiden" in Dutch, it contains cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and cardamom)
1 tablespoon of lemon zest
2 eggs
150 ml sunflower oil
150 g grated carrots (you want to grate these in your kitchen machine. Believe me, I tried grating them by hand, and it's no fun. Also, it makes everything in your kitchen bright orange)
Add the sugar, flours, spices, and lemon zest to your grated carrots.
Combine the eggs and oil in a separate bowl.
While letting the machine run, pour in the oil-mixture bit by bit until you have a soft dough. (At this point, it will not look pretty. Believe me). Spoon the mixture into your cupcake cases (you'll need 12, or fewer if you want bigger cakes) and bake for about 20 minutes at 180 degrees C, until they are firm but still springy to the touch. Let cool on a wire rack (or you'll get soggy bottoms, and if The Great British Bake-off taught me anything, it is that you don't want soggy bottoms).
Now, you can eat them just as they are, or you can add some icing (what Americans call "frosting", which always reminds me of How to lose a guy in 10 days ("Frooooooost yourself!!!") but never mind). Make sure your cupcakes are completely cooled before putting on the icing or your icing will melt, or worse, split.
Icing ingredients (this makes for a loooot of icing (see photo), take half of these amounts for a more modest amount):
100 g butter (soft)
200 g cream cheese
100-200 g icing sugar (how much icing sugar you use will depend on how sweet you want the icing to be. I like it when there is a bit of a sour bite to it, so I used 100 g (also because the carrots make the cakes really sweet), but if you have a sweet-tooth, use more than that)
Mix the butter until it is soft and smooth. Beat in the cream cheese, and finally beat in the icing sugar. Use a knife to put it on top of the cupcakes, because the mixture is too thick to go through a piping bag.
You can decorate them in any way you want, I didn't have any cute sprinkly things laying around, so we just ate them like this. And they were delicious! Sweet, spicy, a bit soury, moist but firm, hmmmm!
I think I may try these again with some chopped walnuts added to the batter, I wouldn't mind a bit more of a crunch. But other than that, they're great!
Now I checked on line for several recipes but none really suited my purpose, so I created my own by combining several other recipes. It is mostly based on the BBC Good Food recipe for carrot & cream cheese cupcakes, but as I have no clue what "brown muscovado sugar" might be, and bicarbonate of soda still isn't something you just find in shops around here, you will see I've made some changes.
Ingredients:
175 g brown sugar
100 g plain flour
100 g self-raising flour
3 tablespoons of mixed spices (this is called "koek- en speculaaskruiden" in Dutch, it contains cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and cardamom)
1 tablespoon of lemon zest
2 eggs
150 ml sunflower oil
150 g grated carrots (you want to grate these in your kitchen machine. Believe me, I tried grating them by hand, and it's no fun. Also, it makes everything in your kitchen bright orange)
 |
| Told you it didn't look pretty! |
Combine the eggs and oil in a separate bowl.
While letting the machine run, pour in the oil-mixture bit by bit until you have a soft dough. (At this point, it will not look pretty. Believe me). Spoon the mixture into your cupcake cases (you'll need 12, or fewer if you want bigger cakes) and bake for about 20 minutes at 180 degrees C, until they are firm but still springy to the touch. Let cool on a wire rack (or you'll get soggy bottoms, and if The Great British Bake-off taught me anything, it is that you don't want soggy bottoms).
Now, you can eat them just as they are, or you can add some icing (what Americans call "frosting", which always reminds me of How to lose a guy in 10 days ("Frooooooost yourself!!!") but never mind). Make sure your cupcakes are completely cooled before putting on the icing or your icing will melt, or worse, split.
Icing ingredients (this makes for a loooot of icing (see photo), take half of these amounts for a more modest amount):
100 g butter (soft)
200 g cream cheese
100-200 g icing sugar (how much icing sugar you use will depend on how sweet you want the icing to be. I like it when there is a bit of a sour bite to it, so I used 100 g (also because the carrots make the cakes really sweet), but if you have a sweet-tooth, use more than that)
Mix the butter until it is soft and smooth. Beat in the cream cheese, and finally beat in the icing sugar. Use a knife to put it on top of the cupcakes, because the mixture is too thick to go through a piping bag.
 |
| Now, with added deliciousness! |
You can decorate them in any way you want, I didn't have any cute sprinkly things laying around, so we just ate them like this. And they were delicious! Sweet, spicy, a bit soury, moist but firm, hmmmm!
I think I may try these again with some chopped walnuts added to the batter, I wouldn't mind a bit more of a crunch. But other than that, they're great!
Saturday, 5 May 2012
On your own
So we're back from Paris, we survived the endless queues, drunk Russians, and guys trying to sell us all kinds of stuff we don't need, and had an amazing time in between!
One thing I did notice, and it intrigued me. We had dinner in several small (very small, like 15 seats-small) restaurants, but also in some bigger, more touristy places. In all of these restaurants there were people sitting on their own, eating. Mostly these were women, but in the first small, vegetarian restaurant we visited, Le Potager du Marais, one Asian guy was also eating on his own (he spooned up the rich, dark chocolate mousse that took me 10 minutes in about 5 bites, which was another thing that amazed me, but that's neither here nor there).
Now in the Netherlands, it is highly unusual to sit in a restaurant on your own. It is also unusual to go to the theatre or cinema on your own, but more people do seem to be doing that. Eating alone, however, is not really done outside your own home, and when you see people doing it, they are generally businessmen, working on their laptop or making calls. Also, you would see most of them in the restaurants attached to the big department stores or more bar-restaurants, not in genuine "restaurants", and especially not in very small places where it is very noticeable that you're on your own.
What was interesting, I thought, was that most of the women were just quietly eating, some were reading a book, but most were just very relaxed, eating and talking to the staff (in the second small vegetarian restaurant, Le Puits de Legumes, one women actually kept bothering the about 20-year-old girl who ran the place on her own, so maybe some of them do need company). But on the whole, they seemed pretty happy about being there on their own. I think most of these women were French, but definitely some of them were tourists, including the aforementioned Asian guy, and in one Italian restaurant there was quite an old Italian guy who put away 4 courses in the time we finished one pizza.
But then there was an American girl who was waiting for her friend to join her, and she had to sit alone for about 10 minutes, and she was very uncomfortable about this. She kept looking as if she was afraid she would be thrown out of the restaurant any minute, even though there were more people sitting on their own. And there was an American couple (not in a relationship, just friends, the guy was gayer than gay), one half of which really didn't want to be in the small, weird vegetarian place she found herself in, and the other half profoundly thanked her several times for coming with him. He clearly wouldn't have gone there on his own, he needed her with him to go there.
So there you have it; some people do comfortably sit alone in a restaurant, eat their meal, and go on their way, while others cringe at the thought and would rather stay home. I think I'm of the latter category, I would have the idea that others would constantly be watching me and wondering why I'm not with someone; do I not have any friends? But maybe it's also a cultural thing; eating in the Netherlands is still more of a thing to get through before you can move on to things you really want to do, and if you go out to eat in a restaurant it is a "thing to do", a thing to do with other people, not something you just do. I wish it were, because eating in these small, out-of-the-way, eccentric places makes me very happy, and it should be acceptable to be on your own more, especially now that more and more people are staying single for longer times.
I would highly recommend both restaurants I mentioned in this post, even if you're not a veggie-hippie, because they serve great organic food, have nice staff whose English is far better than they give themselves credit for, and their general atmosphere is so much better than in the big chains where you're just a number. So go there. Even (or especially) if you are on your own.
One thing I did notice, and it intrigued me. We had dinner in several small (very small, like 15 seats-small) restaurants, but also in some bigger, more touristy places. In all of these restaurants there were people sitting on their own, eating. Mostly these were women, but in the first small, vegetarian restaurant we visited, Le Potager du Marais, one Asian guy was also eating on his own (he spooned up the rich, dark chocolate mousse that took me 10 minutes in about 5 bites, which was another thing that amazed me, but that's neither here nor there).
Now in the Netherlands, it is highly unusual to sit in a restaurant on your own. It is also unusual to go to the theatre or cinema on your own, but more people do seem to be doing that. Eating alone, however, is not really done outside your own home, and when you see people doing it, they are generally businessmen, working on their laptop or making calls. Also, you would see most of them in the restaurants attached to the big department stores or more bar-restaurants, not in genuine "restaurants", and especially not in very small places where it is very noticeable that you're on your own.
What was interesting, I thought, was that most of the women were just quietly eating, some were reading a book, but most were just very relaxed, eating and talking to the staff (in the second small vegetarian restaurant, Le Puits de Legumes, one women actually kept bothering the about 20-year-old girl who ran the place on her own, so maybe some of them do need company). But on the whole, they seemed pretty happy about being there on their own. I think most of these women were French, but definitely some of them were tourists, including the aforementioned Asian guy, and in one Italian restaurant there was quite an old Italian guy who put away 4 courses in the time we finished one pizza.
But then there was an American girl who was waiting for her friend to join her, and she had to sit alone for about 10 minutes, and she was very uncomfortable about this. She kept looking as if she was afraid she would be thrown out of the restaurant any minute, even though there were more people sitting on their own. And there was an American couple (not in a relationship, just friends, the guy was gayer than gay), one half of which really didn't want to be in the small, weird vegetarian place she found herself in, and the other half profoundly thanked her several times for coming with him. He clearly wouldn't have gone there on his own, he needed her with him to go there.
So there you have it; some people do comfortably sit alone in a restaurant, eat their meal, and go on their way, while others cringe at the thought and would rather stay home. I think I'm of the latter category, I would have the idea that others would constantly be watching me and wondering why I'm not with someone; do I not have any friends? But maybe it's also a cultural thing; eating in the Netherlands is still more of a thing to get through before you can move on to things you really want to do, and if you go out to eat in a restaurant it is a "thing to do", a thing to do with other people, not something you just do. I wish it were, because eating in these small, out-of-the-way, eccentric places makes me very happy, and it should be acceptable to be on your own more, especially now that more and more people are staying single for longer times.
I would highly recommend both restaurants I mentioned in this post, even if you're not a veggie-hippie, because they serve great organic food, have nice staff whose English is far better than they give themselves credit for, and their general atmosphere is so much better than in the big chains where you're just a number. So go there. Even (or especially) if you are on your own.
Saturday, 28 April 2012
Nothing to-do
It's official; for the first time since last September, my to-do list is empty. I have nothing to-do!
And it feels good. It feels like some weight has been lifted, like I'm free, can do what I want.
It also feels tiring; I think I need a looooong sleep.
It also makes me kinda twitchy; I'm bad at doing nothing. I think I might even be a bit of a workaholic. Luckily for me, there are 2 huuuge essays waiting at the end of this semester, and at 5,000 words they're of equal length to my BA dissertation, and that took me a whole semester, so writing two of those in about 3 weeks will be interesting. And then, of course, there is the dreaded MA thesis. Which I'm already preparing for now, even though I don't start until September, because that's the way I am.
I do have some good news on that front; I will be writing my thesis on Jane Austen. I won't tell you the specific topic, because I'm not 100% sure myself, and also because I don't want to jinx the thing, but I am very very happy about it. So I can work on my thesis proposal as well, if I really need something to do.
See? I'm completely crazy, I have the first free weekend in months, and already I'm trying to find things to keep my mind occupied.
It's a good thing I will be going to Paris for a week, because there I can't do anything, even if I wanted to (although I am bringing my modern theatre book, but reading plays hardly counts as "studying", right?). So there's packing, and arranging the last few things, and then tomorrow we take a train and do noooothing for a week. Except walk around in one of the best cities of Europe, and visit museums, and eat in great restaurants, and, and, and... Okay, maybe we will do stuff. But that's different, of course.
And when I get back, I will have another huuuge work assignment waiting for me, which will freak me out and throw me in a haze of business, and then I will wish I had nothing to do! Ah, the irony.
And it feels good. It feels like some weight has been lifted, like I'm free, can do what I want.
It also feels tiring; I think I need a looooong sleep.
It also makes me kinda twitchy; I'm bad at doing nothing. I think I might even be a bit of a workaholic. Luckily for me, there are 2 huuuge essays waiting at the end of this semester, and at 5,000 words they're of equal length to my BA dissertation, and that took me a whole semester, so writing two of those in about 3 weeks will be interesting. And then, of course, there is the dreaded MA thesis. Which I'm already preparing for now, even though I don't start until September, because that's the way I am.
I do have some good news on that front; I will be writing my thesis on Jane Austen. I won't tell you the specific topic, because I'm not 100% sure myself, and also because I don't want to jinx the thing, but I am very very happy about it. So I can work on my thesis proposal as well, if I really need something to do.
See? I'm completely crazy, I have the first free weekend in months, and already I'm trying to find things to keep my mind occupied.
It's a good thing I will be going to Paris for a week, because there I can't do anything, even if I wanted to (although I am bringing my modern theatre book, but reading plays hardly counts as "studying", right?). So there's packing, and arranging the last few things, and then tomorrow we take a train and do noooothing for a week. Except walk around in one of the best cities of Europe, and visit museums, and eat in great restaurants, and, and, and... Okay, maybe we will do stuff. But that's different, of course.
And when I get back, I will have another huuuge work assignment waiting for me, which will freak me out and throw me in a haze of business, and then I will wish I had nothing to do! Ah, the irony.
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
The Hunger Games
For all of you who think I am dead or have been eaten by my work; I'm still here! I am extremely busy, but it's all rounding-off and tying-up kind of things, because coming Friday 3 of the big projects I've been working on for months are done, followed by (great timing) the May holidays. Which I will spend in Paris. Which will be fantastic.
But I have been somewhat swallowed by something other than work; The Hunger Games. Now it's been a long time since I read a whole book in 24 hours, but part 2 of the series, Catching Fire, worked just like that (this all happened about a week ago, now that I think of it, during another thing-that-hasn't happened in a long time; me being really, genuinely ill. But no more about that). Funnily enough, I think it's the worst book of the series, but that's they way books work.
Now I won't spoil any more for you, except to say that I think it is a great series, that I would never let my (hypothetical) children read it until they are about 16 because of all the blood and gore (definitely not because of all the adolescent sex, because there is none to speak of), but I do hope they read it one day because it teaches Important Life Lessons (such as; "the world does not revolve around you", and; "yes, war sucks, losing your home and family and everything sucks, but fighting for what you believe in is sometimes more important"). It also teaches some important literary lessons, such as "don't overdo it with all the Latin name references", and it draws a bit too heavily on some of the trauma theory things, but that's nothing a normal (non-literary theory induced) person should worry about.
For all of you who loved this series (there must be maaaany, because it's everywhere now (I hate being part of a hype, but all of this started when I got a card from a Ukrainian girl say "Hey, I'm reading The Hunger Games and I think they're great books", not with people shoving the things down my throat, so I kinda feel like I'm not part of the hype (even though I am shoving the books down other people's throats))) and want more more more, I can only recommend the Tomorrow-series by John Marsden, starting with Tomorrow When the War Began (1993). I read these when I was about 10 (much, much too young!), and there are 7 books in all, so that should keep you going for a while.
And to conclude; I'm on Team Peeta, if we're going for that kind of thing again (don't think so, as this series is finished already, but I just want to spread the word). Also, watch the film, it's great.
But I have been somewhat swallowed by something other than work; The Hunger Games. Now it's been a long time since I read a whole book in 24 hours, but part 2 of the series, Catching Fire, worked just like that (this all happened about a week ago, now that I think of it, during another thing-that-hasn't happened in a long time; me being really, genuinely ill. But no more about that). Funnily enough, I think it's the worst book of the series, but that's they way books work.
Now I won't spoil any more for you, except to say that I think it is a great series, that I would never let my (hypothetical) children read it until they are about 16 because of all the blood and gore (definitely not because of all the adolescent sex, because there is none to speak of), but I do hope they read it one day because it teaches Important Life Lessons (such as; "the world does not revolve around you", and; "yes, war sucks, losing your home and family and everything sucks, but fighting for what you believe in is sometimes more important"). It also teaches some important literary lessons, such as "don't overdo it with all the Latin name references", and it draws a bit too heavily on some of the trauma theory things, but that's nothing a normal (non-literary theory induced) person should worry about.
For all of you who loved this series (there must be maaaany, because it's everywhere now (I hate being part of a hype, but all of this started when I got a card from a Ukrainian girl say "Hey, I'm reading The Hunger Games and I think they're great books", not with people shoving the things down my throat, so I kinda feel like I'm not part of the hype (even though I am shoving the books down other people's throats))) and want more more more, I can only recommend the Tomorrow-series by John Marsden, starting with Tomorrow When the War Began (1993). I read these when I was about 10 (much, much too young!), and there are 7 books in all, so that should keep you going for a while.
And to conclude; I'm on Team Peeta, if we're going for that kind of thing again (don't think so, as this series is finished already, but I just want to spread the word). Also, watch the film, it's great.
Monday, 16 April 2012
Save yourself!
It's Titanic time, or 100-years-after-Titanic time, and of course the 1997 film was on tv yesterday, and of course I watched it (not all of it, mind you. I mean, I've seen it before, I've seen it before in the way I can still mouth most of the dialogue with them, and the ending is really, really cheesy).
Now I remember the first time I watched, and I couldn't get over how stupid these people are. First we have Rose, who goes back onto the doomed ship not once but twice to save Jack, the second of which (her jumping from the lifeboat) I especially couldn't get over, to still have him die and her live. She could have just gone with her mother the first time, and the outcome would be no different, really. But then I thought, with my 12-year-old romantic head, this must be real love. And after reading up on some things, it turns out that some women did refuse to go into the lifeboats, deciding to stay with their husbands and die together. In my 26-year-old pragmatic head this still feels somewhat unbelievable, because I think the survival instinct is one of the strongest we (and all animals) have, but I can see how it would happen.
No, the people who amaze me even more are the crew. The guy manning the elevator Rose takes to go find Jack (the first time), that guy is still at his post. The ship is sinking, but he's still doing his job. The guys walking around with the life jackets, or the guys keeping the gates for the third-class passengers closed, those people all know they're going to die, they're going down with that ship. And they accept it, and not only that, they just keep on doing their work.
Amazing.
I can't imagine that happening now, that the guy would still be at the elevator telling people that it is out of service and they should take the stairs. Today, it's more of a "save yourself!"situation, as we could all clearly see when the Italian captain left his sinking ship way before most of his passengers.
And even more clearly, you can see this in the new hit-film, The Hunger Games. Now I'm gonna spoil everything there is to spoil about this film, or more precisely, about the novel (which is different in several key aspects from the film), so if you don't want to have things spoiled, stop reading now.
In The Hunger Games (for those very few who don't know anything about it), in some post-apocalyptic dystopian America, twelve districts have to send "tributes" (a boy and a girl teenager), who will fight the other 23 in a large arena until one of them survives. It is a critique on modern society, modern politics, modern game-shows, and modern consumerism, combined into one neat Young Adult package. It is a great book to read, even though I detest first-person narratives written in the present, and even quite believable given the unbelievable plot.
Now the main character is Katniss (also named after a plant, like Rose), and her fellow male tribute is called Peeta (I still cannot decide whether his name is a critique on the hideous names people give their children nowadays, with them trying to be original and making it "Sem" in stead of "Sam", or (as in this case) "Peeta" instead of "Peter"). Anyway, mid-way through the Games, the rules change and now two tributes can win if they're from the same district. Katniss and Peeta pretend to be in love (Peeta actually started this strategy way before they went into the arena) with lots of kissing and sweet words and desperation, so the audience will like them and send them gifts. In the end, obviously, they do win (this is why I don't like first-person narratives written in the present. If it were written in the past, we could at least know that she'd survived and was re-telling what happened. But now, it may well be that she did get killed, and the story would abruptly stop. Only that doesn't ever happen, because you know she will survive, which frustrates me. Anyway...). For Katniss, it was all a big game of pretend, and as she says multiple times "we acted to be in love to save each other's life". For Peeta, not so much, for him it was the real thing.
Now there are only 15 years (seriously!) between Titanic and The Hunger Games, but see how far we have come. Nowadays, you can pretend to be in love, you just lie to the guy, to the organisers of the program, and incidentally to the whole country, to save your life. And it's not just a simple lie, no, it's being in love, which is still one of those things that people consider to be very special. After the Games, Katniss basically doesn't want to have anything to do with Peeta, because the game's up and they can now go home and ignore each other, right? Not only is she so self-absorbed and egoistic to not see that he is really in love with her (and has been for the past 10 years or so), when she does realise it, she doesn't make it any easier for him. He was a tool to survive, and now that she has, he can be discarded.
Now all of this sounds very harsh and it is true that at some point Katniss does cry at the thought of Peeta being killed, but that's just because she would be alone again. When she does get the chance to kill him in the end she doesn't because she dislikes the whole idea of killing, not because she's incapable of doing it. The whole Rose/Jack situation, going back to die together, is not much of an issue. It seems like it is, when the two of them attempt to commit suicide at the end, but that's just a ploy to have both of them win. She is solely focussed on her own survival, and it's nice that he survives with her, but she would've been okay with being the only one.
In a way, it makes me sad to think that this is the way we are now. We've become so egoistic and self-absorbed that we will do anything to survive. On the other hand, I do think The Hunger Games is probably a more realistic representation of human spirit than Titanic. Those guys staying at their posts, the orchestra that kept playing, all of them were lower class men, so maybe they knew there wasn't a chance for them anyway. Maybe if we were in that situation (but when are we, ever, living in a world where everything is possible), we would act the same way. If they had had the slightest idea that they could save themselves, they would probably have done so. So we haven't become egoistic and self-absorbed, we've always been; as I said in the beginning, the spirit to survive is something you find in every living being.
Which means that Jack and Rose and those women staying behind are the odd ones out. They are the romantic, altruistic idealists, and because Titanic focuses on them you may be led to think that this is what people are like. But underneath it all, most people are survivors, are egoistic, will save themselves when the time comes. I'm not sure whether this makes The Hunger Games the better story, but I do think it may be good to realise once in a while that this is what life is like. This is what we are like. And we'll just have to accept it.
Now I remember the first time I watched, and I couldn't get over how stupid these people are. First we have Rose, who goes back onto the doomed ship not once but twice to save Jack, the second of which (her jumping from the lifeboat) I especially couldn't get over, to still have him die and her live. She could have just gone with her mother the first time, and the outcome would be no different, really. But then I thought, with my 12-year-old romantic head, this must be real love. And after reading up on some things, it turns out that some women did refuse to go into the lifeboats, deciding to stay with their husbands and die together. In my 26-year-old pragmatic head this still feels somewhat unbelievable, because I think the survival instinct is one of the strongest we (and all animals) have, but I can see how it would happen.
No, the people who amaze me even more are the crew. The guy manning the elevator Rose takes to go find Jack (the first time), that guy is still at his post. The ship is sinking, but he's still doing his job. The guys walking around with the life jackets, or the guys keeping the gates for the third-class passengers closed, those people all know they're going to die, they're going down with that ship. And they accept it, and not only that, they just keep on doing their work.
Amazing.
I can't imagine that happening now, that the guy would still be at the elevator telling people that it is out of service and they should take the stairs. Today, it's more of a "save yourself!"situation, as we could all clearly see when the Italian captain left his sinking ship way before most of his passengers.
And even more clearly, you can see this in the new hit-film, The Hunger Games. Now I'm gonna spoil everything there is to spoil about this film, or more precisely, about the novel (which is different in several key aspects from the film), so if you don't want to have things spoiled, stop reading now.
In The Hunger Games (for those very few who don't know anything about it), in some post-apocalyptic dystopian America, twelve districts have to send "tributes" (a boy and a girl teenager), who will fight the other 23 in a large arena until one of them survives. It is a critique on modern society, modern politics, modern game-shows, and modern consumerism, combined into one neat Young Adult package. It is a great book to read, even though I detest first-person narratives written in the present, and even quite believable given the unbelievable plot.
Now the main character is Katniss (also named after a plant, like Rose), and her fellow male tribute is called Peeta (I still cannot decide whether his name is a critique on the hideous names people give their children nowadays, with them trying to be original and making it "Sem" in stead of "Sam", or (as in this case) "Peeta" instead of "Peter"). Anyway, mid-way through the Games, the rules change and now two tributes can win if they're from the same district. Katniss and Peeta pretend to be in love (Peeta actually started this strategy way before they went into the arena) with lots of kissing and sweet words and desperation, so the audience will like them and send them gifts. In the end, obviously, they do win (this is why I don't like first-person narratives written in the present. If it were written in the past, we could at least know that she'd survived and was re-telling what happened. But now, it may well be that she did get killed, and the story would abruptly stop. Only that doesn't ever happen, because you know she will survive, which frustrates me. Anyway...). For Katniss, it was all a big game of pretend, and as she says multiple times "we acted to be in love to save each other's life". For Peeta, not so much, for him it was the real thing.
Now there are only 15 years (seriously!) between Titanic and The Hunger Games, but see how far we have come. Nowadays, you can pretend to be in love, you just lie to the guy, to the organisers of the program, and incidentally to the whole country, to save your life. And it's not just a simple lie, no, it's being in love, which is still one of those things that people consider to be very special. After the Games, Katniss basically doesn't want to have anything to do with Peeta, because the game's up and they can now go home and ignore each other, right? Not only is she so self-absorbed and egoistic to not see that he is really in love with her (and has been for the past 10 years or so), when she does realise it, she doesn't make it any easier for him. He was a tool to survive, and now that she has, he can be discarded.
Now all of this sounds very harsh and it is true that at some point Katniss does cry at the thought of Peeta being killed, but that's just because she would be alone again. When she does get the chance to kill him in the end she doesn't because she dislikes the whole idea of killing, not because she's incapable of doing it. The whole Rose/Jack situation, going back to die together, is not much of an issue. It seems like it is, when the two of them attempt to commit suicide at the end, but that's just a ploy to have both of them win. She is solely focussed on her own survival, and it's nice that he survives with her, but she would've been okay with being the only one.
In a way, it makes me sad to think that this is the way we are now. We've become so egoistic and self-absorbed that we will do anything to survive. On the other hand, I do think The Hunger Games is probably a more realistic representation of human spirit than Titanic. Those guys staying at their posts, the orchestra that kept playing, all of them were lower class men, so maybe they knew there wasn't a chance for them anyway. Maybe if we were in that situation (but when are we, ever, living in a world where everything is possible), we would act the same way. If they had had the slightest idea that they could save themselves, they would probably have done so. So we haven't become egoistic and self-absorbed, we've always been; as I said in the beginning, the spirit to survive is something you find in every living being.
Which means that Jack and Rose and those women staying behind are the odd ones out. They are the romantic, altruistic idealists, and because Titanic focuses on them you may be led to think that this is what people are like. But underneath it all, most people are survivors, are egoistic, will save themselves when the time comes. I'm not sure whether this makes The Hunger Games the better story, but I do think it may be good to realise once in a while that this is what life is like. This is what we are like. And we'll just have to accept it.
Friday, 13 April 2012
Grown-up
So my latest Facebook status update reads; "Sent out my first ever "factuur" (invoice) today. I feel so grown-up, it's disgusting."
Emphasis on feel, not am.
(Incidentally, I prefer the Dutch word for "grown-up", which is "volwassen" and literally means "fully waxed" ("waxed" as in "grown", like "the moon waxes and wanes", not as in "hairless"). If you're "grown-up", it just means that you've grown up from where you began, but it doesn't mean the process is finished yet!)
I remember the first time I felt grown-up. I must have been about 15, and I had just bought the new Bon Jovi album, Crush (yes, I used to be a Bon Jovi fan in high school. Better than having to admit you were into The Backstreet Boys). Now I had always been a shy and quiet child, chatting away at people I knew, but insecure when it came to people or stuff I didn't know. So when we got back to the car, and I wanted to play the CD, and it turned out that the wrong CD (Eminem, juch) was inside the case, my heart dropped. I had to go back to the store (there used to be a time when we bought CDs in stores, and it's less than 10 years ago, can you believe it?) and tell them they'd made a mistake. I remember my mother looking at me and saying; "Do you want me to come with you?" And at that moment I decided I should now be old enough to handle such things on my own. So I shook my head, got out of the car, went back to the store, walked over to the way-too-hip guy behind the counter, and casually said; "Hey, you gave me the wrong CD just now." He looked surprised but not offended, took back the Eminem CD, gave me the right Bon Jovi CD, said "Hey, do you like Santana?", and gave me a free copy of the new Santana album, because I had to come all the way back because of his mistake.
Wow. I can still remember the feeling, walking out of the store, that I was now fully grown-up, knew how to handle things, and could take care of myself.
That was the image I had of grown-ups when I was a child; they knew and could do everything, and knew exactly what to do or how to behave in any given situation. They could say; "Don't tilt your plate like that, your food will fall on the floor" and just know it to be true. Or, even more magically, they could say; "Don't cut off your Barbie's (or your own, in my case) hair, you'll regret it later!" and then when you didn't listen and were crying about your (Barbie's) mutilated hair, they wouldn't go "I told you so", but you still knew they had. You could make stupid comments about all sorts of things and they would just go "but in Australia it's summer when we have winter" or "red cabbages always stain purple" or "don't climb unto the thinner branches, they can't hold your weight", and it was true. They just knew everything.
My goal in life became, when I was grown-up, to know everything.
I pretty quickly discovered that that ambition may have worked somewhere in the Middle Ages, but not anymore. There was just too much to know. But still, most grown-ups knew a lot about a lot of things, right? So I could still get pretty far.
But then I brought back homework that my parents didn't understand and couldn't explain. I had to explain things to them before we could figure out the question together. On family gatherings or birthday parties, sometimes someone made a comment I knew was wrong. I didn't say so, of course, but I just knew it wasn't true. So maybe grown-ups didn't know everything, and maybe some of the stuff they knew was wrong?
And then I began to notice that a lot of grown-ups didn't know how to do everything. My uncle would ask my father about the new shed he was building, my father would as my mother about ironing a shirt, and my mother would as my grandmother if we could plant the potatoes already or still had to wait a few more days. They didn't mind asking, they were okay about not knowing stuff.
But still, when there's little children near, grown-ups tend to act as if they know everything. Just last week I was at the zoo and this guy's kid asked what kind of animal they were looking at, and he goes "must be some kind of rat", and the child read the sign and went "it says here that it's a prairie dog" and the guy went "well, clearly it isn't a dog, so they got that wrong! Haha! Let's go look at the bears now!" Seriously? You're gonna credit your authority over the zoo people's?
But then I do it too, of course.
Being a grown-up is nothing like what I thought it would be. Being able to decide on your own what you're gonna do or eat or become doesn't make things easier. Just because you have to send out your first invoice, doesn't mean that you know how to do that. What do you put on there? How do you start the e-mail to the company? What happens if you've done something wrong, will you not get any money? "Filing your taxes" sounds very mature, but I know people who are 60 years old and still aren't sure whether they're filing them correctly. (And now we can just check Wikipedia if we're unsure, but think about people 30 years ago!)
So yeah, I may have been feeling very grown-up, but that doesn't mean that I know what I'm doing, or even that I am very grown-up. And in hindsight, I think reality beats the vision I had as a child. How scary would it be if you really knew everything? No, I'll just wallow in my unknowing insecurity when I get the chance. Makes me feel young.
Emphasis on feel, not am.
(Incidentally, I prefer the Dutch word for "grown-up", which is "volwassen" and literally means "fully waxed" ("waxed" as in "grown", like "the moon waxes and wanes", not as in "hairless"). If you're "grown-up", it just means that you've grown up from where you began, but it doesn't mean the process is finished yet!)
I remember the first time I felt grown-up. I must have been about 15, and I had just bought the new Bon Jovi album, Crush (yes, I used to be a Bon Jovi fan in high school. Better than having to admit you were into The Backstreet Boys). Now I had always been a shy and quiet child, chatting away at people I knew, but insecure when it came to people or stuff I didn't know. So when we got back to the car, and I wanted to play the CD, and it turned out that the wrong CD (Eminem, juch) was inside the case, my heart dropped. I had to go back to the store (there used to be a time when we bought CDs in stores, and it's less than 10 years ago, can you believe it?) and tell them they'd made a mistake. I remember my mother looking at me and saying; "Do you want me to come with you?" And at that moment I decided I should now be old enough to handle such things on my own. So I shook my head, got out of the car, went back to the store, walked over to the way-too-hip guy behind the counter, and casually said; "Hey, you gave me the wrong CD just now." He looked surprised but not offended, took back the Eminem CD, gave me the right Bon Jovi CD, said "Hey, do you like Santana?", and gave me a free copy of the new Santana album, because I had to come all the way back because of his mistake.
Wow. I can still remember the feeling, walking out of the store, that I was now fully grown-up, knew how to handle things, and could take care of myself.
That was the image I had of grown-ups when I was a child; they knew and could do everything, and knew exactly what to do or how to behave in any given situation. They could say; "Don't tilt your plate like that, your food will fall on the floor" and just know it to be true. Or, even more magically, they could say; "Don't cut off your Barbie's (or your own, in my case) hair, you'll regret it later!" and then when you didn't listen and were crying about your (Barbie's) mutilated hair, they wouldn't go "I told you so", but you still knew they had. You could make stupid comments about all sorts of things and they would just go "but in Australia it's summer when we have winter" or "red cabbages always stain purple" or "don't climb unto the thinner branches, they can't hold your weight", and it was true. They just knew everything.
My goal in life became, when I was grown-up, to know everything.
I pretty quickly discovered that that ambition may have worked somewhere in the Middle Ages, but not anymore. There was just too much to know. But still, most grown-ups knew a lot about a lot of things, right? So I could still get pretty far.
But then I brought back homework that my parents didn't understand and couldn't explain. I had to explain things to them before we could figure out the question together. On family gatherings or birthday parties, sometimes someone made a comment I knew was wrong. I didn't say so, of course, but I just knew it wasn't true. So maybe grown-ups didn't know everything, and maybe some of the stuff they knew was wrong?
And then I began to notice that a lot of grown-ups didn't know how to do everything. My uncle would ask my father about the new shed he was building, my father would as my mother about ironing a shirt, and my mother would as my grandmother if we could plant the potatoes already or still had to wait a few more days. They didn't mind asking, they were okay about not knowing stuff.
But still, when there's little children near, grown-ups tend to act as if they know everything. Just last week I was at the zoo and this guy's kid asked what kind of animal they were looking at, and he goes "must be some kind of rat", and the child read the sign and went "it says here that it's a prairie dog" and the guy went "well, clearly it isn't a dog, so they got that wrong! Haha! Let's go look at the bears now!" Seriously? You're gonna credit your authority over the zoo people's?
But then I do it too, of course.
Being a grown-up is nothing like what I thought it would be. Being able to decide on your own what you're gonna do or eat or become doesn't make things easier. Just because you have to send out your first invoice, doesn't mean that you know how to do that. What do you put on there? How do you start the e-mail to the company? What happens if you've done something wrong, will you not get any money? "Filing your taxes" sounds very mature, but I know people who are 60 years old and still aren't sure whether they're filing them correctly. (And now we can just check Wikipedia if we're unsure, but think about people 30 years ago!)
So yeah, I may have been feeling very grown-up, but that doesn't mean that I know what I'm doing, or even that I am very grown-up. And in hindsight, I think reality beats the vision I had as a child. How scary would it be if you really knew everything? No, I'll just wallow in my unknowing insecurity when I get the chance. Makes me feel young.
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Home-made cards
There seems to be a lot of aversion against free, ad, and homemade cards on Postcrossing. Every second profile you read has a line saying they'd rather not receive such cards, or more plainly; "NO AD, FREE, or HOMEMADE". When talking about this on the forum, people rant against the "thin, ugly pieces of paper with random things glued on to them" which they have received as "homemade" cards. I, on the other hand, have a line that says; "I don't mind hand-made, free, or ad cards". In my experience, I'd rather have a homemade card from Japan that represents the sender's culture and environment than a shop-bought card from a brand I could have bought in the store around the corner. However, there are some drawbacks to having this line on your profile, because for some people, photoshopped collages of their pets also mean "home made".
Yes, the above are two such cards I've received. The first one is from an American woman who defines herself as "a grandmother", the second from a 30-year-old Dutch woman. Now I know there must be people out there who think these are brilliant works of art, but personally, they freak me out. Especially the "cat with diamonds in her eyes", although I get the idea, and I like the concept, the pixelled image, the "curtain", the background... It's just too much. From the way these pictures look, I think we're dealing with avid scrapbookers, who've transferred their artistic inspiration to postcards. Not really my cup of tea.
But that doesn't mean I don't want to receive homemade cards ever again. It also doesn't mean I feel obliged to keep these. I only keep cards if they have either a great picture on the front, or a great (personal) message on the back. I seem to remember that the second card had no message whatsoever (some people just print out 500 stickers with the same message, put them on cards, and send them out), so that may have gone into the bin, but the first card had a nice message about cats and books and other things relating to me on the back, so I kept that, even though I will never put it on my wall or whatever.
But you do get some great cards, too.
The above is not technically "hand made" because it concerns a printed-out image, but as it was the first ever postcard send by that person, a 17-year-old Finnish girl, and because it so completely fits everything I've written in my profile, I still cherish it as one of the better ones.
This one is just brilliant. The sender, a 16-year-old Lithuanian girl, sends out mainly hand-made cards, and she shapes them around the receivers wishes, in my case, she picked up on a comment about baking, and sent me a Lithuanian recipe. I love the handwriting and the drawing, it's very unique.
And here are some more "truly" hand-made cards I've received over the past weeks. The first one is from an Asian woman living in the US, and although I am not a big fan of it, one of my friends really liked it, so it's probably a taste thing. the second one is from a 20-year-old Finnish girl called Lotta (user name Lote) who sends out collages to people. I think in my case she made a very good collection, apart from the chair-and-parasol, although that may stand for travel. The third one is from a Russian woman who has two little daughters who help her make these cards. She prefers receiving homemade cards herself, and this was the first ever card she send out (I get those a lot, don't I?). I think it's one of the more artistic cards I've received, as the eagle is cut out of fabric, and I love the lettering "falling off" at the top.
So I think the main conclusion has to be that young girls from the Baltic area are the most creative among the Postcrossing bunch? Or maybe that I've been lucky with what I've received so far? As I've said before, the most crappy cards I've received were shop-bought ones from the Netherlands, so I think I will have to receive several veeeery bad things before I even consider putting a "NO HOMEMADE" shout on my profile.
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| US-1460130, received 3 Jan 2012 |
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| NL-1051854, received 22 Feb 2012 |
Yes, the above are two such cards I've received. The first one is from an American woman who defines herself as "a grandmother", the second from a 30-year-old Dutch woman. Now I know there must be people out there who think these are brilliant works of art, but personally, they freak me out. Especially the "cat with diamonds in her eyes", although I get the idea, and I like the concept, the pixelled image, the "curtain", the background... It's just too much. From the way these pictures look, I think we're dealing with avid scrapbookers, who've transferred their artistic inspiration to postcards. Not really my cup of tea.
But that doesn't mean I don't want to receive homemade cards ever again. It also doesn't mean I feel obliged to keep these. I only keep cards if they have either a great picture on the front, or a great (personal) message on the back. I seem to remember that the second card had no message whatsoever (some people just print out 500 stickers with the same message, put them on cards, and send them out), so that may have gone into the bin, but the first card had a nice message about cats and books and other things relating to me on the back, so I kept that, even though I will never put it on my wall or whatever.
But you do get some great cards, too.
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| FI-1220986, received 12 Oct 2011 |
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| LT-142713, received 20 July 2011 |
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| US-1552683, received 29 Feb 2012 |
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| RU-864423, received 3 April 2012 |
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| FI-1384936, received 4 April 2012 |
And here are some more "truly" hand-made cards I've received over the past weeks. The first one is from an Asian woman living in the US, and although I am not a big fan of it, one of my friends really liked it, so it's probably a taste thing. the second one is from a 20-year-old Finnish girl called Lotta (user name Lote) who sends out collages to people. I think in my case she made a very good collection, apart from the chair-and-parasol, although that may stand for travel. The third one is from a Russian woman who has two little daughters who help her make these cards. She prefers receiving homemade cards herself, and this was the first ever card she send out (I get those a lot, don't I?). I think it's one of the more artistic cards I've received, as the eagle is cut out of fabric, and I love the lettering "falling off" at the top.
So I think the main conclusion has to be that young girls from the Baltic area are the most creative among the Postcrossing bunch? Or maybe that I've been lucky with what I've received so far? As I've said before, the most crappy cards I've received were shop-bought ones from the Netherlands, so I think I will have to receive several veeeery bad things before I even consider putting a "NO HOMEMADE" shout on my profile.
Monday, 9 April 2012
Why wait?
So I've been reading Watership Down for a while now, and one thing I noticed was that those rabbits seem to do everything as soon as they decide on it, or at least pretty quickly afterwards. This includes large, difficult plans, such as Bigwig's infiltration operation in Efrafa and extracting the does from the farm. Why, I thought, do they not wait and talk things over for a bit longer? Why is always "we've got a plan, now let's act on it".
Then I started thinking about a theory we were told by Simon Verhulst when he introduced the book we're translating for a course. He argued (pretty convincingly), that when you know (and this includes non-conscious "knowing", obviously) that your life isn't going to be that long, you'll invest in the moment. You'll go the extra mile, make the extra baby, fight the extra enemy, because tomorrow you may be dead. This is what we called the "mouse-strategy" when I was studying biology; live fast, make lots of babies, die young. Now when you're like us humans, and you can expect to live for around 80 years, you don't have to start making babies as soon as you're able to (although some 14-year-olds still do), you can first get a degree and a job and a nice house and a partner that isn't going to run away any time soon before you make your big investment. And of course related to this, that investment is that much bigger, because rabbit kittens (to stick to that example) can leave their mother when they're about 4 to 5 weeks old, and we tend to stick around until we're 18 years.
So there is a point to this "act in the moment" behaviour. Somehow it puts me in mind of "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow", which is one of those songs you've heard a thousand times but never realised what it is actually about. But I think both rabbits and Fleetwood Mac have a point. Tomorrow is going to be here soon enough, what's the point in sitting around weighing your options, just go for it, and see how far you get (or as they say in Dutch: see where the ship beaches). We're still on the "elephant-strategy", to be sure, so I wouldn't advise this for long-term things like having children or sailing around the world, but a little more spring-of-the-moment acting may not be such a bad thing. Worked out pretty well for the rabbits.
Then I started thinking about a theory we were told by Simon Verhulst when he introduced the book we're translating for a course. He argued (pretty convincingly), that when you know (and this includes non-conscious "knowing", obviously) that your life isn't going to be that long, you'll invest in the moment. You'll go the extra mile, make the extra baby, fight the extra enemy, because tomorrow you may be dead. This is what we called the "mouse-strategy" when I was studying biology; live fast, make lots of babies, die young. Now when you're like us humans, and you can expect to live for around 80 years, you don't have to start making babies as soon as you're able to (although some 14-year-olds still do), you can first get a degree and a job and a nice house and a partner that isn't going to run away any time soon before you make your big investment. And of course related to this, that investment is that much bigger, because rabbit kittens (to stick to that example) can leave their mother when they're about 4 to 5 weeks old, and we tend to stick around until we're 18 years.
So there is a point to this "act in the moment" behaviour. Somehow it puts me in mind of "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow", which is one of those songs you've heard a thousand times but never realised what it is actually about. But I think both rabbits and Fleetwood Mac have a point. Tomorrow is going to be here soon enough, what's the point in sitting around weighing your options, just go for it, and see how far you get (or as they say in Dutch: see where the ship beaches). We're still on the "elephant-strategy", to be sure, so I wouldn't advise this for long-term things like having children or sailing around the world, but a little more spring-of-the-moment acting may not be such a bad thing. Worked out pretty well for the rabbits.
Friday, 6 April 2012
Spring cleaning
As you've probably noticed, I've changed the lay-out of the blog. It's springtime, which means bright colours, green grass, and crawly bugs. As with the black-and-white winter version, the background is a picture I've taken myself. I've also changed the template around, and I hope this will improve the readability of the sidebars.
Comments and suggestions are always welcome!
Comments and suggestions are always welcome!
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
Scone do-over
So the last time I made scones, I kind of messed up the whole thing but they still came out okay. Nevertheless, it was time for a do-over, as we were having a little high tea gathering at my house.
This time, I did use the recipe Lorraine (Baking made Easy) offered, but took out the mascarpone and added more milk, and changed some other things (there was woefully little sugar in the recipe). I ended up with a recipe somewhat like this:
340 g self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
80 g butter
25 g brown sugar
About 120 ml milk
1 egg, beaten
Mix the dry ingredients (you can add baking powder, but in my experience it works fine without it) and butter until they resembled breadcrumbs. (Lorraine says to use your food processor for this. Lorraine must have a dish washing machine, because just making breadcrumb-like dough does not justify the amount of mess it makes when you use a machine to do it. Do it by hand, it will take about 2 minutes.) Make a hole in the middle and pour in the milk. I added half of the egg here, because I like egg in the dough, but you can leave it out if you want. Make a soft, smooth dough. (Lorraine says to stir with a knife. No idea what the knife has to do with it. Just make a dough.) Knead the dough and roll it out on a lightly floured surface, about 3 cm thick (depending on how high you want your scones to be, they will double in height in the oven). Cut out rounds (Lorraine says not to twist the cutter (I just use a drinking glass, but maybe you do have a fancy cookie cutter) while you do this, otherwise the scones won't rise), put them on a baking tray, and brush the tops with (the rest of) the beaten egg. Bake for about 10 minutes at 210 degrees or until golden brown.
Eat them quickly (with butter (no clotted cream to be found in the Netherlands) and jam, of course!), because they will still be nice and warm, and because they turn solid if you leave them for too long. Best combined with tea, brownies, muffins, and good friends!
This time, I did use the recipe Lorraine (Baking made Easy) offered, but took out the mascarpone and added more milk, and changed some other things (there was woefully little sugar in the recipe). I ended up with a recipe somewhat like this:
340 g self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
80 g butter
25 g brown sugar
About 120 ml milk
1 egg, beaten
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| Scones, the do-over |
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| High tea time! Sweet! |
Tuesday, 3 April 2012
Watership Down
I've finally managed to get through the book that I just couldn't finish (I won't tell you which it is, because I did really like it, and now it may look like it is a horrible and boring book while it isn't). As I am waiting for my Amazon order to get in, I started to re-read Watership Down, which is one of my favourite books ever. I love the themes of friendship and loyalty and freedom of choice, the rabbit's stories and "religion", and the beautiful descriptions of the English countryside. I love that it has many short chapters so that you can read a whole chapter before going to sleep, instead of just a few pages in other books (even though it comes down to the same amount of reading, you still feel more accomplished when you finish a whole chapter).
Now I first read this book when I was somewhere between 10 and 12, because that was around the time that I had read all the children's books in the library with any literary value twice, and all my own books at least 5 times. I was raiding my mother's books, which led me to some great books I may have read a little bit too early on, including The Lord of the Rings, The Clan of the Cave Bear, and Wild Swans. All in Dutch, of course. I couldn't read a full sentence in English until I was 13, due to a lack of playing computer games, but I think I made up for that quite nicely.
Anyway, having read that book so early on, and at least 5 times afterwards, I thought I knew what it was about. I thought I knew what I would find. But when I started to read it again (I have this great second-hand Penguin paperback from 1976 that used to be orange on the side, but has turned completely white after years of standing in the sun (in someone else's bookcase, I never put books in direct sunlight), which has travelled to several countries with me and even has my address and e-mailaddress in the back from that time that I lent it to a German girl I had only known for 3 days and wouldn't see again in my life, ever. But the book came back, somehow), I did discover new things.
Firstly, there is really a strong focus on the military, isn't there? I mean, really. I knew that Efrafa is bad, and that Sandleford isn't the best place to be, but besides that there are many many references to military practises and morale. Why did I never notice this before? Because I love to know why authors did certain things in their books (this is an ongoing discussion between me and a classmate; he doesn't want to know the first thing about the author, the author is dead, whereas I want to know everything), I looked it up, and it turns out that Richard Adams was actually fighting in the Netherlands in 1944. It's all his own WW II experience put in there. So when he says that Hazel isn't going to leave Fiver and Pipkin to the dog, but stand and fight with them, I immediately get this image of one of his superiors not leaving soldiers behind. Or when Hazel takes care of Pipkin's hurt paw before going to sleep, thinking that he is responsible for the well-being of all, it must have a similar basis. To me, this just gives the story that much extra meaning, I know it's about universal themes and not just about rabbits, but when the author has experienced a certain situation for himself it makes it that more believable, I think.
Secondly, there are some really brilliant jokes in there. Really funny situations. I never noticed them before. Maybe I was too busy being swept away with the story before, or maybe my English wasn't good enough or maybe I was just too young (you know, like when you watch a Disney film again, and go "I never knew that was in there! That's a brilliant joke! Why did I never see that before?"?) to see them, but there are some humorous things. Like how Hazel and Blackberry keep saying to Bigwig how he is a strong and useful guy, especially when he is annoying the hell out of them, and then ask him to go do something on the other side of a hill ("exploring") so that they can have a little peace of mind. Great.
Thirdly, Bigwig used to be one of my favourite rabbits, together with Blackberry because he's smart. Blackberry is still a favourite, but Bigwig has gone down the ladder a bit, because it turns out that he really is quite annoying and bullying, even though he is quite smart (he is one of the few to understand Blackberry's raft idea). But I now prefer Dandelion, because he is the story-teller, and Hazel, because, well, he is Hazel. You can't not like Hazel, I think. Funny how these things change. Fiver used to annoy me, always whimpering and whining and never standing up for himself, but now I see that he actually handles things in quite a clever way, and in the end they always do what he wants, even if he has to have a hard time to get there.
So there. New insights. I know it is one of the qualifications of great literature that you can read it again and again and still discover new things, but I also know not many children's books are considered great literature these days, so perhaps Watership Down doesn't qualify for everybody. It does for me. I think it is one of those books you can read at ten and still read when you're ninety (if you get that far), and still discover new things, messages, stories, and morals in. What more could you want from a book?
Now I first read this book when I was somewhere between 10 and 12, because that was around the time that I had read all the children's books in the library with any literary value twice, and all my own books at least 5 times. I was raiding my mother's books, which led me to some great books I may have read a little bit too early on, including The Lord of the Rings, The Clan of the Cave Bear, and Wild Swans. All in Dutch, of course. I couldn't read a full sentence in English until I was 13, due to a lack of playing computer games, but I think I made up for that quite nicely.
Anyway, having read that book so early on, and at least 5 times afterwards, I thought I knew what it was about. I thought I knew what I would find. But when I started to read it again (I have this great second-hand Penguin paperback from 1976 that used to be orange on the side, but has turned completely white after years of standing in the sun (in someone else's bookcase, I never put books in direct sunlight), which has travelled to several countries with me and even has my address and e-mailaddress in the back from that time that I lent it to a German girl I had only known for 3 days and wouldn't see again in my life, ever. But the book came back, somehow), I did discover new things.
Firstly, there is really a strong focus on the military, isn't there? I mean, really. I knew that Efrafa is bad, and that Sandleford isn't the best place to be, but besides that there are many many references to military practises and morale. Why did I never notice this before? Because I love to know why authors did certain things in their books (this is an ongoing discussion between me and a classmate; he doesn't want to know the first thing about the author, the author is dead, whereas I want to know everything), I looked it up, and it turns out that Richard Adams was actually fighting in the Netherlands in 1944. It's all his own WW II experience put in there. So when he says that Hazel isn't going to leave Fiver and Pipkin to the dog, but stand and fight with them, I immediately get this image of one of his superiors not leaving soldiers behind. Or when Hazel takes care of Pipkin's hurt paw before going to sleep, thinking that he is responsible for the well-being of all, it must have a similar basis. To me, this just gives the story that much extra meaning, I know it's about universal themes and not just about rabbits, but when the author has experienced a certain situation for himself it makes it that more believable, I think.
Secondly, there are some really brilliant jokes in there. Really funny situations. I never noticed them before. Maybe I was too busy being swept away with the story before, or maybe my English wasn't good enough or maybe I was just too young (you know, like when you watch a Disney film again, and go "I never knew that was in there! That's a brilliant joke! Why did I never see that before?"?) to see them, but there are some humorous things. Like how Hazel and Blackberry keep saying to Bigwig how he is a strong and useful guy, especially when he is annoying the hell out of them, and then ask him to go do something on the other side of a hill ("exploring") so that they can have a little peace of mind. Great.
Thirdly, Bigwig used to be one of my favourite rabbits, together with Blackberry because he's smart. Blackberry is still a favourite, but Bigwig has gone down the ladder a bit, because it turns out that he really is quite annoying and bullying, even though he is quite smart (he is one of the few to understand Blackberry's raft idea). But I now prefer Dandelion, because he is the story-teller, and Hazel, because, well, he is Hazel. You can't not like Hazel, I think. Funny how these things change. Fiver used to annoy me, always whimpering and whining and never standing up for himself, but now I see that he actually handles things in quite a clever way, and in the end they always do what he wants, even if he has to have a hard time to get there.
So there. New insights. I know it is one of the qualifications of great literature that you can read it again and again and still discover new things, but I also know not many children's books are considered great literature these days, so perhaps Watership Down doesn't qualify for everybody. It does for me. I think it is one of those books you can read at ten and still read when you're ninety (if you get that far), and still discover new things, messages, stories, and morals in. What more could you want from a book?
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