So I realise that this is my 200th post and I could make something happy-peppy cheery about it, but the truth is that I haven't been writing nearly as much blog posts as I would have liked, so number 200 should have happened a long time ago. With that in mind, I'll leave a small yay here - yay! - and get down to business.
The business of reading books that is, the 52 new books I'm going to read this year (I keep remembering books that I've already read and want to read again, such as The Casual Vacancy and A Dance with Dragons and Juliet, Naked, but all of those will have to wait until 2016). The standings are as follows:
15 Waarom vuilnismannen meer verdienen dan bankiers - Rutger Bregman & Jesse Frederiks
16 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
17 The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan
18 Funny Girl - Nick Hornby
As today is the end of week 22, I'm still 4 books behind. We'll not get into that anymore, I'll just have to catch those up at some point.
But what a combination of books to read this month! Brideshead Revisited, one of the classics I've been wanting to read ever since one of my best friends wrote her thesis on Evelyn Waugh, and I finally made it. It contained a preface by the writer himself saying that he would have done everything completely different when given the chance 15 years after finishing it, but I think it was one of the best classic novels I read in a long time - one of the easiest reads, anyway.
Then came The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Wow. I always make a point of reading the Man Booker winner (if I haven't already), and this one must have been the best in a long, loooong time. It's about the Burma railway, and the Australian POWs building that railway, and one horrible day in their lives. But it's also about Australia, and the spirit of Australia, and about love, and hate, and trauma, and about moving on, and about finding yourself in an honoured position with people saying you're a hero while you were only doing what you thought was best and don't feel all that special at all. Also, it's about the other side, about the Japanese and Korean people also working in the camps, and about their culture and sense of duty and honour, and the aftermath of WWII for them. It is so beautifully written, heart wrenching to read, and again one of those novels which everyone should read so that there will be no more wars, or prison camps, or torture.
I didn't know what to read after I finished that one, so when I came upon Funny Girl, Nick Hornby's newest novel, I was sure that had to be the one, because Mr Hornby has cheered me up in the past. Not because his books are funny in a ha-ha kind of way, they have funny lines and ironic nods, but they also give you a vision on life you don't really come across that often. Usually, they're about people in a pretty desperate situation, trying (or not trying) to get out, but in this case, the protagonist's only downside in life is that she's living in Blackpool. Which is not where she wants to be, so she goes of to London and lives through the Sixties, shedding most of her beliefs and customs from back home and turning into a TV comedy star. It is one of his most serious books to date, even though the subject matter is by far the least serious. But it is up there with some of his best.
I now once again find myself wondering what I'm going to read next, but the pile of to-read novels in my bookcase is ever growing, so I'll just finish typing this up, walk back downstairs, and see what's next. Hopefully something short, to make up for those missing 4 books...
Sunday, 31 May 2015
Saturday, 16 May 2015
Oreo cheesecake
How did I not think of this before? Oreo cheesecake; two of the best things in the world, combined!
So in Beijing, we ate a lot of Oreos. Mainly because they are the only cookies that have a somewhat reasonable price (a roll of Oreos costs about 5 Yuan, whereas other cookies, such as chocolate chip, start around 45 Yuan. Still not a lot of money, but when something is 9 times more expensive than something else, and that something else is perfectly good... the choice is easy), and of course because they're well, Oreos.
All this Oreo-eating got me thinking; I wanted to bake something new, but I don't really have the time to go proper recipe hunting, and I should be able to make it quite quickly because I didn't have enough time to do serious baking before my friend came round for tea last Thursday. So, cheesecake is the perfect solution, as you can make it one day ahead and everybody (well, most people) like it. And then I thought: why not use Oreos for the base? And so the Oreo cheesecake was born.
I've done cheesecakes before, notably the double chocolate cheesecake, so I worked from those recipes, tweaking them somewhat to meet the stuff I actually had bought.
Ingredients:
154 g crushed Oreo cookies (the amount in one packet)
75 g butter (melted)
500 g mascarpone
200 g cream cheese
100 g sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
Crushing Oreo cookies is a bit of a challenge, because the slippery white stuff in the middle means you'll mostly be separating the two biscuits instead of actually breaking them, but that's fine. As long as you end up with somewhat smaller Oreo bits.
Line the bottom of your tin with baking paper. Mix your Oreo bits with the melted butter, and add to the cake tin. Leave to cool (if the next steps take a while, you can put it in the fridge at some point (never put it in the fridge straightaway - melted butter is really hot and you're fridge won't like that)).
It won't look very appetising at this point:
But it's all about the taste!
For the cream cheese mixture, mix all the rest of the ingredients together until they are light(er) and fluffy(er). I added cocoa powder to make it a bit more chocolaty, but you can leave that out or replace it with something else (vanilla, or lemon). Spoon the mixture on top of your Oreo base and leave in the fridge for at least 2 hours.
You can line the sides of your tin with more baking paper, but experience has taught me that the cheesecake mixture will only cling to the paper instead of the tin, so I usually don't bother anymore. I just use a sharp knife to separate your cheesecake from the tin, and you're good to go.
The end result is very tasty. It could be more Oreo-y, maybe you could add some Oreos to the actual cheesecake mixture, but nevertheless good. The cocoa in the mixture does make it more chocolaty, although you do need the sugar to get the sweetness back up, otherwise it'll be pretty sour and bitter.
So Oreos, not just good for eating but for baking too. Obviously, I didn't do any 'real' baking for this one, just melting, so maybe I'll work out some other Oreo recipes that do involve the use of an oven in the future. But for now, we have Oreo cheesecake goodness.
So in Beijing, we ate a lot of Oreos. Mainly because they are the only cookies that have a somewhat reasonable price (a roll of Oreos costs about 5 Yuan, whereas other cookies, such as chocolate chip, start around 45 Yuan. Still not a lot of money, but when something is 9 times more expensive than something else, and that something else is perfectly good... the choice is easy), and of course because they're well, Oreos.
All this Oreo-eating got me thinking; I wanted to bake something new, but I don't really have the time to go proper recipe hunting, and I should be able to make it quite quickly because I didn't have enough time to do serious baking before my friend came round for tea last Thursday. So, cheesecake is the perfect solution, as you can make it one day ahead and everybody (well, most people) like it. And then I thought: why not use Oreos for the base? And so the Oreo cheesecake was born.
I've done cheesecakes before, notably the double chocolate cheesecake, so I worked from those recipes, tweaking them somewhat to meet the stuff I actually had bought.
Ingredients:
154 g crushed Oreo cookies (the amount in one packet)
75 g butter (melted)
500 g mascarpone
200 g cream cheese
100 g sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
Crushing Oreo cookies is a bit of a challenge, because the slippery white stuff in the middle means you'll mostly be separating the two biscuits instead of actually breaking them, but that's fine. As long as you end up with somewhat smaller Oreo bits.
Line the bottom of your tin with baking paper. Mix your Oreo bits with the melted butter, and add to the cake tin. Leave to cool (if the next steps take a while, you can put it in the fridge at some point (never put it in the fridge straightaway - melted butter is really hot and you're fridge won't like that)).
It won't look very appetising at this point:
 |
| Oreos and melted butter, hmmm. |
For the cream cheese mixture, mix all the rest of the ingredients together until they are light(er) and fluffy(er). I added cocoa powder to make it a bit more chocolaty, but you can leave that out or replace it with something else (vanilla, or lemon). Spoon the mixture on top of your Oreo base and leave in the fridge for at least 2 hours.
You can line the sides of your tin with more baking paper, but experience has taught me that the cheesecake mixture will only cling to the paper instead of the tin, so I usually don't bother anymore. I just use a sharp knife to separate your cheesecake from the tin, and you're good to go.
 |
| I'm freeee! |
 |
| It was a dark day. Chocolate to the rescue! |
The end result is very tasty. It could be more Oreo-y, maybe you could add some Oreos to the actual cheesecake mixture, but nevertheless good. The cocoa in the mixture does make it more chocolaty, although you do need the sugar to get the sweetness back up, otherwise it'll be pretty sour and bitter.
So Oreos, not just good for eating but for baking too. Obviously, I didn't do any 'real' baking for this one, just melting, so maybe I'll work out some other Oreo recipes that do involve the use of an oven in the future. But for now, we have Oreo cheesecake goodness.
Wednesday, 13 May 2015
Countries visited
When I was about 9 or 10 I decided I wanted to visit one country for each year that I lived. Which may have started because I counted all the countries I had visited so far, and it came up to exactly the age I was. Or I may have read about it in a book (think about what a great short story that would make; someone has to visit a new country for each year that they live, and what could go wrong...).
Anyway, the recent trip to China got me thinking about this again, so I decided to make a list of all the countries I have visited so far, in somewhat chronological order (I really can't tell if I visited Germany before Belgium, or Luxembourg before France... My parents may have something intelligent to say on this, but really, who cares?), to see whether my goal from two thirds of my life away still holds. I've only included countries that I actually spent at least one night in (otherwise I could include Oman or Abu Dhabi due to flight transfers, or Slovenia and Croatia as I trained through them, although that was on a sleeper train), unless they are really small countries one usually doesn't actually spend a night in (Vatican City and Andorra).
So here goes:
1 The Netherlands
2 Germany
3 Belgium
4 France
5 Luxembourg
6 England
7 Switzerland
8 Italy
9 Denmark
10 Spain
11 Egypt
12 South Africa
13 Mozambique
14 Malawi
15 Zambia
16 Kenya
17 Tanzania
18 Poland
19 Jordan
20 Sweden
21 Vatican City
22 Hungary
23 Czech Republic
24 Austria
25 Scotland
26 United States of America
27 Andorra
28 Australia
29 China
Wow, who would have thought that would fit exactly? And there may be countries I've missed: I'm not sure whether I've ever visited Monaco or San Marino, but I think this list looks pretty neat.
I still have some countries relatively close by that I really want to visit (Greece, Portugal, Norway, Ireland, Turkey), and loooots of countries further away, so I think I will try to actually keep up the 'one country a year' rule for a while. It gives me just as good an excuse as any to travel more!
Anyway, the recent trip to China got me thinking about this again, so I decided to make a list of all the countries I have visited so far, in somewhat chronological order (I really can't tell if I visited Germany before Belgium, or Luxembourg before France... My parents may have something intelligent to say on this, but really, who cares?), to see whether my goal from two thirds of my life away still holds. I've only included countries that I actually spent at least one night in (otherwise I could include Oman or Abu Dhabi due to flight transfers, or Slovenia and Croatia as I trained through them, although that was on a sleeper train), unless they are really small countries one usually doesn't actually spend a night in (Vatican City and Andorra).
So here goes:
1 The Netherlands
2 Germany
3 Belgium
4 France
5 Luxembourg
6 England
7 Switzerland
8 Italy
9 Denmark
10 Spain
11 Egypt
12 South Africa
13 Mozambique
14 Malawi
15 Zambia
16 Kenya
17 Tanzania
18 Poland
19 Jordan
20 Sweden
21 Vatican City
22 Hungary
23 Czech Republic
24 Austria
25 Scotland
26 United States of America
27 Andorra
28 Australia
29 China
Wow, who would have thought that would fit exactly? And there may be countries I've missed: I'm not sure whether I've ever visited Monaco or San Marino, but I think this list looks pretty neat.
I still have some countries relatively close by that I really want to visit (Greece, Portugal, Norway, Ireland, Turkey), and loooots of countries further away, so I think I will try to actually keep up the 'one country a year' rule for a while. It gives me just as good an excuse as any to travel more!
Friday, 8 May 2015
China travels
So we've just returned from our trip to Beijing, China. Where we spent only one week, which several people called 'decadent', and which isn't nearly long enough to see all the sights, but it was everything we could manage with our limited off-days and busy jobs and stuff (the upside is that the busy jobs make us able to actually pay for the trip to China, so it does feel like a good balance).
Anyway, one of my friends from university decided about a year ago that she wanted to teach English in a Chinese high school instead of a Dutch one, so off she went to Beijing, where she teaches the lucky few in the special 'international program' how people think and work and study in the rest of the world. All of this to prepare them for their studies at Yale or Oxford or Harvard or Cambridge, because that's where most of them end up (although most of them also fail quite quickly and go back to China, because just 2 years in an 'international program' won't really prepare you for the culture shock). But as soon as she decided to live in China for a year, we decided to come and visit her.
I'd never been to the 'real' Asia before; I visited Jordan in 2007 but that's more the Middle East than Asia. My boyfriend had already travelled extensively in Vietnam, China, and Malaysia, so he was probably more prepared. Although there wasn't that much to prepare us for; Beijing is a lot like any other big city around the world, only with a lot more smog. Otherwise; congested streets, great metro system (really, the best I've ever been on), lots of international restaurants, supermarkets, shops, etc. Lots of tourist attractions, although not always in the shape one would expect. And, even more unexpectedly, it's also a very green city; the Chinese love their plants, both flowers and trees, and there are some nice parks.
My friend lives in one of the typical Chinese apartment buildings, with oddities such as a refrigerator on the balcony and showering over the toilet, so we got the real local resident experience. She had the first three days of our visit off, so she could show us the sights and explain some Chinese customs and words to us, which was nice because most of them don't speak any English except for 'bye-bye'. But we managed anyway, because smiles, hands and feet, and a friendly tone will get you by almost anywhere in the world.
So what did we see? More temples than I could ever have imagined in a country that went through a Cultural Revolution and doesn't really like religion all that much. But there are lots of beautiful Buddhist temples around, the biggest and most impressive of which was the Tibetan Lama Temple quite close to my friend's house. Apart from billowing clouds of incense and lots of worshippers it contains a 27 meter high Buddha statue, the finest we saw in the whole country. We visited some other Buddhist temples, some newer and some older, but this was by far the best.
Then there was the Temple of Heaven, which was visited by the emperors to pray for good harvests. This isn't so much a Buddhist temple as a general heaven-worship temple, it also has something to do with fung shui (there used to be temples of the earth, fire and water as well), but the whole picture never really clear. These were really nice round temples with lots of numerological detail, which was nice after seeing all the other square temples. Also lots of guardian animals on the roofs, which is probably my favourite thing about these temples (we used to call the figure in front 'guy on a chicken' before we found out it's supposed to be a phoenix). The Temple of Heaven is situated in the Temple of Heaven Park, one of the many parks dotted around the city (sadly, no sitting on the grass, only on benches).
Of course we also visited the Forbidden City and Summer Palace, playgrounds of the former emperors. The Chinese call the Forbidden City the 'Palace Museum' and have put little shops and toilets and everything in all the buildings, but they're still standing and great to see. We loved the nine-dragon screen, of which only a few are left (we saw the one in Beihai Park, too). But mostly it's biiiig, way bigger than you'd think, with more than 800 buildings and huge squares that could fit thousands of people.
The same is true of 'the' square, Tian'anmen Square, to the south of the Forbidden City. This was one of the most stressful experiences I've ever had in a touristy place, with loads of jumpy policemen and military standing around, and very detailed security checks to get there (apart from the regular bag searches, you had to show your identity card, and there was some not-friendly frisking going on, especially of elderly Chinese ladies. As usual, we could walk straight through). There was some disturbance when someone threw a lot of leaflets into the crowd, with the stressed-out policemen shouting and pointing and running as if it were hand grenades rather than leaflets. On the lighter side, there were lots of Chinese tourists (also at the Summer Palace and Forbidden City), many of whom wanted to take pictures of us, because they're from tiny villages and we're weird Western tourists. Different people took different approaches to sneaking a picture, with some of them outright asking us to take a picture with them.
And last but certainly not least, we visited the Great Wall of China. This took some organising to get there, as we had to take two buses out of town, the first of which got stuck in a massive traffic jam and the second of which we couldn't find, so we took a black cab to the wall and arrived there about 4.5 hours after we set off. But it was well worth it, as we visited an unrestored section of the Wall, with all its crumbling beauty and very few other tourists. We had a great walk, and then a great bus ride back, again getting stuck in traffic and spending a total of 9 hours on buses (this was the day after we spent 9 hours on a plane, so you can imagine the state our legs and backs were in by that time - Chinese buses don't really accommodate people over 1.80 m). But again; it was more than worth it.
Beforehand I thought food might become a problem as I'm a vegetarian and allergic to lots of other stuff, but it was a breeze. We had some dinners in Western restaurants and some in Chinese restaurants, including a hotpot 'fastfood' restaurant and two vegetarian 'mock meat' restaurants (close to Buddhist temples, of course). My boyfriend didn't get to eat the much-anticipated Peking Duck, so we'll have to go back for that some day. There are some other things we didn't get around to doing as well, but then my friend is somewhat thinking about staying another year, so we may visit her again. Or we'll take a larger Asia trip one day, as this one has warmed me to that part of the world, which I didn't really know that much about. All in all, it was a great trip, and if you're unsure where your next city trip should be to, put Beijing on the list!
Anyway, one of my friends from university decided about a year ago that she wanted to teach English in a Chinese high school instead of a Dutch one, so off she went to Beijing, where she teaches the lucky few in the special 'international program' how people think and work and study in the rest of the world. All of this to prepare them for their studies at Yale or Oxford or Harvard or Cambridge, because that's where most of them end up (although most of them also fail quite quickly and go back to China, because just 2 years in an 'international program' won't really prepare you for the culture shock). But as soon as she decided to live in China for a year, we decided to come and visit her.
I'd never been to the 'real' Asia before; I visited Jordan in 2007 but that's more the Middle East than Asia. My boyfriend had already travelled extensively in Vietnam, China, and Malaysia, so he was probably more prepared. Although there wasn't that much to prepare us for; Beijing is a lot like any other big city around the world, only with a lot more smog. Otherwise; congested streets, great metro system (really, the best I've ever been on), lots of international restaurants, supermarkets, shops, etc. Lots of tourist attractions, although not always in the shape one would expect. And, even more unexpectedly, it's also a very green city; the Chinese love their plants, both flowers and trees, and there are some nice parks.
My friend lives in one of the typical Chinese apartment buildings, with oddities such as a refrigerator on the balcony and showering over the toilet, so we got the real local resident experience. She had the first three days of our visit off, so she could show us the sights and explain some Chinese customs and words to us, which was nice because most of them don't speak any English except for 'bye-bye'. But we managed anyway, because smiles, hands and feet, and a friendly tone will get you by almost anywhere in the world.
So what did we see? More temples than I could ever have imagined in a country that went through a Cultural Revolution and doesn't really like religion all that much. But there are lots of beautiful Buddhist temples around, the biggest and most impressive of which was the Tibetan Lama Temple quite close to my friend's house. Apart from billowing clouds of incense and lots of worshippers it contains a 27 meter high Buddha statue, the finest we saw in the whole country. We visited some other Buddhist temples, some newer and some older, but this was by far the best.
Then there was the Temple of Heaven, which was visited by the emperors to pray for good harvests. This isn't so much a Buddhist temple as a general heaven-worship temple, it also has something to do with fung shui (there used to be temples of the earth, fire and water as well), but the whole picture never really clear. These were really nice round temples with lots of numerological detail, which was nice after seeing all the other square temples. Also lots of guardian animals on the roofs, which is probably my favourite thing about these temples (we used to call the figure in front 'guy on a chicken' before we found out it's supposed to be a phoenix). The Temple of Heaven is situated in the Temple of Heaven Park, one of the many parks dotted around the city (sadly, no sitting on the grass, only on benches).
Of course we also visited the Forbidden City and Summer Palace, playgrounds of the former emperors. The Chinese call the Forbidden City the 'Palace Museum' and have put little shops and toilets and everything in all the buildings, but they're still standing and great to see. We loved the nine-dragon screen, of which only a few are left (we saw the one in Beihai Park, too). But mostly it's biiiig, way bigger than you'd think, with more than 800 buildings and huge squares that could fit thousands of people.
The same is true of 'the' square, Tian'anmen Square, to the south of the Forbidden City. This was one of the most stressful experiences I've ever had in a touristy place, with loads of jumpy policemen and military standing around, and very detailed security checks to get there (apart from the regular bag searches, you had to show your identity card, and there was some not-friendly frisking going on, especially of elderly Chinese ladies. As usual, we could walk straight through). There was some disturbance when someone threw a lot of leaflets into the crowd, with the stressed-out policemen shouting and pointing and running as if it were hand grenades rather than leaflets. On the lighter side, there were lots of Chinese tourists (also at the Summer Palace and Forbidden City), many of whom wanted to take pictures of us, because they're from tiny villages and we're weird Western tourists. Different people took different approaches to sneaking a picture, with some of them outright asking us to take a picture with them.
And last but certainly not least, we visited the Great Wall of China. This took some organising to get there, as we had to take two buses out of town, the first of which got stuck in a massive traffic jam and the second of which we couldn't find, so we took a black cab to the wall and arrived there about 4.5 hours after we set off. But it was well worth it, as we visited an unrestored section of the Wall, with all its crumbling beauty and very few other tourists. We had a great walk, and then a great bus ride back, again getting stuck in traffic and spending a total of 9 hours on buses (this was the day after we spent 9 hours on a plane, so you can imagine the state our legs and backs were in by that time - Chinese buses don't really accommodate people over 1.80 m). But again; it was more than worth it.
Beforehand I thought food might become a problem as I'm a vegetarian and allergic to lots of other stuff, but it was a breeze. We had some dinners in Western restaurants and some in Chinese restaurants, including a hotpot 'fastfood' restaurant and two vegetarian 'mock meat' restaurants (close to Buddhist temples, of course). My boyfriend didn't get to eat the much-anticipated Peking Duck, so we'll have to go back for that some day. There are some other things we didn't get around to doing as well, but then my friend is somewhat thinking about staying another year, so we may visit her again. Or we'll take a larger Asia trip one day, as this one has warmed me to that part of the world, which I didn't really know that much about. All in all, it was a great trip, and if you're unsure where your next city trip should be to, put Beijing on the list!
Wednesday, 29 April 2015
52 books challenge - April
So I'm writing my reading progress for April one day early, because I don't think I will be finishing another novel tomorrow, with the travelling to China and the panicking about the travelling to China and all (more about travelling to China in a post to come!). So this is my score as of week 18:
11 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - John le Carre
12 Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
13 De Ontdekking van de Hemel (The Discovery of Heaven) - Harry Mulisch
14 The Beautifull Cassandra - Jane Austen
Which means I'm still 4 books behind, but I haven't gotten more behind, which is good. Also, I fiiiiinally finished reading The Discovery of Heaven, which took me about 2 months. This is one of the real 'classics' of Dutch literature, and most people become very pretentious when talking about it, especially when they managed to get through it at an early age (it's on a lot of secondary school reading lists). I can't say I really cared for it; I liked the first part and the last part, but the middle two parts could have done with a LOT of editing. Hardly any character development, but lots of pointless side characters not really doing anything or going anywhere. Also, Mr Mulisch is very fond of killing off characters quite abruptly and for no apparent reason, which I couldn't really appreciate. The whole plot ties up nicely at the end, but I just wish we could have gotten there a bit faster.
But with that huge tome out of the way, I think I will be reading more and faster from now on. I'm halfway through Brideshead Revisited, but I also have some newer novels lined up, which I generally read faster. Also, there is the plane flight to and from China to give a lot of reading time (more about China later). So I have enough excuses to see myself getting to at least 20 novels in the next month. We'll see how that went at the end of May.
11 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - John le Carre
12 Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
13 De Ontdekking van de Hemel (The Discovery of Heaven) - Harry Mulisch
14 The Beautifull Cassandra - Jane Austen
Which means I'm still 4 books behind, but I haven't gotten more behind, which is good. Also, I fiiiiinally finished reading The Discovery of Heaven, which took me about 2 months. This is one of the real 'classics' of Dutch literature, and most people become very pretentious when talking about it, especially when they managed to get through it at an early age (it's on a lot of secondary school reading lists). I can't say I really cared for it; I liked the first part and the last part, but the middle two parts could have done with a LOT of editing. Hardly any character development, but lots of pointless side characters not really doing anything or going anywhere. Also, Mr Mulisch is very fond of killing off characters quite abruptly and for no apparent reason, which I couldn't really appreciate. The whole plot ties up nicely at the end, but I just wish we could have gotten there a bit faster.
But with that huge tome out of the way, I think I will be reading more and faster from now on. I'm halfway through Brideshead Revisited, but I also have some newer novels lined up, which I generally read faster. Also, there is the plane flight to and from China to give a lot of reading time (more about China later). So I have enough excuses to see myself getting to at least 20 novels in the next month. We'll see how that went at the end of May.
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Would you believe I managed to log in to Blogger at exactly the right moment?
Seems like the right time for the shortes blogpost so far. Yay, thanks for reading to you all!
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| Wednesday 29th of April, 11:30. |
Sunday, 19 April 2015
War remembrance
It's almost May, which means that in the Netherlands, the yearly debate surrounding the remembrance of WWII is heating up again. We have our Remembrance Day on the 4th of May, with the national ceremony at 20:00. The 5th of May is Liberation Day, with lots of music and festivals around the country. There has been some debate as to whether the proportion of remembrance and celebration is quite right: many people are keen to celebrate their freedom, but not to remember those who died for it.
Having witnessed Remembrance Day on the 11th of November at the National War Monument in Canberra, I can tell you that our 'remembrance' pales in the light of the Anglo-Saxon way. This is partly a cultural thing: we Dutch don't like to dramatise things and we don't really have a strong military presence, and probably partly due to the fact that we weren't the liberators who sent thousands of young men halfway across the world to die on foreign soil, we were the ones who had to be liberated, after failing to keep out the enemy. Also, for the Allied forces, it's easy to determine who was 'good' and who was 'bad' in the war: we are still trying to come to terms with some of the things that Dutch people did to other Dutch people 70 years ago.
In a way, the whole debate surrounding the remembrance makes the event itself seem less important, at least to the younger generation who hasn't witnessed the war itself, or seen the effects on our parents. Which is why I turn to books, as with so many things in life. From an early age on, I've always been interested in WWII, and at some point I'd literally read all the WWII children's books our library stocked. It wasn't really a subject my grandparents talked a lot about, but for some reason I found it fascinating, so I went and got my information from elsewhere. As I got older and discovered 'real' literature this interest waned somewhat, but as I've been digging into 'the classics', I've come across several war books which have made a pretty big impression on me.
Firstly, there is All Quiet on the Western Front, a German account of WWI. 'We' were neutral in that one, so what is known as the Great War in other parts of the world isn't really a thing here, but this novel did bring the message home. I cannot imagine how anyone could ever start another war after reading that novel, which was probably why it was banned in Nazi Germany. I'd read some of the English war poets for my literature classes and was pretty familiar with that side of the story, but you keep forgetting that it was just as bad for those on the other side.
Then I read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, which isn't about a 'live' war, but plays out in post-WWII Berlin. The Cold War is something that ended during my lifetime, so I have some memories of it (the fall of the Berlin Wall, most prominently, although I was very piqued when the country which I'd finally memorised as Czechoslovakia suddenly didn't exist anymore, and was now two separate countries). 'Cold' as it may have been, that war also changed many lives, and the setting of this novel made quite an impression.
Then I read Slaughterhouse 5, which you can't actually say anything proper about, except that again I cannot imagine anyone reading that novel and still being in favour of warfare. It is harrowing, and it will stay with me for some time to come. But I loved the jumbled-up style, and I wish I'd read this book before my 'trauma theory' essay for literature, as this would have been a great primary text to work with.
Concurrent with all the above, I've been reading De Ontdekking van de Hemel, which is translated as The Discovery of Heaven in English. This doesn't deal so much with WWII directly, but the after effects on Dutch society run throughout the novel.
And finally, my newest read is Brideshead Revisited. This was written during WWII by someone actively involved in WWII, and although most of the story takes place earlier, the whole atmosphere is that of a time gone by, destroyed by the War (amongst other things). In that sense, the novel has more in common with The Discovery of Heaven than any of the other novels written during a war.
In a way, I find these novels even more disconcerting. We can all imagine the horrors of war, but the effects that a war leaves on a society, the things that are lost and cannot be restored because something essential has been taken out, be it trust or innocence or a whole generation of young men, those effects are much harder to formulate and come to terms with. I cannot imagine how my country and my society would have been without WWII, because it took place and changed the world irreversibly. But through reading novels like these, we can get a glimpse of the profound impact a war can have on society. Maybe it isn't about whether we would have been 'good' or 'bad' during the war itself, but about how we go on when the war has ended, and peace will never be the same again.
Having witnessed Remembrance Day on the 11th of November at the National War Monument in Canberra, I can tell you that our 'remembrance' pales in the light of the Anglo-Saxon way. This is partly a cultural thing: we Dutch don't like to dramatise things and we don't really have a strong military presence, and probably partly due to the fact that we weren't the liberators who sent thousands of young men halfway across the world to die on foreign soil, we were the ones who had to be liberated, after failing to keep out the enemy. Also, for the Allied forces, it's easy to determine who was 'good' and who was 'bad' in the war: we are still trying to come to terms with some of the things that Dutch people did to other Dutch people 70 years ago.
In a way, the whole debate surrounding the remembrance makes the event itself seem less important, at least to the younger generation who hasn't witnessed the war itself, or seen the effects on our parents. Which is why I turn to books, as with so many things in life. From an early age on, I've always been interested in WWII, and at some point I'd literally read all the WWII children's books our library stocked. It wasn't really a subject my grandparents talked a lot about, but for some reason I found it fascinating, so I went and got my information from elsewhere. As I got older and discovered 'real' literature this interest waned somewhat, but as I've been digging into 'the classics', I've come across several war books which have made a pretty big impression on me.
Firstly, there is All Quiet on the Western Front, a German account of WWI. 'We' were neutral in that one, so what is known as the Great War in other parts of the world isn't really a thing here, but this novel did bring the message home. I cannot imagine how anyone could ever start another war after reading that novel, which was probably why it was banned in Nazi Germany. I'd read some of the English war poets for my literature classes and was pretty familiar with that side of the story, but you keep forgetting that it was just as bad for those on the other side.
Then I read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, which isn't about a 'live' war, but plays out in post-WWII Berlin. The Cold War is something that ended during my lifetime, so I have some memories of it (the fall of the Berlin Wall, most prominently, although I was very piqued when the country which I'd finally memorised as Czechoslovakia suddenly didn't exist anymore, and was now two separate countries). 'Cold' as it may have been, that war also changed many lives, and the setting of this novel made quite an impression.
Then I read Slaughterhouse 5, which you can't actually say anything proper about, except that again I cannot imagine anyone reading that novel and still being in favour of warfare. It is harrowing, and it will stay with me for some time to come. But I loved the jumbled-up style, and I wish I'd read this book before my 'trauma theory' essay for literature, as this would have been a great primary text to work with.
Concurrent with all the above, I've been reading De Ontdekking van de Hemel, which is translated as The Discovery of Heaven in English. This doesn't deal so much with WWII directly, but the after effects on Dutch society run throughout the novel.
And finally, my newest read is Brideshead Revisited. This was written during WWII by someone actively involved in WWII, and although most of the story takes place earlier, the whole atmosphere is that of a time gone by, destroyed by the War (amongst other things). In that sense, the novel has more in common with The Discovery of Heaven than any of the other novels written during a war.
In a way, I find these novels even more disconcerting. We can all imagine the horrors of war, but the effects that a war leaves on a society, the things that are lost and cannot be restored because something essential has been taken out, be it trust or innocence or a whole generation of young men, those effects are much harder to formulate and come to terms with. I cannot imagine how my country and my society would have been without WWII, because it took place and changed the world irreversibly. But through reading novels like these, we can get a glimpse of the profound impact a war can have on society. Maybe it isn't about whether we would have been 'good' or 'bad' during the war itself, but about how we go on when the war has ended, and peace will never be the same again.
Monday, 6 April 2015
Queen Lear
To keep up on my Shakespeare, which is something they command you to do before you are given your MA in English Literature, I've visited no less than two Shakespeare plays so far this year (and I foresee a third in the summer, when the open-air Shakespeare Theatre in Diever will stage Romeo & Juliet). But in winter we decided to stay indoors, and watched the plays at the Stadsschouwburg in Groningen.
The first was Hamlet, my fifth or sixth Hamlet in all, played by The Tiger Lillies. I had never heard of them before, but Wikipedia tells us they are "a cult British musical trio", which is not who you expect to put on a Shakespeare play. To this end, they teamed up with 4 actors, who played the main characters during the real 'acting' parts of the play, while they connected the acted bits through song and dance and a bit of cabaret. There wasn't much in the way of props or setting, just one big panel with some windows and doors, which could be tilted all the way to the ground when they didn't need it. It was brilliantly done; good acting, wonderful music, the (sometimes very high-pitched) singing was great and very relevant to the play. It also showed that you don't need to put on all of Hamlet exactly as Shakespeare has written it; you can just take 4 people and the main scenes and the gist of the story, and it will still work. I've seen Hamlet done with 6 actors who also played their own musical instruments at the Globe in London, and that one was slightly better on the acting part, but this one was better on the musical part. Anyway; a great show.
There were several other Shakespeare performances in the Stadsschouwburg this year, but we decided to stick with the one as there were other plays to be watched and it is still pretty expensive. But then one of the other plays was cancelled because the theatre went bankrupt, and we decided to visit another Shakespeare play just because we could. This was to be Queen Lear, an adaptation of King Lear by Toneelgroep Amsterdam.
Now while Hamlet had been basically the play that Shakespeare intended, with some scenes and characters removed and some musical intermezzos added, this was something completely different. Not only had they translated the play from English to Dutch, but they also reversed most of the gender roles. King Lear became a queen, his three daughters were now three sons, and their two spouses (the dukes Albany and Cornwall) had become gold digging women. Kent was there, still a male, and the fool was also still male. These were all the characters, but they proved that you can play Lear with only 8 people (with one doubling as the madman on the heath). But if all that change wasn't enough, they also changed the setting to the current time; not a kingdom divided, but a company, with several obvious references to the recent banking crisis. You might think that this is a bit too much for poor King Lear, and in some ways it was. At first you kept trying to remember what the 'real' play was about, and what they changed and why they may have done that, and what was going to happen next. But then the story got underway and you kind of forgot that you were actually watching Lear, until some of the typical Lear stuff started to happen, like the storm or the blinding of Kent or the 'Never never never never never' line. Which was good, because it is recognisable, but it also felt a bit tacked-on, as if they were trying to prove to themselves that they were still really playing Lear and not something else. They play in itself was well done, great acting and a good atmosphere, but during these typical Lear things it all felt a bit too contrived. King Lear is a universally recognisable story about old age and seeing your inheritance dissolve into nothingness, and they could have kept it just like that. I can imagine that when you tell people they're going to see Queen Lear you feel like you're obliged to keep in some of the typical Shakespearean stuff, but to me, it was not really necessary. The story was good enough on it's own.
But anyway, this was enough Shakespeare for a while, until Romeo & Juliet will start in Diever. That play will also be translated to Dutch, but otherwise they usually keep things original, and they have a large cast of volunteers so lots of characters will be there. It's good to see so many different versions of these classic stories, it shows how timeless and universal they are, even when translated to music or our modern times. But once in a while, it's still good to see the original thing, with lots of actors, in the open air.
The first was Hamlet, my fifth or sixth Hamlet in all, played by The Tiger Lillies. I had never heard of them before, but Wikipedia tells us they are "a cult British musical trio", which is not who you expect to put on a Shakespeare play. To this end, they teamed up with 4 actors, who played the main characters during the real 'acting' parts of the play, while they connected the acted bits through song and dance and a bit of cabaret. There wasn't much in the way of props or setting, just one big panel with some windows and doors, which could be tilted all the way to the ground when they didn't need it. It was brilliantly done; good acting, wonderful music, the (sometimes very high-pitched) singing was great and very relevant to the play. It also showed that you don't need to put on all of Hamlet exactly as Shakespeare has written it; you can just take 4 people and the main scenes and the gist of the story, and it will still work. I've seen Hamlet done with 6 actors who also played their own musical instruments at the Globe in London, and that one was slightly better on the acting part, but this one was better on the musical part. Anyway; a great show.
There were several other Shakespeare performances in the Stadsschouwburg this year, but we decided to stick with the one as there were other plays to be watched and it is still pretty expensive. But then one of the other plays was cancelled because the theatre went bankrupt, and we decided to visit another Shakespeare play just because we could. This was to be Queen Lear, an adaptation of King Lear by Toneelgroep Amsterdam.
Now while Hamlet had been basically the play that Shakespeare intended, with some scenes and characters removed and some musical intermezzos added, this was something completely different. Not only had they translated the play from English to Dutch, but they also reversed most of the gender roles. King Lear became a queen, his three daughters were now three sons, and their two spouses (the dukes Albany and Cornwall) had become gold digging women. Kent was there, still a male, and the fool was also still male. These were all the characters, but they proved that you can play Lear with only 8 people (with one doubling as the madman on the heath). But if all that change wasn't enough, they also changed the setting to the current time; not a kingdom divided, but a company, with several obvious references to the recent banking crisis. You might think that this is a bit too much for poor King Lear, and in some ways it was. At first you kept trying to remember what the 'real' play was about, and what they changed and why they may have done that, and what was going to happen next. But then the story got underway and you kind of forgot that you were actually watching Lear, until some of the typical Lear stuff started to happen, like the storm or the blinding of Kent or the 'Never never never never never' line. Which was good, because it is recognisable, but it also felt a bit tacked-on, as if they were trying to prove to themselves that they were still really playing Lear and not something else. They play in itself was well done, great acting and a good atmosphere, but during these typical Lear things it all felt a bit too contrived. King Lear is a universally recognisable story about old age and seeing your inheritance dissolve into nothingness, and they could have kept it just like that. I can imagine that when you tell people they're going to see Queen Lear you feel like you're obliged to keep in some of the typical Shakespearean stuff, but to me, it was not really necessary. The story was good enough on it's own.
But anyway, this was enough Shakespeare for a while, until Romeo & Juliet will start in Diever. That play will also be translated to Dutch, but otherwise they usually keep things original, and they have a large cast of volunteers so lots of characters will be there. It's good to see so many different versions of these classic stories, it shows how timeless and universal they are, even when translated to music or our modern times. But once in a while, it's still good to see the original thing, with lots of actors, in the open air.
Tuesday, 31 March 2015
52 book challenge - March
So I started my 52 book challenge a little more than an month ago, and to keep myself motivated through sheer peer pressure, I'll try to give monthly updates whenever I actually remember.
Last time, I was in week 8, and I'd read 6 books in total. I've made some progress until now, but not as much as I would have liked. We're currently in week 14, and here are the books I've read since last time:
7 The Sleeper and the Spindle - Neil Gaiman
8 Dit kan niet waar zijn - Joris Luyendijk
9 Gratis geld voor iedereen - Rutger Bregman
10 Dept. of Speculation - Jenny Offill
Yup, I am now officially 4 books behind. But I'm reading two books at the same time, so I may be catching up (or so I tell myself), or at least not falling behind even more.
Other noteworthy things: two of the books on the list above are Dutch. I don't really read a lot of Dutch books, but there have been some good ones coming out recently, so I've been buying and reading those. Interestingly, both Dutch books are also non-fiction. I wasn't sure about including non-fiction books on this list, but because I will never ever make 52 books in a year if I don't, they're there. Also, I've already sneaked in one of the very short novels I have saved up to 'make up' for a whole week with a novel that I can just read in 3-4 hours. Dept of Speculation also only took about an afternoon to read, so technically that's in the short novel category too.
Anyway, the list so far doesn't really seem that promising for the future of the whole challenge, but I'm still pretty positive, with several holidays coming up in the near future. I'll try and write another update at the end of April, and we'll see how things stand then. In the meantime, I'll get back to John le Carre.
Last time, I was in week 8, and I'd read 6 books in total. I've made some progress until now, but not as much as I would have liked. We're currently in week 14, and here are the books I've read since last time:
7 The Sleeper and the Spindle - Neil Gaiman
8 Dit kan niet waar zijn - Joris Luyendijk
9 Gratis geld voor iedereen - Rutger Bregman
10 Dept. of Speculation - Jenny Offill
Yup, I am now officially 4 books behind. But I'm reading two books at the same time, so I may be catching up (or so I tell myself), or at least not falling behind even more.
Other noteworthy things: two of the books on the list above are Dutch. I don't really read a lot of Dutch books, but there have been some good ones coming out recently, so I've been buying and reading those. Interestingly, both Dutch books are also non-fiction. I wasn't sure about including non-fiction books on this list, but because I will never ever make 52 books in a year if I don't, they're there. Also, I've already sneaked in one of the very short novels I have saved up to 'make up' for a whole week with a novel that I can just read in 3-4 hours. Dept of Speculation also only took about an afternoon to read, so technically that's in the short novel category too.
Anyway, the list so far doesn't really seem that promising for the future of the whole challenge, but I'm still pretty positive, with several holidays coming up in the near future. I'll try and write another update at the end of April, and we'll see how things stand then. In the meantime, I'll get back to John le Carre.
Sunday, 22 March 2015
Veg patches
So most of you will probably know by now that we have a small vegetable patch in the back garden, in which we try to grow some food, with various outcomes. Potatoes, apples, pumpkins and strawberries appear to love it here, while carrots, lettuce and cauliflower don't really want to do anything. This year, we're sticking to our success stories, and therefore we've already put the potatoes in the ground (in a different place than last year, of course).
We started quite early this year, because the major supermarket chain in the Netherlands decided to jump on the whole 'authentic food' bandwagon and give out miniature vegetable patches with every 10 Euros of groceries you bought. Technically they're not only veg patches but also herb gardens, as you can also get stuff like thyme and rosemary, but they called them 'moestuintjes' (= veg patches) nonetheless.
I've talked to several (freelance) marketing professionals in the last few weeks who cannot comprehend how this supermarket chain has another 'hit' by giving away stuff that most people usually turn up their noses at, but somehow little boxes are popping up left right and centre on the window sills. How many of these will actually turn into proper plants or be planted out when the time comes remains to be seen.
Of course, we will take our little plant proteges very seriously. We got 7 'patches' in total: aubergine, broccoli, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, thyme, spinach and endive. Luckily, most of them are plants we've already grown and/or plants that like our soil. We've put the first 5 of them in their boxes already, and the broccoli and cherry tomatoes have come up really quickly, so we've put them in bigger pots ready to be planted outside when the temperatures get a bit higher. The thyme is now also showing two very tiny leaves, but the aubergines and strawberries don't appear to be doing much as of yet. We won't put the leaf vegetables out until about halfway through April, because these tend to grow pretty quickly and we don't want to see them wither away in the cold March air.
Apart from these new plants, we still have a lot of strawberry plants from last year, plus the apple tree, and a lot of pumpkin seeds from the two pumpkins we grew last year (and didn't eat, because I really just like to look at them and marvel at the fact that we've grown these things in a small, shaded garden in the middle of the city). We may buy more peppers at some point, but with the 'free' veg patches our own patch is filling up pretty quickly. Hopefully, this will be the last year we grow stuff here, as we are now seriously looking at moving to a place with a bigger garden before next spring. But even if we get half the amount of food we grew last year, I'll still be a happy gardener!
We started quite early this year, because the major supermarket chain in the Netherlands decided to jump on the whole 'authentic food' bandwagon and give out miniature vegetable patches with every 10 Euros of groceries you bought. Technically they're not only veg patches but also herb gardens, as you can also get stuff like thyme and rosemary, but they called them 'moestuintjes' (= veg patches) nonetheless.
I've talked to several (freelance) marketing professionals in the last few weeks who cannot comprehend how this supermarket chain has another 'hit' by giving away stuff that most people usually turn up their noses at, but somehow little boxes are popping up left right and centre on the window sills. How many of these will actually turn into proper plants or be planted out when the time comes remains to be seen.
Of course, we will take our little plant proteges very seriously. We got 7 'patches' in total: aubergine, broccoli, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, thyme, spinach and endive. Luckily, most of them are plants we've already grown and/or plants that like our soil. We've put the first 5 of them in their boxes already, and the broccoli and cherry tomatoes have come up really quickly, so we've put them in bigger pots ready to be planted outside when the temperatures get a bit higher. The thyme is now also showing two very tiny leaves, but the aubergines and strawberries don't appear to be doing much as of yet. We won't put the leaf vegetables out until about halfway through April, because these tend to grow pretty quickly and we don't want to see them wither away in the cold March air.
Apart from these new plants, we still have a lot of strawberry plants from last year, plus the apple tree, and a lot of pumpkin seeds from the two pumpkins we grew last year (and didn't eat, because I really just like to look at them and marvel at the fact that we've grown these things in a small, shaded garden in the middle of the city). We may buy more peppers at some point, but with the 'free' veg patches our own patch is filling up pretty quickly. Hopefully, this will be the last year we grow stuff here, as we are now seriously looking at moving to a place with a bigger garden before next spring. But even if we get half the amount of food we grew last year, I'll still be a happy gardener!
Saturday, 21 March 2015
Getting a haircut
There are some reoccurring things in one's life that you have to repeat after a couple of months. These include going to the dentist, having your eyes checked (if you're a contact or glasses-wearer), going to your GP or getting your meds. Mostly, I find these things an annoyance because I don't have that much time, but mostly they're more useful than terrible.
There is one exception to this rule; going to the hairdresser to have my hair cut. I really dread this, because of two things:
1 I don't really pay that much attention to what my hair is doing or how long it's getting, so I usually don't go to a hairdresser until it's about 2 months too late, leaving my hair too long and frizzly;
2 I don't really 'fit in' with people who pay a lot of attention to their hair and hairstyle and make-up etc, which leaves me short of conversation topics while I'm there, and generally creates an awkward atmosphere for all involved.
These things are of course related; because I feel really awkward trying to make conversation while I'm there, I keep postponing actually going, which makes the person cutting my hair even more exasperated with the state of my hair when I finally do go. Thus making me feel even less like a normal human being who should actually be allowed in a hairdresser's.
Although I'm really happy with the result once I've managed to find the time and the courage to actually go, and always plan on bettering my life and visiting more often, the pattern is very well-ingrained and somehow always repeats itself.
The funny thing is; most people I know don't like to go. Usually, because they always get a different result than what they opted for; hair either too short or in a weird way that you can never actually replicate at home. I personally never have this problem, because I always ask for my hair in exactly the same way, and after a couple of times memorised the lingo that the hairdresser uses when they ask the confirmation questions about what you want, so I just tell them those words from the beginning and usually end up with exactly the same hair. Which is thoroughly disappointing to the person who has just cut my hair, because it is a style that doesn't really work when you wear it down, but which works perfectly when you put it in a ponytail or bun, which is how I wear my hair 98% of the time. So I'm happy with it.
And the other thing I hear other people mention about not liking to have their hair cut is the same problem I'm having; the lack of suitable conversation topics that leads to awkward silences. This concerns women, generally, as men either have silent hairdressers or are out of there so fast that the lack of conversation doesn't really matter. And I even know several other women who postpone having their hair cut because of this. So I'm not alone.
However, contrary to all expectations, I had my hair cut yesterday, and it all went swimmingly. The girl cutting my hair was one I'd already seen several times earlier, so we had some recurring topics that we could use. Also, we're of almost the same age, which makes things easier. And, most important of all, we'd both just visited Australia, so we spent about 20 minutes talking about that. We never even got to the question of why my hair was way too long and dry as dust.
Which got me thinking; maybe the solution is that when you make an appointment to have your hair cut, you also hand in a list of personal information, including your age and hometown, but also recent experiences and interests. That way, they can match you to someone who has the same interests, so you have something to talk about.
Also, hairdressers should realise that they are abnormally interested in all things concerning hair (an understandable occupational hazard) but that most other people don't really care that much. So when they comment about styles or products or whatever, and get a terse reply, they should really drop the subject instead of asking even more questions or suggesting difficult products or procedures to 'amend' problems that the person whose hair it is doesn't really have. This would take away a lot of the pre-cutting anxiety, which leads to people going to the hairdresser's more often, which probably also amends the disastrous state one's hair can get into. It's win-win all around.
It would make me, and my tormented hair, a lot happier and more relaxed. Because really, having your hair cut should be just that; having your hair cut.
There is one exception to this rule; going to the hairdresser to have my hair cut. I really dread this, because of two things:
1 I don't really pay that much attention to what my hair is doing or how long it's getting, so I usually don't go to a hairdresser until it's about 2 months too late, leaving my hair too long and frizzly;
2 I don't really 'fit in' with people who pay a lot of attention to their hair and hairstyle and make-up etc, which leaves me short of conversation topics while I'm there, and generally creates an awkward atmosphere for all involved.
These things are of course related; because I feel really awkward trying to make conversation while I'm there, I keep postponing actually going, which makes the person cutting my hair even more exasperated with the state of my hair when I finally do go. Thus making me feel even less like a normal human being who should actually be allowed in a hairdresser's.
Although I'm really happy with the result once I've managed to find the time and the courage to actually go, and always plan on bettering my life and visiting more often, the pattern is very well-ingrained and somehow always repeats itself.
The funny thing is; most people I know don't like to go. Usually, because they always get a different result than what they opted for; hair either too short or in a weird way that you can never actually replicate at home. I personally never have this problem, because I always ask for my hair in exactly the same way, and after a couple of times memorised the lingo that the hairdresser uses when they ask the confirmation questions about what you want, so I just tell them those words from the beginning and usually end up with exactly the same hair. Which is thoroughly disappointing to the person who has just cut my hair, because it is a style that doesn't really work when you wear it down, but which works perfectly when you put it in a ponytail or bun, which is how I wear my hair 98% of the time. So I'm happy with it.
And the other thing I hear other people mention about not liking to have their hair cut is the same problem I'm having; the lack of suitable conversation topics that leads to awkward silences. This concerns women, generally, as men either have silent hairdressers or are out of there so fast that the lack of conversation doesn't really matter. And I even know several other women who postpone having their hair cut because of this. So I'm not alone.
However, contrary to all expectations, I had my hair cut yesterday, and it all went swimmingly. The girl cutting my hair was one I'd already seen several times earlier, so we had some recurring topics that we could use. Also, we're of almost the same age, which makes things easier. And, most important of all, we'd both just visited Australia, so we spent about 20 minutes talking about that. We never even got to the question of why my hair was way too long and dry as dust.
Which got me thinking; maybe the solution is that when you make an appointment to have your hair cut, you also hand in a list of personal information, including your age and hometown, but also recent experiences and interests. That way, they can match you to someone who has the same interests, so you have something to talk about.
Also, hairdressers should realise that they are abnormally interested in all things concerning hair (an understandable occupational hazard) but that most other people don't really care that much. So when they comment about styles or products or whatever, and get a terse reply, they should really drop the subject instead of asking even more questions or suggesting difficult products or procedures to 'amend' problems that the person whose hair it is doesn't really have. This would take away a lot of the pre-cutting anxiety, which leads to people going to the hairdresser's more often, which probably also amends the disastrous state one's hair can get into. It's win-win all around.
It would make me, and my tormented hair, a lot happier and more relaxed. Because really, having your hair cut should be just that; having your hair cut.
Monday, 23 February 2015
52 books challenge - start
In December, several of my old study mates posted how many books they'd read in 2014. Most of them apparently had set some sort of goal for themselves, which usually lay somewhere between 100 and 150. One extreme outlier wanted to read 300 books, but 'only' got to about 260.
Imagine reading 260 books in a year! That's almost 1 a day! I've had to implement some contemporary-classics shift to accommodate all the books I want to read, but with 260 books you wouldn't need any of that, you could just read everything and anything you wanted.
Now 300 or even 100 books in a year is never going to happen with my job and otherwise quite busy life, but I also decided to set some sort of goal for myself, because I do want to read more (I want to do lots of things more, like playing the piano and Postcrossing and writing, but reading is one of those things you can do in otherwise unused moments, such as on a train with a crappy wifi connection, which makes it easier to fit in).
So I set myself the goal of 52 books, or 1 book a week. This, I felt, was pretty reasonable, surely I would manage to read one book a week. I've called this my '52 book challenge', because it does feel like a challenge some times. I've been going at it for 8 weeks (today is the first day of week 9) and I feel like I've been doing pretty well.
Let's see what I've read so far this year (not counting Crime & Punishment, which I finished this year but didn't start):
1 The Children Act - Ian McEwan
2 My Brief History - Stephen Hawking
3 All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
4 Number9dream - David Mitchell
5 The Lost World - Michael Crichton
6 The Rosie Effect - Graeme Simsion
Okay, so maybe the contemporary-classic system is not working as flawlessly as I would have liked. And also, I am 2 books behind. But really, that's nothing, in a good holiday week I can read 6 or 7 books in total, so I will make up for that at some point. Also, I have some nice thin books stacked up which will take me about a day to finish and will quickly get me back on schedule. For now, the biggest challenge is deciding what I'm going to read next, as I finished The Rosie Effect this morning and have several contenders for my next read.
I will try to keep you updated on my reading progress, success and/or failure, and if you have any recommendations as to what I should definitely read this year, tell me!
Imagine reading 260 books in a year! That's almost 1 a day! I've had to implement some contemporary-classics shift to accommodate all the books I want to read, but with 260 books you wouldn't need any of that, you could just read everything and anything you wanted.
Now 300 or even 100 books in a year is never going to happen with my job and otherwise quite busy life, but I also decided to set some sort of goal for myself, because I do want to read more (I want to do lots of things more, like playing the piano and Postcrossing and writing, but reading is one of those things you can do in otherwise unused moments, such as on a train with a crappy wifi connection, which makes it easier to fit in).
So I set myself the goal of 52 books, or 1 book a week. This, I felt, was pretty reasonable, surely I would manage to read one book a week. I've called this my '52 book challenge', because it does feel like a challenge some times. I've been going at it for 8 weeks (today is the first day of week 9) and I feel like I've been doing pretty well.
Let's see what I've read so far this year (not counting Crime & Punishment, which I finished this year but didn't start):
1 The Children Act - Ian McEwan
2 My Brief History - Stephen Hawking
3 All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
4 Number9dream - David Mitchell
5 The Lost World - Michael Crichton
6 The Rosie Effect - Graeme Simsion
Okay, so maybe the contemporary-classic system is not working as flawlessly as I would have liked. And also, I am 2 books behind. But really, that's nothing, in a good holiday week I can read 6 or 7 books in total, so I will make up for that at some point. Also, I have some nice thin books stacked up which will take me about a day to finish and will quickly get me back on schedule. For now, the biggest challenge is deciding what I'm going to read next, as I finished The Rosie Effect this morning and have several contenders for my next read.
I will try to keep you updated on my reading progress, success and/or failure, and if you have any recommendations as to what I should definitely read this year, tell me!
Sunday, 22 February 2015
Piano update
So a while back I posted about my piano revival; after 10 years of not playing, mainly due to lack of an actual piano, I decided to buy a digital piano and start to play again. My idea was to play as often as possible, but at least either a) 3 hours a week or b) 10 minutes after dinner every day. Unsurprisingly, this did not happen.
With our living room stuffed full of books as it is, the piano is hidden away in a room upstairs, a room that generally does not have the heating on. So if I want to play for more than 5 minutes and/or without freezing hands, I have to turn the heating on at least half an hour in advance. This kind of planning is not something my rare impromptu moments of playing are very well adapted to. Added to that, the piano is living up to its cheap nature; some of the keys make this awful 'woink' sound when you release them, so playing without headphones on is no fun, and playing with headphones one is also no fun because you want to hear the sound reverberate in the air. Also, it really does take a lot of energy, and an hour of playing still leaves me quite drained, both physically and mentally. But all that are just excuses for not playing as much as I actually could, or want to.
Because I still really love to play. I've been working through my old books chronologically, and am now in a position that I can actually play some of the more difficult and longer pieces in one go on the first retry. Some of my old favourites are completely back up to scratch and I use those as a reward when I get stuck in one of the more difficult ones. However, because I play so irregularly, my fingers still really really hurt when I try to do the more difficult things that involve lots of fast or repetitious moves. So after an hour, I do have to call it quits, even though I may just be warming up into something difficult. And then it may be more than a week before I find (or rather: make) time to play again.
I measure my progress against my ability to play Comptine d'un Autre Ete, which was the reason I originally started playing again. I would have thought I would be halfway decent on that song by now, given that I try to play it every time. But there is no way I will be playing it in its entirety for the next half year or so; today I finally managed to play the first eight bars correctly, without mistakes, and in the slowest speed ever.
The thing may be that on some of the older songs, my fingers still somehow 'remember' the moves, especially the difficult ones because I practised them so often. And with this new song, I have to learn all these tricks all over again, its not a question of repeating what I already could do once. So my progress is nowhere near as fast as I'd hoped, and that can be a bit hard, but I'm still hanging in there. Working towards this goal is a good thing, even though it is taking me really long and it is sometimes hard to stay motivated.
But I've promised myself that when I can actually play it, and still like playing, I may reward myself with a better (digital) piano. And maybe even lessons. Which I shouldn't have quit in the first place, but that decision is 10 years in the past, so best to focus on what I can still salvage today!
With our living room stuffed full of books as it is, the piano is hidden away in a room upstairs, a room that generally does not have the heating on. So if I want to play for more than 5 minutes and/or without freezing hands, I have to turn the heating on at least half an hour in advance. This kind of planning is not something my rare impromptu moments of playing are very well adapted to. Added to that, the piano is living up to its cheap nature; some of the keys make this awful 'woink' sound when you release them, so playing without headphones on is no fun, and playing with headphones one is also no fun because you want to hear the sound reverberate in the air. Also, it really does take a lot of energy, and an hour of playing still leaves me quite drained, both physically and mentally. But all that are just excuses for not playing as much as I actually could, or want to.
Because I still really love to play. I've been working through my old books chronologically, and am now in a position that I can actually play some of the more difficult and longer pieces in one go on the first retry. Some of my old favourites are completely back up to scratch and I use those as a reward when I get stuck in one of the more difficult ones. However, because I play so irregularly, my fingers still really really hurt when I try to do the more difficult things that involve lots of fast or repetitious moves. So after an hour, I do have to call it quits, even though I may just be warming up into something difficult. And then it may be more than a week before I find (or rather: make) time to play again.
I measure my progress against my ability to play Comptine d'un Autre Ete, which was the reason I originally started playing again. I would have thought I would be halfway decent on that song by now, given that I try to play it every time. But there is no way I will be playing it in its entirety for the next half year or so; today I finally managed to play the first eight bars correctly, without mistakes, and in the slowest speed ever.
The thing may be that on some of the older songs, my fingers still somehow 'remember' the moves, especially the difficult ones because I practised them so often. And with this new song, I have to learn all these tricks all over again, its not a question of repeating what I already could do once. So my progress is nowhere near as fast as I'd hoped, and that can be a bit hard, but I'm still hanging in there. Working towards this goal is a good thing, even though it is taking me really long and it is sometimes hard to stay motivated.
But I've promised myself that when I can actually play it, and still like playing, I may reward myself with a better (digital) piano. And maybe even lessons. Which I shouldn't have quit in the first place, but that decision is 10 years in the past, so best to focus on what I can still salvage today!
Wednesday, 4 February 2015
The Lost Words
Many of you will know the Jurassic Park and Lost World films, but did you know that these movies are actually based on books? Neither did I, until about last October, when I was checking IMDB because of the new Jurassic World film and got stuck in a Wikipedia loop.
Now I wouldn't normally read novels in the 'techno-thriller' genre, not because I think I am above them, but because I have limited reading time and I'd like to spend that time on something really good (or at least worthwhile). Also, Michael Crichton wasn't very high on my 'to read' list. But sometimes, this kind of novel can be really nice to read, for example during a very long flight, or the many train journeys I've been taking for my job lately. Which is how I've read Jurassic Park while in Australia, and am currently reading The Lost World, the sequel.
I came to these novels expecting them to be like the films, at least in plot and characters, if not in setting and atmosphere. But funnily enough, it is exactly the other way around. The novels are very fast-paced and can leave me with my heart in my throat for minutes after I've put them down. The settings are also eerily similar; you know about as much of the surroundings as the characters in the story, and the descriptions are pretty vivid and graphic.
But that's where the similarities end. The plot lines, for example, are completely different. With The Lost World, the only thing that is really similar, is that there is this 'Site B' on Isla Sorna. And that Ian Malcolm visits it, at some point during the novel. All the other things, from the reason why to the people he meets there to the dinosaurs, are all completely different. Same goes for Jurassic Park; Spielberg took the basic premise of the amusement-park-with-dinos and turned that into a whole different thing. Interestingly, in the third Jurassic Park movie, the opening sequence is the same as the opening sequence in the first novel. So sometimes he does adhere to the story, only not in places where you'd expect it.
Does this mean the novels are weak compared to the films? You might think so, because Spielberg made up a lot on the side. The truth is, the novels have a very different angle; very scientific, and pretty philosophical. Ian Malcolm, much more the central character than Alan Grant, proposes his chaos theory and through that predicts most of the things that go wrong in the park. Added to that, the whole premise that genetic research and revitalisation of dinosaurs can only be profitable if they are put into an amusement park, instead of just studied on their own, stands out much more clearly in the novels. It is basically a critique of human intervention on nature, combined with a philosophical exploration of the connection between science and amusement. If that sounds pretty literary to you, that is because it is; apart from the scary thriller bits with the slashing dinosaurs, there is quite a lot of talking and philosophising going on. In some ways it reminded me of Life of Pi, which also explores the connection between wild animals in captivity and humans.
So if you find yourself in need of some dino entertainment while we wait for Jurassic World, why not try the novels? And if you can't be bothered about the whole Jurassic Park craze, maybe the novels are just the thing for you!
Now I wouldn't normally read novels in the 'techno-thriller' genre, not because I think I am above them, but because I have limited reading time and I'd like to spend that time on something really good (or at least worthwhile). Also, Michael Crichton wasn't very high on my 'to read' list. But sometimes, this kind of novel can be really nice to read, for example during a very long flight, or the many train journeys I've been taking for my job lately. Which is how I've read Jurassic Park while in Australia, and am currently reading The Lost World, the sequel.
I came to these novels expecting them to be like the films, at least in plot and characters, if not in setting and atmosphere. But funnily enough, it is exactly the other way around. The novels are very fast-paced and can leave me with my heart in my throat for minutes after I've put them down. The settings are also eerily similar; you know about as much of the surroundings as the characters in the story, and the descriptions are pretty vivid and graphic.
But that's where the similarities end. The plot lines, for example, are completely different. With The Lost World, the only thing that is really similar, is that there is this 'Site B' on Isla Sorna. And that Ian Malcolm visits it, at some point during the novel. All the other things, from the reason why to the people he meets there to the dinosaurs, are all completely different. Same goes for Jurassic Park; Spielberg took the basic premise of the amusement-park-with-dinos and turned that into a whole different thing. Interestingly, in the third Jurassic Park movie, the opening sequence is the same as the opening sequence in the first novel. So sometimes he does adhere to the story, only not in places where you'd expect it.
Does this mean the novels are weak compared to the films? You might think so, because Spielberg made up a lot on the side. The truth is, the novels have a very different angle; very scientific, and pretty philosophical. Ian Malcolm, much more the central character than Alan Grant, proposes his chaos theory and through that predicts most of the things that go wrong in the park. Added to that, the whole premise that genetic research and revitalisation of dinosaurs can only be profitable if they are put into an amusement park, instead of just studied on their own, stands out much more clearly in the novels. It is basically a critique of human intervention on nature, combined with a philosophical exploration of the connection between science and amusement. If that sounds pretty literary to you, that is because it is; apart from the scary thriller bits with the slashing dinosaurs, there is quite a lot of talking and philosophising going on. In some ways it reminded me of Life of Pi, which also explores the connection between wild animals in captivity and humans.
So if you find yourself in need of some dino entertainment while we wait for Jurassic World, why not try the novels? And if you can't be bothered about the whole Jurassic Park craze, maybe the novels are just the thing for you!
Saturday, 17 January 2015
The commercial side
I think the gap between this post and the previous one couldn't have been bigger; the despair and starkness of the WWI trenches compared to the story of commercialization that I'm going to tell below. But hey, sometimes my life is just one big potpourri of unconnected things.
Being a project manager at an educational publisher means you have to know a lot about one very particular thing (your subject, in my case biology) and not so much about lots of other things. These include people management, design, finance, marketing, sales, editing, IT, and which business meeting point has the best dinner possibilities combined with the shortest walk back to the train station. We have specialised departments for each of the things mentioned above, with people who have actually studied in their subject, same way as I have studied biology. But they, lucky them, do not really have to know that much about my field to still be able to do their work on my books properly (although our editor now knows more about protein synthesis than she'd ever care to). I, on the other hand, am constantly learning about their specialities.
One of my least developed areas, I and anyone who knows me would say, is commerce. When I call something 'commercial', it's not a positive thing. I never listen to commercial radio stations, for example, or watch the commercial channels on TV. I don't know that I ever owned a piece of clothing that had it's brand displayed for all the world to see. So doing the commercial things that come with the job can sometimes be a bit difficult.
Yesterday was a case in point. We were at a biology convention (the biggest biology convention of the Netherlands) and not only did I have to man our stand (which means talking to the 650+ teachers who attended the convention, answering their questions, handing out free goodies, and on occasion try to get them to buy our stuff), I also had to give a workshop. To be honest, it was only a small part of a bigger workshop, and my part wasn't really that important, and if I hadn't turned up none of the 35 people in the workshop would have noticed. But still, for me it was quite a big thing, because talking in front of a room full of people is not my favourite thing to do.
Thankfully, it all went well. It went better than well, because everybody listened and participated in the short assignment I'd thought up for them, and when we went through the answers they even forgave me for not knowing exactly why something was the right answer at some points (it was about linking words in educational texts, not exactly my area of expertise). I was dead tired and had a pounding headache, but nobody else seems to have noticed that, which was good. My publisher did the other 80% of the workshop and she made the good points and gave the right answers to the questions, to which I added some small bits of info when I thought she was being a bit too brief.
And then we went back to manning the stand and talking to people in friendly manners. I have never had one of those trainings in which you learn to find out whether someone will actually buy your stuff at some point, and how to ditch them as quickly as possible when you know they won't, so some of my conversations may have been pretty useless in a commercial sense, but I had fun and being nice to people is something I like to do. But still, after spending 12 hours anticipating other people's needs, questions and wishes, I'm going to be the most self absorbed person ever for the next 24.
Anyway, it's nice to know I'm slowly mastering yet another part of the jigsaw puzzle that is professional life.
Being a project manager at an educational publisher means you have to know a lot about one very particular thing (your subject, in my case biology) and not so much about lots of other things. These include people management, design, finance, marketing, sales, editing, IT, and which business meeting point has the best dinner possibilities combined with the shortest walk back to the train station. We have specialised departments for each of the things mentioned above, with people who have actually studied in their subject, same way as I have studied biology. But they, lucky them, do not really have to know that much about my field to still be able to do their work on my books properly (although our editor now knows more about protein synthesis than she'd ever care to). I, on the other hand, am constantly learning about their specialities.
One of my least developed areas, I and anyone who knows me would say, is commerce. When I call something 'commercial', it's not a positive thing. I never listen to commercial radio stations, for example, or watch the commercial channels on TV. I don't know that I ever owned a piece of clothing that had it's brand displayed for all the world to see. So doing the commercial things that come with the job can sometimes be a bit difficult.
Yesterday was a case in point. We were at a biology convention (the biggest biology convention of the Netherlands) and not only did I have to man our stand (which means talking to the 650+ teachers who attended the convention, answering their questions, handing out free goodies, and on occasion try to get them to buy our stuff), I also had to give a workshop. To be honest, it was only a small part of a bigger workshop, and my part wasn't really that important, and if I hadn't turned up none of the 35 people in the workshop would have noticed. But still, for me it was quite a big thing, because talking in front of a room full of people is not my favourite thing to do.
Thankfully, it all went well. It went better than well, because everybody listened and participated in the short assignment I'd thought up for them, and when we went through the answers they even forgave me for not knowing exactly why something was the right answer at some points (it was about linking words in educational texts, not exactly my area of expertise). I was dead tired and had a pounding headache, but nobody else seems to have noticed that, which was good. My publisher did the other 80% of the workshop and she made the good points and gave the right answers to the questions, to which I added some small bits of info when I thought she was being a bit too brief.
And then we went back to manning the stand and talking to people in friendly manners. I have never had one of those trainings in which you learn to find out whether someone will actually buy your stuff at some point, and how to ditch them as quickly as possible when you know they won't, so some of my conversations may have been pretty useless in a commercial sense, but I had fun and being nice to people is something I like to do. But still, after spending 12 hours anticipating other people's needs, questions and wishes, I'm going to be the most self absorbed person ever for the next 24.
Anyway, it's nice to know I'm slowly mastering yet another part of the jigsaw puzzle that is professional life.
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