The only way is up, baaaaaaybeh

Tonight: pub quiz team in top three finish shocker. We were fifth two weeks ago, fourth last week and second at the halfway mark tonight. We somehow managed to keep our composure, despite thinking Liza Minnelli starred in Funny Girl and drawing a complete blank on a plinky planky instrumental piece in the music round which turned out to be Tubular Bells (doh!). We finished in third, 3.5 points behind the winners and fifteen euro richer. Can we keep it together for a top two finish next Monday? Stay tuned...

thwack

Today I have managed to damage five different body parts in four separate attacks of the clumsy. In chronological order:

1. Middle knuckle, left hand off the edge of an open (glass) door in the office today. The bruise is currently eggshell blue with a lovely maroon centre.
2. Left shin off the edge of a shredding bin (still at work). This wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't already got a cut in the same spot from an altercation with a (stationary) bike late last week.
3. Left thumb and left big toe in an inexplicable cycling snafu involving a baking tray and a force 4 headwind en route home. Really - don't ask.
4. Left hip off the edge of our kitchen counter, so excited was I to rush into the living room with my dinner.

I've never been the most graceful of people - four broken bones (right wrist x 2, left wrist, left collarbone) as a child, plus countless scars from countless falls, will attest to that. I had rather hoped I'd grown out of this scale of self-damage though. At least sober! Perhaps I should start padding sharp surfaces and wearing cushioned clothing, like the Glass Man in Amelie...

The good, the bad and the downright ridiculous

It's been said that my taste in all things audiovisual is "eclectic" (read: bleedin' mental). I can sit still at a symphony or mosh with the best of them, I appreciate Jane Austen and Kazuo Ishiguro equally, and I can see the value in chick flicks, action flicks, arty flicks and the ones with the subtitles. When it comes to TV, though, I'm firmly at the soapy end of the scale in terms of my viewing preferences. Although I do appreciate "good" comedy like Scrubs and Seinfeld and The Office (UK version please) and have occasionally been known to watch Panorama, Newsnight and the Culture Show, truth be told, my ideal evening in front of the goggle box would involve one or all of the following:

1. The OC. I am a relatively late convert to the OC bandwagon but am now furiously making up for lost time. I'd never really gotten into it here due to the vagaries of Dutch TV scheduling, but a few all-day marathons on E4 at home over Christmas got me well and truly hooked. And oh, joy of joys, I returned here in January to find it on not one, but two channels - one showing series 1 every night at 6.30 (perfect gym viewing!) and another showing the most recent episodes (further ahead than home!) on Sunday afternoons. I am now engrossed in the implausibly glamorous and verbose lives of Seth, Summer, Ryan et al. And yes, Marissa bugs the hell out of me too.

2. Gilmore Girls. I have only Dutch TV scheduling to blame for this one. It's on every Tuesday at 8.30 and my evening now completely revolves around it - I have a set ritual involving a large pot of tea, stretchy sweat pants, an oversized hoodie, big fluffy socks and a bar of Albert Heijn chocolate (I've said this before and I'll say it again... it's DELICIOUS). I have also had a viewing companion of late in the form of Oran, who will never openly admit that he likes watching, but still giggles every time Michel and Kirk are on screen. Plus, he has the hots for Lorelai. We are now four episodes into season six but I am ashamed to admit that I've already seen up to episode ten thanks to BitTorrent. Does anyone else wish Luke and Lorelai would just grow the hell up?

3. Desperate Housewives. This was must-see TV for me when it started here (Tuesday evening GG and DH double whammy!) but it was starting to wear on me a teeny tiny bit by the time it was mysteriously pulled from Net5's schedule. That said, I'll be glued to it again whenever it returns, if only to find out if Susan Mayer ever cops on.

4. Grey's Anatomy. This may be slightly less soapy and more highbrow than the previous three shows, but it's on after GG now instead of DH so of course, I've become hooked. I'm far more interested in the Meredith/McDreamy storyline than any of the medical gunk, and so far, so engrossing, although Izzie is fast becoming my favourite character.

5. Any Australian soap opera (Neighbours/Home & Away). These are more early evening viewing and I only have my mother and sisters to blame for my continuing recreational use of both. I rarely watch full episodes of either, and hadn't seen the latter for ages until Christmas, but I can always pick up on exactly what's going on after about thirty seconds. Pretty much an essential requirement for any good soap, non?

I'm pretty sure that Dutch TV has largely been to blame for my stunted televisual growth. But given that I spent hours on end over Christmas flicking through the 567824 music channels now on Sky, I'm thinking it could be so much worse...

argh

One million million gold stars and a pint for anyone who can explain the new (and allegedly improved) Dutch healthcare arrangements to me in plain English. I'm at the end of my tether... the Dutch are famed for paperpushing and pointless bureaucracy but this is really taking the cake. It must be said, though, that I probably wouldn't be nearly as peeved about the whole thing had my premium not doubled from December to January... and all this after having many conversations extolling the virtues of the system here to many VHI-saddled friends and family members at Christmas. Damn you, CZ!

The salty and the sweet

In the two-and-a-bit years I've lived here, I've generally tried to use my (minimal) Dutch where possible. Generally, this is limited to restaurants, bars, shops and the cinema as I'm still incapable of stringing a sentence together that doesn't start with "mag ik" (may I) or "Ik wil graag" (I would like).* My feeble attempts at getting my gullet round the guttural "cccch" and "gggggh" sounds that come up in every second word have improved of late, and, shock horror, I'm now finding that most people respond to me in Dutch rather than automatically switching over to English. I've been marvelling at this and was feeling rather proud of myself until last night.

Katie, Anika and I went to see The Constant Gardener at Tuschinski (more on that later). I arrived a little late and popped into the food queue behind them. Both of them ordered in English; I decided to give some cccch-ing and gggggh-ing a try. I ordered an iced tea and a small popcorn and all was well until I sat down in the cinema and started munching away as the trailers rolled. My tastebuds immediately recoiled in horror at - wait for it - the SWEET POPCORN they had just been assaulted with.

How could this have happened, you ask? Well, it's quite simple really. The Dutch words for "sweet"and "salty" respectively are "zoet" (zoot) and "zout" (zowt). I *thought* I'd asked for zout, and my outwardly friendly (but inwardly groaning at yet another stupid expat practising her Dutch) server reconfirmed this to me before merrily filling up my carton. I have yet to decide whether she really deciphered my garbling as "zoet" or if she gave me the sweet stuff to teach me a (Dutch) lesson.

The movie? Visually stunning, brilliantly acted, but didn't grab me in quite the way I'd hoped. As for the popcorn? After the first few mouthfuls, it really wasn't all that bad.

* Readers should note that I've been too lazy to get up off my arse and actually take Dutch lessons; education via the subtitles on Gilmore Girls doesn't really count for much.