A lesson in salesmanship

I popped into our local Apple dealer (ooh, that sounds dirty) earlier this evening in search of a new pair of earbuds for my iPod. Mine finally gave out about a week ago after almost a year of life. I'd been using my boring old black Sony earbuds since and was, sadly enough, missing the uniformity and recognition that came with the white earbuds. They're everywhere I turn these days and are almost like a badge, a secret symbol indicating that yes, I too am progressive and cool. (I am aware of how sad and school-cliquish this all sounds, but there's been so much written about the iPod as an identity technology... I could go on, but I won't.)

Anyway, back to the Apple shop. I went in fully determined to regain my white-earbud-denotes-iPod-owner status and sure enough, they had earbuds in stock (two general department stores I'd tried in town were all out). So my friendly sales assistant pulls them out from under the counter...

Him: "Look, I know they look cool and everything, but I really don't want to sell you these."
Me: "?!"
Him: "See, they're crap. They break easily and the sound quality is terrible. Plus, they're €39.99."
Me: "Oh...kay..."
Him (reaching behind counter): "See these Sennheisers? They're way better, more reliable and they're only ten euro. I know they're ugly... but you can't go wrong."
Me (still slightly baffled, isn't this an Apple shop?): "Yeah, fair point. I'll take them."

So now I'm the proud-ish owner of a slightly less pretty pair of blue and grey headphones, and more importantly €30 better off. My chances of being mugged for my iPod have probably dropped significantly too - blue and grey headphones must equal rubbish mp3 player, right?

(edit to add that I've just flipped through about ten songs on iPod with new headphones in and ohmygoodness there is no comparison in terms of sound quality. It's like my ears have popped after a long flight and I can hear properly again. Yay Sennheiser.)

On (and off) the wagon

It's all about the food here this week. After consuming grand quantities of oily meaty food and wine in Spain, and generally just overdoing it in the past month or so, I made the decision to start a two-week detox regime on Monday morning.

So: caffeine, booze, spices, dairy, flour, wheat, red meat except lamb, white rice, sugar and have I mentioned the booze? are all off the menu. This leaves tasty foods like rice milk, soy milk, rice crackers, soy yogurt, brown rice (are you seeing a pattern emerge here?), lots of fruit and vegetables, white meat, fish, dried fruits, pulses and a whole lotta water. Sample daily menu: rice milk and fruit for breakfast, home made carrot & coriander soup and rice cakes for lunch, small fruity/nutty snacks, and pan fried chicken and a massive pile of green veg for dinner. Plus about three litres of H2O.

The net effect so far (at least until half an hour ago when I caved and had a slice of a colleague's birthday cake) has been a loss of poundage, a surge of energy, and, less desirably, a frequent need to pee. I'm not sure how long I'll last on the full regime, but I'm definitely feeling the benefits of a less carb-heavy diet. I wasn't that unhealthy to begin with, but I'd given up resisting any and every foodie temptation that came my way.

Cutting out the booze also means no hangovers, which means no need to spend one's entire day in the foetal position on the sofa with one hand on the remote and the other alternating between a giant bag of tomato ketchup Lay's and our entire stash of chocolate mini eggs. Now, what to do with those regained hours...?

Mucho bueno

We're back from our wee trip to Girona, tired, full and a little sunburned. Lots of great food and wine, not too much shopping, and some really beautiful old streets and buildings. I'd write more, but the clocks went forward last night and I'm starting to snooze at my keyboard...

Dos riojas, por favor

We are headed to northern Spain early tomorrow, via the bright lights of Eindhoven (bleh, Ryanair), for four days of rioja, jamon, olivas, chorizo and possibly more cheap Pull & Bear and Zara than I or my little wheelie suitcase can handle. Of course I haven't actually packed a thing yet - blogging and refreshing my iPod are far more pressing tasks. I'm also suffering from serious packing indecision as it's set to be 22 degrees all weekend and my pallid knees are trembling at the prospect. Cropped trousers! T-shirts! Possible exposure of toes! It's all too much for a girl to take in.

We're back on Sunday, hopefully with photos and a tale or two...

The wearing of the green

My experiences of St. Patrick's day have been defined by different things over the years. As a kid, everything was huge and exciting and I got to wear the St. Patrick's day badge my aunt had made me and watch our home town's parade. In my teens, I spent a couple of years drumming in the parade, which was far more fun but a lot more tiring, and my home-made badge had been replaced by ten-hole docs and a home-made tie-dyed t-shirt. The college years brought with them the Dublin parade, and all the added extras the city had to offer - firework displays, ceilidhe on St. Stephen's Green, rollercoaster rides at the Custom House - we took it all in.

By the time I left Ireland, the whole thing had escalated to a week-long festival culminating in a massive display of public drunkenness on the day itself. I took full advantage of the day off work but steered clear of the city centre. Most people I speak to back home are now doing the same.

Now, as an expat, I'm finding that I want to do something to mark the occasion, but the Irish pubs here are always packed and blaring the diddly-aye music for all they're worth. So this year, I went shopping for green party decorations and decked out our local as an Irish pub for the night. Oran supplied the music, Gabri looked after the shooters and we settled in for a night of sort-of seasonal fun. Not quite as authentic as home, but nowhere near as tacky.

Post-gym grumbles, part one of many, I'm sure

Legs killing me. Brain fried. So this will have to suffice - a list, in no particular order, of Gym Personality Types:

1. The pretty girls. You know who you are. You wear colour co-ordinated gym gear, the more lycra the better. You have an impossibly sleek and shiny ponytail. You put on makeup in the changing rooms before your workout. Men have been known to drop 25kg weights on their feet as you bounce past. We hate you, but secretly we wouldn't mind being you. Just for a day.

2. The lurkers. You sneak up behind me as I'm about to set up on a weights machine and maintain that "you were there first". I don't think so, lady... but you're about five inches taller than me and you could probably take me in a fight, so I'll let you go.

3. The yoga-ers. You lot are impossibly toned and bendy and you don't sweat and you look so relaxed as you float by on your way out of class. Are you on drugs, or is it really that life-altering? Please do enlighten me.

4. The bodybuilders. Gentlemen. Please note that while lifting 25kg weights does make you a hard man, to a degree, it won't have any lasting effects if you maintain the "one rep, then break for five minutes to admire self close up in mirror" routine you've got going on now.

5. The power platers. Many of you also fit into category 1. Do you really think that standing on a vibrating surface for 20 minutes at a time, while contorting yourself into position after position, will make you fitter? If you ain't sweating, it ain't working.

6. The dressing room naturists. I've encountered many, many more of you here in Amsterdam than anywhere else in the world. I'm really very pleased that you're so happy with your body, but after four laps of the changing rooms a la nip while chatting on the phone, I think we've all seen enough, don't you?

(For the record, I fall into the "baggy t-shirt, hair scrape back, red sweaty face, headphones in" category. The category 1-ers generally look at me like I've got the plague... but whatever, I'm there for the calorie burn. And the abs... someday the abs.)

Shamrock fever

Plans for St. Patrick's Day are already in train here. My mum got us started in style with this little package of goodness, which arrived on Friday night. There were two packets of buffalo Hunky Dorys included but we fell on them like savages the second I opened the box!

Sadly, the day itself isn't a public holiday here but we're planning to get the evening started in style early enough. Our current plan is to hijack our friendly local and deck it out as an Irish pub for the night, complete with diddly-aye and rebel rouser music. No green beer though, but I'm sure Gab the barman will come up with some seasonal shooter or other to get us all in the mood!

It's funny how I've grown to enjoy St. Patrick's Day more since I've left Ireland. It held some charm for me while I was still at college, but by the time I was leaving for Scotland it was just another day off, and an annoying, traffic-diverted, public-brawling, shops-shut one at that. Here we get most of the celebrations but none of the rowdiness; plus we get to introduce our international friends to our many and varied customs and traditions on this most Irish of days. I'll have them all playing The Dawning Of The Day on that tin whistle by the end of the night, no doubt.

These shoes were made for running

Check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvsWD_JhMPg&search=glamour%20stiletto%20run

(can't get it to embed, grr).

Tens of women in impossibly high heels took to the PC Hooftstraat here yesterday in Dutch Glamour's Stiletto Run. I had seen an ad for this a couple of weeks ago and was full sure it was a joke, but no, they pegged it the length of the street in their Jimmy Choos etc. for the chance to win €10,000. A 20-year-old athlete from Egmond won - I bet the money just about covers the medical expenses from the damage she's done to her ankles. Most of the time I can barely walk in heels, let alone run in them!

Not the magic number

Oran and I finally ate at Fifteen last night. I say finally because we've been sort of kind of half making plans to eat there since it opened over a year ago. By our standards of procrastination this isn't the longest finger we've ever put something on - we have yet to buy picture wire to hang the three Picasso prints Oran bought me for Christmas 2003.

Anyway. Fifteen Amsterdam is run by two Dutch guys but operates on the same principle as the original - the number fifteen refers to the size of the group of trainee chefs they bring in each year, usually from disadvantaged areas. Generally they have no knowledge of food or cooking, and the aim of the programme is to train them up to Jamie Oliver restaurant standard in less than a year. The first groups of trainees in both London and Amsterdam had cameras in their faces for the Jamie's Kitchen series; now it's business as usual.

While I'm all in favour of the concept and probably a tiny bit envious of the cooking experience these kids are getting, I'm not sure it works at all in practice. The Amsterdam restaurant tries to place itself in the "hip Amsterdam" category - this is reflected in both the decor and the prices - but the food we ate last night was nowhere near the standard I'd have expected.

The restaurant operates on a set menu basis - ostensibly to broaden the trainees' repertoire without putting them under too much pressure - so the only course where we had a choice was the primi piatti. First up, though, was an extremely bland salad of adichio (sp? it's a type of endive), marinated artichoke and something billed as salted cod which was rubbery and completely tasteless. So far, so underwhelming. At this point we were starving and washing the whole thing down with some excellent Seghesio zinfandel and grazing on the bread and olives we'd also been given (former okay, latter kinda fishy), so we weren't too put out.

Next stop the primi, where I'd opted for the lemon cream tagliatelle and Oran went for the red wine and pancetta risotto. The tagliatelle was surprisingly good - tasty fresh pasta and they didn't skimp on the lemon - but the risotto was horribly presented, overcooked, overcheesed and most of the tiny specks of pancetta (bilingual bacon pun!) we found buried in it were burned to a crisp.

The single biggest disappointment of the night was our main course. It had been billed as "rack of lamb with Sicilian tomatoes, broccoli and black olives" but what we were actually served were random bits of lamb meat, off the bone and completely lacking in flavour. There wasn't a single black olive on my plate, and the two or three lumps of tomato I had were barely warmed through. My broccoli wasn't so bad but Oran's had had the life and soul boiled out of it and tasted like it had been lying around for an hour or so before being served.

I think we would have made more noise about the main course had it not been for the dessert - a nut tart with vanilla risotto ice-cream. Both were delicious and proved that simple food works. I'm not sure how long this group of trainees have been on the job, but there's definite potential there if they're not forced to run before they can walk.

I'm probably coming off like a complete gastro-snob at this point. I'm not - I'll be the first to admit that I'm an average cook. The difference is that I know my limits and Fifteen appear to have thrown theirs out the window. Either they rebrand (and reprice) themselves as a training restaurant, or they increase the numbers of fully qualified staff in their kitchen. I give them another year.

Bubbles burst

Dammit. Fifth at pub quiz! Questions we got wrong (brainy points for anyone who gets these sans Google):

- How many wheels on a Concorde?
- Who founded the Red Cross?
- What year was Michelangelo born in? (this one scored a free round of drinks)
- Which is the first country to have hosted the soccer World Cup twice?
- What Asian politician received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000?

Questions I'm proud we answered correctly:

- Who was the first actor to be featured on the cover of Time? (Charlie Chaplin)
- Which actor or actress has won the most Oscars? (Katherine Hepburn)
- Which two actors have directed themselves to directing and acting Oscars? (Laurence Olivier/Roberto Benigni)
- In which year did Microsoft release the first version of Windows? (1985)

Yeah, there's a pattern emerging here. We are a team of film geeks and geek geeks with comparatively little knowledge of the "useful" stuff (politics/history etc.) We did kick ass on the music round too though, for once! The obscure 1980s electropop tends to leave us stumped - thankfully this week was a mixture of Radiohead, Skunk Anansie, Boyzone and Texas. 8 out of 10!

Next week: hockey match. Oran and Andrew, you're on your own :)

Monday morning blues? Me?

Reasons to be cheerful, parts 1-3:

1. Hockey match this evening has been postponed due to a dusting of snow on the astro turf. This means a) no hypothermia and b) pub quiz!

2. The morning after the night before - lots of Oscar gossip and pictures (see here, here and here for your fill). I don't agree with Crash for Best Picture, but I'll save that rant for another time.

3. Leftover chocolate brownies from yesterday - triple chocolate (70%, milk, white) and pecan. Just the right level of decadence for 10.45 on a Monday morning.

(PS. Hi Tim, yes, it's me :) )

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.

Arctic flunkies

(Yes yes, apologies for the ridiculous pun in the title but it's that kind of afternoon.)

Based on (very recent) experience, I hereby proffer some tips for avoiding certain death from hypothermia when cycling. If one must insist on biking to/from work/pub/cinema/mate's houses when it's sub zero out, there are some key things to bear in mind...

1. Layer layer layer. Recommended are one (or all) of the following:
- knee high furry boots over woolly socks over woolly tights (if one must insist on wearing a skirt)
- jeans over tights (or long johns for the boys)
- woolly jumper over t-shirt over normal vest over thermal vest
- mittens over gloves
- earmuffs over ipod headphones and hat
- coat over fleecy top over rest of outfit

2. Pace oneself. It's all very well thinking "oh I'll cycle faster to warm up quicker" but it is infinitely more difficult to breathe in cold air and one will end up winded after about five hundred metres (ahem).

3. Choose appropriate music to aid with point 2. Fact: listening to quiet music will reduce one's body temperature. Loud guitars/beats are the way forward.*

4. Avoid shortcuts and bits of path/bike lane that seem less popular. Two words: black ice. Three more words: ow ow ow.

5. Last but not least, wussing out and taking the tram is nothing to be ashamed of. Honestly. One may get some funny looks due to the attire outlined in point 1, but it's almost as quick, infinitely warmer and really, pounding away on the treadmill while watching Made on MTV is just as valid a form of exercise.

--

Maximum temperature forecast for the rest of this week: minus 2
Likelihood backpedalbrakes will actually use her back pedal brakes for the rest of this week: 45-55%**

* Of course, one can be sensible and not listen to music while cycling, but really, it's not half as much fun.
**Depending on whether or not it snows. Cycling in the freezing cold is one thing, but cycling in six inches of the powdery stuff... er, no thanks.

yum

Recipe: The Perfect Friday Night In

1 packet fast-cookin' fresh cheese & walnut tortellini
1 jar pesto
1 packet ready grated parmesan (you know the kind, with extra MSG!)
1 tray almond fingers
1 bar Albert Heijn own brand chocolate (with the caramel bits in... do not mock the supermarket chocolate)
1 bottle decent red wine
1 Futurama box set
1 Black Books box set

Mix it all up and dig in! Preferably whilst recumbent on the couch in one's baggiest clothing, with makeup removed and hair in pigtails. Mmm mm m.