Never read the label

I just bought a low fat peach yogurt from our canteen for lunch and, upon opening it, noticed that it looked quite well-set and, well, jellyish, for a yogurt. So I checked out the ingredients list... and sure enough, near the top, I see "beef gelatine". Cue freakout.

Now, I know gelatine gets used in lots of things and I know there are far worse ingredients out there, but something about the combination of the yogurt's consistency, its rather wishy-washy yellow colour and the knowledge that it contained beef gelatine led me to the unshakeable thought that I was eating pure melted down cow hoof. I had one more mouthful before consigning it to the bin and I'm now consoling myself with a giant mug of hot chocolate. It'll be full fat yogurt for me next time - it might be bad for me, but at least it's edible.

A blog about a dog

The dog in question: Muffin, the funniest, coolest, cleverest, most human dog I've ever met and the greatest pet anyone could ever ask for, who was killed by a car last night. She gave my family and I countless laughs and paw-hugs during her short little life and we will miss her lots.

Rest in peace, little muppet.

Two wheels good... eventually

Flatmate Jenny doesn't cycle in the city. She has a bike out in the suburb where she works and zips around there no problem, but she has yet to work up enough courage to tackle the streets of Amsterdam proper. I've managed to avoid talking to her about my early days as a city biker - or at least I had until last night, when, over a giant bowl of Haagen-Dazs, I filled her in. I think I may have scared her even more...

My first (and worst fall) was on my very first visit to see Oran after he'd moved here. It was a scorching Indian summer's day and we'd spent the afternoon lounging around the Vondelpark. (I may have had a touch of sunstroke, which can't have helped.) Oran had very kindly given me his girlie bike and rented one for himself and we zipped around town for a while in the early evening so I could find my balance. I hadn't cycled in about twelve years and was surprised by how confident I felt. We decided to bike home through the park to change before dinner, so I took advantage of the relatively clear bike paths and upped my speed. Trouble was, for all the fast pedalling, I was having a little trouble biking in a straight line, and so when Oran appeared right beside me all of a sudden, I swerved in his direction... and our handlebars locked together. There wasn't much either of us could do at this stage but somehow Oran managed to stay on his bike as I flew off, did a bit of a somersault and landed hard on my right side. The next few minutes after that are a bit hazy but I do remember Oran phoning my parents for my health insurance number (my poor father!). I was then bundled into an ambulance and carted off to casualty, where I was kept waiting for a while before being checked for concussion and given a tetanus shot to ward off any potentially nasty beasties (I'd cut my right leg pretty badly - I still have scars...). The following 36 hours or so were rather painful, but the psychological effects lasted much longer. It took me a year after I moved here (almost two years after the accident) to get back on a bike.

I've had a couple of spills since I started cycling again two and a half years ago, but nothing as serious. I've learned the hard way that tram lines are the perfect width for a bike tyre and getting caught in one will result in a surefire fall. I've learned that there is a limit to my cycling abilities after a few drinks, but I've not yet fallen off while tipsy. But, most importantly, I've learned that, whatever the hazards, there is no better way to navigate and appreciate Amsterdam. Hopefully, in time, Jenny will arrive at the same conclusion.

New week, new start

This past weekend has been extremely unhealthy in more ways than one. My liver took a hit on Friday (drinking, dancing, some more drinking, some more dancing), my wallet on Saturday (we have River Island now!), and my waistline on both Saturday and Sunday evenings (Indian takeaway and icecream on Saturday, Canadian Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday). Trouble is, everything I've just listed was extremely enjoyable - particularly the shopping and the icecream - and thoughts of treadmills and salads and various money-saving activities don't fire me up nearly as much. So I'm adopting a softly softly catchy monkey approach - nicoise salad for dinner tonight, gym tomorrow, a two-hour climbing session on Wednesday, and no booze at all until the weekend (this last ticks both the "healthy" and "money-saving" boxes). So, here's to losing a few pounds and maybe gaining (or at least not squandering) a few euro in the process...

Check out the timestamp

Sure what else would I be doing on a rainy Thursday night but researching some weird and some wonderful kids' TV shows? Working late isn't bad. Sometimes. Although I have a funny feeling the next two months are going to feature a lot of cycling home in the dark and quickie reheated dinners. Roll on Christmas...

Random snippets

1: It's getting cold here. The romance of living in a 260-year-old apartment is starting to wear off - no central heating, people, and warming one's hands on a pot of tea isn't quite cutting it. We had to rearrange the living room furniture last night so we can put on our gas stove and not melt. The rest of the apartment, however, is still icy cold. Mission for this weekend: Buy fleece blanket, buy mini bedroom heater.

2: I think I may be addicted to chocolate-covered kruidnoten. They're small round ginger biscuits of the type that Sinterklaas leaves in children's shoes every December 5th, but of course the shops are full of them already and I'm certainly not objecting. The dark chocolate variety is especially tasty.

3: I am in a major gym rut. Four weeks and counting now since my last visit. Trouble is, the more I think about going back now, the less likely I am to follow through. I almost made it on Tuesday but ended up with the stupidest (and most Amsterdamesque) excuse for skipping: I thought I'd left my bike lights at home. So I stayed in the office until my stomach started growling and then, upon packing up to go home and have dinner, discovered the offending lights in a tiny pocket in my new handbag (damn you, bag, with all your useful compartments). Too late, though, I was already ravenous and would probably have passed out on the treadmill. I've put together a new Gym Playlist and brought my gear to work today in the hope that I'll be newly motivated, but truth be told I'd rather go home and curl up beside the gas stove with a pot of tea and a bag of chocolate-covered kruidnoten.

Wave to me as you are falling

Here's something I never thought I would be blogging about. Yesterday I paid a sizeable amount of money to be strapped out of a stranger and pushed out of a tiny doorless plane at 9,000 feet.

I'm not one of those adrenaline junkies who lives for their next buzz-inducing activity. Up until yesterday I'd never taken part in any kind of extreme sport, and, sad to say, my biggest rush came from finishing my master's thesis. But when Flatmate Jenny started talking about doing a skydive ahead of her upcoming 30th, I started thinking that maybe it'd be a cool thing to do. (I'm convinced that living in Amsterdam instils greater risk-taking, comfort-zone-leaving tendencies in people.) So, yesterday morning, she, Sarah, Angela and I, along with intrepid photographer Julia, headed to an airfield in the middle of the country to get our jump on.

Sarah & I elected to jump first and were promptly kitted out in some very form-fitting flight suits.



















Then it was time for a very thorough briefing, after which we were hauled (literally) on to our tiny plane. Note the lack of a door of any kind in the back - also no seats inside, and there was just about room for us both plus tandem buddies plus cameraman.














After taxiing around a field for about five minutes, it was time for liftoff and the start of our climb to 9,000 feet. At this point I was starting to get pretty shaky, and kept having to remind myself to breathe in and out. Still, up and up we climbed and soon it was time to go.

Sarah was jumping alongside the cameraman so I had to go first. After being strapped firmly on to my jumping buddy, we inched over to the (now completely open) doorway on our arses and I assumed the exit position - hanging out of the plane with my weight completely supported by buddy and plane. He pushed off and that was it... freefall. From what I can remember we dove headlong for about five seconds until he tapped me on the shoulder and we got into freefall position - arms out, legs out, just like you see on those extreme sports programmes. I wasn't sure at this point if I was actually enjoying it - I remember thinking that my mouth had gone really dry (I'd had it wide open in shock) and that I could feel my ears flapping madly in the wind. After the shortest thirty seconds of my life, my buddy pulled the chute and we shot into a sitting position. I remember thinking that a) I was a bit disappointed because I was starting to really enjoy the freefall and b) that it was so so quiet all of a sudden.

Once my buddy had sorted out the chute he started pointing things out to me on the ground. We were over some farmland between Hilversum and Utrecht, so not a whole lot of note to see, but it was nice to look down on the long strips of polder below. After a couple of minutes Sarah dropped by (har, har) with her tandem buddy and our respective buddies manoeuvred the chutes close enough for us to be able to talk/yell to each other (although our conversation was made up of several oh-my-gods and isn't-this-mads). Apparently flying so close together is highly unusual, but it certainly made for a funnier descent. Before I knew it we were at treetop height and bracing for landing in one of the polder fields. My feet touched the ground for a split second before I was pushed onto my knees into a huge rockstar skid through the long grass. And that was it. My buddy unstrapped me and I stood up and at that point started laughing uncontrollably. Sarah was about ten feet away in a similar state - it took us about half an hour to collect ourselves.

We were still buzzing on the bus ride back to the airfield and, in our high spirits, decided to concoct a cunning plan. We would arrive back to the others completely down in the mouth and dejected and regretful of having paid for such an awful experience. Rehearsals did not go well - we kept looking at each other and dissolving back into laughter - but we eventually managed to hone our sad faces, and recruited the cameraman and our jump buddies as additional ammo. So when the girls came to meet us in the hangar, I looked sullen and pretended I'd been ill, and Sarah was loudly apologising to my jump buddy who was berating her for wasting their time. Jenny and Angela's faces were priceless - I think we'd put them off somewhat - and after about five minutes we fessed up. The relief was immense.














Jenny and Angela managed to recover themselves and before long it was their turn to head off.















They returned just as hyper as Sarah and I, Jenny particularly proud of having blown a kiss to camera during freefall. After a couple of celebratory beers we were treated to the gala screening of Sarah and Jenny's videos - it was only then that it really dawned on us what we'd just done. Sarah's featured footage of my jump out of the plane and it was unbelievable to see how quickly I became just a dot in the sky below. I only found out then that I'd fallen 4,000 feet in 30 seconds. And my ears were fine! I'm never stressing out about plane travel again. I'm a little disappointed that I don't have any "action shots", but the extra 80 euro didn't quite seem justifiable. Next time, perhaps?

So that was that. Jenny crossed another thing off her "Things To Do Before I'm 3o" and "Extreme Experiences" lists and I have decided I might make a couple of lists of my own. Any suggestions?

Words fail me

Check this out.

Oh Johnny, Johnny, what have you done?!

Willoughby, will you not shake my hand?

A sad fact: I can at this stage recite most of the dialogue from Sense And Sensibility. It's on Dutch TV right now and I think I am starting to scare Flatmate Jenny somewhat. It may be the least annoying film Hugh Grant has ever made (although that's probably down to his extremely limited screentime). And now Kate Winslet has lost it completely so I must return my full attention to d'telly!

We're all going on a summer blogiday

Oh. It's been a couple of weeks. I've not given up on this thing - my absence is down to one part laziness, one part utter exhaustion and one part 'haven't found the time to get to the post office to pick up the replacement power cord for my laptop so I can blog from home and post the two memory cards full of photos I have to flickr'. So be prepared for a deluge of pics from a leaving party featuring customised pink t-shirts and edible necklaces, an utterly brilliant Beck concert (with puppets!), and our third booze cruise of the summer which ended up being the best by far, in spite of the lack of sparklers and not nearly enough cold beer.

Oh, and my cable works! And it is brilliant! I have all of the BBC channels (even BBC3 and BBC4) plus a rake of extra MTVs and, most importantly, the E! Channel. Quality hangover viewing at last.

Not in the dictionary

I am stuck at home again today waiting for my trial cable/internet/phone installation. The installation guys have 32 minutes left in their allotted timeslot and if they cancel again or don't show I will get violent... Anywho, I decided to play some Boggle in order to stave off my growing boredom, but would you look what I got in my very first game.

(ps... anyone know if Blogger's photo utility is broken or if it just hates Safari?)

Culture shock

Dublin is getting all cultured up!

We've had Museumnacht here for a couple of years now and it's always great craic. Last year we did origami, played with a giant camera and saw a great Annie Leibowitz exhibition; the year before that was heavenly beds at the Bible Museum and rocking out to MTV DJs at a photography gallery. Hopefully Dublin will get it right first time - although I'll be interested to see if they go the Amsterdam route and install bars in all the venues, and if they'll run it as late as they do here (wandering round a gallery at 1:30am, glass of vino in hand, is pretty funny). I'm already looking forward to our next Museumnacht in November.

The black dogs, sort of

I'm not dead, just trying to haul myself out of a post-holiday slump and a crazy weekend. The last couple of weeks have been insane, what with Paris, Antwerp, sisterly visit, too much sushi, day trip to Brussels and two extremely late nights (okay, early mornings) out. Plus, I've been struggling with a ridiculous pile of work, a mysterious appetite-killing stomach bug, a phone connection that still doesn't work and a completely severed laptop power cord.

Things are set to look up in the next couple of weeks, though - starting with the installation of our new (and free!) phone/internet/digital TV plus Beck at Paradiso tomorrow. Then it's a mere eight days until my payrise and back pay finally come through and I can start making plans to spend (and save) it all. Shiny new MacBook, here I come!

Back "home"

We're back from our travels, and there's so much to tell. I could write about my arrival in Gare du Nord, complete with huge homemade welcome sign, or about how we ate our way around the city, about the amazing view from Rebecca and Yucca's roof, or the steak frites, or the ridiculous opulence that is Versailles, or how strange French cinemas are, or the amazing red wine, or our lightning quick visit to the Eiffel Tower, or the fact that we missed our train to Antwerp by twelve hours, got another one to Brussels straight away and were bumped to first class, or the jumbo cocktails we downed in an Antwerp absinthe bar, or our recovery tactics the following day. I'm going to take the lazy option, though, and let the photos speak for themselves. Over here!

All things go

Loads going on here this week.

We had a wee party at our apartment last night to celebrate the airing of Rocking Roommate Jenny's first ever TV ad.


After gorging ourselves on the product for a while we decided to take the party outside:


We sort of had a second reason to celebrate too. My promotion - i.e. the reason I stayed in Amsterdam - was finally made official yesterday. I am now an Operations Manager, yo. Just don't ask me what that actually involves.

And now, Oran is here! Yay! He's here til Monday, and then on Tuesday I leave for Paris, where I'm meeting two of my sisters for some sightseeing and some craic in our own inimitable style. I'm sure there'll be lots of photos and stories on my return...

We're in a state of happiness

I'm proud to live anyplace that nurtures Irish musical genius. This ad is currently running on Dutch TV. Behold the boy Johnny in all his blonde-wigged glory...

Wouldn't it be good to be in your shoes

I realised about three hours ago that I'd completely forgotten to include Nik Kershaw on my cheesy 80s playlist, but have now made up for it with the tacky music gods and now have Wouldn't It Be Good blaring in my headphones. It's a pity it's 1.34am or I'd have it on full blast - this may be an old building but sadly the walls aren't quite that thick.

In other news, the ridiculous heat continues. Tomorrow's hot weather activity: watching the lions at the zoo eat blood flavoured ice-cubes. No, really.

Children behave...

It's Friday afternoon, but the minutes are crawling by and I have a huge pile of rather monotonous work to get through. So, I've put together a cheesy little 80s playlist to help me along (although it's probably taken longer to compile than it will to play from start to finish):

Toto - Africa
Belinda Carlisle - Heaven Is A Place On Earth
Billy Ocean - When The Going Gets Tough
T'pau - China In Your Hands
Eddie Cochran - Gimme Hope Joanna
Wet Wet Wet - Sweet Surrender
Queen - Radio Ga Ga
Los Lobos - La Bamba
The Cars - Drive
Tiffany - I Think We're Alone Now
Yazz & The Plastic Population - The Only Way Is Up
The Housemartins - Happy Hour
Kylie Minogue - The Locomotion

Quite a few of these songs/artists pop up on Now! 11, which is the first compilation tape I remember having at home (The Hits 6 came on vinyl). Actually, it may be the first pop music tape we had, full stop. My parents were avid tapers-off-the-radio (perhaps my illicit mp3 habit is genetic...) so there were always home-made mix tapes lying about. In fact, in a dusty corner of a drawer somewhere I believe there's still one marked "Catherine's tape" which has my favourite songs from the radio and MTUSA (the world's first music video show was Irish, people!) from when I was about three. I'm not sure if "favourite" means "made me dance and sing along" or "shut me up for three full minutes". Next time I'm home, I'll have to track it down.

For now, I'm checking Amazon for secondhand CD copies of Now 11 and marvelling at the tracklisting. I can't believe I was into Coldcut when I was seven... talk about full circle.

Bring me sunshine

Bliss... it's shaping up to be the Netherlands' hottest summer ever. A great excuse to shop, too.

It's alive

Okay, sort of. It looks like our upstairs neighbour has skipped the country, so short of phoning my landlord and telling him he was completely wrong about the phone wiring in his building and then begging him to lend us a spare key or open the door for the phone engineer himself, I'm not sure there's much I can do. So we are still sans phone and internet, but I finally snapped this evening and bought a wireless card so I can steal other people's internet. Sharing is caring, people. Anyway, I've uploaded some photos, downloaded some music and now I am feeling much more at ease.

Today seems to be a day of firsts. Earlier I experienced My First (and second) Scooter Ride - a colleague offered me a lift to a meeting on the back of his Vespa, and when have I ever said no to doing something new? It was very smooth and not at all scary, and my main worry throughout was how geeky I looked in my big black helmet. Definitely an experience worth repeating.

And this evening, I am finding myself alone in the apartment for the first time - just the bells from the church next door and Oran on IM for company. So far, so good. Next up, My First Bike Ride With A Handlebar In One Hand And A Hoover In The Other. I'll let you know how it goes.

[Edit: the Hoover Manoeuvre was a success! Although my left hand is shaking as I type this...]