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January 23, 2005
So far most of my freelancing has been of the sitting-in-cafes-and-'networking' variety. I was coping. However, the New Year and the new budgets that come with it in the Netherlands has thrown up a couple of clients and suddenly I'm working full time on projects for at least the next three months.
They're great projects and great work with people who so far seem really cool as well. But it has caused a bit of a ripple in the old tempo-of-daily-life continuum. No time for surfing, lurking, or snarling at other bloggers via a comments pop-up. Ironically, while terribly busy all day with all things interactive and the whole process of creating effective communications for the web, I'm feeling a little cast adrift and isolatd with no idea of what everyone's been up to.
Maybe I should increase my rates?
Posted by Faith at 09:51 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
High Protein Energy Food
Qua the snowboarding-fitness-programme, inspired by the sucesses of the previous weeks, this weekend I really peaked with the creation of a High-Protein-Energy-Food. Or Date and Chocolate Cake as our Steph rather mundanely calls it.
Mr Atkins would have been proud as this is very Low-Carb. Six eggs, sugar, an enormous block of dark chocolate, a truckload of dates AND a tub of Marscapone cheese and you have an enormous meringue with great big lumps of chocolate and dates in it smothered in a very delicious form of fat. For someone who doesn't have a 'thing' about chocolate I'm doing quite well.
Posted by Faith at 07:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 22, 2005
Photo Friday: Crowded
Posted by Faith at 10:18 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 20, 2005
?
Who moved my blogroll?
Posted by Faith at 12:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 19, 2005
Baking not sweating
Ok, now that its been established that I need to lose weight AND get fit in seven weeks in order to enjoy our annual snowboarding trip (with pants on) I've wasted no time at all in tackling the issue.
Armed with an enormous tin of Haigh's Cocoa powder and Stephanie Alexander's the Cook's Companion last weekend I baked Miettas's Chocolate cake (250g full-cream butter AND 4 eggs)It was delicious. Just as you'd expect from the late Mietta O'Donnell.
While flushed with this success I stumbled across a recipe for a Chocolate and Zuchinni Cake. The coincidence with the name of Clotilde's weblog was too great to overlook so this was step two in my new-fitness routine. High in fibre AND protein it had to be a winner.
It is now sitting in the kitchen cooling down so I can smother it in melted chocolate and cream. I can just feel my abs bulging to the surface! Or something
Posted by Faith at 10:19 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 17, 2005
The line-up
Jacob's vocabulary is expanding and he is constantly babbling now and doing lots of awfully complicated things with his tongue. He strings together words and now and then you can identify a whole sentence. "ik krijg eten" (I'm getting food) while I'm making his breakfast, "Het ligt daar" (It's there) pointing to his horse lying under the couch. There may be lots more, having two languages to guess from about the sounds coming out of his mouth makes it all the more tricky to identify them.
Jacob speaks mainly in Dutch although on the days when he is alone with me he does start using more English words. But it is clear that he understands far more than he says. I've been trying really, really hard to speak proper English to him, (not English with Dutch grammar and the odd-Dutch word) but wasn't sure how much he was really picking up so carried out an impromptu test the other day while we were playing with his favourite farm animals.
Lining them all up I asked Jacob in turn to pick out the cow, horse, dog, chicken, duck, pig, sheep etc. After he'd picked out each one I re-arranged the line with the full complement of test-animals before asking for the next one. Even I, proud-and-besotted mother, was impressed and a bit surprised when he picked out each animal without hesitation correctly first time! In English!
Posted by Faith at 09:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 14, 2005
The Albert Cuyp Buffet
If I play my cards right I don't need to feed Jacob at all. Everyone else does it for me.
Friday mornings we leap onto his tricycle, (OK, he leaps, I push) and set of to do the shopping on the Albert Cuyp. First stop is the baker on the corner of Eerste V D Helststraat and the Govert Flinckstraat. Here, the woman serving shamelesly tries to influence my buying-strategy by plying my son with bread with chocolate cooked into it. We leave, Jacob clutching his treat and me with our usual boring bread and currant buns. Why would I buy it when she gives it to us for nothing?
On the Albert Cuyp proper we turn left and head down to our favourite cheese stand, "Bart Kaas". Here we buy a piece of the "Jonge Kaas", (for Ron and Jacob), the "Droom van de Boerderij" (the Dairy's Dream) for me and some Parmesan and sometimes a piece of Munster. If Mr Bart is on duty Jacob might get a civilized slither, if Mrs Bart is on duty he is given an enormous chunk of creamy rich young cheese. More like a doorstop than anything else. While Jacob gums the cheese into submission I can enjoy my raw herring from over the way.
Heading back in the direction of Van Vouwstraat we stop at our favourite greengrocer where Jacob is on the receiving end of the daily speciality, a mandarine, a couple of strawberries or some pieces of a mango.
Next we pass the fish and chicken stands where thankfully, no one offers him anything.
Crossing over the Eerste Sweelinckstraat we stop to buy Australian dried apricots (They're the only ones available in the Netherlands that are picked when they're ripe) and dates. While we're waiting Jacob is entertained with the offer of a small box of raisins.
Finally, across the way, we stop at the Greek stand to buy olives, pesto, anchovies and feta cheese. Here Jacob finishes off his repast with a piece of olive-bread before we head home, well-fed.
Posted by Faith at 08:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Photo Friday:Signs
Another old photo taken with the Canon G2 last March 2004 when we were in Copenhagen.
Posted by Faith at 02:25 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 13, 2005
Your waitress today.............
We're not big reality TV viewers but were initially tempted to take a look at "Outback Jack", (yup, I know, its taken a while to make it to Dutch television) by the landscape which we recognised from our last month in Australia together. We spent this month travelling around the Kimberley in North-western Australia and the show appears to be filmed in and around El Questro and the Kunnunara region. We camped at El Questro too, but in the el-cheapo BYO-tent-and-get-eaten-by-a-crocodile area, whereas the programme seems to be making use of the luxury top-end options available there.
We were quickly seduced by the irony of sending 12 American city-living model/actress wannabes to El Questro to meet one Australian city-boy model/actor wannabe. Surely they'd have all felt more at home over a diet-frappe on Chapel St in Vadim's home town of Melbourne?
The concept is brilliant though. The problem with the 'Bachelor' idea is that it doesn't appeal as much to a male audience as to women. Solution: put eight models in bikins and have them splash around a billabong trying to catch fish and Bobs-your-uncle! Programming for the WHOLE family!
We love the suposedly adventurous challenges and even more the not-so-subtle-soft-porn filming of these challenges. Does the director actually yell "CUT! Marissa can you catch that fish again but this time with MORE booty!". Is there an X-rated version where the girls catch fish with their cleavage? And we have a lot of sympathy for Vadim whose responses-for-every-situation are beginning to dry up. The poor boy is starting to sound a bit repetitive. Can't the scriptwriters come up with anything better than the same old, .."this journey that we've started together...", ..."I've only just started to discover who you really are...", "..you're a beautiful person on the inside...". It's obvious everyone involved had a hoot filming this show.
Last night however I was jarred from my open-jawed-admiration when one of the contestants mentioned that she had been told that "Australian men like to be waited on" or words to that effect. It was not so much the novelty of this idea, it has about as much to do with reality as the rest of the programme, but my (Dutch) husband's reaction. He seemed to be having trouble breathing and had sunk into his chair groaning, gasping, turning purple and making strange squeaking noises. After some considerable time of hopelessly- over-acted-amusement he summonned just enough breath to wheeze, "well obviously not by Australian women, or they'll be waiting a long time!"
Frostily, this-Australian-woman pointed out, that my mother, has made a huge fuss over him when she's been here. Spoilt him even. some would say.
Posted by Faith at 11:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 12, 2005
5 Januaries
My first January in Amsterdam I had nothing to do but wait for my 'verblijfsvergunning', (residence permit) so spent the days walking and exploring. It snowed, quite a bit, and to someone from a country where it doesn't snow in everyday-situations, only on special-trips-to-mountains-especially-reserved-for-snow, having snow on pavements and bridges, cars and bikes, your hat and your nose, was pretty special.
By my second January in Amsterdam I had my permit (but only just!) and had started work and thus discovered cycling-to-work-in-the-snow-wrapped-in-a-flock-of-woolens. I also discovered ice, quickly followed by what-the-road-feels-like, what salt is used for and why you should sleep in and let all the other cyclists go first.
My third January in Amsterdam I was a dab hand and only briefly glanced at the RAI thermometer and it's -11C reading as I whizzed past on my bike. Riding home I loved the sudden silence descending with a snow-storm as I was transformed into a cycling snowman and the road underneath me from a greasy wet black to a crisp crunchy white where my wheels were the first to leave tracks.
My fourth January in Amsterdam I wrapped our new son Jacob up in five layers of clothing and two blankets and a jacket and took him out in the pram and wondered if he could see the snow yet.
So now in my fifth January in Amsterdam I was just a bit startled to discover crocuses (croci?) in the Sarphati Park and blossom on the trees in the Vondelpark! And no sign of snow at all. Looks like we won't be getting a chance to buy that little wooden sleigh for Jacob after all.
Posted by Faith at 02:21 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 11, 2005
Three small things
Now that my bank accounts have returned from their jaunt to other-parts-of-the-Netherlands it was time to reintroduce myself to the receptionist at the Rabobank and confirm all his worst suspicions about people-who-speak-Dutch-with-a-funny-accent. This visit was an effective live demonstration of the proverb, "Never put off 'till tomorrow what you could do today". Or how one silly mistake when coupled with two others has the power to make you look like a prize idiot.
Firstly I had to get my PIN pass de-blocked after having typed in the wrong PIN code multiple times a few weeks back. Could have happenned to anyone. The nice young man at reception was able to fix this in a jiffy.
Then I had to ask him about my brand new account. The one I opened a week or two ago. That I've not yet even had the chance to use. For which I've just received the pass card in the mail. And the PIN number. Which I've lost. Unopened. The nice young man at reception held my gaze for only a nano-second longer than strictly necessary. And ordered a new card and PIN number in another jiffy.
Last but not least I had to mention the money I transferred to my Australian bank account and which has not yet shown up in that account but which has been taken from my Dutch account. The nice young man at reception explained that these transfers can take time and when was the transfer? April. And when did I notice it hadn't gone through? November. And it is now...? It took only a jiffy of significant silence before the nice young man at reception was on the phone arranging for me to consult a consultant.
Posted by Faith at 12:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 07, 2005
Photo Friday: Silhouette
I like the way the frame is the silhouette instead of the other way around in this photo. It was taken last May with the now-extinct Canon G2, in Sicily from our bedroom window in the little farmhouse we rented.
On a clear day you could see the Aeolian Isles from this window. Thats got nothng to do with Photo Friday, just thought I'd throw it in. As you can see it was a horrible place to stay. I highly recommend it. The food was terrible too. And the jasmine, the orange grove, the hosts, the beaches, the wine.......
Posted by Faith at 01:37 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 05, 2005
Essential Maintenance
Both being Very Busy People BBC-star-Kathy-Clugston and myself only just managed to squeeze in a six hour jaunt to Den Haag yesterday for a pedicure.
Enthroned on our vibrating-massage-chairs-with-a-view our feet were bathed, scrubbed, massaged, preened, slathered in sweet-smelling-ungents and suitably fussed over for more than an hour. The whole affair was then topped of with the application of a nail poilish that BBC-star-Kathy-Clugston perceptively dubbed "Fuck Me Red". Our intrepid pedicurist (bravely going where no pedicurist has been for months) confirmed this diagnosis with the revelation that the name of this subtle-shade was "I'm not really a waitress".
Armed with my new toe nails I didn't even flinch when paying the bill which together with the train fare meant my pedicure could have bought a decent meal for two in many a gezellige Amsterdam cafe. Wine included.
Photos may follow once BBC-star-Kathy-Clugston works out her software issues.
Posted by Faith at 08:47 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Wham! Kerthump! Blam!
On a nerdy note, Six Apart have released a Guide to Fighting Comment Spam for all you Movable Type users. And all I can say about this;
"As I've mentioned before, Six Apart is fully committed to eradicating comment spam."
is YAAAAAY YAAAAAAAAAAAY! Go Superheroes!
Posted by Faith at 08:40 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 01, 2005
Photo Friday:Best of 2004
This is a bit of a cheat. Its not my best shot of 2004, in fact its three shots, but they are close to my favourites. They were taken with the Canon G2, obviously before it was lost and stolen, when Jacob had just learnt to sit up. For short periods.
Posted by Faith at 01:31 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Oude Nieuwe
Watching the neighbours watch the fireworks over Sarphati Park.
Posted by Faith at 12:48 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack