1) Two weeks ago I went to see The Fall (and here in English) - it's a wonderful movie, I really recommend it.
2) I would be quite shocked if I found out I had been using this for for target practice with my air gun. (If I had an airgun, but that's another story)
3) I thoroughly enjoyed Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.
4) Reaper is highly underrated... Sean and I watched the first season and it is a great show. Too bad it's only on Comedy Central, they tend to mix up the episodes... Now we have to wait until december or something when the second season will air :)
5) I loved the Dr Who Agatha Christie episode. Maybe not the best plot ever, but highly entertaining. Sometimes the references to book titles were a bit forced ("Damn it woman! Cards on the table!" Almost directly following another title... Well maybe I'm just jealous the wonderful contest is for UK residents only... I do want to have those facsimiles editions!) , but in general it was good fun.
Staying with Dr Who for a while, from Neil Gaiman's blog:
I know that David Tennant's Hamlet isn't till July. And lots of people are going to be doing Dr Who in Hamlet jokes, so this is just me getting it out of the way early, to avoid the rush...
"To be, or not to be, that is the question. Weeelll.... More of A question really. Not THE question. Because, well, I mean, there are billions and billions of questions out there, and well, when I say billions, I mean, when you add in the answers, not just the questions, weeelll, you're looking at numbers that are positively astronomical and... for that matter the other question is what you lot are doing on this planet in the first place, and er, did anyone try just pushing this little red button?"
There. Thanks. Sorry about that.
In other news: it's almost saturday, and then we will finally be able
to visit our new appartment for the very first time! I will be taking
my father with a lot of DIY tools. He has to make sure the walls and
floors are level and everything... I am so excited!
After not having been to any concert whatsoever in quite a long time, I went to 2 concerts in one week! One was already planned: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds at the Heineken Music Hall last Monday, and one was a spur of the moment thing after having overheard 2 people talk during the Nick Cave gig. As you might know, one of my favourite Norwegian rockbands is Madrugada. Somehow I thought they had already played a gig in Amsterdam, and I missed it, but hearing someone say: "And we are going to see Madrugada at Paradiso on Friday" (well, actually, I only heard "Madrugada", "Paradiso" and "Friday") gave me hope. So on tuesday, at work, I checked the Paradiso site to find it was not yet sold out, which made me a very happy girl! The fact that their latest album Madrugada is frequently compared to Nick Cave made Sean happy to accompany me.
Nick Cave was absolutely amazing! He's 50-something now, but has the energy and intensity of a 20-something year old. I was truly amazed. He sounds better live than on his albums :) He played many new songs (of course) but also quite a few old-time favourites as The Ship Song, Red Right Hand and Stagger Lee.
Friday we went to Paradiso, I have to admit that I had never been there before. I also have to admit that I had never ever seen Madrugada live before (they played in Oslo right after I returned to the Netherlands...). Paradiso is beautiful, nice and small. It was great to finally see Madrugada perform live. This may be their last tour, after the tragic death of their guitarist last year. Luckily the album was already finished and they released it last January. I don't know what will happen next, especially since the lead singer, Sivert Høyem, recorded 2 solo albums a few years ago. Well, we'll see, at least I am very happy that I managed to see them live :) Sean also really enjoyed their music, luckily. He agreed that some of their songs do remind him of Nick Cave. Personally I loved their performance of Strange Colour Blue, but that may be because that was the very first song I ever heard from them, and New Woman/New Man, one of their new songs. Sean especially liked Blood Shot Adult Commitment, one of their older, louder songs, and Black Mambo, Look Away Lucifer (the new single) and Honey Bee. Since they were in Amsterdam, they told us that they thought it would be very deep and profound if they played the Jacques Brel song about Amsterdam :) Read a great review here.
Yesterday I received the cd of the Lord of the Rings musical, Sean ordered it for me. I've been listening to it a lot, and I have to say I am still impressed by the quality of the whole thing. I have to admit, I was sceptical when we ordered our (hugely expensive) tickets last year when we went to London in july. But we weren't disappointed.
On YouTube I found the dvd that came with the cd, it only has the songs in better sound-quality and pictures to accompany it, but on the website you can find some clips of the show, yay! LOTR Musical Clips. Why those were not put on the dvd no one knows... The music is composed by Värttinä, among others.
Yes, the woman who plays Galadriel, Laura Michelle Kelly, plays the beggar woman / Lucy Barker in Sweeney Todd.
Sometimes I am pretty stupid. I literally spent months trying to find my lost USB stick (just because I am Dutch and found buying a new one too expensive) until my father reminded me gently last week that I actually gave said USB stick to him... Granted: he promised to buy me a new one (which he didn't) but this is a wonderful example of how my mind works (or doesn't work, it depends on how you look at it).
Anyway, now I knew why I couldn't find my USB stick, I bought myself a brand new one, beautifully red with 4 GB of storage. It's the small things that count. So yesterday I bugged Sean into transfering my Norway pictures of last year to it so that I can finally post them and tell you all about our holiday.
Almost a year ago I promised to write about this:
- abandoned holiday resorts
- snowed in roads
- waterfalls
- reindeer
- general peace and quiet
- our adventures on the 17th of may (the national day in Norway - a BIG deal)
- ****hotels in Denmark and our feelings about them.
So now I have the pictures to accompany the stories, I am quite happy to write about them.
To start with the reindeer (these are connected to our adventures on the 17th of may and the snowed in roads):
Aren't these the cutest? We saw them right after we discovered that the main road to Geiranger was still snowed in. We had just called the travelling agency to ask them how on earth we could get to Geiranger, and they happily told us we had to take a 200 km detour, which meant another 4 or 5 hour drive, on top of the 6 or 7 hour drive we had already behind us. Poor Sean. Seeing these animals made everything a tiny bit better, though. The 6 hour drive before the detour was stunningly beautiful, I have to say. We drove past the most lovely lakes and up wonderfully scary mountains (the main frustration with having to turn around was that we had to drive all the way back down a magnificently scary mountain road, with loads of scary hairpin turns, but beautiful views). On our way we saw many people walking around in traditional clothing as it was the national day, the only downside was that the shops were closed and most restaurants etc were as well, so it wasn't the best of days to have a long drive ahead of you...
Some more snow we had to deal with during the holiday. Advice: unless you still have snowtyres and/or really love snow, please plan your holiday a bit later than may! It is outside holiday season (which is mainly a good thing) which means that we spent one part of our trip in the middle of nowhere in an abandoned holiday resort. We had to drive for 20 minutes for the nearest shop because the shop on the resort was still closed. We didn't really mind, I had anticipated this and we had carefully planned ahead: we made sure we always had something to eat for dinner on a day we had to drive to a new bungalow. But remember: they do not mention this in the information you get from the travelling agency! So if you don;t know these things, you may be in for a surprise after a long drive. The only downside was that because the resort was abandoned, we searched literally for hours before we knew where to get our keys. (Again, something not mentioned by the travelling agency).
One of the most wonderful things about this trip to Norway: we actually were close to Bergen!
Yay, so finally, after 5 years, I was able to visit this lovely city again :) Sean also thought it was beautiful, and we were extremely lucky with the weather. Bergen is the rainiest city in Europe, and it was pouring down as we drove to Bergen, but, magically, the rain stopped when we arrived and it only started raining a bit again as we drove back again to our bungalow in Voss! This year's holiday (which we booked yesterday) we are also close to Bergen again, I hope we will be able to visit Edvard Grieg's house this year. And Ole Bull's house, which is a lovely house on an island near Bergen.
Of course we visited the odd stavechurch (I am wild about those things and can wander around for hours trying to find runes and wood carvings :)) this one was on our way to Geiranger (see above for our wonderful journey with reindeer and snowed in roads).
In Geiranger we did the cruise, which provided some lovely pictures, but for us it was a shortcut to the main road, as the fasted road was still closed and we had to drive to our last bungalow.
One of the main sites on this cruise are the waterfalls, the most famous being "The Seven Sisters" we were lucky, as the amount of water of course depends on the time of the year and the amount of melting snow:
I am so looking forward to go to Norway again :) I am glad we were able to book the holiday we wanted.
Well, sorry for the long wait, I hope you still enjoy the pictures!
These look so delicious! I think I found a new blog to check regularly...
Pumpkin & Date Scones
(from Mix & Bake by Belinda Jeffery)
3 cups (450g) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (55g) caster sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp bicarb/baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
120g cold unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
200g chopped pitted dates (not medjool, they’re far too moist and sticky for this)
1 cup cold cooked mashed pumpkin (I used butternut)
3/4 cup buttermilk
1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Line a baking tray with non-stick baking paper, then very lightly dust it with flour and set aside.
2. Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking/bicab soda and salt into a large bowl and use a balloon whisk to whisk it together. Add the butter and rub it in with your fingertips till the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Stir together the buttermilk and cooked cold mashed pumpkin and set aside for now.
3. Add the dates to the bowl and toss them through to coat them in the flour mixture, then make a well in the centre of the bowl and pour in the pumpkin/buttermilk mix. Stir it together till barely combined, then tip it onto a well-floured chopping board and lightly knead till the mixture comes together (not till the batter is smooth - just till it holds together and doesn’t have any unmixed bits).
4. Pat the dough into a round about 4cm thick, then dip a scone cutter (or glass tumbler) into some flour and stamp out your scone shapes. Alternately, you can cut the round into triangular wedges or pat it into a cylinder and just cut off rounds.
5. Carefully sit the scones closely together on the baking tray, using up all your dough (press the scraps together rather than kneading them). Either dust the tops with flour or give them a milk or egg wash, then bake for 20 minutes or till cooked through and golden. Once they’re done, remove them from the oven and wrap in a clean tea towel for 5 minutes before removing them to a wire rack to cool.
6. Serve whilst warm with some salted butter, or store in an airtight container for up to three days. Cold scones can be reheated in a microwave or toaster oven to make them warm and soft again.
I absolutely adore scones, and definitely need to find the time to make some.... These sound like perfect comfort food, which I need now.
Things have been very hectic lately, which is probably the reason I am ill. As you know, my father in law had prostate cancer, his operation went very well, but as he is a very stubborn man, he went on with his life as if nothing happened. So a few weeks ago he fell seriously ill with heart problems. He spent a few days in hospital and was then released and urged to take things easy. The heart problems remained, however, and this weekend he was put back in hospital. The doctors think the problems are caused by his medication, so they reduced the amount of heart medication and now we have to wait a few weeks until everything has stabilised. Fingers crossed things calm down a bit around here then. We need some peace and quiet.
I tried another recipe:
Lamb with mint (for 2)
cut lamb in small pieces
1 or 2 cloves of garlic, chop them finely
1 or 2 chili peppers, also finely chopped
1 or 2 onions in rings (you can substitute 1 onion by other wok-vegetables, whatever you like)
2 big tablespoons of red curry paste
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
4 sping onions sliced in rings
1 handful of freshly ripped mint leaves
1 handful of freshly chopped coriander
1 handful of parsley
bake the garlic and chili pepper in some oil, add the onion and bake until the onion is lightly browned. Take this mixture out of the pan and put it away. Bake the 2 tablespoons of red currypaste, add the lamb and bake until it's done. Add the onion-mixture, mint, coriander and parsley and warm it through, eventually stir in 2 tablespoons of soy sauce. Serve with rice or noodles.
Enjoy!
This is also one of our all-time favourites, only we use chicken instead of fish:
Ingredients
2 tbsp vegetable oil
half tsp brown mustard seeds
4 cloves
6 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
1 large piece cinnamon stick
1 small onion, finely chopped
5cm/2in piece fresh ginger, peeled and quartered
2 large garlic cloves
1 tsp ground coriander
300ml/10½fl oz coconut milk
2-4 green chillies, left whole
salt, to taste
100ml/3½fl oz water
10 curry leaves (available from some supermarkets and Asian grocers)
½-1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
¾ tsp garam masala
500g/1lb 2oz salmon or firm white fish fillets, cut into large pieces
To serve
2-3 tsp lemon juice
50g/2oz fresh coriander leaves and stalks, chopped
Method
1. Heat the oil in a non-stick pan, add the mustard seeds, cloves, cardamom pods and cinnamon stick and stir fry for 20 seconds (be careful, the seeds might pop). Add half of the chopped onion and fry for 4-5 minutes until soft.
2. Meanwhile, place the remaining onion, the ginger, garlic, ground coriander and 100ml/3½fl oz of the coconut milk into a blender or food processor and blend to a smooth purée.
3. Add this mixture to pan along with the whole green chillies and salt, to taste. Cover with a lid and cook over a low heat for 12-15 minutes, giving the pot an occasional stir.
4. Add the remaining coconut milk, the water, the currry leaves, black pepper and garam masala and the fish and leave to cook undisturbed for about 3-5 minutes, until the fish is opaque and cooked through.
5. To serve, stir in the lemon juice and coriander. Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary, then pour into bowls and serve with rice.
(taken from: BBC food - the most wonderful recipe resource site...)
In other news: I have the flu, I've been at home for 2 weeks now - I even let my parents come over to take me home because I felt so terrible - and haven't been able to do much. (Apart from having all the time I needed to write my research proposal for the PhD position in Amsterdam I am applying for, so that's good!). I completely understand why I have to get the flu vaccination every year now, because my lungs have been acting up so badly, that at times I thought I had pneumonia, not nice. I'm almost well again, finally, and now I am taking some sort of codeine to stop coughing just to let my lungs recover before I go back to work.
...I am already looking forward to december 12th when the J. W. Waterhouse exhibition will start in the Groninger Museum: J.W. Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite (12/12/2008 - 03/05/2009). I would love to see The Lady of Shalott in real life - and real size - for that matter.
Last saturday we went to Groningen to see the Russian Fairytales exhibition, I can recommend it to everyone, it was absolutely wonderful. If you decide to go, do so on a weekday, we went during the weekend and the museum was packed. We literally stood in line in order to see the paintings. Of course, everyone is entitled to watch the paintings and to study them as long as they desire, but people, please! If you have a rollator AND the media-tour do not pointedly place your rollator directly in front of a painting, sit down and calmly start listening to what the thingy has to say about the painting WHILE ACTUALLY SHOWING YOU SAID PAINTING IN EXCRUCIATING DETAIL, ok? PLEASE move your rollator and your media tour to a corner, listen and watch as long as you please and THEN make your way to the desired painting, the line really will move faster this way and young and healthy people can watch the paintings without almost knocking you over. (As a sidenote - the mediatour was actually really cool, you received an iPod-like device with headphones, and as you listened to the tour, the paintings and additional info would show on the screen!)
On the way home we listened to the stories on the cd that came with the catalogue :)
Finally, as everyone else already posted: Heath Ledger died.
Sean texted me at midnight to tell me, I was already asleep but immediately called him, barely awake, to ask HOW? I mean, it's not like I was a big fan, but somehow he seemed a very decent, nice, thoughtful and sensible young man, judging by the diverse roles he chose to play. I am looking forward to seeing him as the Joker (even though the pictures scare the hell out of me - but then again, I am easily scared). Either way, I was, and still am, shocked to hear about his sudden death.
I think a translation is required:
You are Moomintroll! You are extremely curious. You often make new friends and you love going on adventures.
 | |
 | Hvem er du i Mummidalen? |
Mitt resultat: Mummitrollet Du er Mummitrollet! Du er veldig nysgjerrig. Du får ofte nye venner og drar gjerne ut på eventyr. | |
| Ta denne quizen på Start.no | |
Everyone who knows Twin Peaks will love this! Sean and I got the Twin Peaks Gold Box (the definitive edition of the two seasons) for Sinterklaas and we watched all episodes while Sean's parents were on holiday (every night 2 or 3 and 3 or 4 during the weekends :D). I absolutely loved it! I agree that the series lost its spark after they revealed who murdered Laura Palmer, that episode would have made the perfect ending. But the real ending is twisted and sickening but manages to revive the spark of season 1 and therefore works.
It is full of spoilers, but only for people who've actually seen the series, and it probably isn't funny for people who haven't seen it, but I HAD to share it! Click here.
In other news, I started reading manga. Currently I am devouring Deathnote. The Wikipedia summary pretty much nails it (as it's supposed to, after all):
Light Yagami is an extremely intelligent young man who resents the crime and corruption in the world. His life undergoes a drastic change in the year 2003, when he discovers a mysterious notebook, known as the "Death Note", lying on the ground. The Death Note's instructions claim that if a human's name is written within it, that person shall die. Light is initially skeptical of the Death Note's authenticity, believing it is just a prank. However, after experimenting with it and killing two criminals, Light is forced to admit that the Death Note is real. After meeting with the previous owner of the Death Note, a shinigami named Ryuk, Light seeks to become "the God of the new world" by passing his judgment on criminals.
Soon, the number of inexplicable deaths of reported criminals catches the attention of the International Police Organization and a mysterious detective known only as "L". L quickly learns that the serial killer, dubbed by the public as "Kira" (derived from the Japanese pronunciation of the word "Killer"), is located in Japan. L also concludes that Kira can kill people without laying a finger on them. Light realizes that L will be his greatest nemesis, and a game of psychological cat and mouse between the two begins.
It really is a pageturner and I recommend it to everyone. Please read the English translation if you decide reading it, the Dutch translation is a bit odd.
... a meme, because it looked interesting on maswala 's livejournal.
How this game works: Just comment on this post saying you'd like to play. Then I will choose seven interests from your profile, and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post these instructions along with your answers in your own LiveJournal so that others can play along, too.
maswala picked the following interests for me:
1. Alice Liddell
2. Coraline
3. Fate
4. Miyazaki
5. Nick Cave
6. Tear in your hand
7. And since Old Irish isn't there (bad girl!), you can take languages in general.
1. Alice Liddell - As you probably know I love Alice in Wonderland. Alice Liddell is the girl who inspired Mr. Lewis Caroll to write Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Last year I received The Annotated Alice in Wonderland for Christmas, and I realized I quite enjoyed reading all those notes and thoughts about the books, so I decided to add Alice Liddell to my interests. Actually, to me, Alice Liddell stands for 'background information' - gaining general knowledge about books in general and the time they were written in or the time they are placed in. If that makes any sense.
2. Coraline - Neil Gaiman's novel Coraline is often described an alternative Alice in Wonderland. Having recently moved into a new apartment with her loving but very distracted and preoccupied parents, Coraline finds herself bored one rainy day and, upon her father's suggestion, decides to explore the flat. She finds a locked door which her mother opens and explains once led to the flat next door but was bricked up when they separated the building into apartments. During the night Coraline sees a small black shadow slip into the room where the locked door is. The next day Coraline opens the door again and it suddenly leads to a dark corridor, down the corridor she finds another apartment seemingly a twisted copy of their own apartment. She also finds her 'Other Mother' and 'Other Father' there, two duplicates of her parents except with buttons sewn over their eyes. Once there, her Other Mother traps Coraline in the other world by kidnapping her parents, wanting her to live there forever. Coraline learns that her Other Mother captured three other children before her and turned them into ghosts, stealing their souls. Desperate to escape, Coraline makes a bet with her Other Mother: If she can find the three children's souls and her parents, then they can all go home...
Probably my favourite quote from the book (it shows exactly why I love the writing of Mr. Gaiman so much):
There was also a well.On the first day Coraline's family moved in, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible made a point of telling Coraline how dangerous the well was, and they warned her to be sure she kept away from it. So Coraline set off to explore for it, so that she knew where it was, to keep away from it properly.
3. Fate - To me the term 'fate' is connected with the Old Norse mythology, when I hear 'fate' I think about the Norns. It also always reminds me of my BA thesis, which I really enjoyed writing because it combines so many of my interests and I could really put my heart into it.
My thesis finally brings me to the term 'fate' meaning 'an inevitable course of events' which can be said of my decision to start studying Scandinavian Languages and Cultures - and specifically choosing Scandinavian Languages and Cultures instead of any other subject - before starting Celtic languages...
4. Miyazaki - And then specifically Hayao Miyazaki, the director of many wonderful animated films. Disney from Japan, if you like, but it goes far, far beyond Disney, both in quality and in themes. Spirited Away is one of his most famous films, and Princess Mononoke. Recently he adapted Dianne Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle. I particularly like his movie My Neighbour Totoro about two girls who have an adventure with forest spirits. My Neighbour Totoro also contains one of my favourite characters: the Catbus, it is a large creature, depicted as a grinning cat with a hollow body that serves as a bus, complete with windows and seats coated with fur, and a large bushy tail -he reminds me of the Cheshire Cat.
5. Nick Cave - I love his voice. Need I say more?
6. Tear in your hand - probably my favourite Tori Amos song. It means an awful lot to me although I couldn't explain why. The entire Little Earthquakes album is an album that I always enjoy listening to, I listened to it a lot as a teenager and somehow it became a part of me.
7. Languages - I admit, Old Irish should have been in my interests. But Languages in general is something I've always been interested in, specifically (and there it is!) Old Irish, Welsh, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic. I love studying languages, acquiring them and being able to communicate with them, even if it is only translating from one language to another. I love writing, reading, playing with words. It's something I miss in my current job. My next goal is to learn Old Norse and Icelandic - after I've dusted and cleaned my Norwegian ;)
Besides thinking about my interests I had a lovely time reading this about 'writing blunders'.
