I seem to be talking to my Korean housemate the most. Probably the main reason is because he has the best English among all of them (he lived in the US for a few years), so it's easiest to communicate. Actually the Dutch students all have better English than the European exchange students.


In University College Utrecht Building U, where I have my tutorials, I entered this funky toilet. For those who don't get it, in the distance a urinal can be seen, while on the right you see a door which marks the female toilet. This means that there's no partition, screen or door at the entrance of the male toilet area, making it unisex in a way. I was wondering if the sinks were shared too, but I peeked into the female toilet and saw sinks in there, so. I asked one of my classmates if other Dutch toilets were as funky, and he said it was only this one, since the compound used to be a military barracks.

One of my modules was sneakily switched from Period 3 (current period) to Period 4 (the next one), and they didn't tell me (it still says 3 in the Prospectus on the website). This means I'll only be able to do 5 modules, not 6. Ah well - I was only going to map 5 anyway.

In Spar, I saw 7-up Light going for €0.45, and the normal variety for €0.55. This world is going mad. Or maybe it's a sly way of promoting healthy living.

Very obviously imitating Walker's (same name, similar flavours), Lay's has a Lay's Sensations range here, and from the looks of the packaging, throughout the western part of the continent.

There are a lot of Shoarma (the Turkish version of Gyros) places here. Must be a lot of Turks.

"Cursus Nederlands voor Buitenlanders (Dutch Language Course for Foreigners)". Wonderful. A document about a Dutch language course for beginners comes in Dutch as well.

I don't understand why people like to talk rubbish during tutorials and irritate others (or at least me). This is especially since there're no participation points given out now - you only have an "effort requirement" to qualify for a retest (and stuff like that).

Instead of sounding an audible noise, in the public buses here when you press the "Stop" button, all that happens is the "Stop" light goes on. So you don't have the problem of annoying kids pressing the button repeatedly and pissing everyone off with the noise.

The varieties of bread I find in one Hema (a supermarket chain - not a speciality bread shop) are amazing. I catalogued, with Babelfish translation (supplemented by helpful readers) where available, wit (plain), landbrood (country bread), tijgerwit (tiger blank - there're like stripes on the crust), mais (corn), bruin (brown), licht meergranen (multi-grain light), zonnerpitten (sunflower seeds), tarwe (wheat [???]), boulemeergranen (round-loafed multi-grain), volkoren (people ears? whole wheat), donker meergranen (dark multigrain), allinson (seems to be some freaky kind of flour), boulemais (round-loafed corn), landbrood pompoen (pumpkin country bread), boule volkoren (round-loafed people's ears [???] whole wheat) and boule naturelwit (round-loafed natural wheat bread). Though at least half look like the sort I'd never eat (being brown/black and bitter) and the rest probably taste similar, it's nice to have a choice, and to have crusty sliced bread (a term which until I thought was an oxymoron until I came here).


On request of Tim The Great, who is interested in my culinary experiments, I will be documenting them here, excluding things like my shallow frying of this weird chicken Schnitzel with a layer of cheese and a pineapple ring on top (it was half-price at Spar since it was expiring). I made some tao tjo (black bean sauce) chicken the other day, and oyster sauce vegetables, but this came before his request, so.


Oyster sauce chicken - raw. Unfortunately I made an incision in my left thumbnail while cutting the breast into chunks. My flesh was untouched, but a day or two later the cut bit fell off (ie Not into the food).


Oyster sauce chicken - cooked. Marinated with oyster sauce, soya sauce, sesame oil, onions, garlic powder, pepper and paprika (I think it lent a touch of sweetness to the meat)


Quotes:

[On not letting Consumption dropping to 0] If first, you decide that you don't want to die, you will end up at Steady State.