Tonight I am leaving Utrecht for Berlin. I will be away till the evening of 31st May. The usual words apply.

I screwed myself for the night train to Berlin. Originally I booked one leaving from Cologne and arriving at Berlin at 4+am, giving me =<6 hrs of sleep. I also got confused with the Eurail pass - the rule about writing the next day's date when taking night trains applies only to through trains. Luckily I managed to unscrew myself in time. Now I'm taking a train to Liege-Guillemins via Maastricht and arriving at 8am in Berlin, with =<7 hrs of sleep. Not only is Utrecht-Liege-Guillemins half the price of Utrecht-Cologne, the train from Maastricht leaves after midnight so I can use my Eurail pass for that leg.

On Wednesday, I went to the Hague.


Duck watch!


Vredespaleis, home of the International Court of Justice
Luckily, I snapped these before 3 tour buses containing people of multiple nationalities pulled up

I arrived at the Peace Palace at 11:20, but the tickets to the 2pm and 3pm tours were sold out already - they can be booked up to a week in advance. I was very annoyed (but then someone hasn't been inside either, so).


World Peace flame. It's quite cheesy - each country gave 1 stone, and they combined flames from 5 continents.

I then proceeded to Binnenhof - where the Dutch parliament convenes.


Binnenhof


Flags of the Dutch provinces


Statue of King William II. He was involved in Waterloo, or something. No mention was made, of course, of the Belgian revolt. Notice the anti-pigeon devices on his head and epaulettes! The horse's mane had them also, but they're invisible here.

Given my luck, it wasn't surprising that the building was closed to the public that day.


Binnenhof


Fountain in Binnenhof


Binnenhof. It has a very medieval feel to it, cars and bicycles notwithstanding.

Next I went to the Mauritshuis, an art museum built in the Italian style. They had a special exhibition called Droom van Italië ("Dreaming of Italy") with paintings from 1500-1900, and it was so big that it seemed to have displaced some of their permanent collection (which didn't even occupy the whole of the top floor). At first I was annoyed, since the banner said those with the museum card still needed to pay €4 to enter, but surprisingly I was let in gratis - the joys of having a Youth museum card. I don't understand why museums always like to combine special exhibitions with their permanent collection and charge a higher price - some people aren't interested in the special exhibitions!

The audioguide was included in the admission price, so it was quite nice. Furthermore, the audioguide included headphones instead of making you hold the stupid thing up to your ears (and disturbing other people with the noise in the process).

I was wondering why the exhibition was called "Dreaming of Italy". It seemed these artists found their home countries so bad that they had to dream of italy.

(Press images also available on the museum website)


Goltzius - Apollo Belvediere, 1592


Posthumus - Landscape with Roman Ruins, 1536. There's a quote by Ovid.


Paulus Bril - View of Bracciano


A woman's portable seat - I want one!


Lorrain - Pastoral landscape with the Ponte Molle, 1645. Damn glass.


Lorrain - A seaport, 1644.


Caspar Van Wittel - View on the Molo in Venice


Hubert Robert - Hermit praying in a Ruinous Gallery, 1760
The ladies 'have penetrated the world of the hermit'. One thinks the flowers for the Virgin Mary are for her and another is trying to disturb him by tickling him with a reed.


Claude-Joseph Vernet - Waterfalls of Tivoli, 1740-1750

They had some paintings that looked like photographs (until you looked more closely). It says something about the skill of the painters. But this effect was only apparent in very small or small paintings. If someone could achieve this effect with a large format, I'd take my hats off him.

The audioguide talked about the Italian landscape lit with 'Scandinavian light, which is hard light' (and also described as 'bright'). So the light in Italy is soft? Uhh. I suspect the intensities are more in the minds of painters and art critics, and reflect the character of a country and the characteristics of painting styles more than the light in a country.

They had an oil sketch (preparatory sketch) for a huge painting in the National Gallery, London which was so huge it couldn't fit in the Mauritshuis. The least they could've done would've been to display a photo of the huge painting beside the oil sketch!


Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - Pope Pius VII in the Sistine Chapel, 1810
Supposedly this was a protest against Napoleon, since Pope Pius VII was never in the Sistine Chapel (?)


Arnold Bocklin - Villa by the Sea, 1878

"Longing for Italy is actually a disease" - some artist friend of Feuerbach. Haha. The conclusion of the exhibition: "Italy is within us". Bah.


Rembrandt - The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, 1643

The audioguide numbers for the permanent collection were cunningly hidden on inconspicuous slates far below the paintings. I only discovered them by accident. Gah.


Addendum: Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring
Given that this is probably the most famous piece in their permanent collection, I was surprised it wasn't specially treated or located, and there was no huge crowd.
The turban gives her an Oriental look. I knew it wasn't just me!


Rogier van der Weyden - The lamentation of Christ


Avier camp - Ice landscape. On the left people have fallen into the ice and someone is coming with a ladder. Near the bridge a couple has fallen down and the woman is wearing nothing under her skirt.


Rubens - Old woman and a boy with candles

In the museum shop they were selling extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar and linguine. All Italian of course. Gah. There were also these strange long bendy plastic coated pencils. I wonder how you sharpen them.

The museum cafe was called the Bertolli cafe. Of course it had a counter of Bertolli sauce bottles.

Nabucco is coming to Den Haag in Mid-August. Gah. Why is there no season now?!


Monument to William Frederick, Prince of Orange-Nassau. He did something in 1813 and 1814.

I arrived at the Prison museum a few minutes too late for the tour, which only started at the start of every hour, so I went to one museum in the vicinity which sounded interesting - the Panorama Mesdag, which had huge cylindrical paintings surrounding you. Unfortunately the Museum card was not accepted and I didn't want to pay €4 - the paintings (as reproduced in the souvenir area) didn't look that interesting, and I didn't like that style of painting/sketching anyway. I ran back to the Prison museum and caught the 4pm tour just in time.

Inside, I saw just why visits were only with a guide - people had vandalised the place with lines such as "FC Utrecht"; there was also a man in a suit following behind the group to make sure no one touched anything. The tour was in Dutch, but €1 was a reasonable price to pay for a booklet with a translation. I enjoyed it substantially more than the Conciergerie despite it being less historically significant, which tells you something about how badly the Conciergerie was presented.

Burger King had this sign proclaiming that their "Big King" had 21% more meat than a Big Mac.

The McDonalds in The Hague where I stopped to get a caffeine boost didn't have anyone collecting money by the toilet. There is hope for this country yet. Then again, the large Coke I got wasn't filled to the brim - there was a "0,5L" mark at the side below the top of the cup. Grr.

Chinatown was marked out on one of those signs showing tourist where the attractions were. I wonder how big it is.

My parsley plant and the €1 stroopwafel bits

Our upper floor toilet bowl was clogged and I think it took 3 weeks for the housing people to get it fixed. Gah. I was anticipating this, so I tried to unclog it myself with gloves and a plastic bag. It did not work.

I saw an ad for a drink with passionfruit, pineapple and corn ("Mais"). Wth.

Another mystery of the universe: Why does a 1-to-3 power extension cost €2 in the market here but S$18 in Singapore? The lack of on/off switches on each individual socket (one of the things about Continental power sockets - aren't there safety issues?) can't explain all of the price differential.

There was this ad for a vaginal wash on the TV. As the woman took each successive bottle, a meter counted up, but it stopped at 75% till she grabbed the vaginal wash. At the end of the ad you saw her topless and looking down at her unmentionables (which, somehow, were blurred out). Gotta love these Europeans.

Someone in my Dutch class said my Dutch was excellent. Uhh. Maybe only when compared to most of the others'!

I think one reason people say English is difficult is that looking at a word you don't always know how it's pronounced. Whereas in many other languages you pretty much do (Spanish, German, Dutch, Lithuanian [except for the emphases], the Slavic languages and Malay). One person informs me that French is "is way out there". Somehow I'm not surprised.

400 years ago, the Netherlands threw off the Spanish yoke and threw them out. 400 years later, the Spanish have reinvaded - except this time in the form of exchange students! Somehow my apartment complex seems to have many of them, and my apartment itself often sees groups of them, and sometimes (like last night) even witnesses a horde descending upon it.

I was taking the bus to the ice skating rink, and noticed the following street names:
Paranadreef, Amazonedreef, Japuradreef, Bogotadreef, Japuradreef, Orinocodreef, Rio Brancodreef, St. Maartendreef, Rio Brancodreef, St. Laurensdreef, Nebraskadreef, Nevadadreef, Arizonadreef, Hudsondreef, Mississippidreef, Oregondreef. This on top of the University street names near De Uithof and the Indonesian ones in Lombok (the Muslim quarter). Why can't the Dutch come up with their own street names?

A Greek guy killed himself on Monday by jumping from the window of his apartment. Apparently he always looked depressed and walked around alone.

Egypt is running a tourism ad campaign. It's quite funny because they use music from Aida in the background - hardly Egyptian.



Chicken with tomato-cream sauce
In the sauce: garlic, onions, tomato sauce for pasta, chive cream cheese, red wine
You see red splotches on the chicken because I added the tomato sauce to the chicken and vegetables before deciding to take the chicken bits out to prevent overcooking (and ensure the surface was not covered with sauce).


General Tso's chicken (3rd attempt)
My Korean housemate asks me every now and then when I'm going to make it again, so last Saturday I humoured him and cooked it for myself, him and his Korean friend. This time I had ginger, used drumstick meat (the right type) and knew how to make the chicken crispy so it was excellent, if a bit dry due to my underestimation of the amount of sauce needed, or rather underestimation of how much meat a drumstick was by weight (I thought it was 1/2 - turned out to be maybe 2/3-3/4. This also meant there was too much to eat, even though I kept some for my own consumption the next day).
The chicken was a bit too floury - I haven't gotten the flouring right yet (I was told to shake off the excess but it didn't work). Maybe I don't actually need to dust it with flour before egging it. It was a bit rushed - one of them had to leave early, so I didn't fry chopped onions as the recipe called for; I did so the next day when frying the leftover chicken and eating it with Korean curry but it didn't make any difference (the onion bits didn't become crispy - maybe I'm doing something wrong).
To the left you see vegetables. The carrots were too hard. I should cut them smaller next time.


Coq Au Vin
I deviated a bit from the usual recipe. First I fried bacon pieces and removed them, browned the drumsticks lightly in the fat and removed them. Then I fried onions and yellow pepper in the fat (vegetables brown beautifully in bacon drippings). Then I dumped everything into a pot, added some chicken stock from powder, threw in torn parsley, added 100ml of cream and a lot of red wine (MFTTW: "no such thing as too much wine!", and anyhow it supposedly oxidises since I don't drink it, though that doesn't matter since I don't drink it). I brought it to a boil on medium-high heat and then lowered to low-medium heat to reduce. I was worried it would be too salty since my stock is from powder and thus salty, but in the end it was within the tolerable range.
MFTTW spewed some crap about cream interfering with evaporation, but it turned out alright. Though I suppose she's right - I should add cream at the end next time.


Coq Au Vin with potato salad
Unfortunately, though I left the pot on the stove at 1/11 while eating this, the liquid reduced to nothing.

I was prevented from bringing a bottle of plain water into the Arts library. Gah.

With somewhat warmer weather, all the pussies appear on the streets. I wonder where they've been hiding the last few months.


2 of my Dutch class classmates saw me walking home from class, so one of them offered to lend me the use of her bike while she hopped on the other guy's. When I told them I couldn't cycle, they were flabbergasted. The guy then offered to let me hop on the back of his and I cheerfully accepted.

Riding on the back of a bike is harder than it looks. You can't touch the wheel or the floor, so you have to do leg lifts and hold them in position. It's quite tiring, really. Furthermore, you need the right timing to hop on.

Somehow I found sitting sideways (like how females are supposed to ride horses) awkward, so I switched to mounting the bicycle like one would mount a horse. It was okay (albeit tiring) till we hit the traffic intersection, where I walked across. When I tried to get on after the intersection, I sat on my thumb and somehow kicked out of place on the bike because my legs were flailing around.

Ugh.


Maggi has 3 grades of instant mash potato - normal, stamppot and oven schotel (dishes). And there's one type with cheese inside. Wah.

Aldi may sell food for a low price, but sometimes the quality is lacking. For example, the fruit juice and milk cartons have caps on them, but after you remove the inner seal the outer caps leak.

Slices of carrot can pass through the digestive tract intact. What a hardy vegetable.

I attemped to make jiang1 si1 shou4 rou4 (shredded ginger with meat). Problems:
1) I left my meat in the microwave for too long to defrost since it was a smaller portion than I normally use. So it got partially cooked. After it was stir fried it was too tough
2) I put too much ginger so it was too hot
3) I cut the ginger too small so I ate much of it. Also, I forgot to wash it and didn't bother skinning it.
4) I had too little sauce. I need to add more oyster sauce and rice wine next time.


Quotes:

dement / demon't (demand)

We have a shark (shock)

H'ice skeared (high skilled)

After bra'gaining (bargaining)

ray'zern (reason)

Get some in'sear'rence from the state (insurance)

The prime is for the guy (problem)

They are not foe kearsed on money (focused)

[Tutor: Welke groente eet jij vanavond? {What vegetables are you eating tonight?}] Err. Patat? [Tutor: In {the} Netherlands, 'Patat' is french fries.]

[Tutor: Wat kosten een paprika? {How much does a paprika cost?}] 3 euro. [Tutor: *some disparaging remark*] [Student 2: 50 cents.] [Student 3: Where does he shop?] [Tutor: Aldi]... [Student 4: Where is this Aldi everyone is talking about?]

*** [a girl], perhaps it's an impolite question. Hoeveel weeg jij? [How much do you weight?] [Student: 54 kilo]

Is 'haar' rabbit? I've seen it [the word] around. [Tutor: Nee. 'Haar' is 'hair'.] [Student 2: What've you been eating?]

[Tutor: Waarom ga je naar de drogist? {Why do you go to the druggist?}] Hashish.

But now I want to make things a bit more interesting and have some mathematical rehearsals with you (?)

[Scaring people on the exam] It's the 4th block of the 3rd year so I expect you to know everything from the 1st 3 years.

When are we in equilibrium in Economics in general. Philosophical question. *To student* When are you in equilibrium? [Student: When all my equations are optimised] When are *you* in equilibrium? [Student: When all my equations are optimised... inner peace]

[Student: I think there's another mistake.] [Student 2: It doesn't matter.] It doesn't matter. Let him figure it out for himself.

[On transparency] There are corrupt judges in ofreign countries. Maybe we can make some movies about this. (?!)

NUS Business School Ad

"You know they don't sell chewing gum there. And I hear the boys are way too cute for my liking" - American mother

WTH?!

As someone commented: "So Dark the Con of NUS"

So this is where my fee hike money goes!

[Addendum:

Someone in that video comments page: "those are actually letters of rejection. LOL! university acceptance usually come in big pakages."

The reason for all this skepticism and scorn? Chiefly, I think: how can anyone like, support or think well of a school with policies such as this?

Dear all:

It comes to my attention that several students are absent from tutorial 1. According to the Dean’s new policy, the departemnt will send you warning letters when you are absent for the first and second times. Starting from the third time, the department has to cc the warning letter letter to the Dean.

We look forward to seeing you all in tutorials.

(from interminableruminations)]

***

One of George Bush's lame justifications for his reckless tax cuts is that he wants to "starve the beast" of government. Of course, as any student who has rushed homework will tell you, that doesn't work.

Screwed Up Girl says that at Oregon, even USP students who have done the USP "writing" module have problems with writing: what they think are clear thesis statements are not accepted, and the Professors seize on other lines as "excellent" thesis statements. It looks like "writing" confuses people everywhere.

I saw part of a documentary on National Geographic where chimps attacked neighbors for meat they didn't need so they could distribute it to allies and withhold it from enemies - politics. No doubt this is a symptom of their Fallen state since they are our nearest relatives were created by the Devil in a process of demonic imitation to deceive us into thinking that Evolution is true (Why don't any fundies use this argument? Maybe even they realise how lame and stupid it sounds and only use it as a desperate last resort)

[Keywords: demonic interference, demonic impersonation]

The BBC was showing a feature on economic growth in India, and they asked poor villagers if they'd give up the vote in order to get economic growth like in China. They unanimously said no. No doubt this is because the unwashed fools were too stupid to know what was good for them (it takes a higher degree of intelligence to recognise that economic growth is good for you than to grasp complex and abstract concepts like Democracy and the Right to Vote).

***

It's interesting finding out what the lyrics of Semoga Bahagia actually mean:

"Watch your behaviour, oh youths
Respect and honour your customs and traditions...

Soft-spoken is the lady
Energetic and tenacious is the man"

If you didn't tell me I'd think it was a Chinese song from Nanyang Primary School.

Maybe there's a reason they don't teach you what it means in Primary school.

***

Teaching Political Theory in Beijing

"I had taught at the National University of Singapore in the early 1990s. There, the head of the department was a member of the ruling People’s Action Party. He was soon replaced by another head, who asked to see my reading lists and informed me that I should teach more communitarianism (the subject of my doctoral thesis) and less John Stuart Mill. Naturally, this made me want to do the opposite. Strange people would show up in my classroom when I spoke about “politically sensitive” topics, such as Karl Marx’s thought. Students would clam up when I used examples from local politics to illustrate arguments. It came as no surprise when my contract was not renewed. In comparison, China is a paradise of academic freedom. Among colleagues, anything goes (in Singapore, most local colleagues were very guarded when dealing with foreigners)...

Human rights—or at least, the functional equivalent of human rights, whatever we want to call it—is what gives the point to sovereignty. Sovereignty only has moral value because it serves (usually) to protect the fundamental human rights of people in the state, and it loses its value once the state infringes upon, or fails to protect, those rights. I asked the student whether I, as a leader of a sovereign state, could kill millions of my people, then be justified in telling you not to intervene because you’d be trampling on my sovereignty. He agreed that I could not do so. I then asked him what moral value sovereignty could have if not its contribution to securing the fundamental rights of people in the state. He seemed genuinely puzzled, and then repeated out loud, to the whole class, “Mmm, what you’re saying is very different from what we’ve learned.”"

***

cheahchuwen on Slavery: "people just cant help but feel NS is 'hell', 'torture' and everything negative. They never see it as a way of changing the way of life, a form of paying back what the govt has given, a chance to learn about respect, and most importantly, learning about life, work, and play.

NS has alot to offer. Only those who say it robbed them of their lifelihood are just a bunch of ingrates."

Well said. I've added it to my Dachau post.

Being told that "this will be the most difficult lecture of your career" is not heartening. Though I'm sure something in NUS will top that.

One lecturer used a floppy disk to bring his Powerpoint to class. How retro.

Someone was saying his high school teacher commented that you can learn English, Spanish and Italin in 6 weeks, French in 6 months but after 6 years you still can't get German. And this from soneone who's presumably a Hole - tsk.

I think a good weather range is 18-19 degrees in the day and 15-16 at night. No need for sweaters, fans or radiators.

There must be some special event coming up. The orange flags and decor are coming out again, as well as orange shirts in shirts. Maybe it's the World Cup.

My mid-term got shifted forward 2 days, screwing up my Freiburg-Berlin plans. Gah.


I discovered the secret to making very creamy mashed potato - add mayonnaise!

My housemate threw away my deep fry oil. Again. I was very pissed off, since I'd told her, after she'd thrown it away the first time, not to do so. She claimed it looked disgusting, and that it was bad for health. This despite the fact that I'd only used it twice, much less than most people. She claimed that when she cleaned she threw away what looked dirty or disgusting (sounded eerily like my mother), and that I shouldn't be upset because she threw away others' things also. She helpfully suggested that I hide it where she can't see it, so now I have to hide it in one of my cupboards (having too many things, I took possession of an empty shelf).

Another of my housemates says his eggs and milk disappear also. Hmm.

I can't find palm oil labelled as such here, but I find huge bottles which resemble car oil and suspiciously say that they contain "plant oil and fat". Considering that the Netherlands is the biggest importer of palm oil in Europe after the UK, this is not good.


Penne tossed with curry mayonnaise (from the expensive Albert Heijn curry) and vegetable mix (courgette, carrot, onion, yellow paprika, chicken stock, ham bits)

I got this very nice Campina Passionfruit Vla. It was €1,65 for 1 litre (compared to €0,45 +- €0,10 at Aldi for the same amount), but it was well worth it. Despite not having had any Vla from late March to Mid May, I don't think I can take low quality Vla anymore, especially since I'll be leaving Nederland in another month. Fresh Vla is good stuff, especially the Limited Edition Lentevla (Spring Vla) - it has a purer taste and less (or no) artificial flavouring.

A housemate and a frequent visitor left for Berlin for 5 days, leaving 2 sinks full of dirty dishes. Gah.


Quotes:

I want you to work in couples (pairs)

In International Trade, in International Economics, we don't use the oligopolistic model simply because it's rather difficult.

Ten per share'nt market share (percent)

[On helping out in orientation] The subscription period willend soon (sign up)

This is a clear example of dumping because Q dum is sold at P dum (dom - domestic)

[On timing the break] I've no watch. So you either give an expression on your face which signals, "Gee, I've had enough"

[On the 100+ year old journal 'Hansische Geschichtsblaetter'] It's Hansa here, Hansa there, Hansa everywhere.

[On figures on a map of Antwerp] I don't know why they always put pictures of people on these maps. One suggestion I've heard is it's to prevent Muslims from stealing them... I've never seen it again. It's almost certainly wrong. You can never look at these maps without looking for people again.

If you ever want to change careers, being a garden historian is nice stuff.

Those were the Dark Ages. Terrible time. Everything went wrong. Terrible terrible terrible.

Ok, so it's doable. 20 minutes - 6 centuries of World Trade.

[On service personnel in fundacos] Cooks, doctors. [Student: Prostitures] We try to keep that one out.

This will be the most difficult lecture of your career.

ES-LM model (IS)

In economics we focus on real people. In psychology, they focus on sick people. In economics we focus on non-sick people... We call them rational... They may be stupid... bounded rationality.

[On the principal-agent problem in monetary policy] The social planner is not human because he cares for other humans only.

This is not understood by non-economists. We don't want realism. If we want that we can look out the window at reality - we don't need the model. If you want to look at reality... in the social sciences. Lots of case studies. They have no idea what they're talking about.

[On continuing without a break] You don't look very tired. So I'll continue. This is very interesting. You look very fresh.

[On b=0 for rational expectation of inflation=0 - attaching no weight to unemployment with a supply shock] Suppose the people in the economy differ in their kappas. What can we do? We can look for a real bastard.

[On b=0 being undesirable] We want to find a person who is a bigger bastard than ourselves, but not such an extreme bastard.

t'air tar (theta)

How much discree'shion do I give to my workers? (discretion)

You can deduct the number of cars in the Argentinian market (deduce)

[Student on his presentation partner: I just received an email 10 minutes ago.] Is he coming? [Student: He's sick.] He's sick? Because of the presentation?

The films have less incentive to p'roar'deuce (produce)

After Keukenhof, I went to the city of Leiden (the place where the Leyden Jar was invented). It was past 4 by the time I went there, so I only had time to visit one museum - the Museum of Ethnology, which was close to the Centraal Station.

The museum was small but respectable. My only gripe was that most of the items were not individually labelled or captioned.

"In Africa it is hot, sometimes extremely hot, but this is the only common fixture of the different parts of the continent"


Benin Bronzes

The Indonesia collection was as large as that for the rest of Asia sans East Asia. Not surprising.


Jade Sedan (China)


Plate (China)


How tourists are conned about diamonds. Now they're all polished in India.
"Amsterdam remained a centre for the retail trade. Here, large so-called factories pretend to their visitors that cutting and polishing still takes place. Actually, they are tourist attractions that draw hordes of customers eah day, tempting them to buy finished gems. Among the best clients are the increasingly wealthy Asian tourists."

The Museum of Ethnology is clear proof that the discipline of Ethnology is RACIST. There were sections on all sections of the world except for Europe, and even the North American section only had material on American Indians. Clearly, this shows how the rest of the world has been reduced to the Other, in contradistinction to the White Caucasian Male. Without having a section on the Ethnology of Europeans and Americans, as well as banal platitudes about how we are all one big happy family, they are just perpetuating racial stereotypes and cliches. How loathsome!


Shoarma Nefertiri
I find it sad that they've defamed her name and image so


Canal


'Red Hot Pussy' - The 'Bear-Cat Alliance'
This store sold Bad Taste Bears!


Canal

Leiden is like Utrecht, but with nicer canals and more level pavements.


Archeologisch centrum


Hooglandse Kerk


Archway to Burcht (Castle mound in the city)


Burcht entrance


In the Burcht


View from the ramparts


View down the hill


Coats of Arms


View up the hill


More Coats of Arms


CLOSED. What a pity!!!