I started this off with breakdancing robots, but screw it...MOTHRA MONDAY
FLIST. So I had a big post planned about Palin's resignation and Robert McNamara's death, but that'll have to wait.
I so rarely get to use my King Ghidorah icon. Below you will see why I'm using it today.
But first! I got sucked into watching the new season of America's Got Talent last week ( Read more... )
I so rarely get to use my King Ghidorah icon. Below you will see why I'm using it today.
But first! I got sucked into watching the new season of America's Got Talent last week ( Read more... )
Our Regular All-Dutch Dinner usually consists of a) meat b) potato and c) veggies, so... prepared differently, but pretty similar to the US, if with smaller meat portions than common over there. Which is completely irrelevant to you. Moving on!
Here in Amsterdam we have a lot of international food. Chinese restaurants are very common, as are Surinamese and Indonesian. I think there's a lot of Thai restaurants around as well, and supermarkets supply just about everything you need if you prefer to fix it yourself (with, again, Surinamese and Indonesian meals being very popular).
Honestly, as long as tourists are polite and try their best, hardly anyone cares if they speak Dutch or not. Everybody here speaks excellent English, and are usually only all-too-happy to help tourists. If you're just here on holiday, it'd be weird if you DID speak Dutch :)
I won't deny there are some bad feelings towards the US, but never towards individuals as far as I can tell - just the policies and mentality. Overall, we like you guys! My sister's US boyfriend has lived here for three years now and gets by perfectly.
In short: don't worry about being a blundering idiot American, because as long as you're not actually a blundering idiot, no one minds the American part *g*
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Oh, believe me, I know the Dutch are tres, tres cosmopolitan and sophisticated and that you all speak better English than I do and are generally all awfully cool people (like you!!). It's weird - I have no hangup about going places where I don't speak the language, but I have this intellectual glitch, this knee jerk cognitive flinch when I say to myself "self, go to Amsterdam already!" It's like I have this conception of the Dutch as being so awesome that to NOT speak your language is kind of an affront.
And yeah, I knew that Amsterdam had lots of Indonesian food - what with the history and all. Good to know that I can surf into grocery stores and stock up in Amsterdam the same way I can stock up here on Japanese, Cantonese, Tongan, and Basque delicacies at the corner store. But do you have umeboshi plums? They are the new staple of my diet! We can get umeboshi at corner convenience stores here in SF!
Sprinkles on bread. All my Dutch friends (and/or non-Dutch friends who have traveled to the Netherlands) tell me about the sprinkles. I picture hilarity every morning when people all across the Netherlands try to eat toast with sprinkles on top and sprinkles fall all over the place. Or is there some mysterious substance HOLDING the sprinkles to the toast?
Mmm, toast with chocolate shavings. Y'all are DECADENT, you know that?
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I truly and honestly have no idea what umeboshi plums even are - I'm dreadfully difficult with food! I'm sure you can get it here, but... probably not at regular convenience stores, no.
There is indeed a mysterious sticky substance, and it is called butter. We always put butter on our bread, both for nutritional reasons and to Make Things Stick. (We divide people into two categories: those who use butter even on Things That Already Stick, eg. chocolate paste, and those who... well, don't. I don't. It's unnatural and wrong, damn it!)
(And no, we don't put mayonaise on our bread. We save it all up for the fries!)
That said, the sprinkles still fall off. As a kid when I was at my grandmother's, she'd feed me bread with sprinkles and give me a little teaspoon afterwards that I'd use to scoop up all of the sprinkles that fell onto my plate so I could eat them separately.
Mmm, toast with chocolate shavings. Y'all are DECADENT, you know that?
And it's good, woman!
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You people eat mayonnaise? Goyim food! Feh!
We eat mayonnaise here, too. In theory. I mean, I see mayonnaise on the grocery store shelves, we have mayonnaise ads everywhere, but maybe it's because I don't live in the Midwest that I NEVER see anyone in SF eating mayonnaise. I did eat mayonnaise as a child, though, in macaroni salad and whatnot. At a certain point, though, mayonnaise became totally gross and disgusting to me, to the point that I find it repulsive the same way I find watching someone eat hard boiled eggs repulsive.
Maybe it's just that I don't like any foods that are white, and that pretty much rules out me going to Scandinavia, doesn't it? White fish, white sauce, white food, white food, white food!
Hmm. I should have thought of butter. Somehow, I like my vision of the Dutch collectively performing epic brinksmanship on the rest of the world every morning by being able to eat toast with sprinkles WITHOUT butter as the adhesive.
Umeboshi are Japanese plums that are dried and pickled. They're eaten everywhere in Japan, and in most major metropolitan areas in the U.S., you can find them in grocery stores. They're powerful antacids, so people use them both medicinally and as delicious food (mmm, so good with rice!). Plus, they have powerful antibacterial properties and are really, really good for you! Not to mention delicious - sour, salty, and sweet all at once.
You were out here last year? Wow, I did not know. What sushi restaurant was this? Can I brag now about how good our food is?
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I am deeply, deeply amused that mayonaise disgusts you so. I was similarly freaked out when I saw my US friends eat it on their sandwiches. That's just not right. It doesn't go with bread, damn it!
Somehow, I like my vision of the Dutch collectively performing epic brinksmanship on the rest of the world every morning by being able to eat toast with sprinkles WITHOUT butter as the adhesive.
I'm kind of digging this image, too. Maybe I'll need to tell all my foreign friends about this and see how long it takes before it spreads the world as FACT.
You were out here last year? Wow, I did not know.
I actually believe I mentioned it in your journal a few times! But yes, I was in SF for about two and a half weeks visiting my sister who was doing an internship there at the time. It was absolutely lovely. I also spent a bit of time up in San Rafael, as well as Sacramento.
What sushi restaurant was this? Can I brag now about how good our food is?
I absolutely don't remember - only that it was just south of Golden Gate Park. But yes, you absolutely can! Take pride in your San Francisco-ness!
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It'll be a little hard to pin down what sushi place you're talking about given that there are...probably five thousand sushi places just south of Golden Gate Park. *g*
I totally agree - mayonnaise on bread is wrong. But yes, Americans use mayonnaise primarily on sandwiches and as the stuff that holds chicken salad, potato salad, and macaroni salad together.
I am very amused that the wiki entry on fritessaus makes it clear that it is NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH FRY SAUCE, GOD FORBID.
You know, one thing I miss as a vegan: cinnamon toast. Toast with butter, cinnamon, and sugar. But that's why the Divine Construct created margarine!
And hey, where are you RPing nowadays? I've been meaning to ask you. And! And! Has your art been on television yet?! Isn't that coming up? (Forgive me, I'm behind on my flist.)
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You know, one thing I miss as a vegan: cinnamon toast. Toast with butter, cinnamon, and sugar. But that's why the Divine Construct created margarine!
Exactly! I'm not even vegan, and I love how many creative vegan alternatives there are to all kinds of food.
As for my RPing - I just had to leave the Nolanverse Batman game we talked about due to time constraints, but I'm still RPing at new-ish Firefly and Star Trek '09 games, all forum-based. They're a little quiet, but definitely fun.
And yes, the episode aired on Thursday night :) For my reactions and links, go here and here. There's currently an auction going on for my portrait which can be found here - it's currently at 450 euros and will end around this time tomorrow. Very exciting!
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That portrait is stunning. Girl, you can draw. And I see that someone named "jan.slagter" was the "hoogste bieder" (highest bidder, one presumes) at 500 Euros, amirite?
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You're totally correct. The fun thing: Jan Slagter is the big head honcho of the network that airs that TV series, Omroep MAX. Not necessarily the same guy, but it'd be a pretty darn big coincidence if not. I'd been hoping to maybe get an e-mail or something after the auction ended, but it's been two days since it ended, so I guess not. Oh well!
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