Stuff. Things.
Wednesday
I went out to dinner with one of my classmates (Clayton), his labmate (TJ), and his wife (Kate). Another classmate (Derek) would have gone but was busy doing something else.
I dressed up nicely, wearing my sequined koi top, some blackish pants, heels, my peacock jacket, and green and purple earring, rings, bracelet, and necklace. I was overdressed.
We ended up going to Aladdin's Café, which is in the same chain as the one where a cockroach ran over my mother's foot and they got my parents' orders wrong. She ordered chicken, and they gave her beef. When she pointed this out, the server asked, "What, you don't like beef?"
So I was not thrilled to go to another restaurant in the same chain. That, and they claim to be "authentic'" and then make up stupid names like "Raja dip" and "Genie dip" when I know that there are proper names for these dips. If they want to be chintzy for the Americans, fine, but don't claim to be authentic, then.
I ordered the lamb kebabs, which supposedly came with pita bread. No pita bread ever materialised. Everyone else seemed absolutely thrilled with their meals, though. I also ended up wondering if everyone else was a vegetarian, given their orders, which made my order of lamb rather uncomfortable.
Then the server bungled splitting the cheque.
However, actually getting to talk with and interact with people face to face was pretty awesome, so the dinner was worth it.
Thursday
I taught myself the basis of MATLAB Symbolic Toolbox, which was a lot of fun and quite gratifying. I had the eerie feeling of, "Where has this been all my life?" It is beautiful and makes life much easier. I wish that I had known about it sooner!
Then, feeling relatively good about my homework situation, I decided that I would indeed go to a comedy presentation about some comics. At the start of the day, I didn't think I would have time to attend. However, as the presentation was coming up, I was stuck on a part, so I e-mailed my TA and my professor, and I headed off for some laughs.
I ended up winning a book that normally cost $12.00. Good thing I went! :D There were at least a hundred people there, probably a lot more, and there were only five winners. Weirdly, four out of five winners were female, even though the audience was at least 75% male, if not more.
Also, laughter is good for me.
In addition, I boiled some gemstone potatoes with a bit of oregano and garlic. I really just wanted some purple potatoes, but I have tried several different grocery stores here, and no one seems to sell just purple potatoes, only mixtures. Of course, the yellow fingerlings were the most numerous, followed by the redskin fingerlings, and my beloved purple fingerlings were the least numerous. However, I like yellow and redskin potatoes, too, just not as much as I like purple potatoes.
Friday
I am a GTA for a lab class. So I have to set up stuff. The equipment is usually old, broken, and missing.
Having to work with rusted pumps made me glad I have up to date tetanus shots. (I had to get those for a summer internship.) o_O
I was also glad that my shoes are machine washable and black, because the water went everywhere.
GTAs. Setting up crazy pump systems so the students don't have to.
(No, really, last year, the students had to set up their own pump systems and splooshed water everywhere, I am told.) However, one of the flow meters was mysteriously missing, and we don't have spares and don't have time to order an extra. So one team will have to leave early and one will have to come late in the larger lab sessions. Sigh.
Saturday
I went to the Farmers Market and did acquire delicious edibles.
Top Row
- Lamb's quarters. Supposedly like spinach, but with more vitamins? I just bought it because it was weird, and I have never had it. I only bought a little, in case I am allergic to it.
- Arugula. I bought it because I wanted some arugula, dangit. It's tasty. Also, it reminds me of Greece. <3
Top Middle Row
- Mesclun salad mix. It is organic and stuff, but I really just bought it because I wanted salad.
- Nameko mushrooms. Organic. That box was $4. A small box was $2.50. In a grocery store, the exact same small box from the exact same farm would cost $5.90. :v
Bottom Middle Row
- Six duck eggs. Organic. a) I heard duck eggs are delicious and b) the grocery store is bad about not selling small amount of eggs, so six is a nice amount of eggs for me to have. Comparing duck eggs to chicken eggs, they're honestly pretty similar. Higher in a lot of random vitamins but not all of them. Noticeably higher in monounsaturated fat, though, which is cool. As far as fats go, monounsaturated > polyunsaturated > saturated > trans fat.
- Goat ribs. I really wanted to get some goat stew meat and make goat vindaloo, as another grad student suggested, but they were sold out of goat stew meat. So, instead, I am going to glaze the goat ribs with red currant jelly for dinner tomorrow. Next time, I will get to the market earlier and try to buy some stew meat before they sell it all!
Bottom Row
- Patak's Vindaloo curry paste. If I ever do manage to buy some goat stew meat, I'll be able to make goat vindaloo with this, as that grad student suggested. I bought it at a British import store, not far from the farmers market.
- Hero red currant jelly. This was a downright pain to buy. I finished my breakfast. I knew that, in an hour, a store would open that sold exactly the kind of red currant jelly that I wanted. However, I vaguely recalled that Ye Generic Grocery Store carried Hero products, so I decided to check there, because it might save time. They do sell Hero products. Just not red currant jelly. They did sell a red currant jelly, but it had high fructose corn syrup in it. They also sold a four red fruits jelly, but I really just wanted red currant. So I tried Ye Discount Grocery, because it sometimes has weirdly cool items. No dice. I tried Ye Farmers Co-op Grocery Store. No dice. Belatedly, I realised that I had not checked the foofoo health departments at Ye Generic Grocery Store or Ye Discount Grocery Store for red currant jelly. By then, the place that I knew sold Hero red currant jelly was open, so I just went right there. If I had just stayed put for an hour and waited for the store to open, I would have saved myself so much trouble! The European import store, in fact, had two brands of red currant jelly that had red currants as the first ingredient and did not contain any Primus-blasted high fructose corn syrup. However, the Hero red currant jelly contains seeds, and I like seeds in my jelly, and it was also cheaper. Win. (The British import store also sold red currant jelly, but it was much more expensive, did not contain seeds, and had sugar as the first ingredient, so forget that.)
For breakfast, I had this delicious French toast with whipped cream, walnuts, strawberries, and maple syrup at an Italian restaurant. I just walked there from the farmers market. (The red currant ordeal was after breakfast.)
For lunch, I decided to fry up a nice duck egg. Duck eggs seem to have a somewhat thicker shell than chicken eggs and are much more variable in size. Also, their eggs are mottled and come in pastel colours. Cracking it open took two good whacks against the side of a bowl. The egg 'white' was a pale, pale pink, and the egg yolk was a bold, vibrant, sunny yellow-orange. Transformer fans would complain and call it neon and Playskool, seething about how G1 chicken eggs have much more subdued coloured yolks than these Armada duck eggs. The photograph does not do it justice.
I fried it up and put it on a bed of arugula, then garnished it with a Sunkist moro blood orange. Delicious.
I went out to dinner with one of my classmates (Clayton), his labmate (TJ), and his wife (Kate). Another classmate (Derek) would have gone but was busy doing something else.
I dressed up nicely, wearing my sequined koi top, some blackish pants, heels, my peacock jacket, and green and purple earring, rings, bracelet, and necklace. I was overdressed.
We ended up going to Aladdin's Café, which is in the same chain as the one where a cockroach ran over my mother's foot and they got my parents' orders wrong. She ordered chicken, and they gave her beef. When she pointed this out, the server asked, "What, you don't like beef?"
So I was not thrilled to go to another restaurant in the same chain. That, and they claim to be "authentic'" and then make up stupid names like "Raja dip" and "Genie dip" when I know that there are proper names for these dips. If they want to be chintzy for the Americans, fine, but don't claim to be authentic, then.
I ordered the lamb kebabs, which supposedly came with pita bread. No pita bread ever materialised. Everyone else seemed absolutely thrilled with their meals, though. I also ended up wondering if everyone else was a vegetarian, given their orders, which made my order of lamb rather uncomfortable.
Then the server bungled splitting the cheque.
However, actually getting to talk with and interact with people face to face was pretty awesome, so the dinner was worth it.
Thursday
I taught myself the basis of MATLAB Symbolic Toolbox, which was a lot of fun and quite gratifying. I had the eerie feeling of, "Where has this been all my life?" It is beautiful and makes life much easier. I wish that I had known about it sooner!
Then, feeling relatively good about my homework situation, I decided that I would indeed go to a comedy presentation about some comics. At the start of the day, I didn't think I would have time to attend. However, as the presentation was coming up, I was stuck on a part, so I e-mailed my TA and my professor, and I headed off for some laughs.
I ended up winning a book that normally cost $12.00. Good thing I went! :D There were at least a hundred people there, probably a lot more, and there were only five winners. Weirdly, four out of five winners were female, even though the audience was at least 75% male, if not more.
Also, laughter is good for me.
In addition, I boiled some gemstone potatoes with a bit of oregano and garlic. I really just wanted some purple potatoes, but I have tried several different grocery stores here, and no one seems to sell just purple potatoes, only mixtures. Of course, the yellow fingerlings were the most numerous, followed by the redskin fingerlings, and my beloved purple fingerlings were the least numerous. However, I like yellow and redskin potatoes, too, just not as much as I like purple potatoes.
Friday
I am a GTA for a lab class. So I have to set up stuff. The equipment is usually old, broken, and missing.
Having to work with rusted pumps made me glad I have up to date tetanus shots. (I had to get those for a summer internship.) o_O
I was also glad that my shoes are machine washable and black, because the water went everywhere.
GTAs. Setting up crazy pump systems so the students don't have to.
(No, really, last year, the students had to set up their own pump systems and splooshed water everywhere, I am told.) However, one of the flow meters was mysteriously missing, and we don't have spares and don't have time to order an extra. So one team will have to leave early and one will have to come late in the larger lab sessions. Sigh.
Saturday
I went to the Farmers Market and did acquire delicious edibles.
Top Row
- Lamb's quarters. Supposedly like spinach, but with more vitamins? I just bought it because it was weird, and I have never had it. I only bought a little, in case I am allergic to it.
- Arugula. I bought it because I wanted some arugula, dangit. It's tasty. Also, it reminds me of Greece. <3
Top Middle Row
- Mesclun salad mix. It is organic and stuff, but I really just bought it because I wanted salad.
- Nameko mushrooms. Organic. That box was $4. A small box was $2.50. In a grocery store, the exact same small box from the exact same farm would cost $5.90. :v
Bottom Middle Row
- Six duck eggs. Organic. a) I heard duck eggs are delicious and b) the grocery store is bad about not selling small amount of eggs, so six is a nice amount of eggs for me to have. Comparing duck eggs to chicken eggs, they're honestly pretty similar. Higher in a lot of random vitamins but not all of them. Noticeably higher in monounsaturated fat, though, which is cool. As far as fats go, monounsaturated > polyunsaturated > saturated > trans fat.
- Goat ribs. I really wanted to get some goat stew meat and make goat vindaloo, as another grad student suggested, but they were sold out of goat stew meat. So, instead, I am going to glaze the goat ribs with red currant jelly for dinner tomorrow. Next time, I will get to the market earlier and try to buy some stew meat before they sell it all!
Bottom Row
- Patak's Vindaloo curry paste. If I ever do manage to buy some goat stew meat, I'll be able to make goat vindaloo with this, as that grad student suggested. I bought it at a British import store, not far from the farmers market.
- Hero red currant jelly. This was a downright pain to buy. I finished my breakfast. I knew that, in an hour, a store would open that sold exactly the kind of red currant jelly that I wanted. However, I vaguely recalled that Ye Generic Grocery Store carried Hero products, so I decided to check there, because it might save time. They do sell Hero products. Just not red currant jelly. They did sell a red currant jelly, but it had high fructose corn syrup in it. They also sold a four red fruits jelly, but I really just wanted red currant. So I tried Ye Discount Grocery, because it sometimes has weirdly cool items. No dice. I tried Ye Farmers Co-op Grocery Store. No dice. Belatedly, I realised that I had not checked the foofoo health departments at Ye Generic Grocery Store or Ye Discount Grocery Store for red currant jelly. By then, the place that I knew sold Hero red currant jelly was open, so I just went right there. If I had just stayed put for an hour and waited for the store to open, I would have saved myself so much trouble! The European import store, in fact, had two brands of red currant jelly that had red currants as the first ingredient and did not contain any Primus-blasted high fructose corn syrup. However, the Hero red currant jelly contains seeds, and I like seeds in my jelly, and it was also cheaper. Win. (The British import store also sold red currant jelly, but it was much more expensive, did not contain seeds, and had sugar as the first ingredient, so forget that.)
For breakfast, I had this delicious French toast with whipped cream, walnuts, strawberries, and maple syrup at an Italian restaurant. I just walked there from the farmers market. (The red currant ordeal was after breakfast.)
For lunch, I decided to fry up a nice duck egg. Duck eggs seem to have a somewhat thicker shell than chicken eggs and are much more variable in size. Also, their eggs are mottled and come in pastel colours. Cracking it open took two good whacks against the side of a bowl. The egg 'white' was a pale, pale pink, and the egg yolk was a bold, vibrant, sunny yellow-orange. Transformer fans would complain and call it neon and Playskool, seething about how G1 chicken eggs have much more subdued coloured yolks than these Armada duck eggs. The photograph does not do it justice.
I fried it up and put it on a bed of arugula, then garnished it with a Sunkist moro blood orange. Delicious.