As you may or may not have realized Me Day Eve was a Tuesday. This means that my after-work-time involves ballroom dancing (or my new Afrikaans word of the day: langarm) followed, of course, by trivia.
Since I’m an idiot, I thought dance started an hour before it actually did, so I walked all the way across campus and had to kill an hour. I went to the library and decided to read a couple chapters of Long Walk to Freedom and came to the conclusion that Nelson Mandela is a really good writer and, despite the length of his autobiography, I think I could finish it relatively quickly...at least faster than As I Lay Dying (not that that’s saying much)
When I get to the building my dance lesson is in, the first thing I think is “wow they’re playing the music really loudly”. I go upstairs to the room and there’s a note on the door saying the lesson has been moved downstairs. That’s downstairs in the middle of the cafeteria. At 6 o’clock. In the middle of the cafeteria! Now, normally, I have few qualms about dancing in front of large crowds of people...we all remember the sokkie incident of 2009. The thing with this particular dance class is that, not unlike any dance class, there are more girls than boys. The instructor’s solution to this very common problem is not to have some of the girls do the boy parts, but to make the girls without partners dance behind a girl already dancing with a guy. That is, the girl who was already rejected by all the boys to the point where she is forced to dance alone (i.e. me), is also forced to creepily hover behind some poor couple in the hopes that eventually the guy will notice and pity dance with her. This isn’t so horrible in a classroom setting where everyone realizes that I’m doing what I’ve been told to do and it’s not an act of pathetic desperation. However, the rest of the people in the cafeteria, sitting around attempting to enjoy their dinner while Mambo No. 5 plays on repeat and a mass of people in front of them awkwardly dance with each other, do not know this. That is why I left.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
And I mean lime
I went to the rugby game last night and witnessed the destruction of a young man’s future. This poor, unfortunate soul could barely stand let alone walk and was clothed in not but a Borat-style, lime green “swimsuit”. If my parents are reading this and don’t know what that is...please, for your own sake, don’t Google it. I’m sure if this kid had been a little more lucid he would have been very embarrassed. It didn’t help the situation when people started taking pictures and the frat boys behind us started throwing empty beer cans at him. What started out as funny turned sad much too quickly. Other than that the game was pretty standard. Kurt Darren came out to sing a few sounds and the national anthem, and I came to the realization that he will be my future husband and serenade me to sleep with much too perky Afrikaans music every night and we’ll live happily ever after.
Oh and it was a close call, but we won the rugby game in the end. Meaning that we’ve won 100% of all Varsity Cups (ie. we’ve won the two they’ve had since it was created). Go Maties!
Oh and it was a close call, but we won the rugby game in the end. Meaning that we’ve won 100% of all Varsity Cups (ie. we’ve won the two they’ve had since it was created). Go Maties!
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Cutest Thing Since Sliced Bread
On Friday I went out with some friends from trivia night, which was super fun (despite the fact that, apparently, they are all lawyers). I learned, to my intense delight that the pub we go to for trivia, isn’t the only pub in Stellies that has a trivia night. This means that I could potentially go answer random questions with strangers for 3 nights of the week!!! I honestly don’t think life could get much better than this (yes I do, if they had Tim Horton’s and I had friends to play Trivial Pursuit with in it) and I most certainly don’t know how I lived before this. I could legitimately move to SA for this reason alone.
As fun as Friday night was I had to be in bed by 10 (which ended up being closer to 11:30) to get my much needed somehow never successful beauty rest due to the fact that I had to get up at 6 Saturday morning. Yes, morning. Supervisor’s son and a friend were going diving for crayfish, so my officemate (OM) and I tagged along thinking we could chill on a sandy beach while they dove. However, getting to the specific diving spot they wanted required an hour long hike on a rocky beach (which was fantastic since I had initially wanted to go on a hike) and then sitting and waiting for them on more rocks. The latter was less fantastic. When we gave up and decided to lug all of their stuff to the sandy area so we could sit comfortably, all we received were complaints because now they’d have to rinse their equipment ‘cause it got all sandy. I know, how could we be so inconsiderate...I did have a lot of fun though :)
Saturday evening I participated in Earth Hour and I hope all of you did, too or we can’t be friends anymore. Then I spent a good three hours talking with OM’s boyfriend and best friend over skype and came to the following conclusion: Belgians are a wonderful people who like pigs and are almost as pretentious about their beer as Canadians.
Then today I spent cooking various things involving rice as outlined below in a sample menu:
Breakfast: vegetable fried rice
Lunch: tuna and rice casserole
Dinner: tomato and balsamic vinegar rice salad with leftover tuna and rice casserole
Tomorrow’s Breakfast: more vegetable fried rice
Tomorrow’s Lunch: still more tomato and balsamic vinegar rice salad
Tomorrow’s Dinner: I think you get the idea.
In between this rice cooking I spent the day lying on the grass drinking coffee and reading...aren’t I just the cutest thing since sliced bread. I finally finished As I Lay Dying, so yay!!!! Took me long enough...
As fun as Friday night was I had to be in bed by 10 (which ended up being closer to 11:30) to get my much needed somehow never successful beauty rest due to the fact that I had to get up at 6 Saturday morning. Yes, morning. Supervisor’s son and a friend were going diving for crayfish, so my officemate (OM) and I tagged along thinking we could chill on a sandy beach while they dove. However, getting to the specific diving spot they wanted required an hour long hike on a rocky beach (which was fantastic since I had initially wanted to go on a hike) and then sitting and waiting for them on more rocks. The latter was less fantastic. When we gave up and decided to lug all of their stuff to the sandy area so we could sit comfortably, all we received were complaints because now they’d have to rinse their equipment ‘cause it got all sandy. I know, how could we be so inconsiderate...I did have a lot of fun though :)
Saturday evening I participated in Earth Hour and I hope all of you did, too or we can’t be friends anymore. Then I spent a good three hours talking with OM’s boyfriend and best friend over skype and came to the following conclusion: Belgians are a wonderful people who like pigs and are almost as pretentious about their beer as Canadians.
Then today I spent cooking various things involving rice as outlined below in a sample menu:
Breakfast: vegetable fried rice
Lunch: tuna and rice casserole
Dinner: tomato and balsamic vinegar rice salad with leftover tuna and rice casserole
Tomorrow’s Breakfast: more vegetable fried rice
Tomorrow’s Lunch: still more tomato and balsamic vinegar rice salad
Tomorrow’s Dinner: I think you get the idea.
In between this rice cooking I spent the day lying on the grass drinking coffee and reading...aren’t I just the cutest thing since sliced bread. I finally finished As I Lay Dying, so yay!!!! Took me long enough...
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Sadness
I almost forgot to tell you. Someone stole my beaver at the IFE. Who goes around stealing people's cartoon beavers?!?! Horrible, horrible people that's who...saddest moment of my life...
International Food
I don’t know what feat of mathematics had me convinced that I needed 7 kilos of dry rice to make 200 100mL samples. Let me try a reenactment:
1 cup of dry rice makes 4 cups (1000mL) of cooked rice, so each cup of dry rice should feed 10 people 100mL samples. 200 people divided by the 10/cup of dry rice means I need 20 cups of dry rice or just under 7 kilos (3 cups to a kilo).
Now somebody please tell me where I went so horribly wrong that when I got home last night I had 5 pots of rice to contend with...
I had got off work later than I intended due to an unexpected work load 15min before I had planned to leave...unfortunate. So when I got home I had to run around borrowing pots and elements from people as I only had 1 of the former and 2 of the latter. I scrambled together 5 pots and my cooking partner had another two. The elements I borrowed, however, were scattered all around the building requiring me to run up and down floors checking on 5 different pots of rice in various rooms to prevent burning and boiling over, and occasionally running to the other building to check on how my cooking partner was doing. It got to the point where my fellow Canadian said to pick two more pots that were almost done and stop cooking the rest of them. This resulted in my apartment being covered in 5 pots of half cooked rice. To my extreme pleasure by the time I got home at 10, they had finished cooking them selves and I didn’t have to worry about throwing out 5 pots of half cooked rice!
My fellow Canadian had about as relaxing an evening as I did in his attempt to obtain and cook the fish. We decided that fresh fish was a necessity, so he had to drive out to get it, then de-scale, gut, and de-bone it. All of which is easier said than done if all you have is a little paring knife.
I would say we could’ve benefited from a little more planning, but the food was made and enjoyed. Now I just have to deal with all this rice...ideas?
1 cup of dry rice makes 4 cups (1000mL) of cooked rice, so each cup of dry rice should feed 10 people 100mL samples. 200 people divided by the 10/cup of dry rice means I need 20 cups of dry rice or just under 7 kilos (3 cups to a kilo).
Now somebody please tell me where I went so horribly wrong that when I got home last night I had 5 pots of rice to contend with...
I had got off work later than I intended due to an unexpected work load 15min before I had planned to leave...unfortunate. So when I got home I had to run around borrowing pots and elements from people as I only had 1 of the former and 2 of the latter. I scrambled together 5 pots and my cooking partner had another two. The elements I borrowed, however, were scattered all around the building requiring me to run up and down floors checking on 5 different pots of rice in various rooms to prevent burning and boiling over, and occasionally running to the other building to check on how my cooking partner was doing. It got to the point where my fellow Canadian said to pick two more pots that were almost done and stop cooking the rest of them. This resulted in my apartment being covered in 5 pots of half cooked rice. To my extreme pleasure by the time I got home at 10, they had finished cooking them selves and I didn’t have to worry about throwing out 5 pots of half cooked rice!
My fellow Canadian had about as relaxing an evening as I did in his attempt to obtain and cook the fish. We decided that fresh fish was a necessity, so he had to drive out to get it, then de-scale, gut, and de-bone it. All of which is easier said than done if all you have is a little paring knife.
I would say we could’ve benefited from a little more planning, but the food was made and enjoyed. Now I just have to deal with all this rice...ideas?
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Rice-matics
I went to the grocery store today to stock up on rice for the International Food Event, but I made the mistake of not calculating how much we would need before getting to the store. It didn’t help that for some reason doing math in my head was just not working out for me. So I ended up sitting on the floor of the grains aisle surrounded by all different kinds of rice counting on my fingers.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Missing Sockeye and Cheese Curds
This is much harder to update this blog now that I have, as the kids say, irl (or "in real life") friends and am less desperate for people to listen to me ;) But I’ll try to do better and I know you all still love me.
Now I know you have all been waiting with baited breath to find out if my team won the potijkos competition? I hate to break all your hearts, but unfortunately we did not. I’m just going to blame drunk fire fighters for that one. They kept taking the mini-hose on all the chefs thereby killing the fire and causing distraction due to extreme anger and frustration. It’s good to know the city is in safe hands, hey? Anyway, our potjikos was absolutely delicious. Although I like to think that was all my doing, I can barely take any credit for cooking as all I did was hold a spoon and chop mushrooms…on separate occasions (the mushrooms were cut with a knife). We made an asian, chicken noodle type deal. I see why South Africans like potjikos though…it’s the same reason they like braais. They take so long to cook and get the fire just right that you spend most of the time drinking wine and socializing…kind of the perfect meal.
My next excitement of life is the International Food Event. I was originally going to make poutine for this because, really what’s more Canadian than cheese curds with gravy over fries…I’m inclined to say nothing, but bannock probably is…Anyway a fellow Canadian shot down this idea because to make poutine we would have to use baked, frozen fries, from powder gravy and some non-descript white cheese thereby making it not real poutine. Besides that’s really a Central Canada dish and we’re both from the West coast. So after hours of debate we settled on salmon and wild rice, unfortunately we have to settle for local salmon…it’s a little hard to get sockeye around here…mmm sockeye.
Last night, in preparation for the IFE I had an arts and crafts night with myself. I’m not going to lie, that was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I painted a flag and Doug Fir tree as well as making a little hippy beaver sidekick for us potentially named Mike from Canmore, but it’s still up for debate. I’ve never considered myself artistic, but the beaver turned out well…you can tell it’s a beaver and that’s really all I was going for. I even got together a bunch of Canadian music to showcase our country’s talent and came to the conclusion that most of what I listen to is Canadian. How patriotic am I?!? I’m just walking proof that the Canadian content law really works!
Finally, I came to the conclusion that all people should speak in their non-native languages by directly translating from their native tongue, that or without the use of verbs as both ways inflict the same level of hilarious confusion – This revelation brought to you by my new Belgian office mate.
Now I know you have all been waiting with baited breath to find out if my team won the potijkos competition? I hate to break all your hearts, but unfortunately we did not. I’m just going to blame drunk fire fighters for that one. They kept taking the mini-hose on all the chefs thereby killing the fire and causing distraction due to extreme anger and frustration. It’s good to know the city is in safe hands, hey? Anyway, our potjikos was absolutely delicious. Although I like to think that was all my doing, I can barely take any credit for cooking as all I did was hold a spoon and chop mushrooms…on separate occasions (the mushrooms were cut with a knife). We made an asian, chicken noodle type deal. I see why South Africans like potjikos though…it’s the same reason they like braais. They take so long to cook and get the fire just right that you spend most of the time drinking wine and socializing…kind of the perfect meal.
My next excitement of life is the International Food Event. I was originally going to make poutine for this because, really what’s more Canadian than cheese curds with gravy over fries…I’m inclined to say nothing, but bannock probably is…Anyway a fellow Canadian shot down this idea because to make poutine we would have to use baked, frozen fries, from powder gravy and some non-descript white cheese thereby making it not real poutine. Besides that’s really a Central Canada dish and we’re both from the West coast. So after hours of debate we settled on salmon and wild rice, unfortunately we have to settle for local salmon…it’s a little hard to get sockeye around here…mmm sockeye.
Last night, in preparation for the IFE I had an arts and crafts night with myself. I’m not going to lie, that was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I painted a flag and Doug Fir tree as well as making a little hippy beaver sidekick for us potentially named Mike from Canmore, but it’s still up for debate. I’ve never considered myself artistic, but the beaver turned out well…you can tell it’s a beaver and that’s really all I was going for. I even got together a bunch of Canadian music to showcase our country’s talent and came to the conclusion that most of what I listen to is Canadian. How patriotic am I?!? I’m just walking proof that the Canadian content law really works!
Finally, I came to the conclusion that all people should speak in their non-native languages by directly translating from their native tongue, that or without the use of verbs as both ways inflict the same level of hilarious confusion – This revelation brought to you by my new Belgian office mate.
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