March 13th, day 45! I wanted to cook a lot more veges today! I had bought quite a lot of veges from the saturday market this morning! including half a kilo of towgay! can you believe my madness?? yes, half a kiloo! woohoo~
hahah, So, first off.. i heated some oil, spices, chilli paste and onions..
And then.. added in the veges! Together with water to soften them and distribute the heat evenly. Do try to immerse those parts that need softening, like the stems.
I stopped once most of the water had dried up. But you should stop before that. My towgays were overheated and too soft and flimsy. The stems of the broccolis weren't cooked enough. Depends on your preference, actually..
Next time, i will add the veges that need more softening before the others. yup! That should do it! And for those are wondering.. yes, i ate all those veges for 1 dinner :D
12th march, day 44 I really wanted to finish my lady's fingers. They have somehow managed to remain fresh for 2 weeks and i don't want to push them any longer! So.. I decided to FRY them! Together with a few friendly potatoes, of course.. We all need some company on the pan, don't we? Well I didn't want to add too much oil this time. So, i stir-fried them. Here are the steps i took: 1. I poured some oil and heated it. Added spices (whatever i had) and chilli paste/powder, salt, pepper 2. Andd added the 2 vegies! This is how it looked like after stirring a bit:
3. I then realised that potatoes might need a bit of water to soften..So, i added some water in the middle! and some yoghurt for taste too!
4. And i stopped when most of the water had boiled away~
11th march, day 43! Alrights.. It was time to say goodbye to everybody! Thank you to my coach Bob who guided me thorough my steps patiently!
And thank you to the ice-resurfacing machine which made the ice perfect before i set my skates on it:
And my friends in the ice-skating lesson! I only managed to get on of them on cam:
I might be meeting up with him later, since i have his number :D
And thank you to the other coach, J.selen! Though i wasn't his student, he took care of me and guided me along outside lesson hours.
And it was the last day of trainers on the rink. So, here are the crazy things that happened. 15 mins before the lesson ended, ppl started skating the otehr way round! hahah! This doesn't sound crazy, but it is a challenge to the pros who are not used to turning right! It seemed a bit weird to me too...
And... there were people running barefooted on the ice! Trust me! they went a few rounds! hahah!
And i timed myself again! I managed to complete 400m at 1min 25 secs. hahah, after this, my coach told me not to go that fast cos i tend to lose my technique. okayy.. it's videos time!
Here is a clip of me getting the ice off my blades before going for one round. And you can see some lessons going on when i'm at the other side of the track! Note the temp! 5degrees! brr!
And this one is a video of me speeding up and braking:
And this is me following those guys who ran barefooted on the track! Look!
And my last round on the track, at the ice-resurfacing machine came out :(
This time, the others managed to sneek in for free! hahah, thanks to me briefing fong chi abt the trick of waiting for the 2 counters to be empty before entering :D the ones without sports card even went to hide in the toilet! lol! After the initial 'briefing', we went to the small rink to skate!
KH and JH wanted to take the speed skates later! hahah, They finally did, after getting enough practice on the rink.
And..i asked one of my ice-skating lesson frens to take a group pic for us:
And it took ~15 mins for KH to get used to the speedskates. JH took a little longer. He seemed to be using a lot of energy and got pretty tired at the end. Azri got used to it pretty soon. An elderly man fell down at a turning and the fall resulted in internal bleeding in his head! Surprisingly, he was quite conscious after being helped out of the skating area, for abt 50m! And we took a few great videos as well! Here is a vid of me arriving to meet the other people:
And.. here is another video. This one is of Kai hee and Azri skating along the place with blod spots on the floor!
and lastly, here is a shot of me trying a stunt and falling down later...
The previous indian curry i made lasted me for 3 days!So, i wanted to make it again! There were also some left-over soaked dhal from the previous curry making attempt! This time, I'm gonna go though the steps that i did, so that others can try and follow along. You'll need oil, veges, spices (pepper, salt and any other spice that you may have. I used coriander powder), dhal soaked overnight, curry powder. I'm unsure of the amounts as of now. I don't really measure when i cook. But i have pics to help! Here are the veges, all diced up:
So, step 1: Add the dhal to water and let it boil for abt 25 mins. You should cut up your veges while this is happening.
step 2: Add some curry powder to the dhal. Top up more water if needed. And add in the veges! This is how mine looked just before adding in the veges!
I didn't add so many lady's finger this time cos I didn't want it to affect the texture of my curry, like it did the last time.
Step 3:Fry your spices in oil and add that to the curry! Mix and heat for 5 more mins and it's done :D Mine was almost over-flowing and was packed with veges! This is how it looked at the end though:
And as for the lady's fingers.. i fried them! MUAHAHAH!
Utrecht is another city within the Netherlands. There were 6 of us in this trip. Nicely paired up! Let me recall.. me, JH, FC, saba, Johnny, pedro. And this is the thing which chops our tics and validates them before entering the train. The tic normally applies for a particular point to another point and can be used anytime.
And our sporty-looking train arrived!
We found a candy shop in the train station. It had a giant ice-creamm!
Since it was saturday, there was a saturday market as well! We bought waffles there. One thing unique abt utrecht is that the city is centered around several main canals.
Our first stop was this cathedral with a tall tower. It was supposed to be the tallest tower in the city! And as you might have guessed it, we are gonna climb it! Here:
After getting our tics at the friendly VVV (tourist office), we joined a tour group up the tower. And we saw this room with GIANT bells in the midst of our climb:
And this is JH hanging for his dear life, on tt part of the bell that swings to hit the cone!
See how BIG that thing is!! And I took some videos at the top of the tower. I'll join them up and put them on youtube later. Anyway, saba and i saw this cat that jumped up on a tall structure with a plant on top! And it just stood there, waiting for us to take photo of it!
We then went on to explore the cathedral that was half-destroyed by some storm. It still looked great inside.
We walked around a bit more, trying to find an affordable place to eat. We finally ended up back at the station where the rest decided to have KFC. Mee.. I brought in an awesome californian veggi pizza from the new york pizza shop nearby:
And to top that, a meal deal from Albert Heijns supermarket! The meal deal is 4 euros and it has 2 sandwiches, a fruit(i got banana) and a 500ml packet of milk! It is kinda ex when you look at them as being S$8 but my meal ended up being equally as ex as others :D
We met up with Johnny's friend after lunch. We all gathered at this big museum (i forgot what it was called). We then split up. Me, saba and pedro went to the railway museum while the other 3 ppl, together with johnny's friend, went on to see the big museum and the miffy museum. We walked for abt 15 mins to the museum but didn't go in. It was too ex and was gonna close soon! We then went on to walk around the city somemore.
We then went to a music museum which was also closing at that time. We got chased out as we were looking at the shop inside. As we then walked along the canal, we came to a kebab shop. We went in and gave some rest to our tired legs :D After chit-chatting there for a while, we went to walk around more and met the rest at the train station for dinner!
And guess what! I managed to find the 7b cycling route that RUNS BY MY STEEET!
I managed to take this pic of the sunset while we were looking for a place for dinner!
Finally, we ended up at... another kebab restaurant! hahah! I had falafel this time. It came with some salad and broodjie! hahha! And it was called falafel vegetarich too! The last falafel i had was in biz canteen at NUS :P
Anyway we then walked around somemore and decided to call it a day as we took a train back home :D
4th march: After my lesson, i accompanied FC to go to the train station to enquire about prices for taking a train down to paris, utrecht, brugge and brussels. We were planning to go down to brussels on 6th, saturday. The both of us then shamelessly followed KH all the down to the IND just for their free coffee! hahah! It felt good to be watching a friend become what they call a citizen of Eindhoven though :D And I had an outline of a paper due by the end of today! I wanted to go ice-skating as well, since i found out that there were only going to be a few lessons after they close down the rink for spring and summer. Anyway, I had already found the articles and had a rough overview of what i'm gonna write on. I worked on it yesterday night. I only had 2 hours when i went back, before i had to go off for the ice-skating. There was a student's gathering at Vestide (the housing agent) as well. I wanted to attend it, but nah.. paper is more impt! So, i managed to finish up the intro and most of the body of the paper before going for ice-skating. I told myself that i would be stop skating at 9 instead of 10 to come back early and finish the paper. I had a fun time at the lesson. The coach was very good. He took the time to understand where i stand and what my mistakes are. He then tries his best to convey them to me in english, though his english isn't that good. He normally talks to the other students in dutch and then comes to attend to me in english :D Anyway, i came back early and yayy! I managed to finish up my paperr! Boy, my outline was abt 700+ words long! and my paper was supposed to be 1200 words? hahah! now i just have 500 words to write on.
5th march:
I'll be going to Utrecht the next day! :D haha, brussels plan was changed to utrecht. Not so exciting. But i shall reward myself for chionging my outline :D anyway, i finally got myself to mail vestide about the shower head. The one in my house was covered in some white stuff. And the pressure was low as well. And I also wanted a container for my utensils. Everyone else had one! I bought some milk and cereal too! I was gonna start eating cereals for breakfast! And i bought a calling card for calling back to s'pore as well. Well, i can call to anywhere but it lasts for 1000mins for s'pore. It was the best they had for s'pore and costs €6. Well, it's not like i talk much though.. I've only made 2 calls home till now! The first one for ~2mins and the second one for ~30mins to try to solve some prob tt my mom had with her laptop. hahah, PY is gonna think tt i'm bad to my parents again! And packing for utrecht was fast, since it was a day trip. So, i managed to get some rest :D
I MADE INDIAN CURRY TONIGHTTT!!! hahah! and guess what! It was EDIBLEE!! hahah! yup! Took me 1.5 hours though.. to cut the veges and all that. My mom had given me a indian sambar(curry) powder. But i hadn't been adventurous enough to try it! It came with a recipe. So, i just followed it. Here was my dinner for that day:
But this being my first time, i had forgotten about the potatoes and the red beans that i had. It was a bit late when i realised that and so, i managed to just put in one after i peeled it.
The amount i made was this one plus the curry on my plate. I have no idea how long those potatoes would survive on the shelf...
This time, I invited the SEP peeps to try out ice-skating. I had my ice-skating lesson from 630 to 745. The free skating starts at 8. JH had to drive the rest to the place as i didn't want to miss the lesson. I took a nice pic of the sunset on my way there:
they got there at about 730, but were stuck outside :( And they had to eventually pay to get in.
And while i had nice comfortable speedskates, they started with ugly blue skates. but i still think the ugly blue skates are better than the ones that the centre in S'pore rents out!
I think FC had skated before. So, she could balance and move around. JH was superb for an absolute beginner! He dared. He tried. Though he fell a lot of times, he could skate as fast as KH at the end of the session! Saba.. well.. he was cool on his skates :)hahah! I later exchanged my speedskates with him since both of us wanted to compare the 2 skates. But he didn't really like the speedskates. And I didn't like the normal ones too! We then went on to the 400m skating rink, nto which KH dared to step in with me. The rest felt too pressured. And i guess KH felt pressured too. I had the same feeling when i first went in! And.. time for group pics!
This marks my first month in Eindhoven! Seems like i've been here for several months ald! Anyway, a few of us met up last night to settle the money for the italy trip and have a short talk on future trips... And in the morning, I decided to join the rest for saturday market. It was drizzling slightly. And the great thing is that ppl here don't even seem to notice it! The market wasn't really great. Some stuff were cheap.. some were ex.. all the veges and bread were fresh though. I should come down soon to buy another bottle of bike oil. I bought a bell for my bike! 1euro only! ring! ring! hahah.. I then accompanied KH to get her lunch as i got my cereal bowl from Hema's. And we tried the coconutty Bounty sweet! That's abt it.. next day :P
This day was exciting! I went down early to the ice-skating rink and managed to borrow the skates! The lesson was great! I keep saying it was 4 hours but it started at 630 and ended at 8. The coach( bob) was friendly and spoke english just for me! Since i was a amatuer, he gave me one-to one-coaching! cool, right! And the place was open till 10. Although i was tired, i decided to keep on practicing till then to make full use of my moneyyy. And then, another coach came in and started to help me out! hahah! Dutch ppl are just so nice! Even though i wasn't his student, he looked after me till 10pm :) And instructed me and stuff. I really learnt a lot that day! And to add on to all these stuff, it was my first time trying out speed skates! It took me about 5 mins to get used to it cos it's difficult to lift my knees. My coach then taught me to slide sideways to move. And then..WOW! The skates were a lot faster than normal ones! At the end of the lesson, for the ~3+ hours that i was skating, I was making 1 round every 2-3 minutes or so, on the average. Cos the coach will into me to a new technique and ask me to practice it for several rounds before going on to another one. I should have done ~40 rounds in total that day! that's like... 16km ald! OMG! hahah! great day! no pics though!
And it was her birthday on 24th Feb. Johnny had projects and stuff that week, so i filled in to help out in the arrangements. Kai Hee and I met in the morning at Piazza. We managed to get the cake and the presents there! yippeee! hahah! The cake was great! look!
And then, we went over to woensel market place on kruistraat to get veges for cooking. And i got another packet of my awesome 'heat & eat' chikpea curry. And it was a wednesday! We had 1ZM40 test that day! We were supposed to read 3 readings and the test will be a MCQ on the contents of those readings! I went to the place early and started taking down notes on the readings for better remembrance. And later on, I thought the teat was quite easy..I think the test lasted for the first 45 mins or so.. Then, we had 3 presentations and Q&A sessions. The prof had appointed groups to present on topics replated to the readings. And he also appointed groups to ask critical questions! hahah! This module consists of about 7 or 8 such meetings, until every group presents! and we have a test at every meeting. It might sound difficult but it's wayyy easier than EE3001 back in Singapore. And i've gotta tell you this too: Studying with europeans is a lot less stressful than studying with asians!
anyway, after the lesson, KH and azri came over to my place to start cooking the curry. When it was 8pm, we went over to Fong Chi's place to meet the others! I loved it, cos everyone was there, waiting outside the house, as i planned! lovely! hahah, JH came down to open the door for us to let us in. And all of us neatly lined up outside the door to do out 'surprise!!' for her! Too bad, we forgot the lighters for the candles :( anyway, Johnny and Zaida made spanish omelette,
Jiang Heng made fried rice with his secret ingredients from China,
Kai Hee made her Japanese curry,
me made tamarind rice and heated up the chick pea curry.
Saba bought the cups and stuff and Azri was the cake boy! Yup! That's all for that night!
This day, i went to the ice-skating rink in the evening. I didn't manage to get there in time to rent the skates but the coach was excited to see me after my Italy trip! hahah, so he attached me to another guy who talked to me about the sport and the place and how the club operates and stuff. And later at 8, i rented my own skates and tried something new! I went onto the 400 m rink! yea! I kinda felt weird going in cos my skates were super slow ones (the skaters on it were all ZOOMING past in their speed skates) and yea.. I dun wanna be hogging them too. But this time, i saw that the coach gathers his ppl on the outside lane and uses that lane for instuctioning and practicing new stuff. So, i felt okayy to get in there. And since it was so huge, when i came back to the small rink, i foud that my speed increased! there were no disco light this night though :( I was very much looking forward to that. But the 400m rink is good enough to make me smile :) And i made a video of it too! I takes me ~2.5 mins to go around this thing. Slower than my running speed :(
Okayy.. i've been slacking in my blogging recently.. I'll just do up this post to cover the days till we took off to Utrecht. I dun have much to write about each day. I just wanna cover the more happening parts and life here is getting regularised :)
So, on 20th feb.. I arrived in my home, slept for a little while before washing up and going to the super market! hahah, cos the next day was sunday and the markets here are closed on sundays. I did my laundry too, washed both of my winter socks. And guess what happened on 21st feb!
21st feb: My frens were planning to go see the windmill! I wanted to follow them to show them the stuff i saw and also to check out the lake that i missed out. I also used the opportunity to test out my heat packs. Somehow, it seems that ppl who bring heatpacks to cold countries rarely use it. Well, i didn't want to bring them back to s'pore. So, i decided to open the one that is for shoes! It had an adhesive side to stick onto the front of the sole:
And it did keep my feet warm for the 6 hours that it promised :) Although its 37 degrees isn't too hot, i wouldn't recommend ppl to have prolonged direct skin contact with it. It still... well... kinda hot! hahah! KH got lost when we met up! Me and FC looked all around for her! it was super exciting!! The looking around part made it feel so fulfilling to find her in the end! Andd.. we saw the bulls and the foresty areas.. windmill... ducks/swans.. and it's pic time:
And the heart-shaped lake was closed though :( It was part of some theme park. Alrights! that's all for 21st feb!
And next up was... Fong Chi's birthdayy! hahah, I dun want to make this post too long. So, I'll do up a new post for that!
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And then.. added in the veges! Together with water to soften them and distribute the heat evenly. Do try to immerse those parts that need softening, like the stems. 
I stopped once most of the water had dried up. But you should stop before that. My towgays were overheated and too soft and flimsy. The stems of the broccolis weren't cooked enough. Depends on your preference, actually..
