Anyway, moving on to day 9, it served as another highlight on my trip to Amsterdam, for I became closer to becoming the authentic Amsterdammer, with my very own bicycle! Well the day started with me waking up at 9 despite the fact that I had no lessons, I also took the time to finish the last bit of the previous entry you would probably have already read.
Travelled to Seb's house to prepare breakfast since all of them were still having lessons. I was beginning to feel like some nanny or caretaker, or even a housewife who prepares the meal for the children in school. Lol, not that I'm complaining but I really find cooking an excellent way to spend my time. Unfortunately, the stove wasn't very co-operative and I was not quite done when the rest returned from school. However, we did have brunch which was spaghetti/macaroni with pasta sauce. I would like to take this time to briefly describe the whole process of my cooking, you may treat it as another special edition of 'Cooking with GH today', which will very likely make many more appearances in the future too! =P
Like a carpenter with his tools, a chef needs his ingredients. On this day, the chef in typical forgetful style forgets his camera (its the second time in four days that this has happened) so is forced to resort to using his iPhone camera, which is fairly decent for the task of capturing the things that go into his spaghetti.
In my spaghetti, there is pasta sauce, bacon, sauage, mushroom, prawns and crab sticks. Don't ask me why that last ingredient is in there but I just had a sudden craving for crab stick at that time and I didn't care if it wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. The rule with cooking is that if you think something can go into a dish, and it will not ruin the taste of it, just do it. It could also be classified as a wannabe/pseudo seafood pasta.
On top of the pasta sauce which is pretty cheap for a 700ml bottle (at 0.90 Euros or S$1.80),
I also managed to get some cheap and nice spices,
Oregano and rosemary, the foundation of pasta sauces or western dishes. They taste superb on grilled or roasted meat as well.
The crab sticks which are like very expensive, well any form of seafood is expensive here in Amsterdam. I found this cheap alternative.
Frozen peeled prawns which go for 2.30 Euros (S$4.60) which contains around 25 prawns. Though frozen, they taste very sweet for prawns that even fresh prawns cannot match up too. This is very surprising and I actually like them more than the prawns I eat back at home.
Another poor man's food in the form of diced bacon. S$1.70 for a pack of about 200g. Very sweet-tasting smell that has worked wonders for my fried rice.
Sasauges in brine. Its like chicken franks we find so easily in stalls and supermarkets in Singapore, but these are slightly longer and can be eaten right out from the can.
I was also having a craving for macaroni which prompted me to buy it and cook with pasta sauce. All I can say is that the packaging deceived me into thinking that the macaroni were big pieces.
I was horrified when I saw what was in the box. The actual size as compared to a 10-cent coin.
Needless to say, it wouldn't have been alot, or tasted nice with pasta sauce, so I cooked more spaghetti as well.
Since I already had the pasta sauce already, cooking pasta is a really simple task of cooking the spaghetti and macaroni in boiling water till they turn soft. In another pan, fry some onions till they turn golden brown and give off the typical fragrance fried onions should give, add in the bacon till you get the smell of bacon overwhelming the room, throw in the mushrooms and the sasauges, the pasta sauce, the spices and the crab sticks, get it to boil and serve with the already-cooked pasta and there you go! Its ready in less than 10 minutes and it is filling!
Okay so that was it for brunch, and soon after that, we headed out to the student information centre at Spui where there was going to be a bicycle sale. By the time we reached the place, there were a good 50 to 60 people waiting in the area for something to happen. Soon after, the person in-charged told us that anyone who wanted to get a bike would have to fill a form, and they would conduct a lottery to see who would be able to buy a bike. Apparently, according to him everyone would get a bike, but it was just a matter of who will get it first. Since the bicycles came in batches, he called out the first 25 numbers, out of which Weiliang, Meiyee and Seb were in, and chose their bikes.
Bev and I waited for the second batch to arrive, and thankfully I was the 5th or 6th person to be called in this second batch. I went out to the area where the bikes were parked and I saw this nice bike which had handbrakes, gears and a decent bike rack. While I didn't see any orange bicycle, which I wanted real badly, I guess this was a nice one and I settled for it. Again, I was without my camera so I will post pictures of it again once I get hold of it from cameras of the rest. Bev didn't get a bike from the sale as all the bikes there were too high for her not-so-tall frame, but they had recce at a bike shop the previous day and found a smaller bike which she's comfortable in. We spent the first half an hour, at the historic 1430 hours of 5th February 2009 cycling in Amsterdam! Wow, I just have to say that cycling around in Amsterdam feels nothing like a leisure cycle in Singapore. Here, there are cycling routes every where, bicycles are more abundant than cars (could you name me any capital city which actually has bikes outnumbering cars? ok I can only think of Bejing, but still..) and all of a sudden, there are alot of motorcar rules that apply to bicycling as well!
For instance, to turn left or right, you have to put up the respective hand for 2-3 seconds so that cyclists behind you know you are going to turn and not crash into you if you try to turn. You have to keep right so people can overtake you on the left. And like cars travelling straight, you have to give way to cyclists going straight if you are going to turn. I learnt this the hard way and I will talk more about it later.
It was just so fun and interesting cycling around, instead of previously walking. Now everything seems closer than it was before! We went to a nearby marketplace to get our locks, which cost almost S$30 for my bike, but its a good investment so I won't have to buy a new bike if mine gets stolen because I didn't want to spend money on good locks.
We took some nice pictures at the park near the marketplace as well, which I will also post up in due time. At the market place, Seb, Weiliang and I were about to buy a 15 Euro rice cooker which would have made cooking rice simple for us, when I came across this multipan near the counter just when we were about to pay.
This multipan deserves a special mention, as for 2.50 Euros more, it is an electric stove which has 5 adjustable temperature settings, from 100 degrees to 250 degrees. Its very big and cooks my rice in under 15 minutes! We tried cooking curry with it and it is an amazing timesaver with my curry ready for serving in half an hour! I am very thankful for this purchase and it will go a long way in curbing hunger with the great deal of time we can save. More pictures soon!
Of course, dinner was the curry as I had mentioned, and the night ended quite early since I decided to sleep my fill till friday morning.
Day 10
And sleep was the only thing I did for 12 hours starting 10pm on day 9. Woke up at half past 10 (gosh I am starting to follow europeans with all of their 'half past six, a quarter to eight or five minutes to nine, instead of the commonly used 230, 515 Singapore style) to cycle over to Seb's place for breakfast, and then going to the same marketplace we bought the multipan to see what a Dutch market was like in the morning.
It was the first time in days we saw the sun (it had either been raining either water or sleet, or snowing for the past 3 days) and it was so bright it actually felt warm! It certainly didn't feel like 6 degrees. Still having the sun shine brightly on yourself while you don't sweat a bit feels nothing short of wonderful.
The road reflected much of the sunlight that it was pretty scenic.
The market place was another amazing place. Its just so different from the ones in Singapore since everything is outdoor and the way they place their wares are just like the ones I used to see in picturebooks as a kid. That kind of fuifillment is something I guess only weirdos like myself will appreciate. Marketplaces beat shopping centres, NTUCs, cold storages, Giants anytime.
They have outdoor bread vehicles like the one you see here! All the freshly baked breads from the oven in the van (yes oven in a van how cool is that!) are placed on sale right in front of the van. Nothing like a loaf of freshly baked bread to be eaten on its own. I also realised that the Dutch don't get their fresh supplies of seafood like what we have in Singapore. Most of the seafood are either frozen solid and sold in packs, or are already cooked/processed beforehand. The most common kind of fresh seafood would probably be like salmon, salmon and more salmon. So seafood lovers either go on a diet here or prepare to fork out your usually un-usable 100, 200 Euro bills for your fix of ocean catches.
In another shop nearby we found pork ribs that will make us some really nice bak kut teh! Pork is another rarity here in the Netherlands. We see very limited selection of pork, either porkchop pieces of pork fillet or small pieces of pork belly. All the minced meat sold in supermarkets are usually called 'half om half' (yes om is the dutch word for on) which is a mix of beef and pork. Beef is the most common meat in the Netherlands and chicken would probably rank second. However, given the cosmopolitian nature of Amsterdam, we easily found shops in the marketplace selling foodstuff from all over the world, like from India and even Africa. One more reason why I haven't felt homesick at all in my first 10 days here.
Lunch was another cooking with fried rice, fish fingers which I bought at Albert the previous day, yes frozen fish fingers which are tasteless when eaten on its own, but decent with our own chilli sauces. The thing is that its fish and its cheap! S$1.60 for 10 fish fingers, literally the size of my middle finger, probably longer and slightly fatter. Also managed to whip up some frozen french beans and the remaining prawns from the previous day. I'm starting to suspect that the key to sweet tasting dishes actually lie in freezing them! Since both the prawns and french beans tasted reallllllly sweet and uber tasty. It helps that frozen food is also much cheaper than fresh ones. I will soon come up with a hypothesis and do a test that frozen food is actually equal or better than fresh food! hahahahaha.
I went back to my room after lunch thinking what was going to happen for the rest of the day. This was because over at my accomdation, Prins Henrikkade 189, we were supposed to have a running dinner, where residents would cook some dinner at their respective kitchens and other residents will go around different rooms and eat dinner, or what they had to offer. However, due to less than desirable response, it was changed into a potluck dinner with around an expected attendence of 15 people. Since I was going to cook something with a neighbour who I knew from my group at the ISN introduction, I decided to cycle over to Seb's place and get the multipan which will greatly aid my cooking.
However, sad to say that on my way there, I met what was also the first unpleasant thing in my stay thus far. (I am praying hard it will be the first and the last) While cycling out of my hostel, at the first traffic junction which I was to do a left turn to the street that leads to Seb's place, I crashed into an on-coming bicycle. It was a head on crash but it was not too great and we did not fall off the bike totally. Got a cut on the index finger and it bled quite a bit. This was only part of the unpleasant thing that happened in the afternoon, in the same journey there, as I was going to cycle to the opposite side of the road from where I was, my bicycle went onto the tram tracks, and since the wheels were pretty thin, they got right into the tram tracks when I maneuvered the bike a little as I was crossing the road. Needless to say the whole bike flipped and I was lucky to get my footing right before I crashed onto the track, and the on-coming tram was still 5 seconds away. (by the way the tram driver could break the tram pretty much like any ordinary vehicle and it was quite slow)
It was that instance I realised that cycling was not all about fun and convenience, but the dangers out there are real and I think I was lucky to learn 2 important lessons with just a cut and nothing more. Well now I know I must always wait for on-coming traffic to clear before I ride off, and I will cross tram tracks more carefully. I hope there are no other lessons I need to take away from cycling, wouldn't want any part of me to be left in Amsterdam, not in the museums or hospitals or whatever places! hahahaha.
With the unpleasant encounter I had with the bicycle, dinner was the opposite. I made it for the cooking with my partner Elle in her kitchen, and while I had previously wanted to cook my curry, the menu was changed to fried rice since I got the feedback from Bev and the rest that Europeans probably wouldn't be able to stomach the spicy curry. My fried rice was the bacon, sausage and eggs which have been wiped clean on the 2 ocassions I have cooked it here in Amsterdam. True enough, making its appearance together with my fanciful mulitpan, it proved pretty much a hit with everyone at the table. Of course, other dishes on the table deserved as much credit. There was very fragrant and chewy bread which was served with a garlicbread-like spread, a tasty and appeitising salad, a sweet vegetable curry, lagsagna as well as a potato soup. The participants for the dinner came from England, Denmark, Bangladesh, Germany, France, New Zealand, Malta, Slovakia and a couple more I couldn't remember, but yes another multi-racial interaction and I was certain everyone enjoyed themselves. To have my fried rice finished by everyone was ample justification that my cooking isn't just catered to local tastes! Yes the 'GH-plan-to-world-culinary-domination' is well within reach! *insert evil laugh*
The hosts of the dinner, or our resident assistants (RAs for short- they are full time students at UvA who live in the hostel, like how I stay in hall 13, they are like the jcrc members who run the place and take care of our welfare) made this nice drink/desert called shangreya which orginated from Spain. Made of a lot of fruit cocktails like peaches, pineapples and orange, as well as fresh orange and lemon slices, served together in a concoction of red wine and brown rum. Its quite sweet as an alcoholic booze, but the fruits soaked in alcohol was nonetheless an interesting way to eat fruits!
I thoroughly enjoyed the interaction with the people I live and see every now and then, and I look forward to more activities that they shall organise in the future! Heard there is going to be an ice-skating outing in a disco at the end of the month, as well as a hitch-hiking contest sometime soon. Hitch-hiking contest... How awesomely cool is that!?!
It's a wonderful time I had at the dinner, and a great way to end the first 10 days of my stay here in Amsterdam. I am amazed by this city everyday thus far and I hope to discover more new things about it as time goes by, I don't feel guilty that I haven't felt homesick, because I know this is worth everything that I am possibly giving up in Singapore in this period. To friends who have asked me about going for an exchange or have reservations about going, from what I have experienced in these 10 days, I say.. GO FOR IT! Its just going to awesome and nothing else, irregardless of where you may go. I am pretty damn sure this statement will not change come 14th July 2009.
Well its a super duper long post which I have worked on for the last 2 hours, (why do I not work this hard for my essays?) and I will be sleeping soon! Its a saturday morning over here, 11 minutes past 2 and we are going on a cycling trip around Amsterdam tomorrow! Sounds like more fun over the weekend. Will update again once I get the chance to. Guys in Singapore, have a great weekend too!
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