Again the title needs some explanation but to do I first need to tell you something about this week.As you know by what I wrote last week I went back home to celebrate my birthday. It was nice it is always good to see your family and friends again. On Saturday I went out and about to buy new trousers. I thought I can pay this with my Scottish bankaccount only to find that the pin machine said in English try swiping your card and in Dutch please push the card in the bottom of the device. Ah well then use the Dutch again. The rest of the day consisted of eating cake a lot of cake and meeting friends and family. Sunday. The idea was to go mountain biking only the weather didn't agree. It was raining the whole morning and it didn't seem to stop. Given that I was home for only three days I didn't feel like spending half a day on cleaning my bike. The afternoon was spend celebrating the birthday of one of my cousins. Which meant eating even more cake. Monday. Of course on Saturday you're forgetting to buy things so I had to go out and about again to buy some other stuff. Like sportsshoes, cheese (Dutch cheese) and a bag of those tiny biscuits that we can only buy from September to December. That was actually the whole Monday the rest of the time was spend relaxing and doing as little as possible. Tuesday. The day of leaving again. It is weird staying at home and knowing that you need to leave again in a couple of day. Anyway. I had a lunch appointment with my boss. So my parents dropped me off at the company and then after lunch my boss dropped me off at the airport. Everything went well. The suitcase wasn't too heavy so I had time to spare when I arrived at the gate :). Thankfully I didn't have to cook in the evening so when I got back dinner was almost served. After dinner went for a quick shower and to pick up my bike. Wednesday. Had to go to uni in the early morning for classes. In the afternoon I went to an inaugural lecture. Which was about geology and energy consumption. Really interesting. About how our energy sources changed over the years and to get to the hard to reach places where there's oil or gas. Like I said really interesting. Thursday. Finally the lab was finished early so I had plenty of time to get home do some cooking and go to dancing. Friday. When I thought about getting a piece of my cheese this morning I found that someone had stole a bit. So I asked my flatmates who it was and if they liked. Also kindly proposed that they replaced it with another piece. In the evening there was a launch event from the postgrad society. We had a good turn out and it was great fun to do. One of the questions I remembered was about what wasn't invented in Scotland: haggis, the Australian national anthem, piano keys or insuline. I was going for either piano keys or insuline. It turned out that it was haggis. Saturday. First went to the Farmer's market to buy some roe deer and some haggis discs. Together with a partridge pie it made a great lunch. The roe deer is for a bit later. In the afternoon went out and about to arrange stuff for the evening. In the end I forgot to post a parcel anyway that needs to wait till Monday then. In the evening went out with Jess and some other friends for birthday drinks. It was the birthday of me (last Monday) and Hannah's flatmate. So asked politely if I could make use of that fact. Sunday. Went to Gullane for a hike towards North Berwick. Nice views and a nice guide.
The cheesethief hasn't come forward but I suspect we have large two legged mice. At least I hope they enjoy the cheese.
zondag 23 november 2014
zaterdag 15 november 2014
A weekend @ home
So the dutch message was written yesterday in the bus to the airport. This message is written today at home. What a difference a day makes. Anyway the week so far.
Monday. The robot we made has stage fright, when it had to preform it didn't want to. So we couldn't get the marks for one of our final performances. Anyway tough luck then and trying to fix everything for the competition.
Tuesday. I was cooking again. My idea of making goulash. I had two issues. One I didn't have to correct pan for the dish so I grabbed the biggest cooking pan that we had to make it in. The other was that I had bought two different types of meat. One was veal, the other beef. The difference in meats meant that the taste was even better.
Wednesday. A bit in a hurry. The plan was to go to a play called the kite runner. We (me and a friend) both read the book and loved it. Given that the play started at Wednesday and there was a possibility of doing the matinee one with a generous discount. We thought of doing that one instead of the evening one. So rushing back from HW to the city to be in time for buying the tickets. After a quick shower we went to the the play. And what a play it was. It made me remember most of the book and the actors were great. After the play we walked to a nice Italian restaurant for some really good pasta.
Thursday. Just a normal Thursday nothing special happened this time.
Friday. The day of my flight. After lunch I rushed back to my apartment got wet on the way and delivered my bike to the bikeshop for save keeping. Ran back to my apartment for a quick shower and change and on to the bus. The funny thing was that my suitcase only weighted 10 kg this time. That happens when you have nothing to carry only a backpack and some change of clothes. The flight went ok and the trip home was coming to an end after 3.5 hours of travel.
Monday. The robot we made has stage fright, when it had to preform it didn't want to. So we couldn't get the marks for one of our final performances. Anyway tough luck then and trying to fix everything for the competition.
Tuesday. I was cooking again. My idea of making goulash. I had two issues. One I didn't have to correct pan for the dish so I grabbed the biggest cooking pan that we had to make it in. The other was that I had bought two different types of meat. One was veal, the other beef. The difference in meats meant that the taste was even better.
Wednesday. A bit in a hurry. The plan was to go to a play called the kite runner. We (me and a friend) both read the book and loved it. Given that the play started at Wednesday and there was a possibility of doing the matinee one with a generous discount. We thought of doing that one instead of the evening one. So rushing back from HW to the city to be in time for buying the tickets. After a quick shower we went to the the play. And what a play it was. It made me remember most of the book and the actors were great. After the play we walked to a nice Italian restaurant for some really good pasta.
Thursday. Just a normal Thursday nothing special happened this time.
Friday. The day of my flight. After lunch I rushed back to my apartment got wet on the way and delivered my bike to the bikeshop for save keeping. Ran back to my apartment for a quick shower and change and on to the bus. The funny thing was that my suitcase only weighted 10 kg this time. That happens when you have nothing to carry only a backpack and some change of clothes. The flight went ok and the trip home was coming to an end after 3.5 hours of travel.
zondag 9 november 2014
A nice week.
Okay so I won't bore you with everything that happened this week but just the more interesting part. So the message will be shorter and will contain most of the weekend stuff where I've got more time I guess. Tuesday I was time for me to cook again. Also you might expect this message to appear next week as well. Me and Jess traded for a week because I'm flying back to Edinburgh the 18th and don't have time to buy stuff then. So next week will also be on me. This week it was Spaghetti Carbonara. Nice dish only that I put in a bit too much cream. Making the sauce a bit too creamy for my liking. That is just my opinion. Wednesday I had another videoconference with UoE. This time I was the only one at HW making it a nice but lonely conversation. Also after exactly one hour the connection was stopped even though we were still in the middle of our conversation. Great fun staring at a blank screen for a couple of seconds.
This brings us to Friday. Given that in the rest of the week nothing special happened. Okay so Friday I went with my cohorts to dinner. We plan to have dinner at least once a week just to talk some rubbish and relax a bit. Also to get to know each other better. So dinner it was and it is always nice not to cook once a week :). Afterwards I went to a friend for some drinks and watching a movie as I had promised.
Saturday. Got out of bed a bit too late then had to walk back because I forgot my PIN. So all in all a pretty interesting start of the day. Went to the market to buy some stuff and on the way back walked into to the barbers the have my hair shortened a bit. Not as short as back home given that it is a bit colder here. After that I had some food and went out again. Had to make an appointment for checking my bike. I was given a notice for a six week check up for my bike so why not make an appointment for next Saturday. I'm not here then so I won't need the bike. I'll bring it in on Friday and get it back on Tuesday. I guess it's a good deal. After that was arraigned went back into town to buy a towel and to rent a kilt. I guess it is a bit weird for a foreigner to rent such a thing because we are not used to it. Thankfully the shop was a bit more man friendly. It was better than the time I went out to buy some dancing shoes and found myself in a ballet shop. So a kilt rented I went back to make dinner and cake. In the evening went out with friends for some drinks. It was a bit chilly and of course all my warm stuff is miles away. So in the end I was happy to warm up inside again.
Sunday. Went for a hike with a friend. We followed the water of Leith for the best part. A really nice route to do and I would certainly do it again only this time with some other shoes. I made the wrong decision of not grabbing my running shoes but grabbing my normal shoes. To be short not a good idea but still a great walk.
This brings us to Friday. Given that in the rest of the week nothing special happened. Okay so Friday I went with my cohorts to dinner. We plan to have dinner at least once a week just to talk some rubbish and relax a bit. Also to get to know each other better. So dinner it was and it is always nice not to cook once a week :). Afterwards I went to a friend for some drinks and watching a movie as I had promised.
Saturday. Got out of bed a bit too late then had to walk back because I forgot my PIN. So all in all a pretty interesting start of the day. Went to the market to buy some stuff and on the way back walked into to the barbers the have my hair shortened a bit. Not as short as back home given that it is a bit colder here. After that I had some food and went out again. Had to make an appointment for checking my bike. I was given a notice for a six week check up for my bike so why not make an appointment for next Saturday. I'm not here then so I won't need the bike. I'll bring it in on Friday and get it back on Tuesday. I guess it's a good deal. After that was arraigned went back into town to buy a towel and to rent a kilt. I guess it is a bit weird for a foreigner to rent such a thing because we are not used to it. Thankfully the shop was a bit more man friendly. It was better than the time I went out to buy some dancing shoes and found myself in a ballet shop. So a kilt rented I went back to make dinner and cake. In the evening went out with friends for some drinks. It was a bit chilly and of course all my warm stuff is miles away. So in the end I was happy to warm up inside again.
Sunday. Went for a hike with a friend. We followed the water of Leith for the best part. A really nice route to do and I would certainly do it again only this time with some other shoes. I made the wrong decision of not grabbing my running shoes but grabbing my normal shoes. To be short not a good idea but still a great walk.
zondag 2 november 2014
The week of seconds and angry people
I'm not sure how I managed to do this again. I really don't know but let's start at the beginning.
Monday. Just classes so nothing special happend.
Tuesday. Mainly classes. On the way back some pedestrian was mumbling that the speed limit 6 mph (around 10 km/h) was. No way that I'm cycling 10 km/h. It would take me a full hour to go to HW. So I cycled further paying no attention what so ever to what the man said. I didn't had to cook this evening so it was nice and relaxing. Instead I had to book a restaurant for Friday. Given that it's Halloween then it will be busy in restaurants but I was lucky. When I got back I saw that Jess got an Arduino kit. So trying to learn her programming by connecting a LED and explaining what I was doing. Took me a while to figure everything out. Luckily I had a programme that showed me exactly what I wanted.
Wednesday. Classes in the morning. I promised to fix the brakes of a friend's bike. In return I would get dinner. Only I'd taken out some chicken on Tuesday. So no dinner for me apart from my own cooking of course. Only my dinner was finish quicker than I expected so I went to my friend's house to have a second dinner and to have some dessert. Af the dessert I finally got round to fixing the brakes and adjusting to ones from last time. Two of the brakepads weren't correctly aligned with the wheel so I had to redo them.
Thursday. Classes the whole day. When cycling towards HW some pedestrian didn't notice me and shouted at me that I had to slow down. Yep I will whenever there is a bridge, a bit I can't see clearly or someone walking but when no one is around I'll just speed up. A few meters later there were two groups of walkers standing at both sides of the path trying to slow down cyclists. One of them made some kicking gesture with a leg for which I wanted to slow down. So we cyclists need to pay more attention when cycling here. Just had time to dance in the evening which wasn't much because they had a general meeting. So we skipped out of the general meeting and went home.
Friday. One of the hottest days of the week. Because I had my jacket on I was slowly cycling towards HW. After lunch I dumped my jacket in my backpack and made two new personal records. One for cycling to home in 25 minutes and one for being late 15 minutes. I could have gone faster but that would mean not slowing down for bridges and pedestrians. After classes we had pizza because of the gateway event and talked a bit about how stuff was going. The only thing was that I also booked a restaurant for the evening so for the second time this week I had two dinners and for the third time this week I had two meals. I'm also counting the second lunch I had on Sunday. Great fun but I don't want to do this every time. It is rather filling.
Saturday. Finally some time to clean my room, do some laundry and bake some cake (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/693646/banana-and-pecan-loaf). The latter could do with some extra time in the oven but tasted really nice so will be repeated at some point. The rest of the time spend doing some homework and trying to figure out where the errors were in some homework. During my dinner I tried signing up for the Sallandtrail. A run that's held near my hometown. Great thing to do it only took me 21 minutes to sign up. In the evening I went over to a friend's place for watching a movie. Settled in the end for Blues Brothers still a great movie.
Sunday. First went to the other farmers market to nose around a bit. This one is in stockbridge. I think I prefer how this one is set up. Nice and small. Being able to walk in a circle instead of a straight line. It is however a bit more expensive. So ended up buying nothing and running for a bus again. Went with a friend back to the Pentlands to walk some hills. Nice weather but a bit winding. Saw some black grouse :). It was however a great walk and I definitely want to do some more exploring in the Pentlands but need my hiking boots first. Later on went to a pub for some food and meeting new people.
Monday. Just classes so nothing special happend.
Tuesday. Mainly classes. On the way back some pedestrian was mumbling that the speed limit 6 mph (around 10 km/h) was. No way that I'm cycling 10 km/h. It would take me a full hour to go to HW. So I cycled further paying no attention what so ever to what the man said. I didn't had to cook this evening so it was nice and relaxing. Instead I had to book a restaurant for Friday. Given that it's Halloween then it will be busy in restaurants but I was lucky. When I got back I saw that Jess got an Arduino kit. So trying to learn her programming by connecting a LED and explaining what I was doing. Took me a while to figure everything out. Luckily I had a programme that showed me exactly what I wanted.
Wednesday. Classes in the morning. I promised to fix the brakes of a friend's bike. In return I would get dinner. Only I'd taken out some chicken on Tuesday. So no dinner for me apart from my own cooking of course. Only my dinner was finish quicker than I expected so I went to my friend's house to have a second dinner and to have some dessert. Af the dessert I finally got round to fixing the brakes and adjusting to ones from last time. Two of the brakepads weren't correctly aligned with the wheel so I had to redo them.
Thursday. Classes the whole day. When cycling towards HW some pedestrian didn't notice me and shouted at me that I had to slow down. Yep I will whenever there is a bridge, a bit I can't see clearly or someone walking but when no one is around I'll just speed up. A few meters later there were two groups of walkers standing at both sides of the path trying to slow down cyclists. One of them made some kicking gesture with a leg for which I wanted to slow down. So we cyclists need to pay more attention when cycling here. Just had time to dance in the evening which wasn't much because they had a general meeting. So we skipped out of the general meeting and went home.
Friday. One of the hottest days of the week. Because I had my jacket on I was slowly cycling towards HW. After lunch I dumped my jacket in my backpack and made two new personal records. One for cycling to home in 25 minutes and one for being late 15 minutes. I could have gone faster but that would mean not slowing down for bridges and pedestrians. After classes we had pizza because of the gateway event and talked a bit about how stuff was going. The only thing was that I also booked a restaurant for the evening so for the second time this week I had two dinners and for the third time this week I had two meals. I'm also counting the second lunch I had on Sunday. Great fun but I don't want to do this every time. It is rather filling.
Saturday. Finally some time to clean my room, do some laundry and bake some cake (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/693646/banana-and-pecan-loaf). The latter could do with some extra time in the oven but tasted really nice so will be repeated at some point. The rest of the time spend doing some homework and trying to figure out where the errors were in some homework. During my dinner I tried signing up for the Sallandtrail. A run that's held near my hometown. Great thing to do it only took me 21 minutes to sign up. In the evening I went over to a friend's place for watching a movie. Settled in the end for Blues Brothers still a great movie.
Sunday. First went to the other farmers market to nose around a bit. This one is in stockbridge. I think I prefer how this one is set up. Nice and small. Being able to walk in a circle instead of a straight line. It is however a bit more expensive. So ended up buying nothing and running for a bus again. Went with a friend back to the Pentlands to walk some hills. Nice weather but a bit winding. Saw some black grouse :). It was however a great walk and I definitely want to do some more exploring in the Pentlands but need my hiking boots first. Later on went to a pub for some food and meeting new people.
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