While waiting

yesyes. defending your PhD in the Netherlands is a very serious business. you need to dress up, and everything goes according a strict protocol. the candidate and his/her 2 paranymphs have to be present well in advance. so there is time to get the "protocol" explained, and even practice a little (where to stand, when to sit, where to bow to the committee). of course, we were even earlier than "well in advance". but that was fine. did i mention already the weather has been great this september?! while august was awful, september feels like summer. as a result, we were overheated when arriving at the place where it would all happen; its not easy walking around in fancy clothes i can tell you....

we had to wait in the above room, so i had some time to take pictures. i guess you are supposed to work up your nerves in this room, but this was a better way to spend our time.... no? :)

University wedding

so. not yesterday, but the day before already tim defended his PhD thesis. that took 45 minutes, as tradition dictates. when the 45 minutes were over, the lady with the black hat came into the room, hit her stick onto the ground to indicate the defense was done. then all the professors (you cannot see them, they are in front of tim here, sitting behind the red tables) went into some room to decide whether tim should get his PhD. after a short while they came back, and yes, he got it! in the photo above (taken by my sister, the official tim-phd-defense-photographer), tim just got his diploma, its in the red thingie he is holding in his hands. right now he is listening to the "laudatio" given by his PhD advisor. 2 "paranimfen" are sitting behind tim (one of them being me, perhaps you can figure out which one! ;) ). paranymphs are similar to best men/bridesmaids in weddings... as in fact you marry the university (really!! i always said so, and now i read wikipedia says the same, so it must be true!). nowadays, the role of the paranymph is purely ceremonial, but in the old days they could also help answering questions during the defense. in fact, we all 3 worked in the same lab (yes, i worked a bit with tim, and yes, even one chapter in his thesis is actually "my" paper!). soo.... during the defense i actually felt like answering as well... just when they asked about "my" chapter... of course i could not have done it better than tim did... :)

it was a very nice day and evening. but exhausting!!

Big day...

this is tims thesis! its about the work he did in boston. after a successfull defense, he will finally be a PhD. just like me, so then we are even again.... :P ah no, he is also an MD, and i am not and never will be one.... 

but anyways. so he did publish a paper recently that was also picked up by news sites all over the world. perhaps you saw it? here is a link to the BBC news, and it was also on the dutch news site nu.nl (here), or a more serious link, here. it was really interesting to see how news sites were just copying the story from other sites, changing it bits by bits (not always correct), at some point tims name got lost too, and in some articles they even prominently name the photographer that was hired to take some pictures..... (the above picture was taken by tim himself, btw). there are also interviews, with the second author and the boss (ah, and i already forgot again, with tim as well!!), here and here.

so, this famous person is getting his PhD tomorrow!!

now, if you are around the netherlands, or utrecht, more specifially, you can witness this defense, as it is a public happening. just be at "het academiegebouw" at the domplein in utrecht tomorrow, september 9, at half past 2 (well, then it starts, so i would be there 5-10 minutes in advance...). its fun to witness a dutch PhD defense if you have never seen one.... (here you can see where the defense will take place).
edit; here is the official announcement. and here (unfortunately there is no full access) is the original researchpaper i refer to above... im just as bad as those news sites... :)

Real patriots!

today the weather was not too bad, finally! quite sunny and even warm enough to sit on the balcony in the early evening. the above picture however was taken on queens day (oh no, i mean kings day). its one of the few days dutch people wear orange. as i wrote before, orange is the national color since its the color of the dutch royal family (they are named "van oranje", meaning "from orange"). the other days you might people see wearing orange is when the dutch soccer team is playing in the world cup, and i guess thats about it. orange is not worn in everyday life. so in general, people do not possess orange clothing, aside from the one orange jersey you wear that one time a year. it really is considered weird to wear orange, and you wont see much (any?) orange clothing in the shops.

i never even wore orange on queens day, but that changed after 3 years in boston. there we dressed up in the american colors on the 4th of july to feel like real americans. so... it was just natural to finally do as almost all the other dutch do. it also helped that i bought a beautiful silk orange dress in boston, just a few weeks before we left (it was crazy cheap in a shop for vintage clothing. i still miss the cheap american shopping, and hardly shop nowadays.) when else to wear it but on kings day?!

Another impression

some trouble with my slow laptop prevented me from posting yesterday. but here, one last photo of kings day (i keep thinking queensday!). as you can see, quite a lot of people were dressed in orange. and like someone said, its indeed comparable to an american yard sale (but a gigantic one!). people put their stuff out on blankets; i think most of the stuff was baby/childrens clothes and toys. while we were walking around, one mother discovered that her child had just put his current shoes between the shoes for sale... whahahahaha, that was so funny. maybe he didnt like his shoes..?

too bad we dont have some yard sales every weekend, like in the US. i really enjoyed driving/walking around on our way to somewhere, anywhere. and then suddenly seeing a yard sale with lots of interesting stuff for nearly nothing... thats how we got part of our furniture.... :) i dont think i ever saw a yard sale in the netherlands, and i am not sure whether they are allowed (although doing it in your own yard should be ok, no...?).

King's day!

since last year we have a king, and so the traditional queen's day is now renamed king's day (the dutch havent had a king since 1890...!). its also moved from april 30 to april 27 (the birthday of our current king). but... since april 27 is on a sunday this year, we had kings day today; the 26th... complicated, no?

but the day itself isnt complicated at all. you should wear at least something orange (as this is the dutch royal color. the royals are named "van oranje", which literally means "from orange"), you go out and have fun! if it falls on a weekday, it means the day is off (for most people; shops are also mostly closed or only open half days). the day is spent outside; kids (mostly, but some adults too) put all the stuff they dont want anymore on a blanket in the park, and other dutch in need of this crap buy it for not too much money (mostly). many kids do tricks, or play an instrument, or sing songs like you see above, and hope to get some money. its all fun when the weather is nice.... :)

well, the weather wasnt bad at all! and this was my first kings day since a loooong time. we bought some crap from people who didnt want it anymore, walked around a lot, were dressed in orange, and saw the fireworks ending all the festivities!

Happy Easter!

i never decorated our apartment for Easter, but this year i did a bit, as you can see. we also had some chocolate eggs, but we ate them all before easter arrived. then i didnt want to buy new ones, as im sure they are cheaper after easter (and we really dont need more chocolate anyways).
yesterday the weather was amazing again, and i spent some time in the sun on the balcony. excellent! and i think today will be even better.... jaayy!

Merry Christmas!!

this is a "kerststol" that i made yesterday for christmas. it is a traditional dutch breadlike pastry (or pastry-like bread..., whatever you want to call it), with lots of filling! it contains dried fruit; usually at least raisins and currants but you can also add dried cranberries (like i did) and whatever else you prefer. i added some coarsely chopped almonds as well. in weight there is as much dough as filling, so it turned out to be quite difficult to get it all spread in the dough evenly. then in the middle is the big surprise; a log of almond paste (made tastier with some lemon zest) thats rolled into the dough. as a child this was the main reason i liked this bread. i would quickly eat around the piece of almond paste and keep that for last (here you can see what i mean). hmmmmmm... the outer part of the bread ofcourse has no almond paste, and in the very middle you get the biggest piece, so i would always try to get a middle piece.... as this morning we had to check the bread (i had never made one before), i of course had to slice it in the middle.... ;) there are many recipes out there to make a kerststol, here is one in english!

enjoy your christmas!

Sinterklaas storm

yesterday we had another big storm in the netherlands! as most of the trees fell down during the previous one in october, that was at least a bit less of a worry. a tiny bit then... the wind was blowing again like crazy and hail was coming down with massive amounts. at some point i was afraid the large window we have in the living room would just be blown out, but luckily it didnt....

yesterday was also "sinterklaas avond". and above you see the clothes of sinterklaas! most certainly he could not have hung them out like that yesterday, they would have been blown away! santa claus is thought to at least have some origins in the dutch sinterklaas, brought to the other side of the ocean by dutch immigrants. but... sinterklaas has helpers, and perhaps because of that you might have read or heard something about this dutch tradition during the past weeks. even the united nations (or some working group consisting of volunteers) looked into it! you can read about that here, for example. but many, many articles have appeared. so... as it is late i will not get into it as well, so much has been said and written about it already! it certainly got many dutch very agitated... i will just say this; its a fest mostly for children and i loved it (especially getting all those presents!!), and thats what it should continue to be.....
sinterklaas (as well as the storm) has left the country now, back to spain. so now we can focus on santa claus and his little helpers.... ;)

Gay pride

today was the annual gay boat parade in amsterdam. its held since 1996, and i never went.. but since i now live in amsterdam, it was easy to just hop on the bike and have a look. well... ofcourse we arrived when it had started already and it was packed. all the cute little bridges were full with people, and this is literally the only shot i managed to take while on a bridge. we walked around a bit, and yes, there are many, many bridges, and they were all packed.... 

the gay parade is just another excuse to have everyone out on the street dressed up funny, acting weird and drinking beer... :) ah, and ofcourse there are the boats. all with their own theme and music... (some very interesting, others boring, like those from the political parties, i really dont get why they join). tim managed to get some better shots, but i havent looked at them yet....

we ended the day with this movie about the pianist liberace, with michael douglas and matt damon as lovers. very fitting, no? they were both very good (although near the end it was a bit too slow..).

In Austin

on a wall in austin, texas, where we were last december. i thought this was a really cool graffiti.

in the subway today i saw a lot of men with "some flowers". normally you never see that. funny.... perhaps tomorrow all the valentine's candy is on sale? (the shops were full with chocolate etc). maybe i should check..... :D
as a valentine's gesture, the mayor of boston decided that parking was free today, so that everyone who wants to go out for dinner can do so without having to think about paying for parking.... although that didnt make parking in the center of boston any easier, i guess, especially since there are still huge piles of snow that are also taking up some spaces..... 

Enjoy christmas!!

this is (again) at the boston common. the tree you see here comes from nova scotia, and is a present from their government to the people of boston. since 1971, this has been a tradition. it is in thanks and remembrance of the halifax explosion in 1917. on december 6 of that year, a french wartime ship fully loaded with explosives collided with a norwegian ship in the halifax harbour. the gigantic explosion that followed instantly killed 1900 people, and 9000 were wounded. anything, buildings, people, within 500 acres of the explosion vanished, and the explosion caused a tsunami in the harbour, causing even more damage. the city of boston quickly learned of the disaster and was the first to send help. the year after, in 1918, the people of halifax sent a tree to thank all those that helped. and as mentioned, since 1971 this has been a yearly tradition.

the tree lighting is a spectacle in itself, with a lot of performances and whatnot. we went there the first year we were in boston (together with 30,000 other people). it was so cold, we could hardly see anything and the (live) singing was not that good....needless to say, we did not go the past 2 years!  but... although sad, its good to know the story behind the tree....

and now you all should enjoy christmas!!

Back home!

while we already came back friday night, i was a little too lazy over the weekend to write a new blog post. while in the netherlands i did not get fully over the time difference (at midnight i felt very awake each day), back in the us im tired early in the evening! grrrrr....

on saturday we had to refill our empty fridge, and on sunday we went for a hike in the woods not too far from our apartment. i actually meant to spend some hours in the gym this weekend, but too lazy for that as well. at least we went this evening, and it was very necessary; while in the netherlands we didnt move too much and we ate a LOT! all those typical dutch things that we cannot get here in the usa..... hmmmm, it was so good. and ofcourse, the tasty typical dutch things are not the most healthy or low in calories..... 

starting november or so, until the end of the year, you will see pastry stands (i.e. "gebakkraam") like the one above. they sell "oliebollen" and thats the first thing we ate when we arrived. oliebollen literally translates into "oil balls", and thats what they are; dough, usually filled with raisins, currants and/or succade are scooped into balls, deep fried and then covered in powdered sugar. hmmmmm!!! traditionally, this is eaten at the last day of the year, and not one or 2, but many, right from the frying pan. the leftovers are eaten in the day(s) afterwards, either cold or rewarmed in the microwave. here you can find the recipe (on a lovely site featuring typically dutch recipes that i recently discovered). we ate a LOT of other stuff, for the dutch among you, these things will sound familiar and we ate them as if we hadnt eaten them for ages and wont for months to come (which is probably true); kaasbroodjes, saucijzenbroodjes, poffertjes (homemade; those you can often buy on the street as well), roze koeken, drop (ofcourse!!), fries, kroket, kaassouffle, banketstaaf, and certainly also lots of dutch bread and real dutch cheese (hmmmmm), many, many mandarins  (sooo good and they are soooo cheap, especially when compared to the us, and without the stones they almost always have here). and, and and.....! so yes, we stayed only a week and ate for 2 or 3.... whoops.... but it was just sooo very good! tomorrow i will goto the gym again, i promise....

December 5

this is some very nice decoration in "de bijenkorf" in amsterdam, a department store. i guess you could compare it to nordstrom in the us. these are "zwarte pieten", or black petes, the helpers of "sinterklaas". here they climb up and down the ropes, its really nice to see. they are there every year, for as long as i can remember.  "sinterklaas" is comparable to santa claus; in fact, santa claus' origins are said to come from the dutch sinterklaas. he arrives from spain somewhere in november, and leaves on december 6th. its mainly a feast for children; you can place your shoe at the chimney, with something in it for sinterklaas' horse, and if you have been good, you get a little present or some candy. on december 5, you get some more (and bigger) presents. the zwarte pieten have black faces since they go through the chimney to get the presents into the houses (so i never understood how children living in a house without a chimney could get presents; luckily we did have one). as a child, i liked sinterklaas much more than santa claus, which we also celebrate, probably because sinterklaas takes several weeks and i got more presents... :)

every year, people are complaining about the zwarte pieten; as they are "helpers" of sinterklaas, and black on top of that, they see it as a racist feast. but, as said, their faces and hands are black because of the chimney, and i dont think that children see them as anything else than providers of candy and presents, and it really is a feast for children!! (occasionally they see them as scary as only children that behave well get presents, and parents sometimes threaten their children that if they misbehave they will be taken to spain together with sinterklaas and zwarte piet...). 

Shiny umbrella

i was mostly fascinated by the umbrella, as you can see from the pic.... 

this is not just another day in the park in boston (at least, not that i have seen!), this was at the steampunk festival in waltham, back in may. steampunk is some weird genre i never heard of before, but wikipedia does... :)  i think americans really like costume parties. next to drinking through straws, i dont think i saw more adults in the most weird costumes. and not just something simple! no, into detail they are dressed up.... complete with elaborate make-up and accessories (must cost them so much time and money!) me? i would just like that umbrella... :)

tomorrow tim comes back from his trip to berlin (conference) and amsterdam (home). i missed him because i now had to eat from the yoghurt-can when it was almost empty (i hate that and he always does that; i always get my portion in a nice bowl). also, i had to cut my own mango (sticky hands, beehh) and i didnt drink coffee in the weekend (he always makes the coffee; i cant even operate the coffeemaker). during the week i had to make my own lunch (takes so much time! normally im in the shower when he does that), and in the evening i had to throw the trash into the trash receptacle myself (scary, because in summer there are often raccoons inside/around). moreover, i had to make dinner and clean up (especially cleaning up becomes boring), so i skipped dinner a few times (but not too often!!), and i had to get packages delivered during the day from the apartment office myself (which requires to make small talk with the security guy, beeehh).

so... i guess its good he comes back again tomorrow ;) probably there are some other reasons too why its good he wil be back tomorrow, but i forgot... :)

Wonderful 4th!

yesterday was the 4th of july, a federal holiday in the us since it was the day, back in 1776, when they became independent from the kingdom of great britain by adopting the declaration of independence. there are parades, and generally people spend this day outside having a bbq and watch the fireworks in the evening. this was our third independence day in the us, and (some) things have started to become "normal". sort of. i really wanted to see it all in year 1, and last year as well, but this year... naahh...hmmm.. its so crowded, the fireworks start soooo late, then you have to wait forever to get into the subway to get home, and and and... besides, tim said he wasnt interested at all in watching "those boring fireworks with all those millions of people again". we thus decided to go somewhere and to just enjoy the weather. 

the day started out with quite some rain, but when we left it was getting hot and humid again. not even halfway, i thought it would be fun to leave the highway and drive a bit on the backroads... that was fun, for the first few minutes... until we suddenly became the very last car of the 4th of july parade, as you can see above!! not that anyone was interested in us (i did dress appropriately in red, white and blue!); everyone (as usual) was leaving as soon as the last of the real parade had passed by.... and there we were, driving very, very slowly... eventually we got out and back to the highway again... :) tomorrow i show you where we went!

Kiss my....

... irish ass! 

well... that was on st patricks day in boston. the day where you apparently can dress as ridiculous as you want, as long as it is green... 

i wouldnt, but who am i...  ! :) (i had nothing, really nothing green that day. only some purple (as usual) and felt kind of out of place)

Green mass

as you can see, there were quite some people watching the st patricks day parade yesterday (it was 3 miles long. some places were more crowded than others. the crowded ones were quite annoying to get through, but at some point we really just wanted to leave..)

this was the damage; 8 arrests and 244 citations for drinking in public... why dont they just allow public drinking?! i dont really get that. many were drinking anyways... if they catch you carrying an open can/bottle of alcohol, thats sufficient proof that you were drinking in public and you can get a ticket (so the police does not have to see you doing it... (the actual drinking)). only sometimes drinking in public is allowed, or only when its in a bag (like the brown paper bag you always see in the movies, haha). there are actually a few places in the us where drinking in public is allowed (here you can see where).

the police blogged about their arrests, if curious, you can look at that here. they describe the situation, as well as the full name, age and hometown of the arrested person. i especially like the title of their blog post: "if you got arrested at this year's st patricks day parade, you probably did something to warrant it." 

probably you did....

Saint Patrick

i guess saint patrick lost some weight and grew his hair, as compared to last year...

reading wikipedia, im not sure that the early years of his life were that great. when he was 16, he was captured from wales and brought as a slave to ireland, where he lived for 6 years, and then managed to escape to go back to his family.

today the weather was amazing! it was so warm i did not need a jacket and i regretted wearing stockings. i even got a little sunburn! we walked along the shore in dorchester, and then went to the parade for a bit. tim initially did not want to go, as we saw it last year already. and well, yes, it was basically the same. lots of parents with kids, and then many many young people walking around with lots of beers. pretending not to drink them, of course, since thats not allowed in the streets. it all reminded me a bit of queensday in the netherlands, but instead of green, everyone wears orange on that day (after the last name of our queen "van oranje", i.e. "from orange"). also, drinking is allowed and nobody cares about their trash; when the day ends you walk on streets newly paved by plastic cups (i dont really like that day.... and usually just went to do some work in the lab although its a national holiday).

ah well, we had our dose of real irish culture and boston tradition and so on..... and a lot of sun as a very pleasant bonus!

Irish culture

today its st patricks day. according to wikipedia, it is a cultural and religious holiday, celebrated on march 17, commemorating saint patrick (AD 387-461; he died on march 17). in the early 17th century, it became an official feast day, and gradually became a celebration of irish culture in general. on this day, you goto church, you wear something green, and the lenten restrictions on eating and alcohol are lifted.

now... if you just look around in boston during st patricks day..... you see more of the above. im so frustrated this pic not sharp, but well... you get the idea. im not sure those 2 went to church, or were celebrating irish culture that much.... it seems to me its just a day spent in the pub (or waiting in a long line to get into one), and getting drunk in a weird (or weirder) green outfit...