Bikes, Hikes, and Dykes. Oh My!

A bike parking lot.

Jammed into every free slot, bikes dominate the urban areas. I'm beginning to think that many are abandoned, since several tout irrevocable amounts of rust. There are roughly 1.2 bikes for every person in the Netherlands, which makes sense since the country is only a few kilometres wide. Why drive an automobile when you could peddle your way along majestic canals?

The water ways are meticulously maintained through a series of windmill powered dykes. I'm not sure how the term came to refer to lesbians. I can only guess that many years ago, women who exhibited strange tastes displayed water retention traits.

"A society in which women are taught anything but the management of a family, the care of men, and the creation of the future generation is a society which is on its way out." said L. Ron Hubbard, the head scientologist, who half of Hollywood follows, and a man who shouldn't be taken seriously.

Definitely Nourishes The Soul

Indian Dal with a Spinach Salad - August 31

The first meal done in tandem with Saartek. He supplied the Dal, and I the nut and cheese spinach salad.

Spinach Burger a la Burger - 1 September

Sandwiched between two pieces of what passes for a hamburger over here, you'll bite into fresh spinach and Gouda cheese with a chilli and garlic sauce. Best eaten with a fork and knife for all you civilized folk out there.

Chilli con Carne - 3 September

A wholesome creation with more than a touch of zing. I spiced up my version quite a lot with a variety of different nuts as well. To temper the burn, I had a side of fresh spinach with quark, and a Jupiler beer.

Shrimp Carabana - 4 September

With the most simple of ingredients...

...the right style...

...and beer, comes something passable as cuisine.

Saartek's Creation - 13 September

Saartek feeling surprised with his success.

A small victory in a campaign of great achievements I hope.

Brown Rice dans Carrot Sauce - 14 September

Hellou!

I wished to experiment with brown rice. Having a harder kernel I chose to use a medium thickness sauce to give it more character and bring attention away from the crunchiness.

AYCA Sushi and Expensive Tap Water

As some of you may know, all you can eat sushi is an important part of an astronomer's life. With little indication that such a place would exist in Leiden, we were somewhat surprised to find two restaurants offering. One was ridiculously priced and the other not much better. Being so close to the sea one would expect them to know a thing or two about raw fish. Not so.

The Asian Palace had minimal selection on it's menu. It wasn't unusual to find that only part of the menu was available for lunch, but selection was scarce across the board.

Near the end of the lunch a kitten wandered out from the kitchen, happily trotting along and sporting a jingling necklace. We had ordered too much food so it helped us devour the rest so we didn't have to pay for leftovers.

What really made the trip a trip was when they brought us tap water and then at the end of the meal tried to make us pay 0,50eur per glass. We refused outright and the lady finally accepted it. Needless to say we shall not be returning again soon. Actually, pizza is next on the menu.

We started off with quite a bit of sushi...

but then The Kitten, the only good thing about the place, ate it

Adventure Lady: a million bucks

After our little spat the other night, I left Adventure Lady to drift in the downtown old town. I was not sure I would find her again, but I did. I found her some new parts and got dirty putting them on. My first time was a success, and upon inspection of the old tube found that there were no holes, merely a loose cap... I now have an extra tube for future fiascoes. Next job is finding her a rack.

I believe I have unlocked the key to changing a tire. This was
really a happy accident, since I met new people in the process.

McDonalds

McDonalds is a huge company worth many billions of dollars. It exists in all places, and will likely be the first restaurant in space. I try to go once in every country I visit just to see if I yet like it in that country (I never do!).

Since I didn't take any pictures in McD's I want to
share with you how awful the meat is here. I'm
sorry Holland, but that is not a hamburger.

I used the service on my first day, when I didn't have any food to eat, and found it a different experience than Canada, India, and Germany. As a business mandate the food is never healthy, however whereas in Germany the food is smaller portions (and comes with beer), or India, where you get cholera from the produce (and there is no beef), or Canada, where it feels like you're happy meal is too happy, here it is minimalist and empty feeling (and it tastes like cold bacon grease). At least the place I visited had scant few items on the menu. A they were weird names with weird meat. returning to my norm, I won't be doing it often.

Biked to Pub Crawl and Crawled Home

Last night reconfirmed in my mind that pub crawls are shitty events. Much of the time is spent walking your buzz off, and then waiting for beer at the new place, and not having enough time to really talk to people, like archeologists, who you meet at bars.

A beautiful canal with ancient reflections.

It might not have been so bad if my tire hadn't pooped out on me. Adventure Lady is now sitting somewhere downtown with a flat ass end. I had to walk home this morning to meet up with some professors meaning I'm going to have to walk back down again to find it later. Not impressed with my luck!

Drunk in a Church

The first day of Orientation Week in Leiden (OWL) began today. As with most social gatherings we stood around 95% of the time, and listened to someone speaks 4% of the time and the rest was good fun.

A posse of us left on bikes from our residency and headed down to the central meeting place. After meeting others in group 31 (masters students in natural sciences), we played some silly name games. There were five astronomy, four media technology, three statistics, two mathematics, and two life sciences.

	Top Left: Circles of people. Our group stood/mosied about. Top Right: Our group flag. Bottom Left: Silly name game.

A grand old church.

We walked to a church wherein we found chairs assembled. We heard some speeches from the principal, or some other head figure at Leiden University, who seemed to think China was the Cat's Ass. She also doesn't like how much students drink, and how Dutch students don't travel as much as others. She outright apologized in advance for two things: The Dutch discrimination and blunt directness, claiming it wasn't the Dutch's fault, they merely didn't know better.

We heard from the fire department, who dress fancier than most Generals in the Canadian Military, and who informed us that if we ever get stuck in a fire we will likely die. We watched a video of a room with a candle size flame on the floor turn into a huge fire ball in three minutes!

Lunch: Water, bread, cookie, banana.

We then heard from the police (the Polities - the Polite-ees) who had some more pleasant facts to impart. There are more bikes in the Netherlands than people (I intend to do a whole post on this topic later), and as such people need to STOP RIDING BIKES ON THE MARKET STREETS because it's annoying! Reefer and other soft drugs are only legal to be bought and consumed in coffee shops. Also, Leiden has a municipal by-law of no public drinking. I'm sure he said more stuff but too many people were laughing to hear him. He ran off the stage with his tail between his legs, poor guy.

Censored coffee shopper.

We heard from the ISN who said there are tons of cool things planned this year for University Leiden students, from trips to themed events, and clubs.

We were a little hungry so we headed on to the four hundred year old botanical gardens! We had bread, water and bananas for lunch (that's all our 60EUR OWL fee could afford).

Mayor and Japanese girl. The mayor was out of
line in his mock imitation of her accent.

The problem with these orientation things is that they don't leave any time for yourself so a few of us opted out of the city walk and did our own thing: cafe, coffee shop, and incense shopping.

We met back up at the church where this time drinks started flowing and the mayor talked about how happy he was. I later came upon him talking to a young Japanese girl. He spoke in a slow, completely obscene, imitation Japanese accent to make the girl feel comfortable. She seemed a little shaken by the experience.

From then on we headed to some place for a sloppy dinner-in-a-box and finally on to a pub where we did a groups' quiz challenge. Our group 31 called the "Malakus 31" came second after "Justice Mother Fuckers". The bike ride home was swift and my only time of solace today.