In Memoriam

On August 18 at approximately 4:30am in the morning, our dear friend and trusted companion Miss Sylvia passed away. 

 

She had just had a joyful weekend with our friends Ghosh, Tuncay, and Oni, where she cheered us up each morning with the wonderful cups of espresso she produced. 

We are saddened beyond words by the fact that she is no more. Causes of death have been determined to be overzealous wiping of surfaces, not checking whether switches are in the off-position before the electricity turns on automatically at 4am, and the lack of a built-in fail switch. We can only imagine her painful last moments when she had heated up and spat out all water that was available to her, and she had no other option but to short circuit her motor and heating element.

Miss Sylvia came into our lives into 2006, thanks to an un-enjoyable TA position for professor Bland for extra cash. She survived the perilous 4-month journey to China in 2008. We missed her so much during her travels, that we never allowed her to travel without us again -- from then on, she traveled on the same plane as us, no matter the cost. She was a faithful companion in Germany and Virginia, despite the fact that we initially did not clean her as much as she liked. In the last years of her life, she divided her time between Williamsburg VA and Ithaca NY, settling down in Ithaca for good in the summer of 2020.

Miss Sylvia is survived by her grinder Rocky, her followers Frans and Anke, as well as the does-have-an-automatic-off-switch upstart fully-automatic-espresso-machine Jura.

Cooked Cream (Panna Cotta)

It was weekend, time for breakfast.



Maybe better when served as dessert, but very tasty in either case: panna cotta with coffee granita. We just have to learn how to get these from their mold in one piece.

Big Kitchen

As soon as we arrived in Saarbrücken (on Monday) and were shown our temporary apartment with a large kitchen, we quickly went out to do some grocery shopping in a hypermarché since we had to hand in the car at 9 in the morning. After that we were tired and went out for dinner, the pictures of which are so bad that I won't post them.

We thus now have our long list of things to do, things to buy, things to find etc. We are progressing faster than ever though: one of A's coworkers is moving to Australia, so we are able to buy some of his furniture, amongst which some of his kitchen furniture --- it turns out that in Germany most apartments are not equipped with a kitchen, so this is hopefully a good investment (or we find an apartment with a kitchen, in which case we are quite happy also).

Other stuff that we could cross off our list: sim cards (our new numbers are 0177-4357627 (A) and 0163-7101801 (F) --- the sim cards should be arriving tomorrow), a "Spannungswandler" (transformer) for Miss Silvia, and bikes! (Still to go: finding an apartment, a car, a job (F), registering, finding a golf club (F), a tennis club (F), ground-breaking research topic (A) etc., etc.)

Having a bike meant that we could go to the "Islamische Metzgerei". So today: olives, a nice chicken, feta and even a beautiful Turkish fig!









We may slowly be getting used to things here.

Yes, Virginia

... we still eat. Even more strongly, we cooked!





The lamb was a slight disaster however, so shame prevents us from posting pictures.

On the subject of shame, remember that our espresso machine failed us? It turns out that we failed Miss Silvia, our espresso machine. We decided to clean her, before boxing her and getting her ready for being shipped to Europe. After more than one hour of backflushing in which I abused 4 liters of spring water, and kept on channeling Gordon Ramsay ("I drank espresso from that, you PIG!!!"), the water that came out of Miss Silvia was finally not brown any more. And guess what? Her pressure had risen significantly as well! It turns out that Miss Silvia was not broken, but just very dirty. We are pigs. Hurray!

Best Malaysian food in Beijing*

We seem to be following some pattern of not cooking for weeks in a row, and then cooking almost every day. The home-cooking days often coincide with one of us being sick, but not this time!**



A is happy to report that she successfully prepared cuttle fish (or whatever they are called), the little squid-like things she is always irresistibly drawn to when visiting the supermarket. (Last time she tried was a disaster). One more thing to cross of our list of things-to-do-before-we-leave.

On a related note, our material possessions also seem about ready to leave. F's bicycle tire exploded last week (and the Giant store says they don't have a replacement tire) and our espresso machine is too tired to produce sufficiently high pressure to make espresso (and since we don't know any repair person around here, we now make espresso using this).

Are you guys all going to watch the Eurovision Song Contest today? We are very excited about it, and we are wondering whether or not to pull an all-nighter to watch it. Unfortunately, the official website is blocked, so it is not clear whether we would even be able to watch, even if we were awake.

Since the Dutch entry was fortunately already eliminated, we hope all of you will vote for our soon-to-be host country. We are so excited about Lena! She rules!!!

* The only Malaysian restaurant in Beijing that we know of, closed a while back.

** Upon further thought, I believe our cooking spells coincide with our having a non-spoiled wine supply (which is not so common). There is nothing like a nice glass of wine to make you feel like cooking!

Who would've thought...?

... Frans certainly never expected that the two of us would ever go on a yoga retreat.

On Friday afternoon we took our bicycles and rode up to the Fragrant Hills, a park outside of Beijing. We had hoped to sleep in a tent, but it turned out to be freaking cold. Even inside. No central heating. That may also explain the fact that we were the only retreatees...

Nonetheless, we had a good night, and the next morning we did yoga on the roof where the sun did its best to make it warm. The views were beautiful, and I at least enjoyed the yoga as well. After that we relaxed, read, and walked up to the real bird's nest (not the fake one used for the Olympics) to do a bit of drumming.

Much needed fire to keep us somewhat warm in the evening.


After more yoga, we went to a nearby temple on Sunday. Besides an illustration of the tower of turtles cosmic belief, there was also a hall with 500 (I think) life size monk statues.



The most memorable thing for this weekend may have been the fact that we ate only vegetarian food, and had no beer or coffee. (Ok, ok, we cheated and went to a cafe on Saturday afternoon for a quick espresso and a corona.) I suffered from caffeine-withdrawal headaches the whole time. Here's my first cup once I got back:

Reunited!

It took a little while, (over 5 months), but our stuff finally arrived!!!



Then:

Now:

We were pretty scared when we saw the state of the boxes, but surprisingly (and mainly thanks to very very careful packaging), only 2 plates and one cup did not make it intact.

The roomba is still grumpy over the treatment it received over the past 5 months, so we may have to learn how to ask one of the people working in our building if they can come in and vacuum our apartment. Miss Silvia however is thrilled to be back to work, and so are we!

Clusterf@#ck

I fucked up dinner :(. But I still make a mean espresso.