This Year's Prediction

I know all of y'all been eagerly awaiting the next installment of our flawless predictions of winners in the Eurovision Song Contest, so without further ado: it will be Austria this year; zero doubts as usual.

Calling it now

We may be a bit premature but we are calling it for Hilary right now. Oh, sorry, we meant Maraaya.



Just two months to go for the Eurovision.

P.S. We are also loving honorary European nation Australia.

P.P.S. is it just us or does Maraary look like our favorite Hilary (with only one l!)

Easy Prediction: Sweden

It is easy to predict this year's eurovision song contest winner: Even though the triple climax after 2 minutes of foreplay by the geriatric is very impressive, Sweden will be the runaway winner. The quality of most other songs is even more dismal than usual, which means that The Netherlands this year actually has a shot of being in the final!

Instant Favourite

This is only the second entry for the ESC 2012 I have seen, and it is my instant favourite for this year's title. Hilariously awesome/awful! (Just keep on watching: "An understated and slightly mournful ode to lost love, it bursts into life after two minutes and is followed immediately by a rapturous round of applause across the entire continent. Well, that's the idea anyway." according to the Guardian.)

Is it that time of the year already again?!

"We" have chosen who will be representing the Netherlands at this year's Eurovision Song Contest:



We are a little surprised at this choice, but since we don't have a "next year's father land" lined up, we have no choice but to complete love this.

Eurovision Foodz

Before indulging in the ancient European tradition of listening to bad songs, badly performed by second rate artists, also known as the Eurovision Song Contest, we made a wonderful laksa!

High tech and hip as we are, we not only watched it on the intertoobz, but also simultaneously followed the twitter hash tag #eurovision. We could thus enjoy gems like: "#Eurovision And here's Italy with 'Fuck This Shit'. They could've at least done a song called 'Bunga Bunga'" and "If I wasn't depressed before, I am now. Merci France. #Eurovision".

Meanwhile, team Hilvaria Studio's has no idea how close F was to adding "eurovisie" to the list of query words of their AdWords campaign, with an advertisement "Kom morgen gezellig napraten over het songfestival in ons illegaal partycentrum."

The winner turned out to be a slight deception, which is not surprising after so much excitement. Hence a video, not of the winning song by Azerbaijan, but of Armenia's entry last year about a peach pit, which I like a lot better.

That Time of the Year Already?

Time flies. Sadly enough we did not manage to get tickets to the music event of the year. Luckily a local cinema has all the live action. Let's see if we can still get tickets.

And... congratulations to Gavin. Without a doubt it's Ireland's year (again --- it will be their 8th win) with the awesome song above.

Penitence

I'm afraid everyone has to watch this.

Why does Spain always seem to have one man too many?

Anyway.

Go fuck yourselves, Spain!

Congratulations to Emmanuel!

And Lena of course.

(photo by aktivioslo on Flickr)

We spend our full morning (and part of the afternoon) watching the Eurovision Song Contest. Sadly the official site was blocked, so we had to content ourselves with the Dutch version where two commentators made juvenile fun of anyone who had a size larger than what was normally shown on tv, or people's religion, or anything else that was inappropriate.

Also, we extend our warm congratulations to Tuncay, with a rather unexpected second place, a song that was neither here nor there, neither fish nor meat, snarf nor barf, in my humble opinion. I had high hopes for Belgium (almost the Netherlands), Azerbaijan and Armenia (especially Belgium actually), but the masses have spoken and who am I to disagree.

I hope we are sane enough in a year's time to fork over about 100 euros for a ticket to the live show.

Update: I completely forgot to mention the awesome entries of Russia and the cradle of modern Europop Moldova. Check them out if you feel bored!

Huaiyangchun

Another fabulous dinner with Amanda, this time in a famous restaurant: Huaiyangchun. There were eight "Chun" restaurants that were very famous, before Mao's liberation. This is one of the only two that still exist.

We had this wonderful pork liver...



some eel...



the famous lion's head meatballs (meatballs with crab roe)...



healthy fava beans...



squirrel fish, which is usually translated as mandarin fish...



and an extra large soup dumpling.



On a completely unrelated note: this week is our "connect to our European roots"-week: the Eurovision Song Contest is held this week! We would like to congratulate Emmanuel in advance with his home country's winning entry ---I can't see her not winning--- Lena. In the following link she is aptly described as "A Swedish Speech Therapist Imitating Ali G.".