Christmas in Amsterdam and London

Last night I returned to London after visiting Guo Juan in Amsterdam for the weekend. This is the view from her beautiful apartment. She had a couple of students from France visiting as well, and Siu came up for Saturday night. Siu was in China with me this summer and, since Guo Juan made tons of excellent Chinese food, it felt like we were back in Wuhan. Another student of Guo Juan's, who lives just around the corner, came to spend time with us too. And I got to finally meet Guo Juan's son, Wang Zi. He is now about 3 dan and will also be playing in the London Open this week.

We were tourists this weekend. We took a boat tour through the canals (Guo Juan says she brings everyone on the boat tour, so she's done it many times). Camille (from Paris) said that what they tell you in French is not the same as what they tell you in English. I liked the houseboats along the river. Some even have front porches--rafts with deck chairs. We walked around for a while afterwards, stopping for tea and then meandering through a market where we ate raw herring with onions and pickles, a traditional Dutch delicacy. It was really good, but I'd recommend some sort of breath freshener afterwards. Since we were cold and we still had to go to Chinatown to go shopping for dinner, we stopped in another coffee shop. We ordered hot chocolate which, unbeknownst to us, was served with a small shot of a coffee liqueur. It was the perfect afternoon stop to warm and rejuvenate us.

Inspired by our afternoon stop, we picked up some hazelnut liqueur to bring home. After eating tons of delicious Chinese food for dinner, we had oily balls, another Dutch treat. These were balls of oily dough, served with powdered sugar.

For breakfast yesterday, Guo Juan made a Chinese salad, which was easy to make and delicious.


Chinese Salad

• Chinese cabbage, chopped/sliced


• garlic, minced (optional)


• hot pepper stuff


• vinegar


• sesame oil


• soy sauce


• sesame seeds

Toss everything except the sesame seeds together and then sprinkle the sesame seeds on top. The hot pepper stuff: in Asian food stores you should be able to find something of this sort. It'll be a jar of hot peppers, chopped and stored in oil. The vinegar is Chinese vinegar, which is black (again, you should have no trouble finding this in an Asian food store). There was no measuring going on, so you'll have to just add everything to taste.


I walked up to Chinatown today to pick up some stuff to make dumplings. In the U.S., the Chinese restuarants are usually the only places open on Christmas, but in London, even these close. One of my grocery stores was open, so I was able to get most of what I needed. It was a ghost town out there today though. The tube was closed, and I guess the buses weren't even running, because I certainly didn't see any. There were practically no people on the streets (well, there were still a few with cameras). It was very disorienting. Even though I walk this route all the time, I kept pausing and wondering whether I had made a wrong turn somewhere. This is a picture of Emma with the "I heart London" t-shirt I sent her for Christmas.

I made some pineapple upside-down cake today too. This is one of my favourite recipes, though our oven is not very cooperative, so my cake is still a bit undercooked in the middle.


Pineapple Upside-down Cake

• 1 20 oz can pineapple slices (drained)


• 1/2 Cup (1 stick) butter


• 1 Cup brown sugar


• 1 20 oz can crushed pineapple (drained)


• 1/2 Cup (1 stick) butter


• 1 1/3 Cups milk


• 2 1/2 Cups flour


• 1 1/2 Cups sugar


• 2 1/4 tsp. baking powder


• 1/2 tsp. salt


• 2 eggs


• 1 tsp. vanilla

Pre-heat oven to 350. Grease a 9 x 13 pan. Arrange pineapple slices in pan. Melt 1/2 Cup butter, stir in brown sugar and crushed pineapple, pour over pineapple slices. Melt 1/2 Cup butter, add to milk and beat until "fluffy". (I always have trouble with this. My butter clots and I get worried. Maybe it's better to just barely mix, rather than beating them. Or maybe I don't beat them long enough.) Combine dry ingredients, add to butter/milk mixture, stir. Add eggs and vanilla, stir. Pour cake batter over pineapple mixture. Bake for 30 minutes or until knife comes out clean. Invert and serve.

2People.org

My friend's brother just launched a website called 2People.org to get people to do something about climate change. Something needs to be done. In particular, the U.S. needs to change its habits. Since the current American leadership refuses to recognize the problem, much less do anything about it, the website is designed grassroots style. It's a place for people to find out more about what they can do personally, to organize action with other folks and to raise voter awareness so that future leaders will have to do something about this issue.

Sign up and check it out. He's done an excellent job with the website.

Blitz

I've started doing something I never thought I'd do: play blitz games online. The newest version of KGS has auto-match: you set some preferences, and then it finds an opponent for you, rather than you trying to accept an open game. I think it's great. They have some other new features too, like mouseovers of open games telling you the person's comments and time settings. They have a blitz setting on the auto-match that is 1 minute opening and then three 10-second byo yomi periods. This is ridiculously fast, in my opinion, but it does let you get more games in. I've even been able to actually finish a few of these games now (as opposed to someone losing on time). Though I much prefer a slow, thoughtful game (as anyone who has played me well knows), I think this will really help me because I just don't play enough.

Ice Skating

Here are some photos from our ice skating outing this morning. This is Somerset House, which is on the Strand, right next to the (ugly) building that houses the maths department of King's College.

They make some tickets available every morning for that day, instead of booking in advance. We had to arrive early this morning to buy those tickets, since they were sold out all day. It was a bit rough on Alicia, who doesn't usually arrive at the office until late afternoon.

Here's Alicia, Brenda and Ed. Alicia, who is from Mexico, was rather out of her element on ice. She was a good sport though, and managed, after not very long, to leave the edge and clomp along on her skates without the aid of the handrail.

Ed and I change places. I think the idea here is that you pay £10 to take photos of yourself and your friends or family on ice skates. This we accomplished. Maybe we should have taken pictures in front of the tree though. I guess there's always next year (Alicia did say she would go back and I'll hold her to it).

Brenda in action. Ed left a few minutes early; the rest of us decided to finish out the hour on the ice. We met him for hot beverages in the snack bar afterwards and berated him for not warning us that the reason he had left early was to avoid the long queue to return your skates, while your socks absorb the puddles of melted ice.