i didn’t quite post everything yet from our amazing trip to Egypt; when we went snorkling in the Blue Hole in Dahab, i bought one of those very simple (but as you can see here at least pretty effective) small throw-away camera’s…
i asked Sylvia to take the name literally after developing the pix (thanks, Syl!)…
now, the pictures don’t do justice to the immense feeling of freedom beneath the surface. what i also loved was how al of the fishies accepted our presence as if we weren’t there… i don’t know how many different species we have seen, but it must have been at least 50!
One of the nice things about working in a different country, I feel is to use the (little) time off to see new things, work and play, so to speak…
So after my class in the morning on friday, where we are really on a roll and have good discussions, I hurry to the appartment to get my things. I walk over to the busstation to take the expressbus to Busan, the 2nd city of Korea. A funny thing, this expressbus. Costs next to nothing, and drives to all the major cities, really easy. also, because of the distance it stops somewhere at some parkingplaces with shops and toilets at the side of the highway to get something to eat and drink in the bus (i really don’t see bus 182 from Leiden to Alphen do that ;-( )…
i arrive in one of two busterminals in Busan in the west of the city.
but as always, my experience is that when you take a couple of minutes to understand the subwaysystem of these types of cities, you go anywhere, anytime at no cost… and Busan os no different!
so i take the subway to my hotel, nice and neat, next to a big business center and close to one of the major beaches, Haeundae beach. from my room, i give my friend Sung Min a call; gonna meet him later. for now, i start walking, my favourite means of transportation when it comes to getting to know a city… i cross the river from my hotel and ignore the biggest shopping mall in the world (according to Guiness anyway, for what it’s worth), the Shinsegae Centum City mall… then i walk into the Suyeong area, a nice, kind of messy folky type of neighbourhood. when i get hungry, i pass a japanese restaurant, where the waitresses are very giggly and the food looks amazing; enter Arvid!
the sushi indeed is fantastic and i get the giggly waitress passing me and giving me new dishes, looking great and tasting better! too bad we cannot figure out the english fishnames used in the sushi…
i walk back to the hotel to meet up with Sung Min and it feels as if we saw each other yesterday. he first shows me Haeundae beach and although not very applicable to the two of us, this is a very romantic place (proof of which are the couples sitting on the benches at the cliffs)… the start of the beach is this around the (apparently) famous Westin hotel and you follow the wooden walking paths around the cliffs ending up on the actual beach. this beach has a very classy audience, couples walking hand-in-hand and people having drinks at the boulevard. so are we. we sit down and keep up the catching up; this is one of the things i like so much about talking to Sung Min: i can ask him anything i want about his culture and he can ask me anything about mine…
we walk back to the car and shows me the other beach,
Gwangalli beach. this beach has a totally different atmosphere: there is a rockconcert going on, many young people, nice and noisy, fortune tellers at the beach (“you will be very relaxed real soon”); very vibrant! sung Min shows me the raw fish market here: a big hall at the ground floor of a huge appartment building, where there are all kinds of reservoirs with water and the most exotic fish in them. the idea is to indicate which fish you want to eat and then to have it delivered to any of the restaurants on one of the floors above… indeed, all of the floors above the groundfloor are restaurants!!! Sung Min and i are not hungry, so we go to the Thursday Party, a great bar at the boulevard, where we do some drinking…
when we walk back to the car, which is parked at a parking lot, the owner asks Sung Min where i am from and starts to Hiddin-Gu me (Hiddink is a dutch football coach who has pushed Korea to a higher ground when he was their coach and consequently is considered the reincarnation of Buddha here..). i get a drink from him, nothing alcoholic (probably because he drank most of that himself) and he starts to become kind of affectionate… Funny thing is, that in the Netherlands if you would approach a man like he does, you are wondering if you ended up in a gay-bar. i have understood, that because of the invisible fence between men and women (especially when you are not married), men amongst men and women amongst women are very physical in that they are very used to touch each other, even when they don’t know you so well, like my new friend. after we part from our friend, we get into the car and head back to my hotel where Sung Min drops me off. i say goodbye to my friend and fall into an amazing sleep…
saturdaymorning i get up and head downtown to Seomyeon to have some great coffee and a muffin at one of the international coffee places… nice jazz!
after my coffee i walk about over all of the little markets where it is great to be able to pass and look without having to say ‘la, shokran’ every time! by the way, maybe there is a lesson here: people work for their money, so far so good. but principally everyone works for his money! it is a shame if you don’t work! because if you are not in an office or a store, you can always grow vegetables and sell that?! you continuously see mainly old ladies at the side of the road, pealing peas, organizing carrots or leaves of lettuce and putting them into containers, cleaning fish or cutting chickenlegs; activities of which you thought they were just done by machines, but where they prove the contrary… but it is also a social gathering, your friends are sitting here as well or visit you ‘at work’, you have your family with you; this is Maslow visually explained!
i pass the markets on my way to Busanjin market through the “i-got-the-most-amazing-old-shit-for-sale”-market… i love walking the back-alleys. like in Seoul, they are crawling with small booths forming one particular type of market. and it is so funny: no matter how many restaurants there are, they are building and starting new ones everywhere! and in all of these markets there is a whole lot of the same! like in all of these countries there is absolutely no diversification. now that intrigues me, although i do like the customerorientation: it is very easy to find specific stuff!
i take the subway to the last, most northern station to take the bus to Geyong Ju. at this time, the subway is nice and busy for me to observe all kinds of different people and how they differ from their peergroups in Holland! young women, grandfathers with grandchildren, young teenagers, schoolchildren, old people, twenty-somethings… and in everything they seem more naïve than their counterparts in Holland. younger and more carefree, without the feeling to have to be tough and distant; at least that is the impression i sometimes get in Holland. people here are carelessly sleeping in the subway and others look at you totally open, straight in your face; try doing that in 010: “what’cha looking at catweazle? am i wearing something of yours?!”… even in the street, people bump into you, but never aggressive, just absent-minded: “sorry” (in korean)…
Sung Min told me to bring an umbrella by the way, because very bad weather was expected; apparently the RKMI (republican korean metereological instituut) has the same capabilities as the knmi in Holland; the weather is amazing! so now i am in the expressbus once again and again, this is an amazing means of transportation! flexible, comfortable… i really don’t know whether this would work in the Netherlands, but here it is fantastic (please in Holland with dutch drivers, cause i haven’t encountered any good one here; gas/break/change lanes/break/gas and then there is no car in sight, can you imagine what they do when they pass a truck!!)…
after about 40 minutes i arrive in Geyong Ju and the hotel is just around the corner. now, i understood this place is actually kind of a big, open-air museum with large distances and around the corner at the hotel, i saw a rental-motorscooterplace… hmmm…
although the two boys tell me i need an international driver’s licence, i self-confidently point at the little motorbike at mine and add i already did this once in korea (true, but that was a small moped at Jeju-island!)… Anyway, 50 or 125 cc, they ask me… duhn. the 125 is pretty fast (down the mountain, wind in my back about 125 km)… Cool wind in my hair (under my helmet), warm smell of the kimchi… anyway…
they explain to me how to get to the most beautiful places, Bulguksa temple and the Seokguram grotto… it seems simple and later it actually is, but the map is not to scale, so everything seems much closer than it is. these two places are about 30 km down the valley; thank god for my scooter! so hit the gas and head down to Bulguksa. the whole area stems from the Silla dynasty and this temple is about 1250 years old… beautiful complex with all kinds of prayer-areas and buddha-statues… from there i get to Seokguram and i like this even better: a small temple carved into a rock up in the mountain with a normal front… the buddhas in it are also carved in the mountainrock, really beautiful! small but lovely!
from there i drive back along all kinds of remains; a temple here and there (but after Bulguksa and Seoul, more of less), i pass the Anapji-pond, where king Munmu founded a big pond with temples to house animals and plants (foreseeing!), Cheomseongdae, the oldest astronomical obeservatory in East-asia (for what it’s worth) and the Daereungwon royal tombs, which are tumuli, big hills under which the royals were buried…
A little bit later than i should have i return the motorscooter, but they don’t mind and i go for a bite. Then i notice, that the rest of Geyong Ju is really nothing much. I find a nice restaurant where i have some meatsticks and a plate of undeterminable (at least
for me, as i don’t speak Korean ) meat, which is not so good… I impersonated a chicken and the girl nodded, but if this is chicken, it is very tough parts of it… I’ll just leave it… (later, when i ask Paul, he says they were the chins of chicken…)
after dinner, there is really nothing much to do here, so i get back to the hotel…
the next day i take the amazing bus back and check in again at the Haeundae Centum city hotel. i am visiting william and veronica, two former students of mine, about 10 years ago. they have gotten married and are living in Busan. William invited me to celebrate his birthday with them and some of their friends.
we had a great lunch with all guests in a nice italian restaurant and drinks up in their beautiful appartment overlooking the ocean…
After this relaxed atmosphere, drinks and nice people it is very hard to get myself moving again. but i want to do a little more sightseeing so i thank them for their great hospitality and take the subway to Jagalchi, the famous fishmarket… it is the most crazy amount of fishbooths and fishstands that you can imagine and then you have the inside market still…
i walk over to the other side of the main road and enter a vibrant area, where it is immensely crowded and very energetic. not so at the hotel where i return, because most of the guests are probably preparing for another day of congresses and seminars… i have to say, i love Busan, the way it is built around all of those mountains in the city, creating different areas… loved it!
let’s go to sleep and return to the vibrant, energetic Gwangyang in the morning…
i was so happy to notice the grlz had the same fascinations as i do; we don’t just go and visit a country for the beautiful beaches and all of the touristically appropriate locations… they, like me, see the normal side of a country too…
so with some help of them, here are some of the people we saw in Egypt…
i promised.
i did…
to put these things in a post.
so here it is.
the sushi-post…
let me describe what i use, but remember, experiment as much as possible to find different things and tastes. i like my sushi, like i like my jazz: fused and funky. i like to make something new, imagine tastes and most importantly, try stuff. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. but the sushi always gets better in the end!
so you asked me to put the stuff on here, i made a post with ingredients, some descriptions and end-results of course, as ultimately food is only as good as it tastes!
apart from this, i like to use cream cheese. mayonnaise is used for some types of sushi, but as i love the freshness and lightness of the sushi, i don’t like mayonnaise so much, as it makes the sushi too fatty to my taste. that’s why i use plain cream cheese…
in my opinion there’s nothing to making sushi. it’s all about the ingredients and the rice…
the best and freshest ingredients is the trick… so i love to buy the stuff before at the market (fishies and veggies) and in some great toko’s or
oriental supermarkets (usually in 010)… and when you have the ingredients, start with the rice (obviously ;-/ ).
you have to wash the rice as thoroughly as possible, until no starch comes from the rice anymore or when your hands turn blue from the water, one or the other…
seriously, when you stir the rice, the water should remain completely clean and transparent. loose the water and take new water in 1,5 to 1 division to the rice, so about 750 ml to 500 gr of rice.
then, i leave the rice for about 30 minutes in the cold water and after that, i put it to boil. when it boils, i turn down the fire almost completely and leave it to cook slowely for about 10 minutes until all of the water is gone. turn the fire off and leave the rice for about 10 minutes with the lid on the pan.
while cooking the rice i prepare the mixture that makes the rice so typically sushi-fresh afterwards with 175 ml of rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons of sugar and a little salt. heat the mixture until all of the sugar is absorbed by the vinegar… put the rice in a big shallow bowl to cool down, pour the mixture over the rice evenly and leave it to cool off with a towel over it for example. now, the rice should be really cooled down, before you use it for the sushi, as the nori will turn soft when it is too hot…
now we’re gonna cut and mix some stuff. first of all, i always love to buy salmon with the skin. cut the skin off, including that little whitish fatty layer. two reasons for this: you keep the leanest part of the salmon for the maki or nigiri and you use the skin to fry. this will become amazingly crunchy, which i love for the temaki’s (handrolls).
second, we’re gonna make a lovely mix for tuna tataki (tartare) to use in an uramaki (inside out roll) and to make some tuna tataki pyramids. cut the tuna (not all of it; we also love to use some for a lovely spicy tuna futo maki!), really small and mix it with some roasted sesame seeds, some cream cheese, a little salt and some wasabi paste… this is an amazingly fresh/spicy combination!
for the nigiri mainly, but i also love to use it as strips in a futomaki, i make tamago (omelet). mix 2 teaspoons of mirin or sake with 50 gr sugar, 2 teaspoons of light soy sauce with 4 eggs. take a (preferably) square frying pan, heat some vegetable oil and pour a first thin layer of the mixture in the pan on a low fire. when this layer is cooked at the bottom, take a spatula and fold the omelet to a third. pour more of the mixture in the pan and repeat the procedure until the mixture is gone and you have a thick brick-shaped omelet.
so now that the rice and the extras are done, we’re ready for the creative stuff!
let’s first make some futomaki (thick roll), a roll with nori on the outside and a thick layer of rice and filling of choice. first, put down a layer of nori on the sushi bamboo mat. then, wet your hands and grab some rice and spread it out over the nori not making the layer thicker than about 5 mm (to my taste), leaving about 1,5 cm open at the top of the nori. now put the filling you like at about 1/3 rd of the nori at the bottom (feel free to experiment with putting parts of the filling at different parts of the nori, this gives a great visual effect!)… in this case i used a strip of tamago, salmon and avocado and some sesame seeds over it… but i love tuna with cucumber, some cream cheese and tabasco, mmmmm… roll the maki from the bottom to a nice roll. finally, cut the roll in 8 pieces.
second, let’s make an uramaki (inside out roll), a roll with nori on the inside and rice on the outside. before you start, rip a piece of plastic wrap, big enough for covering the nori, which we’ll use later. put the rice on a sheet of nori like above, but don’t leave any space open. now put a line of fisheggs, sesame seeds (i used wasabi flavoured ones here) or any combination of them on the rice. then put the plastic wrap over the rice, put one hand on it and put one hand under the bamboo mat and turn it around. put the bamboo mat under the plastic wrap so that the nori is upwards facing. put the filling you want on the nori. i love the tuna tataki for this… then roll the maki, while making sure the plastic wrap is pulled out of the roll. again cut the roll in 8 pieces.
next are the hot rolls. this is a kind of different type. take two sheets of filo dough and put them on the bamboo mat. just put the filling of your choice on the dough. use fatty types of fish as this roll will be fried in vegetable oil and a leaner type will loose it’s flavour. i love red gurnard or salmon with crabsticks, cream cheese and cucumber (in this case). roll the dough and cut them into 8 pieces. then heat a big amount of vegetable oil in a wok and deep fry the pieces until they’re golden brown.
for the nigiri and the gunkan-maki (battleship roll) you make a layer of rice on a cutting board, for the former of about 1 cm thick in a rectangular shape, for the latter also about 1 cm thick in a small (<2,5 cm in diameter) oval shape. for the nigiri, put a piece of tamago or (my favourite) unagi (smoked eel) on it. cut a strip of nori of about 1 cm to wrap around the piece. for the gunkan-maki fold a piece of nori around the oval shape creating a kind of cup. in the cup you can put the ingredients you like; i used some cream cheese, put some mahi mahi on it, a small strip of anchovy paste, crabstick and some salmon eggs on top…
lastly, i made the temaki (handroll). for this, cut the nori in half (or 2/3 rd if you want a bigger temaki). put some rice only on the top half of the nori. then put the ingredients from the left top corner diagonally to the right bottom corner of the rice. i absolutely adore the temaki with fried crispy salmon skin, some cream cheese, cucumber and tabasco, finishing it with a tempura shrimp on top, hmmmmmm… the tempura shrimp by the way, is made with a special tempura paste and fried in vegetable oil…
on this video there’s a lot more of this stuff… damn, the guy is going absolutely crazy, that is why it is so frustrating i wasn’t able to see this tour live!!!
Here is devil’s pie (be sure to go through the beginning, when it starts, goose bumps!):
now I was going to see him in 2000. After he released his Voodoo album, I looked forward, no I was drewlingover the anticipation of seeing him doing his thing; the new stuff, but also the old stuff like brown sugar…
and i missed the north sea jazz festival in 2000, but my dissappointment was dismissed quickly by the news, that he was going to come back to rotterdam! and he was coming, posters were ready and everything…
but the concert was cancelled, resulting in the fact that this is the musical genius, i have, so far, not been able to see. now some intermediate albums notwithstanding, we haven’t heard anything since Voodoo in 2000. however, rumour has it, that his new album is coming out this year… seeing is believing, unfortunately…
i do have some footage of him though, @ the Free Jazz Festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 2000. Check it out!
photography, i mean… because on the one hand, with my old analog Canon Eos Rebel, i was a little more, i don’t know, thorough in taking pictures. you had to be at least a little surer than now to take a picture, as you had to have those films developed. and i liked to use higher iso-films and b&w films and stuff… so that was even more expensive to develop… on the other hand, though, the ease with which you can try and capture with digital is also very comfortable. no developing, just processing on your own laptop, i prefer this…
however, digital has one disadvantage: you have a lot. of pictures. a whole lot. an immense lot. so then, sometimes you go through them and discover all these pictures you meant to upload or process or anything…
here’s a couple of them…
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i don’t know why it is. but i do remember the first time i realised it… that there are these special occasions where you realise we live in a beautiful little country. not just for our culture and peculiarities, but also for the visuals…
when i was about 15, we had an exchange student from the US staying in our house for (i don’t remember exactly, but it must have been) a couple of weeks, maybe months. and although she was kind of an apathic girl (that much i do remember), we had fun showing her the special places in Holland.
and then i had that feeling the first time, about how you are so close to the most gorgeous places, that you still haven’t seen…
so i love to show reina around and moreover, to arrange things, when she asks for it. biking, she said. i wanna go biking. i said i needed time to notify the police, ANWB (dutch AAA) and all of the official institutions concerned with infrastructural and public safety. she said, she had biked before and it was kind of like with the ice skating: not very experienced, but very enthusiastic! well, you know me, enthusiasm is the only difference between success and failure, so after having received the old, but very nice bike of my mother (thanks, mother!), we planned for a biking trip from our house through the meadows, along small lakes, following rivers…
and then you see how beautiful it is; most amazing landscapes with mills and cows (no tulips, they were cut ), bunch of lambs, we saw a kind of rare bird and the weather was amazing… and what a beautiful country do we have…
i am proud of us as we biked about 35 km… not bad for a girl from the tropics, hunh?!
when reina and i went to the exile on main street exhibit in the bonnefantenmuseum in maastricht, i love to browse through the giftshop. not for ugly small statues or keychains, but for the surprising booktitles, they usually have in these shops.
again i found an amazing book. i love cinema and movies always; the title of the book is Cinema Now! it covers all kinds of independent or different moviedirectors, a lot of whom i appreciate very much. almodovar is the best example, but some orientals, mexicans and a lot of other nationalities pass by. of course, it is always a matter of taste, which could be the reason we were kind of looking strangely at the mentioning of The Host. we found that to be a hilarious (but in a very wrong way) horrormovie. but anyway.
a lot of my favourite movies are in it, like Babel, Volver and Memento for example, but it gives fantastic opportunity to check out new ones; movies by Bruno Dumont, Jacques Audiard and Lucrecia Martel, but mostly it is a book like a good cookbook: when you read it you get hungry…
) meat, which is not so good… I impersonated a chicken and the girl nodded, but if this is chicken, it is very tough parts of it… I’ll just leave it… (later, when i ask Paul, he says they were the chins of chicken…)
