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July 29, 2005
highlight week 30
so you know i've been doing my timesheets when i start titling my blog entries with the week number.
charlie and the chocolate factory
went with robert, and during the movie i stuffed myself with a bag of peanut M&M's and a tub of Ben&Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream.
this is such an amusing movie! i read charlie and the chocolate factory for the first time when i was 10 and i've read it many times over since; it is one of my favorite books. tim burton did a fab job translating roald dahl to the screen! you have to go see it!
shopping night
thursday night is late-night shopping in amsterdam so i went with denise and her friend, patricia, who is on stopover from hong kong to rio de janeiro on a business trip. we walked all along the negen straatjes, tried a few clothes on in the sale at shops in magna plaza.
i am looking for an evening bag, for our wedding party in august. i fell in love with every other bag and shoes i saw, but i managed to restrain myself from buying anything until i find the stuff i need for the wedding.
i looked at some jewelry as well, and made an appointment at an atelier for saturday, to look at some pieces i like, and see if they can be made to match the colors of the wedding outfit :)
then denise, patricia and i went to japanese pancake world for an okonomiyaki dinner. i stayed over at denise's new apartment. she lives 5 minutes away from leidseplein, on the top floor of a building that overlooks the vondelpark. arrrggghhhh, i want a flat like that!
denise made me a very yummy chocolate cake when we got home. it was souffle-like and very chocolatey. poke it with a fork and all the chocolate sauce goodness just bursts forth. i had it with vanilla ice cream. so so yumm. i went to bed happy :)
have a good weekend everyone!
Posted by Yasmina at 01:33 PM | Comments (2)
July 27, 2005
toys wonderful toys!
I went to De Bijenkorf at lunchtime today and they were having a special Miffy/Nijntje 50th anniversary. All those wonderful toys! I ended up buying some toys, for my toddler nephew, Xavie.
Nijntje Tent:
My parents gave me my first tent when I was 3 and I camped out in the livingroom all by myself! I'm so proud of me. I hope Xavie will have endless hours of fun playing in his tent, as well.
Nijntje Memory game:
Made by Ravensburger, from special thick cards, with prints of all Nintje characters. My parents started me pretty early on Ravensburger memory games (mine was not Nijntje, but the other Dick Bruna character, the farmer guy) and I think this is where I get my visual/photographic memory from.
It's a favorite game with us, so I think my parents would get fond memories of us playing this in Geneva, except this time they are playing with their grandson.
Wooden xylophone:
I love wooden music instruments for kids! This one has the bars in different colors and produces such nice sounds *I think I pissed off the shopkeeper a bit as I played the xylophone today* I love that this is wooden as well. I'm sure we'll find out soon how musically-inclined Xavie is :)
Dislike for plastic toys:
Too much cheap plastic stuff for kids in the shops these days, I can't stand them. I never go into toy stores like Bart Smit and Toys R Us because they don't sell beautiful wooden toys *this is the designer in me talking, toys must have aesthetic values as well as educational values*
I go to a lot of independent toy shops that sell traditional wooden toys; there is a wonderful big one in Antwerpen that I can spend hours in. One of my favorites is in Den Bosch. I like going in there with my mother, and she'd laugh as she remembers all these toys she'd got me when I was young. My parents bought my sister and I mostly educational + constructive toys.
The plastic toys I had were the Lego/Duplo variety, and back then, they were the real building block stuff. None of this pre-fabricated Star Wars or Harry Potter Lego sets. We just had squares, rectangles and flat pieces. I made dolls, or robots, depending on my girly-tomboy mood, from my Lego pieces. :)
Nijntje Pool:
I very nearly bought a small circular pool for Xavie, but I stopped myself. My cousins gave Xavie a pool for his birthday, and even though the top ring on the pool has a leak (so he can't lean on the sides of the pool), it works OK. My dad sent me a really cute nekkid picture of Xavie in his pool *15 years from now, Xavie would kill me if he finds out I posted his nekkid baby pictures on my blog*
My sister takes Xavie swimming almost every weekend at the country club, and she says he loves the water. And when they are in my dad's apartment during the week, they swim in the swimming pool of the apartment complex. He's such a waterbaby, I remember bathing him and he just loves to splash water.
p.s. Don't sue me; Nintje images above are copyrighted to Dick Bruna :)
Posted by Yasmina at 02:05 PM | Comments (2)
July 25, 2005
baby boy!
Naya was nearly five months pregnant when she and her husband attended my wedding last March. Yesterday I woke up with a jolt that this is four months later, and that she was probably a proud, happy mommy by now.
SMS from Yasmina to Naya, late Sunday night:
Naya, r u mommy yet? Udah waktunya kan Nay? Boy or girl or twins nih? Salam dari Belanda, Yasmina + Robert.
SMS from Naya, 25 July 2005, 20:23 WIB:
yasminaaa pa kabar? yes, i'm a mommy now :) it's a boy, namanya fadhly. kayak fuad tapi bule. lahirnya kecepetan min, beratnya aja blm sampe 3kg wkt lahir, kecil deh
SMS from Yasmina to Naya, 5 minutes ago:
Nay, congrats ya mommy + daddy baru! Ntar bagi fotonya ya Nay? Gpp kecil, gw dulu cuma 2.8kg pas lahir. Asal sehat kan, Nay? Lots of love from Belanda!
Woo hoo... I am so happy for Naya and Fuad :)
Posted by Yasmina at 02:55 PM | Comments (4)
July 24, 2005
what's in my bag: july 2005
posted this for the what's in your bag group at flickr.
i didn't realise how much junk i've been carrying around in my bag every day! a pocket penguin paperback, a moleskine sketchbook, a couple of pens, work ID, wallet, keys, lipbalm, tissue, a couple of picture books, peppermints; all things i need daily. but concert ticket stubs? and a spork? i guess it comes in handy if i suddenly have to eat pasta or instant noodles or salad at work something.
oh and my Canon G5 camera is usually in there too, except i'm using it to take this photo :)
you can see the bag here.
Posted by Yasmina at 03:24 PM
July 20, 2005
breakfast for robert
i wake up every morning earlier than robert so i can make him breakfast before i go to work (and yes, i come home earlier than him also most of the time, so i can cook him dinner).
today i made dutch uitsmijter: toast with bacon, cheese and eggs. specially-made egg hearts for robert :) this is my submission for flickr fridayfoodfiesta eggs week.
don't worry, our breakfasts are usually healthier than this: fresh croissant or bread, with jam or topping, fresh fruit and homemade smoothies.
Posted by Yasmina at 02:03 PM | Comments (10)
July 19, 2005
my cousin sami
sami is six months older than me. growing up, we'd always been close. unfortunately i didn't see him much while i was in indo this year; i was a little bit mad because he didn't come to my wedding. but i met him for lunch after returning from bali so that was good.
anyway, sami got engaged to this girl and they'll be getting married later this year. i'm writing these stories for her, so she knows what she's getting herself into ;)
sami the typist
sami and i were maybe eight years old, he's as round as ever and i'm skinny like a beanpole; yes, i was skinny once. he was sleeping over and at this time i had my little newspaper business going; my mom gave me her old typewriter as a gift. i made drawings and stories on paper, photocopied them and sold them to family and friends.
anyway, on saturdays i had piano lessons. so i made sami type all the stories while i was away. i paid sami Rp.50 for one paragraph. he also asked to be paid in food (ice cream or a bowl of noodles or siomay, i think). typical.
geez oh man, sami was a really S-L-O-W typist. *rugi di mie bakso dan es cendol deh gue* i hope he's a better typist now that he's a lawyer, imagine all that paperwork a lawyer has to do.
sami the bouncer
around this time, my parents owned a really bouncy spring bed. so sami and i used to jump up and down on the mattress all the time, which annoyed my parents to no end. and because sami is a totally round kid, and weighed twice as much as i did, i didn't really need to bounce. i'd just wait for his weight to land and that was enough to propel me into the air. ;)
sami the antar-antar semut
i'm sorry there is no english translation for antar-antar semut. we were in highschool and he came over to stay for a few days with me. when it was time for him to go home, i went with him on the train and slept over at his house for a few days.
then he took me back to bogor. then we went back to jakarta. this continued until school started and his mom finally drove me home in the car.
sami food fiesta
we love to eat. we eat when we meet. we meet to eat. sami and i have had weekends where we went on an eating spree: sushi, sashimi, doner kebab, shawarma, lasagna, fettucini carbonara, spare-ribs, roast beef, roast potatoes, salad with blue cheese dressing, ice cream, pempek palembang, bakmie GM, indonesian roast lamb *kambing guling*, jajanan pasar, laksa, nasi goreng, es teler, all in one very gastronomically satisfying weekend.
so i am really happy that sami ends up with someone who loves food as much as we do.
a list of places i would like to take sami + angki in europe:
- thai market place cafe on portobello road, london
- japanese pancake world, amsterdam
- belgo, london
- lulu's, rotterdam
- bonjardim, lisbon
- oporto, to sample port wine and eat sardines
- kulu-kulu sushi, london
- belgian food in lier
- waffles and mussels in antwerpen
- lisson grove in london for fish n chips
- cinque terre in italy for yummy italian seafood
- the lakes near halle, for german food
- zierikzee in zeeland, NL, for dutch seafood
- more to come...
Posted by Yasmina at 02:48 PM | Comments (2)
July 17, 2005
sin city + pocket penguins
amidst all the harry potter release hype, i went to the bookshop to get me some more of the wonderful 70th anniversary pocket penguin books.
i bought six new titles to add to my earlier collection:
7. on shopping - india knight
8. nothing bad ever happens in tiffany's - marian keyes
10. a taste of the unexpected - roald dahl
15. artists and models - anaïs nin
19. where i was - james kelman
22. the dressmaker's child - william trevor
so this weekend i spent some time on the couch, drinking fruit smoothies and reading a couple of the titles above :)
i'd seen the sin city trailer on the apple site but forgoten about it until i read thalia's entry about the movie on her blog. so last night fu-ho, robert and i went to catch the midnight show.
wow. wow. wow. what can i say? thalia summed it up well on her entry. the story of marv and hartigan were the ones that touched me most. i loved the entire movie, even the cheesy dialogues, and i laughed at all the cliche bits. i did cringe at all the overly violent bits *ugh, violence just makes me queasy* i want the DVD when it comes out. this movie reminds me of ben, it's a totally ben movie :)
next week wednesday, robert and i have a date to see 'charlie and the chocolate factory'. can't wait! :)
Posted by Yasmina at 03:17 PM | Comments (3)
July 14, 2005
weeknight in amsterdam
last night i went to amsterdam with gerard, judith and jessica. gerard had tickets for us to see a concert at the magnificent concertgebouw in amsterdam's museumplein.
the concert was a mix of classical music, spanish guitar by pepe romero, flamenco dances, and opera. the orchestra and spanish guitar played one of my favorite pieces, Rodrigo's Aranjuez. :)
the opera was heavy, i'd never been that interested in opera anyway. i thought the singer and dancers for the flamenco dance were very good. i'd seen flamenco dances in spain before and one christmas in madrid, i managed to get tickets for a joaquin cortes performance.
before the concert we went to the japanesepancakeworld to eat some of joachim's lovely okonomiyaki. i had a negiyaki butatama this time, and a green tea milkshake. so yumm! i thought of kathya as i was eating, and i thought maybe if i thought of her hard enough, in wiesbaden she'd get zapped by the delicious psychic flavors.
we got home pretty late, around two am. so today i am quite tired. must get to bed early tonight.
Posted by Yasmina at 12:11 PM | Comments (4)
July 12, 2005
flickr'd cherries
last night i posted at flickr saying that my upload quota has been used up this month, so please could everyone look at my blog instead? but this morning i found a cool comment from kathya saying i should look again at my upload quota. hooray! :)
kathya and david got me (and robert) a pro flickr account! yay! hooray! we're so happy! thank you thank you thank you! we're so thankful that we have generous friends :)
*i am a bit overdosing on the cherries i bought today at the market. i ate almost all of lisa's, who bought them in the morning on her way to work, and at lunchtime i popped out to buy another half kilo of cherries and i've almost eaten them all*
Posted by Yasmina at 04:24 PM | Comments (6)
July 11, 2005
north sea jazz 2005
picture is highlights from sunday's NSJ festival. went with robert and remco. i thought gerard might be there, but he was floating on the north sea without the jazz. it was fun, although i wasn't feeling so well, so i was really tired. plus one of the fusion jazz bands really gave me a headache; i didn't know where the next note was going in that music.
we managed to catch afro-cuban all-stars, candy dulfer, steps ahead (with richard bona, who we saw 2 years ago and he is good), the first 5 minutes of guaco (we left because it was not what we expected) and at the end of the night we found a nice cozy small room where joey difrancesco was playing. it was such a nice session. everyone was lying on the floor, on the carpet, listening to the band play. good end to NSJ 2005.
Posted by Yasmina at 10:49 PM | Comments (6)
July 09, 2005
food food food
honestly, when i look at this, this, this and this, i think there just isn't enough mealtimes in the day. i'm just so so hungry, i think i'm going to pop down to the bakery and buy bread for breakfast.
robert bought tickets for North Sea Jazz festival, only for the Sunday. so he's dragging me off to that. i don't feel much like going, probably because i'm still not feeling 100%, but maybe i'd feel worse if i didn't go with him. i still have a bit of a cold, stuffy nose, sore throat but at least my ears don't hurt any more.
at the least the weather outside looks promising, sunny and blue sky. oh, and there's a great falafel foodstand at the North Sea Jazz festival. i love falafel. hooray for falafel! oh and we're going to robert's dad's house today so i hope we can stop by the eel place and get some smoked eel sandwiches, lekker lekker lekker :)
have a great weekend everyone!
Posted by Yasmina at 10:19 AM
July 08, 2005
on a lighter note...
penguin books turns 70... happy birthday!
in celebration of their 70th anniversary, they've published 70 penguin pocket books. you can buy them online here; the idea is that you can buy 70 titles for a boxset price of 70 quid. the spines of these 70th anniversary paperbacks are color-coded; originally, in 1935, it was orange for fiction, blue for biography, green for crime. they are also numbered on the spine.
i was at my local bookshop last week with kathya and david when i spotted the penguin books special. they were sold separately, and kathya and i bought some titles, different ones, so we can do a book swap later.
the titles i got:
3. otherwise pandemonium - nick hornby
4. summer in algiers - albert camus
43. something for the weekend - jamie oliver
50. seventeen poisoned englishmen - gabriel garcia marquez
69. murder - john steinbeck
70. on seeing and noticing - alain de botton
the other thing that made me happy today was that my order from hardtroze has arrived. yay! new bag! it's cream with a flowery pattern on the front, and wide straps for slinging over my shoulder. the size is perfect to carrying my powerbook, my camera, my mobile, my lipgloss, my facial oil blotting paper, water bottle, wallet, keys, mints, all those things girls carry round basically. hooray :)
Posted by Yasmina at 03:45 PM | Comments (2)
london, inevitably
last year i was over in london, visiting my former housemate james. he had received a job interview request, somewhere in west london, fulham or something. james complained to me that he didn't want to travel on the tube for fear of terrorist attack.
i laughed at him. i guess by living in the netherlands for some years, where there's generally less fear, i didn't know what to think of james and his fear of terrorist attacks. this is not the london i used to live in: i roamed the city freely, going wherever i pleased.
at the time, this was what i told james: "look, london is going to get hit no matter what. you won't know when or where or how, but it seems inevitable. you can't live in fear all the time, you just got to believe that god would guide you not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
now that all of this has happened, it's really scary, and i don't know what to think. if i think back to what i told james, it's a pretty terrible place we live in when i take bomb attacks as something that'll inevitably happen to my hometown. :(
Posted by Yasmina at 12:18 PM
July 07, 2005
london explosions
ugh. i cannot get hold of my friends in london: gaya + joachim, mbak murni + mas yusuf, daniel, james, alex, ben and james. none of their phones are connected. i hope they are okay. :(
*update* well sms is working so i got hold of james, gaya, ben and mbak murni. james says everyone we know are safe. gaya also says that she, her husband joachim and her brother ari are ok, they are at home, can't go anywhere as roads are shut and no public transport available. mbak murni says her husband returned home after the first explosion happened when he was still at chalk farm tube. ben and his girlfriend karen are also fine, since they left early so they were out of it by then. :)
allan says he's also ok although he doesn't know the whereabouts of richard and tak.
my thought and prayers are with the friends and families of the victims.
*update* please please let richard and tak everyone be safe from harm tonight.
Posted by Yasmina at 12:31 PM | Comments (4)
July 04, 2005
fourth of july weekend
we did so much this weekend i don't even know where to begin!
the story of kathya + yasmina
so kathya and i became friends when we were maybe 12, living in the washington d.c area. we liked the same music, hard rock stuff, we even went to see *gasp!* poison in concert! huahahaha, now i cringe when i think about poison and the band members' hairdo.
i moved away when i was 14 and lost contact with kathya. earlier this year kathya found me through friendster, and we discovered that we live near each other; she's about 3 hours away from me in wiesbaden, germany. how cool is that?
so thirteen years later we are back in each other's lives! kathya and her husband david came to visit us this weekend, and it was so so good to see them! it was not at all awkward or anything, just this nice rediscovery of each other, and of local food, hehe.
the eerie thing is that kathya and i grew up to be similar type of people: we're chocolate addicts, we're totally into food, we like stubble on guys *ahem, our husbands*, we pick our scabs, we sometimes walk around with our cameras permanently attached to our faces.
boekie woekie
this is my favorite bookshop after fnac chiado in lisbon, and foyles on london's charing cross road. boekie woekie, on amsterdam's beerenstraat, stocks limited edition, one-off books from artists and photographers. i love their stuff.
i took kathya and david here, after we'd walked round the other bits of negen straatjes. my ritual is to get a newspaper, have brunch at nielsen's across the street and when i'm done, i go into boekie woekie and see what new things they have in stock. i love the little delicate illustrations on the books; you're buying art, not books. i love the pocketbooks and reading them on the train on my way home.
this time i bought two small photo books of someone's journey to china. i love picture books.
food, glorious food
where do i begin? to tell the sweet love story that is older than the sea, the simple truth about the love he* brings to me, where do i start?
* = food, not robert, huahahaha
kathya and i are so so passionate about food. i think if i wasn't doing design, i would be cooking, cooking and cooking. i was joking with kathya that she should move to amsterdam and we'd get ourselves a brownstone house on one of the grachts, have a cafe/bar downstairs and a design studio on top. so if i got hungry i could run downstairs and kathya would feed me, hehe.
this weekend we consumed the following:
1. tom ka soup that i prepared
2. poffertjes with ice cream (i had mine only with butter and powder sugar)
3. david had strawberry tarts after the poffertjes
4. a box of chocolate from the boulangerie
5. lots of white beer with a slice of lemon, i love you hoegaarden...
6. bulgogi salad with naan bread (me)
7. roast lamb salad (david)
8. some sort of seafood in a cream sauce (kathya)
9. 'death by chocolate' chocolate cake (kathya)
10. pistachio parfait (me)
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11. breakfast of fresh croissant, banana smoothies, mon chou cream cheese spread, orange juice, tea, coffee
12. osaka-style okonomiyaki with marinated beef, onions and spinach (me)
13. osaka-style okonomiyaki deluxe with everything (kathya)
14. hiroshima-style okonomiyaki with salami and cheese (david)
15. green tea milkshake (kathya & david)
16. cocktail of vodka, calpis and 7up (me)
17. more white beer with slices of lemons
18. tiramisu
19. rendang
20. gado-gado
21. ayam goreng pazri nanas
22. sate kambing
23. nasi putih + garnish (srundeng, acar, sambal goreng kentang, kerupuk udang)
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24. breakfast of fresh croissant, banana smoothies, fresh strawberries with cream cheese, tea and coffee
25. tahu isi dengan saus tausi (stuffed to fu with tausi sauce)
26. ayam bungkus rebung (chicken wrapped in bamboo shoots)
27. jellyfish with duck and cucumber salad
28. nasi goreng
29. ho fun (kwetiau) with cha siu and roast duck
30. chow fan (cakwe dibungkus pake bahan mie trus disiram kecap asin)
31. prawns and mango wrapped in pastry, with a mayonaise sauce
32. deep-fried prawn balls (in indo: udang mayones)
33. turnip cakes with chinese sausages
34. fried salted squid with chili
35. ...
hey kath, did i get everything or did i miss something?
for food pictures, check out kathya's flickr page
we went to amsterdam specially for the okonomiyaki. we went to this place, which is run by joachim, a german guy from ulm, and his japanese wife (who greeted us in bahasa indonesia, what a pleasant surprise!). joachim gave a great thorough explanation on the history of okonomiyaki whilst we watched him cook our food, as well as talking about our personal backgrounds. it was such a great experience, this is one place you should not miss when you are in amsterdam. :)
anyway, kathya and david have left me now, and i was sad to see them go. we didn't manage to get all the food spots i wanted to take them to. i hope next month they return to NL for a longer time, hehe...
have a good week everyone!
Posted by Yasmina at 10:32 PM | Comments (2)
