Pork Buns and Gluhwein.

I made steamed pork buns yesterday, and they were delicious. It's a good thing that I set some aside for lunches later this week, because otherwise I would have eaten them all.

I made them smaller that I usually do, because I wanted them to fit in the plastic lunch containers that I bought.
But the smaller size just makes me want to eat more of them, they are like little tasty snacks.

After the buns, I went out to meet some people for games. There is a bar here, Chico Mendes, that has all sorts of board games for people to sit an play. But the place was full, as there was going to be live music that night. So instead we went and had a mug of Gluhwein at the Christmas Market, and then went to play pool.

Gluhwein (there should be an umlaut over the u), is hot mulled wine. It is essentially cheap red wine, served hot, with LOTS of sugar, and some spices. Ours came in little boot shaped mugs, which was fun.

At the pool hall, since we didn't have a reservation, we had to wait a while, so we played a game of risk. We set the rules out at the beginning, which was a really good idea because that meant no arguing about them later. The pool table was ready just as we were getting to the point where people where regularly holding continents and having large battles against each other. Which is good, because we had to stop the game before much animosity started to build.

... since sliced bread.

Today I used the bread slicing machine! Adventure!

OK, it sounds kinda lame, but I had been determined to use the machine that slices bread since I got here.

What am I talking about?
At the place where I buy my bread, the bread comes in whole loaves. At first I would just bring the bread home and slice it my self with a bread knife. This works fine for baguettes, but it's a bit of a pain for the heavier loaves.
But, they have this automatic bread slicing machine that slices it for you, all at once! You put the bread in the back, close the top, and press the green button. Then the bread gets sliced all at once!

I'd seen it used before, but was always too unsure incased I made a mess of it.
Fortunately, it's pretty straight forward, and I really shouldn't have worried.

Rain, rain, go away.

I was planning on going to Amsterdam this weekend with some friends, but the forecast for amsterdam predicts 90% chance of heavy rain, so we're postponing it.

It was raining pretty hard here this morning as well, so I stayed in bed for a bit longer until it lightened up.
Which is good, because I had been up pretty late last night doing some recreational programming. It was lots of fun.

I was programming in straight, old fashioned C, which I prefer over all of that newfangled (circa the 90s) Object Oriented stuff.
I understand that OOP makes it a lot easier to write larger, complicated programs, but it seams to me that there is an inherent loss of program efficiency. Or at least, it makes it much easier to write inefficient programs.
This is probably why, despite a +10 times speed up in computers over the last 10 years, word processors don't seem to run any faster than they used to. Sometimes even slower.

Stupid Computers!

So, I have an account on the fastest supercomputer in Europe.
I'm trying to run my simulations, and what happens?
The supercomputer breaks.
3/4 of it is "down", and the remaining 1/4 is "idle".
"down" means that it isn't working, "idle" means not down, but just not doing anything.

I'm sure that it couldn't have been my fault, as I was only using a very small fraction of it at the time.

And it's saturday, so it will likely not get fixed until monday.

Frustration!

I'm going to go take a nap now.

Christmas Market!

The Christmas Market in Aachen started yesterday.
It's pretty cool, all of the little shops selling whathaveyou.

Here are two pictures that I took today, It's pretty crowded!





I'm pretty excited for it all.

More Horses, party in the other room.

Here are some more horses that I found around Aachen.

This little guy was in the front window of an art gallery on a side street near my flat.


Another horse being kept on a balcony. I don't know how many times I passed the balcony horses before noticing that they are up there. I think they are fun.



This guy was near the post office.




My flatmate is having a party tonight. I was social for a bit, but have also been sneaking back to my room, accomplishing work stuff.

I think that I'm done with the party for tonight, though.

Baby Jacket Complete

Today I finally finished the baby jacket that I've been making for Nick's new baby boy.

The Jacket is made out of candy coloured yarn, with bright smiling sunshine face buttons.
I just picked up the buttons this afternoon, along with some new yarn so that I can knit another scarf.

Here is a picture of the jacket, with a closeup of one of the buttons.

Home made curry

I made a red curry today for lunch and it was delicious! And simple to make!

Here are the ingredients that I used (meat not shown).



I put some oil in a pan with chopped up garlic and shallot. I use a shallot because they are naturally more quantized than an onion, i.e. I don't have to worry about what to do with the left over onion.
I also add some red curry paste. How much depends on how spicy I want it.
Once the paste is mixed in throughout the oil, I add the chopped up meat.
Once the meat is cooked, I add the coconut milk and let it simmer, adding more coconut milk as needed until it is reduced to a very creamy gravy. 0.5L of coconut milk may seem excessive, but after being reduced it makes it all very wonderful.
Oh, and at some point I add some of the weird asian sauce that is shown in the picture. It's kind of a sweetened soy sauce with kelp extract.

Pizza Time!

I found a really good place to get really good pizza here.
Of course, by found I mean, was shown, :-)

Now, there are many places to get pizza in Aachen, but none as good. Or so I am told.

It was a bit of a walk from the office, but well worth it. And then, AND THEN!!!! We got ICE CREAM on the way back!!!1!!
Oh how easy it is to be happy walking in the rain eating ice cream.

Maybe it was that I was finally not completely overwhelmed with work, but it was much easier to be happy today.
Especially after the pizza, and especially, ESPECIALLY after the Ice Cream.

Horses of Aachen

There are a number of different painted horse statues all over Aachen, And I've decided to try and take pictures of as many of them as I can.
Here are the ones that I have so far:

These guys are above a McDonalds.



This one is near the market square.


This one is near the lecture halls.


I feel lucky for noticing this one. I find it kind of funny, keeping a horse on a balcony.