Oh no, knit again

It's hard to cultivate thoughts of summer and sunshine when this is what greets you every single day. Apparently, this is what passes for summer in this little corner of the world. 

If cold can make things shrink, then the temperature of 12℃ over the past few days has definitely reduced the square footage in my brain that's reserved for swimsuits, sandals, strawberry smoothies and other summery delights. Instead, all I can think of is staying warm.

I seem to have knits on the brain lately. Case in point: I'm currently lusting for a Missoni scarf. I saw my first one in De Bijenkorf (the Rustan's or Takashimaya of Amsterdam) today and fell in love. A few seconds later my eyes drifted over to another one, and now my heart is torn.

Soft and feminine, or bold and striking?

Unfortunately, it comes with a price tag befitting a Missoni, so this love will have to remain unrequited... at least until I can figure out a way to drum up a regular income.

Also in the realm of knits: a few days ago, Audrey of Googooandgaga tweeted me a link to Zilalila's hand-knitted jumbo Nest cushions.

It was another case of love at first sight.

It just so happens that Marlon has always, always wanted a beanbag. I'm not wild about shiny, shapeless pleather, so I've flexed my wifely veto muscles to keep them out of our home. But when I showed the Nest to Marlon, we instantly felt that another miraculous matrimonial compromise was in the offing... in the form of a beanbag both of us could love.

So, braving the rain and cold, we embarked on a Sunday afternoon mission to Sukha, a wonderfully curated home and lifestyle store on the Haarlemmerstraat, which itself turned out to be a lovely street dotted with interesting little stores and cafes. When we got there and sank into the Nest, our worst fears were confirmed.

The Nest indeed feels as enveloping, comfortable and warm as it looks in photos. Therefore, we simply had to have it. 

Good for the home, bad for the bank account... but wait! It turned out to be half the price that it was on the website. That was a big relief... as big a relief as this big cozy knitted beanbag will be in the winter. Or, come to think of it, in the summer.

Knit wit

I just came from a wonderfully long lunch with some new friends from my Amsterdam Girls meetup group. Having realized the fundamental importance of girl friends in one's life (this would have made a huge difference back when we were still living in Singapore), I've been making more of an effort to meet more girls. And it's days like this when I feel like my efforts are paying off. With eight women from different countries and diverse backgrounds at one table, lunch stretched into a four-hour affair with lots of animated conversation.

It was also great to meet women who, like me, "gave up" a life or career back home to follow a boyfriend, partner or husband whose career leads to foreign shores. It reassures me that my choice hasn't been completely insane. That's the great thing about traveling and meeting people from all over the world—you get to see that there are so many ways to live, not just the way you're used to... or are expected to.

Anyway, the conversation turned to knitting when several of my lunchmates admitted to being enthusiastic knitters. This is something that I've noticed since moving here: women will get together, sit in a cafe in a group with their yarn and needles, and knit. And talk, of course. But mostly, just... knit. I've even seen get-togethers for knitting groups advertised online. It baffles me.

Then I realized of course we don't sit around and knit in cozy cafes because it's just not a tropical thing. Because really, what the heck will you do with all the woolly scarves, blankets, cardigans, hats and sweaters you've produced in the Philippines' sweltering heat? Aside from be hot, sweaty, itchy and bordering on the pretentious, of course. Like Singaporeans and their leather jackets.

Hmmm. Maybe there's a knitting culture in Baguio?

After lunch, we meandered around the Jordaan for a while, and happened upon a yarn store. When I stepped in and saw all these gorgeous colors, I thought: hey, maybe these girls are on to something here. So much eye candy, and so soft too! I never realized you could knit with so many different types of yarn, depending on the season: cotton, silk, various blends, even cashmere. It seems like a whole new world, one that all the pretty colors are calling to me to enter. So who knows? I may just take up knitting soon!

Second lesson

My second watercolor lesson with Penny was supposed to be an outdoor session, but the evil Dutch weather gnomes had other plans. Instead, we stayed inside her studio and pored over glossy photos of Dutch landscapes. I chose one of a stream by the woods (how precious!), not knowing that the big swathe of water was going to be tricky for a beginner like me.

Penny had a big group that day, five students, of which I was the only one below sixty. Seriously. I seem to have this knack for gravitating to all the geriatric hotspots. It must be the little old lady inside me. Anyway, I found myself getting huffy as I was painting because I felt I was largely being ignored. So I just went ahead painting with big, loose, and somewhat reckless strokes.

I was so put out that I almost forgot to be pleased with the afternoon's work.

There are problems with the perspective (I didn't bring out the bend of the stream quite too well) and shading of the tree trunks, but Penny seemed really pleased with it. "And it's only her second lesson!" she exclaimed, patting me on the hand. It was a departure from the careful, precise work of my classmates, off in a direction that I'm really liking. Looks like my days of obsessive detail are over.

The pull of pork

Red meat is rarely on the list of foods I crave for. Between beef and pork, I'm far likelier to crave for beef (usually in the form of a burger) than pork. I can go for months without eating pork and rely on a trip home to Manila for Christmas to fill up my meagre pork "quota" for the year. I'm probably one of the few Pinoys alive on this earth who simply does not, cannot eat pork liempo. 

In fact, the list of pork dishes I actually eat is very short.

1. Sausages (chorizo, wurst, and longganisa fall into this general category)
2. Cebu lechon (only from Cebu!)
3. Sisig
4. Chicharon
5. Majestic ham (a Christmas family tradition)
6. Pulled pork sandwiches

So it was to my great surprise that I found myself craving pork last week. Specifically, a pulled pork sandwich. The best I've had was at Daisy Mae's in New York two years ago. Since then, I've put pulled pork out of my mind... until now. The good thing is that it's easy to make, and thus a lot easier for me to get my hands on over here. Imagine if I'd been craving for lechon, sisig or Majestic ham!

I found an easy recipe for pulled pork on the Food Network that required the use of a Dutch oven. We've rarely used our Dutch oven since moving to the Netherlands (a true irony, har har) so it was nice to finally bring it out of the cabinet. With an abundance of Cs (cumin, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, chili and homemade chicken broth, among others) simmering away, the kitchen smelled mouthwatering. 

After Marlon and I attacked the cooked, tender meat with forks and left it to soak up the sauce, I made a broccoli slaw to go with it. I don't usually like slaw, but I like this recipe for broccoli slaw because it uses zero mayonnaise. Instead, it uses vinegar (I substituted apple cider with red wine) and wholegrain mustard to give the slaw a delectable zing.

Then all we had to do was plop a generous serving of pulled pork onto toasted hamburger buns and add a dollop of broccoli slaw. Et voila, our homemade pulled pork sandwiches!

The crunch and acidic tang of the slaw cuts right into the soft and sweet pork, making a yummy match. The pork is heavy though, so I don't see myself doing this at home too often. But to fulfill a craving that comes once in a blue moon, it's more than enough. This will keep me in good stead until pork and I have our Christmas reunion.

Peony in pencil

I never liked peonies before. I always associated them with Chinese paintings and bad tattoos. I'm not a fan of either.

www.hubpages.com

But ever since I first found them in the market here in late April, they've become my favorite flower. I love the huge blossoms (statement blossoms?), especially the ones that are colored intense shades of fuschia and coral. And I love how the petals don't dry up or simply drop off, but fade slowly to white, each blossom at a different pace. Death by ombre, what a way to go.

The only thing that I could conceivably hate about peonies, I discovered during my last Monday sketching session. And that is the fact that they are a real b*tch to draw.

I almost gave up a couple of times. Now I know why the Chinese have stylized their shapes, otherwise these would never make it into traditional motifs. The repetition would have driven the illustrator (at least, a lesser one like myself) totally nuts.

Luckily, we have scanners and printers today. So, working with some fluorescent papers I bought for my Singapore job hunt more than three years ago, I reproduced the sketch I made to create my own peony print. I used Mod Podge for the first time and had awful wrinkles everywhere. Thankfully, most of them disappeared with a little ironing.

The fluo on black kind of reflects how I've been feeling about having these flowers at home: they were the only visual bright spots for me during the first two dark, dismal weeks of "summer." Summer, I'm beginning to suspect, is a figment of the imagination over here, with as tenuous a connection to reality as corporatese, or marketing jargon. 

Ah, enough about this fictitious summer. If I can't get it outside, then I'll just have to find some way to enjoy it in my home. In petals or on paper, by nature's hand or by my own.

Six months

On Sunday, July 10, Marlon and I celebrated our first six months in Amsterdam.

Update: I just remembered a few months before we left Singapore, when we were agonizing over whether to move or not, give up the bigger (joint) income or not, and basically freaking out all the bloody time. We couldn't talk about anything else for weeks. Finally one afternoon in the pool (pool! I miss swimming!), Marlon said, "You know what, six months from now, we'll be in Amsterdam laughing about this and wondering what took us so long to decide."

Well we are now at that six-month point. And what do you know... we are laughing. No regrets.

We used to ignore our Singapore anniversaries (left before I hit my third), but as you can probably tell, things are different here. We slept in on Sunday morning and spent a long time cuddling drowsily on the daybed. Though it sounds normal, it's actually rare for us to do that on a weekend, so the day started off feeling pretty special.

Then, a huge milestone for me: I went out on my bike. We brought our bikes to Haarlem one weekend and spent some time cycling along the canals. But Amsterdam, with all its traffic (pedestrians, bikes, scooters, cars), is a different animal. Since my goal is to bike by myself regularly, I thought becoming familiar with the route to a place that I actually frequent would be a good start. So with Marlon as my guide (and hawi boy, haha), we biked to the Albert Cuypmarkt.

Intersections are the bane of my beginner's existence. I'm completely atrocious at starting up again after a stop, so I veered and wobbled into quite a few cars' path, and probably left quite a few bikers behind me rolling their eyes. One particularly tricky intersection where the bike lane disappeared completely shredded my nerves, and I took to wheeling my bike across the pedestrian lane on several occasions. 

The market was closed when we got there, but... I got there! Woohoo! So we took to a bench in the Sarphatipark to calm my frayed nerves, celebrated with some excellent lemon cheesecake ice cream from Het Ijspaleis, and I resolved to keep at it until both my biking skills and confidence improve.

It was only on my bike ride home that I noticed that I had been wearing a tight frown and chewing on my lip all throughout. I made a conscious effort to iron out my features (like my flamenco teacher used to insist we do). And looking calm and collected—even happy—was easy, because the ride home was much, much better. Marlon led me down a different route with fewer intersections and less traffic, and I had a much easier time of it. 

On the way home, my big loving bear of a husband bought me yellow roses to celebrate. Yes, arriving home in one piece, insurance intact, deserves flowers. He also pulled a first by biking home one-handed, with a bouquet of flowers in one arm. So very Dutch! Now all he needs to do is mount a baby between his handlebars and start texting with the other hand, and he'll be a full-blown Amsterdammer.

In the evening we got all dressed up for dinner at Lucius, a seafood restaurant in the city center. And no, we didn't bike there. But I look forward to hopefully, someday, becoming one of the legions of Dutch superwomen who get dolled up in heels and a dress and think nothing of biking to dinner.

Just as I look forward to more adventures in Amsterdam with my one and only partner in crime. Happy six months to us, Amsterdam. Let's make the remaining (at least) 4.5 years count.

Calle 13

Nearly two weeks ago at the Amsterdam Roots Festival, someone handed me a postcard advertising a gig by Calle 13 at Melkweg. I'd never heard of them before, so I decided to check them out on Spotify.

They turned out to be a really fun, not to mention Grammy-winning, reggaeton (a.k.a. Latin American hip-hop) group from Puerto Rico. Their music consists of awesome beats layered with Spanish lyrics, a language that I love the sound of. I've sampled reggaeton in the form of Daddy Yankee and Pitbull, but so far this is the group I've liked the most; they have a musicality and upbeat vibe that I've just been missing from the (admittedly mainstream) reggaeton acts I've heard so far.

The lyrics are mesmerizing enough to just listen to, and some of the quick and few flashes I've been able to translate have made me chuckle. Translated, some of their lyrics simply flow like poetry. Heck, in this particular verse I liked, they could very well be singing about life in the Philippines.

Tú no puedes comprar al viento,

Tú no puedes comprar al sol

Tú no puedes comprar la lluvia,

Tú no puedes comprar al calor.

Tú no puedes comprar las nubes,

Tú no puedes comprar mi alegría,

Tú no puedes comprar mis dolores.

You cannot buy my sun

You cannot buy my rain

You cannot buy my heat

You cannot buy my clouds

You cannot buy my happiness

You cannot buy my pain.

-- "Latinoamerica", Entren Los Que Quieran (2010)

In need of something new to listen to, preferably in a neighborhood where Latin flavor, eclectic influences and kickass beats meet? Then give Calle 13 a listen on Spotify.

Watercolor lessons

I've always been into drawing and painting. The first medium I ever learned to use was watercolor. My mom hired an artist to give me and my sister watercolor lessons when I was about 9 or 10. He was a really precise, uber-detailed kind of painter who came to the house once a week. We would move a big desk from my mom's study outside onto the front lawn, where he taught me how to mix colors and manipulate water and brush on paper. 

Over the summer, I produced two obsessively detailed watercolor paintings: a still life with fruit that still hangs in my mom's house, and one of unicorns (another lifelong interest of mine) in a cave. He liked to go over my mom's art books to find "inspiration", and the unicorns' cave resembled Da Vinci's Madonna of the Rocks in quite a few places. 

Since then, though, I've kind of... lost the knack for watercolors. I started getting really impatient if I couldn't finish something in one sitting. There are ways to pull off really quick watercolors, but because that wasn't my tutor's style, I never learned how.

It was a flyer posted on the bulletin board of the Van Beek art supply store on the Weteringschans that led me back to watercolors. Penny Johnson, an artist based in Haarlem, was offering watercolor sessions at her studio. After trading a few emails with Penny, I signed up for the last of the Tuesday afternoon sessions before her summer break.

The city of Haarlem is about 20 minutes by train from Amsterdam. A lot of Marlon's colleagues actually live there because of the lower property costs, which makes it a good alternative to living in Amsterdam. Since I was running late (as usual) for my first lesson, I didn't get to look around much. 

I went back with Marlon the following Saturday to walk around the center and explore a bit more. It seems like a pretty town, a lot smaller and quainter than Amsterdam, with not as many tall buildings and far less tourists (which is nice). Still, I haven't quite decided if it's a city we'd want to live in further down the road.

Penny, a late-middle aged British lady with a brisk and cheery manner, welcomed me warmly with a cup of coffee and my art materials for the day. I immediately felt at home in Penny's studio. It was bright, with high ceilings and enough work space for a small group, with heaps of interesting odds and ends piled together in small vignettes... a charming kind of clutter.

I liked her little collections of ceramics and glass bottles, all ready to be captured by paintbrush and water. I suspect I'll be like this someday. I already have a starter collection of wine bottles on the kitchen counter, which I kept just because I found the colors so pretty.

One wall was covered with cards, posters and various bits of paper showing different styles of watercolor. Some were loose and fast, with luminous colors bleeding together; others were more precise and detailed. These two pieces in particular caught my eye, and I snapped a photo with my iPhone. I would be more than happy if I could learn to paint like this.

Penny, and the two ladies who were here students that afternoon, stopped. "What are you doing?" Penny asked. "Are you taking photographs?" Then they all started talking about picture-happy people, how this tourist on one woman's cruise couldn't stop snap-snap-snapping away, blah blah blah.

I didn't realize that taking photos could be annoying to others. Is it just the generation gap showing here? I didn't want to be one of those "annoying types" so I meekly put away my phone, and resolved not to take my DSLR out of my bag for the rest of the afternoon...

... which was devoted to painting, of course. Penny started me off with a relatively easy project: getting a feel for the wet-on-wet technique, or painting on wet paper.  Wet paper makes the paint (which is also loaded with water) blend and bleed together, so it's for quick, loose work; vastly different from the style of my first tutor, but perhaps more suited for the less deft and more impatient me.

I surprised myself by starting out... cautiously. Timidity is not something I normally expect of myself, but there I was dabbing tentatively at the paper, producing pale, washed-out landscape. Penny took one look at my work and pronounced: "Color, my dear. You need more color. Let's put it this way: the paints are free."

By the end of the two and a half-hour session, I had gained a measure of boldness with my colors and strokes. I was re-learning how to see things differently, to look closer at light versus dark, since with watercolors you start with the lightest colors first, before building up the darker shades. I was beginning to learn how to be patient with mixing colors to achieve just the right shade, and not to settle for what I thought it looked like, out of impatience. And I was remembering how to just... play. All of these things that I thought I'd forgotten were reawakening in me. 

And I have to say: I kind of like it.

Beach bummed

As of June 21, summer has officially arrived. You'll have to excuse me for not blogging about it earlier, because it's been pretty hard to get all worked up about it when it's been gray and rainy for the first two weeks of the season. 

I check the weather forecast obsessively (being appropriately dressed for the weather can spell the difference between bliss and misery), and after the seemingly unending doom and gloom, I was ecstatic to see sunshine and 27℃ forecast for last Monday... the hottest it's been all year!

I've been reading about Amsterdam's city beaches, which are basically man-made patches of sand strewn around the city. Now Amsterdam's not by the sea, so the "beaches" are actually beside canals and rivers, thereby satisfying the basic beach requirements of sand and water. But others, like Strand Zuid, have no sand at all... and the "beach" on top of the NEMO building has sand but no water! 

Coming from a country of beaches (without the quotation marks), I found this all very... curious. Apparently, the city beaches are intended to give people without the time (or money) to go on vacation the chance to still enjoy summer at the beach. And with the weather being so changeable from day to day all the time, planning a proper seaside vacation can really be iffy. That I can definitely relate with. So I figured: why not give the urban beach a try? 

Bright and early Monday... uh, afternoon, I hopped on a tram to Centraal Station, then on the tram 26 to the man-made island of IJburg, which is the next big up-and-coming residential development. 

IJburg and the other nearby islands definitely deserve their own walkabout/photo safari. Being new and man-made, the islands feature modern city architecture vastly different from what you'll find in Amsterdam. Definitely interesting, but what I saw reminds me too much of our Asian megapolises. If I wanted brand spanking new and cemented, I would just go home... or back to Singapore. I like the greenness, narrow streets and history of Amsterdam too much to move out here. But who knows, the still-low property prices of IJburg may make me eat my words some day.

On that island is Blijburg, which from everything I've read so far is hailed as Amsterdam's best city beach. A "nomadic" beach that has changed addresses several times, Blijburg came into being as a by-product of the construction of the island and its buildings, and will continue to relocate until the construction of IJburg is completed.

I've read a lot of things about Blijburg's "great vibe", which actually made me look forward to getting there. So apparently, "great vibe" means "transplanted from a backpacker's memories of the 6 months they spent bumming around Southeast Asia (mostly Thailand). Quaint little beach shacks? Check. Fluttering neon-colored pennants? Check. Zen-inspired chillout bar? Check. Oversized Buddhas? Check, check, check... six times over.

So, let's talk about the beach.

Rooting around

There are so many music festivals on in Netherlands (and around Europe) now that it's officially summer. Of the dozens of choices out there, the one I really wanted to go to was the Amsterdam Roots Festival, a week-long world music festival capped with a big, free concert at the Oosterpark. 

From what I gather, the Oost (East) of Amsterdam is where most of the immigrant and minority communities live. I'd been to the Oosterpark once before with Jon, to visit the Tropenmuseum located inside the park. Since the museum deals with the Dutch history of slavery and colonialism, I found this sculpture near the museum particularly poignant: chained slaves emerging on the other side of a portal to gain power and freedom.

Both Womad and the Roots Festival represent world music and are hugely popular events; that's pretty much all the similarity they share. The Roots Festival is definitely bigger in scale than what we got in Singapore: five different stages compared to two. And the crowd was so diverse, which was such a pleasure to behold. No predatory expat-hunting posers in stiletto heels sinking into the grass, no boho uniforms of ethnic-print maxi dress, chunky jewelry and gold sandals. Just a laid-back vibe, lots of sunshine and good music. You could say we were pretty happy.

All around the park were stalls selling various world cuisines at affordable prices, jewelry, clothing, even art.

I was really intrigued by all the soul food and Caribbean cooking. We just don't get that in our part of the world! The Dutch once held sizable colonies in the Caribbean, such as Surinam, a country of which I'd never heard until I moved here. Surinamese food is a big thing here.

For €4, we each sampled a Surinamese bara, which is a flavorful Hindustani-influenced fried bread made with bean flour. Mine was filled with grilled chicken and slathered with the spiciest sauce I've tasted since I moved to Holland, which turned my mouth into the Pacific Ring of Fire. And I mean that only in a good way; I've missed this kind of spice. The bara kept falling apart, but it made a real lip-smacking kind of mess, one that I'd definitely have again.

It was the best kind of Sunday afternoon. We wandered around the park, ducking into tents and drifting into crowds. We got into some Colombian funk and Portuguese fado... 

... mixed with some Dutch hip-hop. I love hip-hop, and being in the midst of the crowd who seemed to know all the songs and not being able to sing along was one of those frustrating moments when I really, really wish I spoke Dutch. I was proud of myself for understanding the words "left" and "right" in Dutch though. It made it easier to wave my hands in the right direction in a timely and thereby non tool-ish manner. Links en rechts, yo!

I'll say it again, I really loved the crowd. I love that moms bring their babies to events like these (there is life after childbirth!), I love that people dance like nobody's watching (because nobody does!) and I love that you can find people of all ages grooving together with such joy. Europeans must be solar-powered... because when the sun comes out they really just come alive.

Here's me in my concert outfit: shorts with a floaty, semi-sheer, neon-dabbed top that I christened a drouse (dress/blouse). I'd been so excited for the weather to get warm enough for me to wear it, and it finally did. Yay summer!

In between acts, we would fall upon one of the park's many sun-drenched grassy stretches to just lie down and chill. Many others had the same idea, although some were better equipped.

It was nice just to watch people go by. So many attractive people, diverse nationalities, and colorful characters. These two were my favorite passers-by: a guy with a face shaved into the back of his head (shades and a moustache!), and a fully-tattooed guy who would look kind of scary if not for his little stumpy adorable dog.

I would totally make this trip to the Oosterpark for the Amsterdam Roots Festival a yearly pilgrimage. On days like this, I just love this town!