Shopping, etc

Busy week at work.  Settling into life in the big city and loving it for the most part (the isolation does get to me sometimes).

These pictures were taken at the market...

Translates to "peanut cheese".

How to say "Ranch" in Dutch.

for Vashti

By request for Joe.
The cases on the floor have a handle in the center for carrying.
They're plastic; when you're done, you put the whole thing on a conveyor and run it through the machine to get your deposit back. (I'll take a picture of the deposit machines later).

from the other end

For Ingi...

Thursday is Fry-day. 
The whole team gets frites for lunch, which is basically the Dutch national dish. 
They're different than the states, though; they're usually covered in sauce.
Mayonnaise is the most popular.  If you go to McDonalds, they give you packets of mayo.
I get mine with satesaus which is the kind of sauce you get in Thai chicken satay.

Best spaghetti bolognese I've ever had.
I went back four more times.

Two more random bits

I wasn't joking.

what
(caption: Pregnant! Greetings from Eersel)

Houdoe!

Long overdue

It's been a week since my last post.  Sorry about that. 

Part of it is because I have been going through a lot this week and I want the posts here to be positive.  I'm doing OK, I'll get through it. Just a rough patch. 

Random pictures. Let me show you them.

Home, US work, dutch work, oncall. 
I'm only oncall one week a month and I jailbroke fixed it so that I'm only carrying two now.

Fruit. Cocktail. Pizza.  It actually wasn't bad.

I spent the last two weeks in Eersel, the village where work is.  It's very idyllic and full of 70-year old tourists.  Here's why.

My home for the week.  It means "The Hooligan (or Menace)".

At the end of the marktplats

Yes, it was used by a marching band.  No, I didn't take pictures.

Marktstraat, where the restaurants are

in the marktplats

"We're open every day at 10am, kitchen opens at 12:00"

I'm still settling in to the way things are done here. Shopping is only done on Saturdays because everything closes at 18:00 (I don't get home until about half an hour later) during the week and pretty much nothing is open on Sundays.  The exception is that some markets are open from 16:00 - 20:00 but everyone is there so it's a madhouse.  If restaurants are open on Sunday they're only open from about 17:00 to 21:00.  It's actually kind of nice, you're forced to take it slow for one day a week.

This past week I moved into my "permanent" room in central Eindhoven.  I may end up leaving again because I can't find anyplace here that doesn't charge extortionate rates for wireless access.  It sounds like a first-world problem but I need it for work. 

The first choice here wanted €15 per day.  The second choice is closed for renovation until 2011. The place I finally settled on seemed ideal until I realised that they seemed to have left out the word "available" from "wireless in every room". They want €5,95 per hour!  I whined about it and they let me have a wired connection, but it's really flaky (I get dropped often).  That combined with the lack of laundry facilities almost makes this place a no-go.  Well when I say "lack" I mean lack of realistically affordable laundry facilities.  Here's the price list!

Yes, they are serious. 
It's literally cheaper to buy new clothes.

So I asked if there was a laundrette anywhere nearby and they told me "nowhere in the Centrum, sorry...many guests ask so I've looked but there isn't anything even close".  What does google maps have to say about that?  Two, just over a kilometer away.  Fucker.

So that's the story so far.  I have lots more pictures but I can't get the iphone to play nice with this laptop so they'll have to wait.

Houdoe!