pax_athena (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pax_athena) wrote2017-08-06 04:03 pm
pax_athena) wrote2017-08-06 04:03 pm
Entry tags:
glimpses of (everyday) life
Each of this things was supposed to be a post of it's own or a part of a thematic post. Oh well ... You'll just get a wild potpourri from a picture of what remains of a spacecraft after a rocket failure over food in Prague to random impressions from living in the Netherlands and food hauls from the market:
This one is from the visit at the main mission control center of the European Space Agency ("European Space Operations Centre" in Darmstadt) - they invited me to give a talk and gave me a nice tour of the facilities, including this showcase with what remains of Cluster I spacecraft after the failure of its carrier rocket. Cluster II went into space four years later, in 2000, and is still used for very cool science by some of my colleagues.
Leiden cite center is very pretty, just the way you imagine Dutch cities to be.
Lunches at the conference in Prague. My heard was bleeding for all the plastic (luckily at least recycling), but the food was surprisingly OK, given how they had to feed well over a thousand people in a place without real facilities for food. Even if it had the charm of school lunchboxes. I don't think I've ever had one of those fruit juices since 15 years, at least.
I've had some very fancy great food in Prague and some more down to Earth great food (if you ever want a rec for a great food place in Prague, I have two absolute recommendation!). This is of the later. I never can say no to a good tartare and especially not when it is served with several cloves of fresh garlic that one can rub the warm bread with. Yum!
There is definitely a story about these shoes hanging on the electricity cables close to the PRague Metronome - I have no idea what it is, but it was a cool thing to see.
(Also cool: the semi-professional rock-and-roll dancing that was going on there, seemingly rather spontaneous. Fun to look at even if this is usually not my thing.)
Amsterdam from above. Not quiet as iconic as New York, but very much like New York does, it gives me a ton of feelings. Different feelings (Amsterdam always feels like home, even though I have only lived there for half a year), but the same kind of intensity. The flight route does not always lead over the city and even if it does, it's not always that clear, but when it does, it's always stunning. And also, in opposite to New York, tiny. For a place with such a cultural significance and a place that feels so much like one of the world metropolises.
Physics in action! This is what happens to 130 meters of metal pipe between summer and winter in Munich! (I did not think to add a size comparison when I took the photo, but just as an orientation - the handwriting is normal-sized, perhaps a big on the bigger side.)
A tiny frog I saved. For some reason, several of them thought that the entrance hall of my house was a good place to be at night? I spent some 10 minutes hunting all the ones I could see (perhaps ten or so?) down and bringing them out. I did find a few dried out ones in the corners, though, so clearly this wasn't the first time some got in :(
Food haul from a week ago. Farmer's market (well, not fully, but it's the closest English word I know?), supermarket, Asian store, Russian store. The strawberries got turned into a fruit spread, the aubergines in some aubergine chips with feta and (with addition of more aubergines) in an aubergine, tomato & minced meat bake, the minced meat and the beans, canned corn, tomatoes, peppers and avocados made a yummy Mexican-inspired pan. The corn was eaten on the cob. I love, love, love fresh corn and have bough another 6 to eat for dinner this week.
At work. I am hardly ever in this corner of the facility (this time I was because of the outreach talk I gave), but this is a neat thing for people who need to get to the restaurants, for example. Since - well, it's Netherlands and it rains and is windy.
Bike parking at one of the smaller train stations in Amsterdam.
New plates I got yesterday. No, I do not need new ones. But I thought this would come useful (just the right side for a lot of the noodle and/or vegetable dishes I am making lately) and they are just so pretty, arent't they? Plus one of my two beautiful Japanese plates has a crack now :(
Random statue in a random suburb neighborhood of Den Haag. It kind of reminded me on Niki de Saint Phalle when I was at quiet some distance? Anyway, not an area I would usually go to but my colleagues let me know that one of the special event Pokémon spawn places as in a mall close to there and since I was feeling pretty down anyway (paper stuff, I'll talk about it at some point), I thought I may as well do something fun outside.
And now I'm off to Amsterdam to eat some Georgian food with friend/acquittances (somehow it's mainly afterwards, once they or I moved away that I know what of the two people are ...). Maybe more photos of that, who knows?
This one is from the visit at the main mission control center of the European Space Agency ("European Space Operations Centre" in Darmstadt) - they invited me to give a talk and gave me a nice tour of the facilities, including this showcase with what remains of Cluster I spacecraft after the failure of its carrier rocket. Cluster II went into space four years later, in 2000, and is still used for very cool science by some of my colleagues.
Leiden cite center is very pretty, just the way you imagine Dutch cities to be.
Lunches at the conference in Prague. My heard was bleeding for all the plastic (luckily at least recycling), but the food was surprisingly OK, given how they had to feed well over a thousand people in a place without real facilities for food. Even if it had the charm of school lunchboxes. I don't think I've ever had one of those fruit juices since 15 years, at least.
I've had some very fancy great food in Prague and some more down to Earth great food (if you ever want a rec for a great food place in Prague, I have two absolute recommendation!). This is of the later. I never can say no to a good tartare and especially not when it is served with several cloves of fresh garlic that one can rub the warm bread with. Yum!
There is definitely a story about these shoes hanging on the electricity cables close to the PRague Metronome - I have no idea what it is, but it was a cool thing to see.
(Also cool: the semi-professional rock-and-roll dancing that was going on there, seemingly rather spontaneous. Fun to look at even if this is usually not my thing.)
Amsterdam from above. Not quiet as iconic as New York, but very much like New York does, it gives me a ton of feelings. Different feelings (Amsterdam always feels like home, even though I have only lived there for half a year), but the same kind of intensity. The flight route does not always lead over the city and even if it does, it's not always that clear, but when it does, it's always stunning. And also, in opposite to New York, tiny. For a place with such a cultural significance and a place that feels so much like one of the world metropolises.
Physics in action! This is what happens to 130 meters of metal pipe between summer and winter in Munich! (I did not think to add a size comparison when I took the photo, but just as an orientation - the handwriting is normal-sized, perhaps a big on the bigger side.)
A tiny frog I saved. For some reason, several of them thought that the entrance hall of my house was a good place to be at night? I spent some 10 minutes hunting all the ones I could see (perhaps ten or so?) down and bringing them out. I did find a few dried out ones in the corners, though, so clearly this wasn't the first time some got in :(
Food haul from a week ago. Farmer's market (well, not fully, but it's the closest English word I know?), supermarket, Asian store, Russian store. The strawberries got turned into a fruit spread, the aubergines in some aubergine chips with feta and (with addition of more aubergines) in an aubergine, tomato & minced meat bake, the minced meat and the beans, canned corn, tomatoes, peppers and avocados made a yummy Mexican-inspired pan. The corn was eaten on the cob. I love, love, love fresh corn and have bough another 6 to eat for dinner this week.
At work. I am hardly ever in this corner of the facility (this time I was because of the outreach talk I gave), but this is a neat thing for people who need to get to the restaurants, for example. Since - well, it's Netherlands and it rains and is windy.
Bike parking at one of the smaller train stations in Amsterdam.
New plates I got yesterday. No, I do not need new ones. But I thought this would come useful (just the right side for a lot of the noodle and/or vegetable dishes I am making lately) and they are just so pretty, arent't they? Plus one of my two beautiful Japanese plates has a crack now :(
Random statue in a random suburb neighborhood of Den Haag. It kind of reminded me on Niki de Saint Phalle when I was at quiet some distance? Anyway, not an area I would usually go to but my colleagues let me know that one of the special event Pokémon spawn places as in a mall close to there and since I was feeling pretty down anyway (paper stuff, I'll talk about it at some point), I thought I may as well do something fun outside.
And now I'm off to Amsterdam to eat some Georgian food with friend/acquittances (somehow it's mainly afterwards, once they or I moved away that I know what of the two people are ...). Maybe more photos of that, who knows?