My epiphany today: Cheesy vs. Çizi

Maikel was talking about something, and he used the word "cheesy".

And, I experienced a very sudden realization!

Çizi has always been my favourite biscuits. I liked its salty taste a lot. "Çiz" means "draw" in turkish, and I did not understand the reason behind the name of this biscuit.

At the moment Maikel used the word "cheesy", I was enlightened by the reason behind this naming :).

Çizi is the turkish spelling of Cheesy, and the biscuit had cheese flavour!

Maikel told me that the english word for such a sudden realisation was epiphany.

May is the warmest of 100 years!!

From DutchNews daily newsletter:

May 2008 has been the warmest May in over a century, the KNMI weather bureau said on Friday. The average temperature has been 15.7°, compared with 12.7° in a normal year. The temperature reached over 20° on 20 days, while nine warm days is the norm, the KNMI said.

Kids, kids, kids... All are daughters..

Johan the father
Johan was at UvA with his daughters on Wednesday. Two blonde sweet girls. Daniel said that they were very excited to get on train, metro to come here and to be at Papa's kamer (room). Father and the daughters have visited my office too. I wish I knew the language to be able to communicate with them. The younger one looked shyer and quieter, and that made her even more childish... It somehow made me happy to see Johan with his daughters, to see that he is a father, he has the responsibility to take care of these sweet kids.. happy and somehow emotional..

Suzanne the mother
Suzanne is back to our group this week. I saw her yesterday first. She looks quite OK. Wednesday is Mamma Dag, and Thursday is Papa Dag. So, little Fiona has to go to the daycare center only three days per week. I asked her if any of the grandmas were helping her for few days after the delivery at home as we have in Turkey. She said that it was quite uncommon here since there is a nurse (paid by your health insurance company), and that nurse comes everyday in first week or so. She shows the new parents how to take care of baby, how to have her have a bath; and she even makes the other stuff like laundry etc. The service is available even it is not your first child, Suzanne said.

Tessa the daughter
Yesterday was Tessa's birthday. Olja showed me the photos from the celebrations in the kindergarten. She said that she started to make fun of her mother when Olja does not know dutch word for something, or pronounces it incorrectly. "Je weet het niet! Je weet het niet!" -you don't know that- was what Tessa said in these moments. I also learned how they came up with her name. Tessa was a dutch author, and it was Hans' suggestion.

She also told me that the swan couple who already had eggs when I visited them had their babies out. There were 6 baby swans first. But after a while, they saw only two of them. They were very surprised on what happened the other 4, and speculated that they were maybe eaten by other birds. Funny thing is, some days later, they saw this swan couple somewhere else, this time with all 6 babies around :).

We have partied at Funenpark roof !!

On friday, we had our vegetarian + chicken barbecue party at Funenpark Roof.

In the afternoon, I went to the P building to meet Vahid. We went to the iranian shop at Dapperstraat together to buy the chickens for barbecue.

After our DBN research meeting, Gooitzen, Maikel, Daniel and me cycled to my place. Johan and Ewout came by tram 10.

We started to prepare bulgur salad (Kısır) and lentil balls (mercimek köfte). Maikel helped me a lot in chopping onions, spring onions and parsley. I guess Daniel chopped an onion too. But he was mostly busy with garlics to be used with shrimps. First, he did not like my garlics since they were rotten somehow, and we got one from Sara and Vahid.

I asked Ewout's help on chopping parsleys. Johan suggested to use a small scissor saying that it makes it more practical. At the end, I realized that Ewout has a noticeably lower performance than he had in our previous gathering in January. Then, I asked him to stop :).

At the end, we had the following menu:

Bulgur Salad

Lentil Balls

Koko Sabzi (Iranian dish; vegetables with eggs. Sabzi means vegetables; and koko is if you mix something with eggs)
Cigaratte Pastry(Vahid helped me to fry them in oil)

Chicken barbecue.

Ewout was our barbecue guy together with Johan. Maikel helped me to mix the things for Bulgur Salad, and Gooitzen squeezed lemons. Sara made the mixing for lentil balls and she shaped the balls.

We were all 9 people, including Sara, Vahid and their friend from Argentina: Ines.

It was very nice weather, and enjoyable there in the roof in open air.

The others left earlier, but we sat in the roof with Maikel, Ines, Sara and Vahid till it gets dark. There was another group started to partying; so we decided to go to my place to have a quieter environment. We made jokes about american pigeons.

After Ines and Maikel left around 11:30 PM, we went on chatting and eating pumpkin seeds (from Ines) with my iranian neighbours till 1 AM or so.

It was funny that my iranian neighbours were referring to Ewout as 'the barbecue guy'.

Overall, I had a very nice evening/night with all those nice people around!

Cartoonist

From the Sidelines of today's Dutch News:
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"The right-of-centre VVD party is offering to exhibit the work of cartoonist Gergorius Nekschot in its parliamentary quarters in The Hague. The party wants to make a stand for free speech.

Nekschot (a pseudonym) was recently arrested and questioned about the alleged racist nature of his cartoons. Some of the cartoons in question were recently re-published. They were ugly and insulting: one showed a fat Muslim riding on the back of the welfare state. One wonders if the VVD would come to the rescue of a Muslim cartoonist in the Netherlands portraying Dutch politicians as fat parasites feeding on populist anti-Muslim sentiment? And what would their reaction have been if Nekschot had substituted Jews for Muslims in his cartoons? Who is
going to see the VVD exhibition, anyway?

If Nekschot has broken the law then he should be punished. If not, then let him continue. His
heavy-handed arrest by the police was unnecessary and has made him a martyr.

And as for the ridiculous nature of VVD’s gallery for free speech….now that would make a good cartoon."
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I completely agree with the parts I colored with green. VVD is the dutch liberal party by the way. And it is the second larges opposition party in the parliament according to the uncle Wiki.