english

MILVA, the Veerse Meer and its shallow shoreline

english, logbook

N 51° 32.728′   E 003° 48.341′ | Red Buoy Number VM22

After a day of craning, setting up the mast, sprayhood and preparing the main drop system, MILVA went on her first cruise in the Veerse Meer. Two sweet Belgian ladies in the harbour, with a lifetime experience in sailing doing an afternoon tea time in the sun, commented our departure with ‘next time you should prepare that just a bit better’.

kortgene_vm22At wind speed of 17 knots in peaks, lots of motor boats and sail yachts around (due to the public holiday in Belgium) in the narrow channel just in front of Delta Marina in Kortgene, it was a quite demanding first time cruise and ended up in drifting to shore due to an unnecessary giving way to a motorboat. It is to blame La capitana who let MILVA pass red buoy VM22 starboard side trying to tack at almost no speed and wind gusts. The tack didn’t work, so MILVA slowly drifted on shore and slightly got stuck with its 1.15m keel in the ground. Two sailors in a dinghie offered their help, people onshore trying to give advice, but in the end Lala-lala-Lola managed to get the engine running backwards and La capitana could push the boat with the rudder standing at the bow and donating her (for sailing apparently unsuitable) green Rayban sunglasses to the Veerse Meer. Another reason to finally get the fancy polarized Polaroid sunglasses!

my boat – a sensitive creature

english, logbook, plapperlaplapp, TEXT

People who do not know that a sailboat is a living creature will never understand anything about boats and the sea.

states one of the greatest ocean voyagers Bernard Moitessier in ‘The long way’.
With the coincidence of my dinghy’s centerboard getting stuck the other day without any indication I get the sense of his statement. The boat feels my sadness and reacts. While starting a therapy sail to get my emotional landscape out of its disorder, my boat refused the centerboard to fall downwards. Now for the second time since I’m sailing this boat and being in some shitty mental state, the boat drifted away into the wrong direction, and so did I. On the river and in my mind.
Once the waves of my emotions get back into some normal state, the self-healing mechanism of my boat turn into action. The next day, sitting on the boats outer edge with my goggles on willing to dive beneath the hull, the centerboard issue solved itself 🙂

Vanilla and chili-glazed pineapple with cardamom yoghurt

english, fressen - einfach nur fressen

Bild

1 fresh pineapple
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
red pepper, chilies
1 vanilla pod
juice of 1 orange
1 cup of (fat greek) yoghurt
1 tablespoon sugar powder
1-2 teaspoon ground cardamom

Peel the pineapple, cut out the stem and divide into 4 chunks.
Melt the sugar in a pan until caramelised, stir and add some water.
Remove the seeds from the chili and cut into fine pieces.
Cut the vanilla pod in halve, length wise with a paring knife.
Put the pineapple chunks, chili and the vanilla pod by scraping out all of the oily seeds from the inside into the caramelised sugar. Add the orange juice. Keep the mixture in the pan boiling at low temperature 10-15 minutes.

Mix Yoghurt with sugar powder and cardamom.

Serve the pineapple with the cardamom yoghurt cold or tepid.

Business trip #4 – Lessons learned

company talk, english

prefer the standard room to the business room
Just in this case of hotel it’s the smaller but cosier room, and it’s got a bathtub – at the lower rate (saves your customer money)

take tea candles (and matches, if you don’t smoke) with you ( preferably those which do not trigger the fire alarm! But my experience with fire alarms is that candle lights don’t do harm, while frying German Leberkäs does ) so that the evening in the bathtub gets romantic even without inviting your colleagues of the different sex.

antiStressBad antiStressBadesalz

Get tipsy in the evening (red wine if you want to sleep more, or french coffee, for less than four hours of sleep)
Makes you, your colleagues and clients more conversational, and if you are even in a foreign country, you’ll unrestraintly speak Dutch without ever having learned it. Plus, the solitary languishing in the bathtub feels like a candlelight dinner of two.

have a bottle of water
Drinking a liter of water after having gotten tipsy makes your presentation at the client the next morning at 8 a.m. bearable

S/M yogis: Take your yantra mat with you
Some people can only relax after a long working day when suffering pain.

get you a new hair coloring prior to the business trip
You should really balance reasons for or against a new hair color before you start your trip to the customer and using innocent hotel towels. Will you meet the dress code agreed with your client? Does the hair color fit to your outfit? Or to the corporate identity? Timing might also have a certain relevance. In my specific case, I knew before that it will be looking good, it was even necessary, because my one and a half week old ‘poppy red’ was already fading, my clients logo type has the same color, Belgium seems in general being a very open-minded country, plus we arrived in the week of carnival and it turned out that the IT-manager recently dressed up as a woman with a wig in the same poppy red. The hotel i’ve been staying however will probably ask for my planned hair color prior to confirming my next reservation. ( p.s. i looked different to this freak)

Diskriminierung auf Europäisch

english, plapperlaplapp, postkartenmotive, reisen, TEXT, travel

geht’s noch? Nicht dass mich das Innenleben der Notre Dame jetzt wirklich interessiert hätte, aber warum kommen über sechsundzwanzigjährige Europäer und unter sechsundzwanzigjährige von der Europäischen Union Ausgeschlossene bei der lieben Frau von Paris nicht umsonst rein? Das klingt wie: Hunde und Heterosexuelle müssen draußen bleiben…

Hummus-Yali

english, plapperlaplapp, reisen, TEXT

Yali hat gemailt! Yali ist auch so ein Grünstrickmützencobain, nur mit Arbeit. In einem kleinen schnuckeligen Falafelladen (Hummus Place, 99 MacDougal, Greenwhich Village), den ich mir letztens als Location fürs Abendessen ausgesucht hatte.
Israeli-Grünstrickmütze ohne Mütze, Frisur ‘Cobain’, gutaussehend. Yali arbeitet ein halbes Jahr, reist ein halbes Jahr. Hielt mich für ne Französin (so toll ist mein Englisch) und war noch nie in Deutschland (you know, the history…). Da hab ich ihn doch gleich mal nach Mannheim eingeladen, der könnt da so’n Hummus-Platz aufmachen, zuviel Döner hier.

Ich habe Hummus und Homemade Lemonade bestellt und bekam ständig neue kleine Töpfchen mit Dips und Salätchen samt Nachtisch von Yali aufgetischt. Das ganze für nicht mal zehn Dollar. Köstliches Essen!
Yali hat im Allgemeinen alle Leute so toll bedient, den ganzen Laden unterhalten, und noch am Nachbartisch zum hebräischen Happy-Birthday angestimmt.

Aber ich glaube, mit seiner E-Mail hat er ne andere Schnecke gemeint, die ihm ihre Adresse aufn Kassenbon gekritzelt hat…

to drunk to function
hello ms marion this is yali , we met at bua,i wanted to appoligize for my behavior at the bar and to tell you that if you are still in n.y i would gladly make it up to you (if given a chance)
and if not you told me you are going to israel for a couple of weeks during the summer so my offer to show you around stands if we will be in the hollyland in the same dates. goodbye.

Was ist bua, warum apologized er sein behavior, was will er up-to-me machen? Aber das ‘holly land’ tät mich auch mal interessieren. Da kann man sicherlich auch fahrradfahren…

the urban dictionary

english, iBlogg, plapperlaplapp, TEXT

Habe gerade über die voreingestellten Bookmarks für Suchmaschinen in meinem Firefox Browser urbandictionary.com gefunden und den Suchbegriff Mannheim eingetragen.

mannheim
the CRUNKEST ghetto-est place on earth yo
you kno dey big ballas in mannheim or mannheim is fuckin ghetto as hell young.

Ich fürchte, der Autor war noch nie in Ludwigshafen – oder Kaiserslautern 😉 Mannheim ist doch SCHÖN 🙂 mal abgesehen von den Ami-Baracken …und wenn großen kleinen Gästen im Eiscafe nicht gerade Schnee-Eulen vorenthalten werden.

Dictionary

english, plapperlaplapp, TEXT

Die besten Auszüge aus dem FEMALE DICTIONARY, das mir letztens in die Mailbox geflattert ist:

Yes = No

No = Yes

Maybe = No

You have to learn to communicate = Just agree with me

Be romantic, turn out the lights = I have flabby thighs

You’re so manly = You need a shave and you sweat a lot

You’re certainly attentive tonight = Is sex all you ever think about?

I’ll be ready in a minute = Kick off your shoes and find a good game show on TV

Das MEN’S DICTIONARY sollte man ja auch nicht vernachlässigen, also …

I am hungry = I am hungry

I am tired = I am tired

Nice dress = Nice cleavage!

Let’s talk = I am trying to impress you by showing that I am a deep person and then I’d like to have sex with you

I don’t think those shoes go with that outfit = I’m gay.