Round and round we go

Hello! Sorry for the long silence, lots going on but nothing really interesting.

However, I have finally got around to putting up my pictures of Ronda! Now that all the Christmas cards and New Year cards are finally out of the way...

Crafty and Christmassy

Took a day out from work - the stuff I'm still doing that seems to fill all my non-traditional working hours and eat into my sleep - yesterday, to find a bead shop that I'd seen while wandering around with my first (and possibly only) guest (apart from himself). It's called "Docombi" and is in the Galerias Goya in Malaga.


It was pretty good! Nothing terribly expensive, a nice range of Swarovski crystal, Czech glass and Delicas, as well as some really nice and unusual glass, resin and shell pieces. I went quite mad and got several of everything I like and some things that I'd never wear myself but think would make a cool set of earrings. The shop was manned by two blokes, but seemed to have a healthy stream of customers and despite being crammed and having lots of stock on the floor was actually quite interesting. And my madness only cost me 40 Euro, so I can't complain.


The Galerias Goya has loads of very nice small alternative shops and looks like a great place if you're stuck for a present. Half of them were closed with no idea of opening hours, as is par for the course here. Here was a knitting/handicrafts store in the basement.


And all the Christmas lights are up! Not on yet, but there.

Dunkin'... what?

It was Dunkin' Donuts in Japan, but seems to be Dunkin' Coffee here. The coffee is terrible, but the donut holes come in a cardboard bus!

Admit it

This is what you always wanted for Christmas.

Photos from Granada!

It only took me three weeks to get these up... I took way too many photos, and culled almost half!

But here is the beauty of the Alhambra and the Nasrid Palaces, and the Generalife and its gardens.

Damn you, Ikea!

I went to Ikea in Malaga for some bed sheets, and only bed sheets. Knowing you have to carry everything back at the end of the contract is a great motivator.

But no, Ikea had to have this ridiculously cute fabric fruit basket. And I spent several minutes fruitlessly (haha) searching the huge bin for the vegetable basket. Twice. I appear to be a sucker for fabric mushrooms, carrots and cabbage.

While I went there looking for an inexpensive and serviceable fitted sheet and duvet cover set (not that you need a duvet here, it's 16 C today), I ended up getting the Beata Orkide set - one of the more expensive ones but I love it and will take it back home and use it there.

Interpretation at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal

A series of fascinating posts on interpretation at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal on the Unprofessional Translation blog: Bilingualism and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, Bilingualism and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (2) and Bilingualism and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal - Conclusion.

The saga ends!

After five months of frantic phone calls, scrambling to get documentation, personally going in to Kantonal authorities to get paperwork and generally struggling with the system - I have my Auslanderausweis!

It's a good thing I had already decided to go back to Zurich this weekend - there was a letter waiting for me from the Adliswil town hall asking me to come in with my passport and a photo. I handed them over to the lovely Ms Angst and two minutes later after stamping the photo into the card and getting me to sign it, I had my 5 year residency permit! (Good thing they didn't give me the 6-month one, otherwise I'd have had to apply for the next one while I was picking up this one.)

It's now scanned and sent to various people who need it, like my health insurer and bank. It kind of has the wrong address - c\o himself - but it's good enough for a celebration!

Hi there, Sexi

I'm a sucker for a bad joke. The beautiful town of Almunecar, known as Sexi to the Phoenecians and (even better) Firmium Julium Sexi to the Romans, is an easy day out and was a great place to stop off on the way to see Matt and family halfway between Malaga and Almeria!

And I finally have the photos up as well! I'm very behind on both blogging and photos but will try to get caught up soon. I just need to stop working, having a life, or sleeping.

Hola!

As they say. Between work, commuting and keeping up with Japan Society commitments, I haven't been doing much. But there is a Bank holiday tomorrow and I'm away at the weekend!

In the meantime, more Random Malaga.

Hasta la vista

Just a quick note to say that I am still alive! We had an enforced day off yesterday due to a general strike (no transport to/from the office) so I spent it catching up with some of the mountain of Japan Society work I need to get done. I think my head is above water now.

Malaga has both a Dunnes Stores and a Sanrio shop. It's like an omen.

Photos from Malaga!

I did go for a wander around town last Saturday, so here are some photos of Malaga!

Paris!

A bit later than planned, here are the photos of our trip to Paris!

Hola!

I have arrived safely in Malaga! Currently in a temporary serviced apartment, probably until the end of the week, and then will move to a normal flat.

It's a change to go from having very little to write about (other than immigration procedure and cake) to having so much going on that I'd need another one of me to write about it (and preferably help the first me clear the backlog). But I will try to get caught up soon on all the news and photos. I'm looking at this weekend, if I don't spend it traisping around Malaga!

Snap

Finally got through all the photos!

Playing with the miniature function and looking around the viaduct in Zurich, and miniature bears in Wildpark Langenberg!

Happy birthday to me!

Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes! And a huge thanks to Bill & Austa for the amazing handwoven blue silk wrap (currently adorning the sofa in the "office" as a runner) and to himself for my new toy - a Canon Powershot SX210 IS!

It has 14x optical zoom - even more than my old Sony - and a fake "miniature mode" which seems to involve not only blurring the top and bottom of the shot to make it look like it was taken on a macro setting but also intensifies the colours. We've both been having a play with it and have got some really good shots (well, his more than mine). I'll post some pictures soon!

Other than that, the cakes went down well although most of my German class didn't show up and I made myself popular with strangers by giving them out in one of himself's office break rooms. We had a nice evening out, eating at Okara where they had tables set up outside.

On Friday I took the (late) afternoon off and headed into Zurich to get some photos. The initial plan was to go to Grossmunster and get some views down onto the city from there (particularly for the miniature mode) but I was distracted by Tram 4 which runs to Dammweg, near a viaduct I'd been reading about. So, I hopped onto that and ended up walking around an under-construction shopping arcade, getting some nice miniature shots of tram stops and generally having fun.

Saturday was a lazy at home day, but we did get out to the nearby Wildpark Langenberg, which houses deer, wolves, Alpine wildcats, wild pigs and more, although some animals didn't seem to be viewable as they're rebuilding part of the park. Photos to follow from there too!

On Sunday our washing was slightly disrupted by the dryer in the building being broken, but I headed to the Swiss-Japanese Friendship Society's softball tournament and managed to give away some more cake - this time matcha muffins and chocolate-chip blondies. The blondies are incredibly nice and stupidly calorific, so himself was given them to dispose of in the office today.

And someone in that same office had three tickets for Yamato in concert - their last night in Zurich - and was unable to go, and himself snapped up the tickets! We went with Sachiko and barely got there on time after missing a train and getting confused about where to go after coming out of the nearest train station. A car shunting another one onto the tram tracks didn't help the situation, but it turned out we were just around the corner and were able to run up to the seats in the balcony area.

Although I've seen Kodo in concert several times, their tour schedule is a bit strange this year - several cities in Israel, nothing in London although doing one night in a few other places in the UK, nothing in Ireland and nothing in Switzerland either although they're doing several dates in Germany. Yamato were full of energy, very performance oriented a bit more modern/fusion than Kodo, but all immensely strong and superb musicians. There were drums of every size, flutes, cymbals, koto and even rock shamisen. One act involved three heavily muscled men, three sets of cymbals and a "ball of sound" being thrown between them, and it had the audience in stitches. They do the same as Kodo in that they also play clapping games with the audience and involve them in various ways. Would definitely go to see them again!

Hey there, good-lookin'

My first attempt at a "blondie"! I know you should always follow the original recipe the first time, but I used dried apple instead of walnuts and added lots of cinnamon. Smells good!

And on and on

Monday brought - surprise surprise - nothing from the AHV. So, it was back to calling, finding out that the woman handling my case wasn't there, and being passed to an English speaker. He told me that I needed to submit a signed copy of one of the contracts (yes, I had posted it to them last Monday and had no response, that's why I'm calling) - and that I must have Swiss clients. Now, I did translate the letter online, so it's not exactly a high quality rendition, but there are two words in brackets after the bit about Swiss clients which come out as "if available". So, the letter doesn't suggest this is a requirement.

He put me through to someone else who had even more interesting things to say. For a start, she contradicted him and said I don't need Swiss clients. (I wish there was some kind of instant penalty button for when public servant contradict each other, especially in such a short time frame.) But she also said that agency contracts don't count. The reason for this is that under Swiss law, agencies must pay the social insurance contributions of freelancers who do work for them. I've seen this before in Germany and it's a good candidate for the root cause of why all freelancers at a previous place of work there were forced to work via agencies.

(So... if this contract doesn't even count, why did you write to me - when you had already promised I would get a decision - asking for a signed copy?)

That certainly presents a small problem. Most of my clients are agencies. It's not unusual for someone like me, a relatively new and non-specialised translator. But according to this person, only direct clients qualify, and I must have at least two. I do have two (although I was so fixated on the disqualification of agency contracts that I forgot about one of them until after the call) but I don't have contracts with them. A lot of work is done quite informally - I did the work, and invoiced for it and was paid, but don't have anything you could call a contract. She also said that using my UK website/email address on my business cards counted against me. (Well, I am kind of waiting for my permit before I change everything. You could force me to create a GmbH, or not let me into the country. I'd really like to know the outcome of this first.)

Anyway, I followed up with an email to the woman handling my case expressing my gentle surprise at this news, emphasising that UK agencies do not pay my National Insurance, and pointing out that there are invoices for two direct clients in the pack I sent in (I was told invoices would be enough). Hopefully someone will get back to me about it, although my accountant was quite exasperated when I told her what had happened and suggested that we "really should insist" on my self-employment soon otherwise Migrationsamt might start taking a dim view of the whole thing.

Let's just say that my illusions of Switzerland have taken a good kicking. I'm sick of even telling people about it now.

In other news, himself was working on his tax return over the weekend and so, left partially to my own devices other than supplying tea and moral support, I finished my archiving in my pretty Ikea boxes and all my filing and accounting too. I have invested in two applications, iBank (chosen at least in part for multi-currency support) and Cashculator, to help me out with this - the former is a bookkeeping tool, the latter a forecasting/budgeting one. My main concern is am I earning enough to cover rent, internet, insurance, travel and food costs here. I am still building up my business, and it hasn't been helped by the state of limbo I'm currently in, but I need to know where I stand.

Our networked storage is offline today for some reason so, deprived of the ability to sort out backups and get at all of my past jobs to do calculate word counts for the CIoL, I accomplished my goal of clearing all my stuff off the couch in the second bedroom/office (we can actually use it as a guest bed now) and have also binned a good deal of beading magazine cutouts that I had been hoarding. There are always these stubborn little piles of things that you can't bring yourself to throw out but that have no place to live.

Himself was home sick yesterday, we had a massive thunderstorm last night and it kept threatening today, but no rain or storm so far. I'm meeting a fellow translator for lunch at a Japanese restaurant tomorrow, and will have to whip up some cake to bring to German on Thursday, as the birthday person has to supply the cake. (Maybe this tells me a lot about Germanic cultures.) We ate up some sweet potatoes as mashed potatoes last night, and that persuaded me to look at some sweet potato muffin recipes. Himself has also offered to take me out to dinner, but not sure where we'll go yet.

Not something I normally say

I need an iron for my furoshiki! I think I got at least one of them and the two holders in Kanazawa... which was in 2008. The post-move rediscovery of stuff continues!

Froth me!

This is what happens when you froth milk in a small saucepan. And this is the refill. Green tea latte time, while himself plays the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World game.

Morning green tea!

Himself was on a flying visit to London and stopped in at the Japan Centre food shop in Regent Street to pick up some green tea powder! This is a 100g can and a 30g ziplock packet.

No prizes for guessing what we're having for breakfast this morning - getting the steamer out now...

Stars of different varieties

On Friday night, himself decided that he really wanted to see if he could see the Perseids. So, after a cursory search online to check what direction to look in around what time, we set off up the Uetliberg to see what we could see. There was far more light pollution than we thought, with Zurich casting a dirty orange glow up quite far into the sky. It also didn't help that we were looking towards the airport, but thankfully planes and Perseids are reasonably different. We were hanging out in front of the fancy Uto Kulm hotel and restaurant, which kept its lights on quite late, and the flashing red warning lights on the telecoms tower also hampered star watching. We did see quite a few though, 10 or so, streaking across the sky. One of himself's colleagues come out to meet us, we drank our tea and coffee from our thermoses, ate the chocolate chili brownies I'd just made, and had a fun night doing not very much. We hiked down from Uetliberg with torches as the trains were only running from several stations further down where there were normal houses. It was a bit nerve-wracking in places, where the road surface gave way to gravel trails, but it wasn't too cold and the torchlight disguised gradients that we might otherwise have balked at. We got home and into bed around 3:00am thanks to Zurich's excellent night transport system.

The other source of very noticeable non-natural light was testing of the lighting rigs for Street Party, which was on on Saturday. After the expected sleep in, I went into town to see Fedde le Grand, a DJ I own a few tracks by, who was playing in Burkliplatz from 2:30 - 4:00pm. Most public transport stopped well before the city centre so I walked the rest of the way in and found a good crowd assembled just before his set was about to begin. There were plenty of people in normal jeans and t-shirts, but also a good number in wings, fishnets, cat or rabbit ears, body paint and one woman in what looked like peacock feathers and a beaded curtain. The police, who were standing around in groups of four in sedate dark blue combats and shirts with orange hi-vis jackets, were constantly being latched onto by party-goers who wanted a photo. Fedde le Grand's set was good, although I couldn't understand why ear protection was being touted so strongly. The Swiss are not, by and large, a very health and safety conscious nation (you just have to see roadworks here to figure it out - very little signage, no protection and equipment left at the side of the road over the weekend). I had problems hearing anything but the bass until someone seemed to turn up the volume partway through his slot.

It was only later that I realised why you needed ear protection - the floats, or "Love Mobiles" as they were called. Being pulled at a snail's pace through the crowd by what looked like standard hauliers, the extra-long flatbeds held anything from full R&B dance crews to scaffolding inhabited by black men in white tuxedoes and white women poledancing, to "pirate ships" with smoke cannons and dancing Jack Sparrows, to the "Dutch Invasion" truck with as many people in orange shirts as could fit, jumping up and down hard enough to shake the truck with just a sex doll in traditional costume as their gimmick. These were loud. And the bass speakers in the back were powerful enough to make you feel like you were being throttled.

I broke away from the crowds and passed by the stalls selling glittery cowboy hats, coloured wigs, silly glasses and plastic lais - I gave the food stalls a wide berth (too many tv shows about the ones in London) and instead headed to the permanent Sterner Grill near Bellevue to grab a sausage and hard roll. Then I wandered around the old town, which was almost deserted with most of the shops shut. I must remember that in case I want some nice photos next year. I hid out in Starbucks and ate the brownies I'd brought with me and waited to see if anyone else was coming in to town - the weather was going from spitting rain to starting to rain in earnest, so in the end I headed home for dinner and a check on the rain radar. I also wanted to see Eric Prydz play from 10-12pm, but decided that the state of both the weather and the crowds would make it less than enjoyable. The atmosphere was great - very friendly - but if there was an element of crushing at 3:00pm and people were drinking steadily, I wasn't sure I'd like it seven hours later. I have to face the fact that I listen to this music in my room on a pair of nice headphones. I don't necessarily do the lifestyle as well.

Sunday was quiet but reasonably productive - washing, tidying up and a really nice Mexican dinner. Well, what passes for Mexican for us.

Monday brought the letter from the AHV. I printed out the contract that had not been signed by the client and put it in an envelope to them. I wrote a cover letter, in English. I pointed out in no uncertain terms that they had known I needed a decision from them by Monday in order to supply documents to the Migrationsamt, and although they knew that was not going to arrive they did not even have the courtesy to contact me, this after leaving my application sitting around for nearly two months.

Then I deleted it and just put the standard this is the enclosure, let me know if you need anything else. My faith is sufficiently dented that I am not going to risk provoking them and having something else happen.

Monday brought a rather nasty shock in the afternoon. I was trying to get a widget to work on my Gmail page when I noticed that it had failed to download email from one of my addresses... since the middle of July. After correcting the password, I had nearly 80 emails, two of which were from potential clients. I may pay for this dearly. But I really wish that Gmail had warned me somehow, without me having to go into the Settings and see that it was failing to collect mail.

I suppose that's my lesson from all of this. Never assume that anyone else is going to tell you if something is going wrong.

After that, I headed out to Ikea. I didn't fancy anything in the fridge and needed some more hanging files and a box to keep them in. I got all that and a half-price plate of Kottbular meatballs and then headed home to file some of the huge amounts of paperwork that moving here has generated, and putting some of the paperwork that came from Reading into storage again. I appreciate that Ikea have reasonable build quality, but 12 nuts and bolts on each file box was a bit much. My fingers hurt now.

Party!

Zurich provides the music - Fedde le Grand at Street Party.

Gotcha!

I thought we were going to have a good old-fashioned Friday the 13th this morning when I opened the fridge and no light came on and the contents were suspiciously covered in condensation and not that cold, but it seems to be working now. Personally, I've usually found Friday 13ths to be a little better than other days, but that may be because you start out with such low expectations for it.

One thing that has not gone right is that the promised letter from the AHV confirming my freelance status has not arrived in the post, so I will now have to apply to the Immigrationsamt for an extension to submit the documents for my residence application, which will further delay my permit. Although I did get my new PostFinance card (with my middle name spelled correctly) and my PIN number, so I can now access my online banking and use my card - himself put the remaining money from the amount I transferred to him last year in the account, so I do have something in it!

The highlight of the whole process - other than the very nice French-speaking member of staff with the same birthday as me who helped me open the account - was a letter to me-the-business, sent by registered post, informing me that I was to pay me-the-self-employed's wages into my personal account.

Other than that, PostFinance have been excellent and I now have everything including my card reader after opening the account on Saturday, and they sent a new card within 2 days after I noticed the spelling mistake. It's normally my first name people get wrong, so that was amusing in and of itself. It was a bit strange that it was only the card and the letter it came attached to though - everything else for the personal account and business account was fine.

Not much else. Weather has been very mixed, some nice sun but some massive downpours. We had a nice BBQ on Friday and the chocolate chili cake turned out very nice. The leftovers were cut into cubes and sent into himself's office where they were rapidly disposed of. I think I'll try a brownie recipe with chili next.

I've almost got my health insurance sorted. It boils down to whether insurer A will give me a rebate on gym membership, which will make them cheaper than insurer B, although A operate a phone-us-before-you-do-anything policy and B operate a family GP system - I prefer the latter, but would really like the gym rebate. Whichever way it goes, it will cost about 160 CHF a month for the compulsory basic insurance (the health service, basically) and 40 for the supplementary (treatment outside of your canton of residence, ambulance transport, search and rescue, and whatever else you'd like).

This weekend is Street Parade in Zurich, so I'm going to try to get out to Burkliplatz to see two DJs playing there. Annoyingly, one is playing at 1pm and the other at 10pm, but it should be interesting to get out and see it anyway. Assuming it doesn't tip it down again.

Green tea Sunday!

In between putting on washes and getting ready for BBQ guests arriving soon, I put on a batch of green tea steamed breads and tried my first homemade green tea latte! Worked very nicely, even if I say so myself, and nothing like Starbucks'. Not sweet even with two sweeteners and an amazing taste.

Son of Failcake

Just out of the oven, the traditional cake version with a little more chili and darker chocolate. Need to let it cool and then refridgerate it before we can see what it tastes like.

Hallelujah!

Not only are the photos of St. Gallen up, I have a bank account! Or to be precise, two Postfinance accounts, one for me and one for me as a business. Definitely one of the most productive Saturday mornings I've had in a while. Many thanks to the French-speaking member of staff at the Postfinance office in the middle of town, who did everything for me and turns out to have the same birthday! She was happy with my proof of registration in the commercial registry and the letter from the Immigrationsamt implying that my permit is being processed. When I asked if they needed a deposit, she laughed and replied "Ici, on n'est pas une banque!"

St. Gallen!

On my way back from St. Gallen after a half day seeing the Textile Museum and the 4th European Triennialle quilt exhibition. Nicer photos to follow!

I bring you... FAILCAKE

You've seen Failboat. Failtruck. And now... Failcake!



They were meant to look like little muffins, not mushrooms. I think the containers were the wrong size... they went in looking like chocolate cups, expanded, then all the batter in the cup shrunk. *sigh* At least they taste okay, but they look bizarre. Next time, I'm definitely doing this as an 8" cake.

Do the maths

I love my new tiny silicone mini-muffin cases. They're brightly coloured and cheerful and will forever remind me of this year's tax refund.

However, I should have realised that 24 tiny little cases will take a lot longer to fill with batter than 12 large ones. I turned the oven on before I started making the batter, and quite frankly I could have waited until the batter was made and had plenty of time.

I'm making some chocolate chili mini-bites (possibly the most insanely calorific recipe I've ever tried) to take to German tomorrow to celebrate the end of Kurs 1 and beginning of five weeks of revision. My fellow students will also be getting the remaining cherry ricotta muffins.

The rest of the day was spent monitoring emails, applying for a job that I've realised I probably don't want and would not be a good idea, and making flashcards for German revision in Anki, which I can use on my phone. When I can get the files to the right place on the flash card. I need to get a new notebook tomorrow to write up more grammar notes too. At least something progressed today!

Now that's how you do it

Success!

Something was wrong with the first batch. The two big suspects are a) the baking soda had been open for too long and was no longer active? and/or b) I noticed while washing up my measuring spoons (a kiddies' set shaped like little fish) that the smallest one was 1/4 teaspoon. I had thought the smallest was 1/2 teaspoon. So I may have put in 1/2 +1/4 teaspoon of baking powder instead of 1 + 1/2 teaspoons. Oops.

Anyway, they're quite heavy, smell delicious (the ricotta mixture smells lovely even when it's being prepared, especially after the vanilla goes in) and are very tasty indeed!

In other good news, I did my tax return over the weekend. As I've been freelancing for over a year, I am now in the "payment on account" system in the UK where I pre-pay 50% of my estimated tax bill for that year in advance every 6 months. I did the tax return to check if I owed Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs the full figure for the second payment on account for the year - only to find that they owed me! It's a combination of the agency I worked for overcharging me on Pay As You Earn (always happens, I regularly got large tax refunds when I worked as a temp), not having my personal allowance taken into account... and business not having been so good this year. But I will be getting both the overpaid tax and the whole of the first payment on account back! I went out and bought a new mixing bowl (keep using our salad bowl to make cakes), cooling rack and some multicoloured silicone mini-muffin cases to celebrate.

Other than that, it's cool and overcast and I'm still waiting for progress on the permit. My accountant has advised me to wait until one week before the deadline from the Immigrationsamt and then chase the national insurance people and ask Immigrationsamt for an extension. There is still a possibility I will have to create a GmbH and employ myself, so I'd better sit on the money until then!

Empty, full

Yesterday was a bit of a write-off. After a very poor night's sleep on Thursday night, we both went to bed at 1am on Friday night... and slept until 1pm on Saturday. I felt awake enough when I got up, but shattered again about two hours later. I headed out to buy some things at Nishi's - who were on holiday - and book an appointment at the Hirano hairdresser's next door - who were closed at 3:10pm despite their opening hours being until 4:00 on a Saturday. And I lost one of my headphone earpieces, leaving me unable to listen to any music. After wandering through Globus and Marinello in search of some chili powder (they had nothing more interesting than what I could get at the local supermarket) I headed back to Sihl City for an "It's a Boy!" card for a friend and some food shopping. I was telling myself that the quality of Co-op's fruit and veg was better than Migros' (especially the avocados) when I saw this:



Can you guess what it is? An aubergine (eggplant) with two enormous holes and who knows what inside. *sigh*

Today was much better. Emails cleared. Washing done. Tax return done - and they owe me! Now if I can just get my Summer Greetings ready to email out to my Japanese friends and business contacts, I'll be happy...

See?

The photos from our travels around Switzerland with himself's parents are up! Pilatus, Lucerne, Schaffhausen, Rhine Falls and Bern for your viewing pleasure.

Back to baking

After himself's parents left, I had about 1/2 kilo of cherries left in the fridge that we hadn't eaten... so I looked for some recipes! These cherry ricotta muffins are cooling off and should be ready to have for desert soon...

Rheinfall!

I'm not going looking for these, honest

But there seems to be no end to the 戦国BASARA news! Now on Kotaku is an article about a 戦国BASARA attraction in a theme park at the base of Mount Fuji... Hope it's still there next time I'm in japan!

Hello from Lucerne!

Because that was too healthy?

The frankly hysterical 戦国BASARA food tie-ins continue, and this time it's Pizza Hut!

These are the boxes:


And this is the "Adult Half & Half" pizza, "Super Delicious Bulgogi" and "Dijon Mustard Sausage":


Gigazine describes "dijon mustard sausage" as like a spicy potato salad, and the "super delicious bulgogi" as strongly flavoured yaki-niku (grilled beef). Pizzas the way only the Japanese seem to like them.

Original post at Gigazine (Japanese)

For your amusement

Here's something I found while sorting through some books today - getting them repacked into plastic bags and moved into storage in crates in the cellar instead of having them in damp cardboard boxes in the garage. It should be particularly amusing to anyone who met me after around 2002 when I started having my hair short!



This is a sketch of me from 1999, done by one of the students at Akechi High School in Japan where I worked as an assistant English teacher. Happy days.

Things that make me laugh out loud

Just spotted this on Gigazine: the city of Ueno, Nagano is collaborating with the computer game/anime 戦国BASARA to market apple wine and cake!

How could you resist this box of biscuits?

By the power of steam!

I can't believe it's July already.

Last Sunday was spent steaming steamed breads - three batches, two green tea and one cocoa - and then heading out for an amazing steam train ride out of Zurich up into the countryside and back!

And I've finally got the photos organised. Enjoy!

In other news, I got a registration card from the AHV, but no confirmation yet that they consider me to be a freelancer. But it's another piece in the puzzle. There is no point in thinking of this process as an orderly progression along some kind of path.

David's office party is tomorrow, there's a Japanese fundraising bazaar on on Saturday, Friday to Sunday is a festival in town, and next Saturday there's a showing by a small Japanese boutique in town. Things to do!

Ah, how Teutonic!

Seen in the big Co-op non-food shop in the local shopping centre. I was in there today to pick up some cute measuring spoons (shaped like fish and intended for children) and a small plastic spatula to run around the edges of the non-stick ramekins I'm using for the steamed breads. I made a second lot of green tea ones this morning... and they're all gone. ^_^; I also made the hijiki brown rice recipe from the same book last night and it was amazing.

In other news, I finally repaired Mom's bracelet and the latest Skulduggery Pleasant book and posted both off this morning. I got a letter from Stadt Adliswil, which I opened with bated breath, only to find it was not my residence permit but them wanting to know who my health insurer is. Well, that comes after the permit.

The birds are still eating everything we put out, and brown rice (cooked) is the new favourite. There were some very confused and upset great tits after himself took down the half coconut shell that was once filled with fat and seeds and now looks like it's been cleaned and polished. I swear they use it and the feeder as swings. We've been seeing some other kinds of birds that we're not able to identify, but at a minimum we have sparrows, great tits, blue tits, goldfinches and greenfinches. No need for TV!

Where there's green tea powder, there's cocoa powder!

After my surprisingly successful attempt at making steamed green tea bread (from the The Okinawa Diet Plan, which I recommend as a cookbook if nothing else) I decided to have a go with cocoa powder.



It worked beautifully! The flavour is subtle but delicious and the texture is amazingly dense. It's a definite tie with the green tea ones.

The one thing that didn't work so well was using both trays in the steamer. The ramekins I have are too large to put four in one tray, so I put two on each and the ones on the bottom steamer got dripped on, one worse than the other.



Himself insists he's going to eat the slightly soggy one regardless.

Been really enjoying the recipes and will probably try making the Hijiki Brown Rice tonight. After my cross-questioning from the lady at Nishi's Japanese shop while buying the hijiki yesterday - although to be fair, I didn't know you couldn't use it in soup, so I learned something this time.

Man to man

Reading up on the Japanese offensive in India in WWII for some work.

At this period a special jeep supply column was formed from a London Territorial Regiment. In its ranks were numbered many London taxi-drivers. General Messervy tells a story of one of these jeep crews. "All races produce tough, brave soldiers, but only the British soldier really has that sense of decency and kindly humanity which nothing can upset.

"A Jap was seen skulking in a bush near Jessami, by the side of the track. Out leapt the Gunners and seized him.

" 'Shall we kill the little bastard ? It's what he and his like deserve.'

" ' Oh, no, we can't. We'll take him back with us.'

"After a ' few hundred yards---"Ere, Tojo, you look pretty miserable. 'Ave a fag.'

"A mile farther on they had a puncture, and it was 'Come on, Tojo, give us a hand:'

"By the time Kohima was reached, 'Tojo' was a mascot, if not a friend."

From Anthony Brett-James' Ball of Fire: The Fifth Indian Division in the Second World War.

Seems there is always hope left somewhere in the world that people can just treat each other as people.

New and old

It's nice to get something off the long-term to-do list. I now have a functioning backup system, and it's bootable to boot. What finally got me to do it? I've decided that I really want to upgrade from OSX Tiger to Snow Leopard. The performance should be better, things may stop supporting Tiger soon as it was two releases ago, I get Boot Camp which means SDL will support me when I run on my Windows partition and I get to use Chrome instead of Firefox. I don't know what has happened to it, but it's become slower and slower and chews up up to 20% of my CPU. So, everything is copied over safely. Twice.

I finally managed to give in my application for my residence permit and registration in the community this week. It will take up to a month to hear back, but can take less time. I successfully registered with the Handelsregisteramt, despite technically not being able to get a notarisation without a permit, and they informed the SVA (national insurance) of my existence. I've filled in the form for them and sent it back with piles of contracts, invoices, etc. to convince them I'm self-employed - it's also missing lots of information like my permit number and bank details. But they wanted a response within the month so this is what I can give them.

Work has been reasonably busy. Well, it's been furiously busy or nothing, as usual. I still need to get used to it. And use some of the downtime to do my accounts and figure out how well I'm actually doing in the grand scheme of things.

I got my official results from the exam board - I passed! So I can now add another MA after my name (MA squared?). And ACIL - Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists. And I took the final set of training for SDL Trados Studio 2009 on Friday, just have to do the exam now and that's the lot. Other than the Termbase one. It's all professional development.

Right. Now for the rather scary endeavour of upgrading my OS.

And boom!

The doorbell went at about 9:00am - David was in the bathroom and I wasn't very dressed, so I peeked out the door of the flat and saw that someone had abandoned a box outside the front door.

I'm assuming this was Swiss Post. Contrary to expectations they seem to be even dodgier than Deutsche Post - so far they've delivered an enormous box to the mother & baby shop in front of our building despite being told it was the wrong address and rammed a box that was too big into our postbox (thankfully the contents were in hard boxes). Oh, and not delivered letters for no apparent reason, causing our ISP to cut us off for non-payment when we hadn't received the bills.

This abandoned package (which a kind neighbour had brought inside the door by the time we went to get it) contained something David had put in an order for months ago but assumed he hadn't got as it was only available in limited quantities - the pocket-böögg!

For those of you who enjoy Sechseläuten, you can get your very own mini-Böögg, the exploding farmer-snowman. It came in a lovely box with three stepped wooden bases, a set of stickers to make the face and bowtie, a removable hat, pipe... and mini firecrackers to put under the hat. And the wooden bases appear to be prepared with something flammable, as the bottom one has three wicks in it. There's a video of one being assembled and burnt on the site, along with the traditional Sechseläuten march music.

So, not only are these made by adults with cerebral palsy, but sent by post? The Swiss really do have a different idea of health and safety!

More updates later - it's been busy, and I've been tired.

Shhh

Woke up an hour early, still on Swiss time. Have caught up with some emails I needed to answer - I'm always annoyed when people flake out on me and don't respond, so I have to not do it myself.

Still surrounded by boxes, but less of them and they have the contents written on the top and have been logged in a packing list and someone is going to print them for us before the movers arrive. A day early. We were going to go into London and treat ourselves to a hotel for the last night we're here - now without a bed - but we have return tickets already bought from Reading so we're going to keep the inflatable bed out and just crash here instead.

Seen lots of people, didn't managed to catch others. Had two Japanese meals on Thurs and wound up the staff at the new Jamie Oliver Italian restaurant in Reading last night. Just have to keep on going and get everything ready to go, including the Amazon order that arrived yesterday. Bought N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the complete Ouran High School Host Club, Afro Samurai (it was cheap enough on Blu-Ray to buy on a whim), Barry Atkins' More Than a Game and a book on vegetarian sushi for himself along with the Lekue Makisu sushi mat which for reasons best known to Amazon is arriving a week later than everything else and after we leave.

Must get dressed and clear the front room. This isn't over yet.

Oh, and apparently the Sheffield exam board met on Thursday but I haven't got final results yet. Will have to harrass the office. Ah, how nostalgic.

Interesting times

Well, that will teach me to complain about not having enough work. Client A emailed me last Monday with a huge project to get done in 2 weeks. Great, thank you! Then Client B checks in with a project I could get done in a day, and is games related. I'll take that, thank you! Then... Client C pops up asking for some small but short turnaround work. Um, yes, let's split this with someone else and I'll get you my bit in 2 days...

The worst of the crush is over and I'm now concentrating on my big file which has a lovely amount of repetition in it which the translation tools handles all by itself. It's dull, but relatively easy and definitely makes me happy I have the translation tool.

I did the two training exams on Sunday, while hiding out in himself's office while our broadband was down - thankfully just a fault instead of their billing section cutting us off thinking we hadn't paid again. Today is a bank holiday in Zurich and we went out to pick up a van to collect a shelving unit from a colleague of himself's who is moving back to the US. Except it wouldn't fit in the van. Himself and colleague managed to take out one side and some shelves with a hammer, so it fit in the end, but we were looking around for irate neighbours if not the police.

The weekend has been gloriously sunny and 31 degrees today, although it's clouded over now. May has just disappeared, and we're off to the UK on Wed night to pack up and finalise all our stuff. I hope a week will be enough. The leasehold extension for the flats has gone through, so we can now put ours on the market, although the two that are up for sale have been so for some time now.

Particularly looking forward to Thurs, when I'll meet up with people at the Japan Society to discuss doing more work with them, and meet up with people for dinner!

Oh, and I shall be waiting for my official exam board results for the MA on May 27, and for a decision on my application to the IoL on June 5. Fingers crossed they all go smoothly.

Ook! Ook!

This goes in with Freelance Folder as something to read when I'm feeling a bit beaten around the head by my chosen profession: No Peanuts! for Translators - a collection of confidence-boosting writings on rates and the value (monetary and otherwise) of translation.

And another one!

Despite getting a terrible night's sleep on Wednesday I had a very productive day on Thursday with a good German lesson and lots of work done on two sites where I'm trying to integrate content from a blog onto a static web page.

As part of that I started looking around for good blogs on general translation, Japanese-English translation and games translation. I've found many of the first so far and am about to start following another possibly infinite chain of blogs about English. I think I should take a break.

Spent Friday in two 3-hour training sessions for my chosen translation tool, which were good but not absolutely required for the exams - I may do the other two exams I want to get without the training sessions. I don't believe that the certification you get for them is absolutely necessary, but it's professional development. And I have time for that now, so I may as well use it.

The birds in the garden are still routinely decimating the two feeders we hang out for them, and himself was concerned that they might need different food if they're raising young, so we went into the pet shops in town to look for some mealworms. We didn't get any, but at least got to see some very cute animals. Well, I find spiders cute - not everyone does...

In other news, I managed to successfully raise a rate offered by a client with everyone happy with the end result and baked two half-batches of muffins, one black sesame and one green tea. Making the two batches distracted me to the extent that I forgot to add the oil to the green tea batch, which came out squat and heavy (still very edible). But I am easily distracted.

Getting back into playing my 漢字検定試験 and 美文字 games on the DS. That and trying to finish Dragon Quest: Chapters of the Chosen. I still have to adjust to the feast and famine cycle. Staring at my laptop waiting for work to come in doesn't help, but neither does endless surfing. I'm not on holiday, I'm waiting for work. And what else is there to do but polish up my skills?

Tortillas and aliens and the Japan Society, oh my

I've been invited by the Japan Society to take on more work for their Japan-UK Live! school exchange/twinning project: checking translations by other Japanese to English translators, helping to plan some of the exchange themes, testing a new website and encouraging UK teachers to keep their links going. Hoping to get stuck into that in the next few weeks! I've also booked a training day on Friday, getting "certified" in my chosen translation tool. I don't think it's entirely worth it, but I need to get back into using it to get the most out of it, and as I learned it on the job and as a project manager instead of a translator I'm sure there are bits I missed. I also get a massive discount on the training and exams through a translation website I'm a member of - wouldn't contemplate it otherwise.

We're back in the UK from May 26 - June 1, and this time the movers are booked. Everything is going into a van on the morning of June 1 and being driven over by a moving company. While I dread another round of throwing out and giving away (especially as the less precious things are now gone) it will be a great relief to have it done, over a year after we started. The silver lining is an email from Oxfam - they raised £258.09 from the sale of my donated goods, and can also get over £70 in Gift Aid (as I'm still a UK taxpayer). That's a fitting end for so many books, CDs, DVDs and comics.

Had a fun night last Saturday with some friends over for our attempt at Mexican cooking - fill-it-yourself tortillas made with Quorn pieces. All very nice and accompanied by Belgian, French, English and even African beer! (Barley ice tea for me.) And a box of Luxemburgerlis, which always go down well. We then all watched District 9 together, and agreed unanimously that some of the very small injuries that happen to the protagonist earlier on are far more flinch-inducing that the massive acts of gore that follow. It's all too easy to imagine the smaller ones happening, I suppose.

I went to one of the spouses' association dinners last night, at the Japanese oKara restaurant, which I recommended. I had the sashimi special and I have to say I wasn't that impressed - the tonkatsu was amazing though. And there should be a warning on udon noodles for people who aren't used to chopsticks.

Weather has been quite bad all week, with wind and rain and general gloom. There was even snow forecast. So long as we don't get an ash cloud.

Bats and frogs and fish, oh my

We went for a short walk last night - himself persuaded me to go out just as it was getting dark. I didn't need much persuading as I'd been indoors all day working. I was a little worried when I saw a flash of lightning while waiting for the train, but I'll get back to that...

It was spitting rain when we got to the station two up from ours that links to the lovely woodland/riverside trail. We crossed under the platform (where some police were talking to what looked like a group of travellers, but it didn't seem confrontational) and across the stream to walk under the trees - which were full of bats! They were wheeling and swinging between the trees and the water, and I'm sure they were having a feast as the air was full of midges. They looked quite small and there seemed to be quite a few (well, there could have been two of them following us too). We carried on as the rain wasn't so bad, and just as we were having second thoughts we found one of the created ponds fenced off at the side of the path. There had been frog spawn there before so we decided to look and see if there were any frogs now. Himself shone his bike light in... there must have been about 20 frogs. We don't know if the light set them off or what happened, but they started croaking in a huge range of tones and pitches and frequencies and we just stood there and laughed in the wind and rain.

We eventually decided to cut back across to the station one up from ours and get the train the rest of the way back. But it was well worth getting wet for.

In other news, I braved the fish counter today. Although I still have problems understanding Swiss German, it does seem to be true that if you speak standard/High/German German you will be understood. Not that it's that difficult to ask for 200g of wild salmon. When you can point for half of it. It was on sale and looks amazing. I'm going to have it for dinner tonight with some organic courgettes and (normal) mushrooms. Strawberries are in too! I got 500g of them for 1.90 CHF (down from 2.50) which was nice. Especially as I paid almost that much for a single red pepper last week.

Banditry

Once again I have made out like it's my birthday and Christmas combined at the Swiss Japanese Friendship Society. We went to their bowling event today - himself came third overall, I came last. Yes, my bowling really is that bad.

He got a medal, a bag, a poster, a can of "neri-an" (red bean paste), three food bowl covers and a box of toothpicks. I got a scarf and pendant, three small cases (all flourescent orange) and a box with seven white bowls! Mr. Yamaguchi bought my drink while I wasn't looking and the Society picked up half the tab when we went for pizza afterwards, and Mr. Yamaguchi drove us all home. He's doing an origami course nearby in October. I am so signed up for it...

But of course

A live hockey match in a mini-stadium. Inside Zurich Hauptbahnhof.

Edit: Apparently they also do beach volleyball in the station. With sand.

Just wow.

I was extremely touched to find that a letter from a client in Japan, which I assumed had a signed contract in it, actually contained a gift of an A4 plastic folder with white rabbits and a sheet of stickers illustrating the town of Kawagoe. I'd hoped to meet him while I was in Japan but wasn't able to, and he'd bought these for me as omiyage.

How sweet. I almost don't know what to say.

Just in case

For those of you who absolutely have to see an effigy of a farmer snowman being blown to nothing, the photos are up!

No groundhogs, please, we're Swiss.

Zurich has its own traditional method of weather forecasting, the Sechseläuten (Sächsilüüte?) (pronounced a bit like "sex-er-loiter"), which involves putting an effigy of a snowman packed with explosives on top of a bonfire. The faster the head blows off, the better summer will be. This is a holiday in Zurich (not anywhere else) with shops closed and himself on a half day.

In the event that that the effigy does not go off, it will be assisted - witness the description of the 2008 burning on the link above, where the fire brigade used their considerable knowledge and a supply of kerosene to help it along. It also involves fleets of guild members in period dress on horseback distributing flowers around the city.

I may just put "busy" in my calendar and go see what photos I can get.

Ikea does manga?

Well, it's close. Saw these in the wonderful Ikea fabric section today. Anyone for Godzilla prints and origami moose?

Just looking at these again - is that the Little Mermaid in the bottom left of the print? Is Godzilla destroying Copenhagen?

Sushi!

I promised a friend a photo of the chirimen (crepe) sushi I got at the Chirimen Museum in Kyoto - here they are! One tamago-nigiri (a slice of Japanese omelette on rice with a band of seaweed) and one inari-zushi (a cured tofu pocket stuffed with rice, dusted with black sesame seeds).

Lazing on a Sunday afternoon

Well, kind of. It's also our day to use the washing room, and I'm having a general tidy up since I can't find space to put my mug down on my desk any more. But other than that, it's sunny outside and the birds are loving the food we put out, so there's much fun to be had sitting inside in a sunbeam watching them flutter about. Himself is in charge of identifying species. So far, we've had blackbirds, starlings, blue tits and finches. There are also bumblebees flying around as well as midges and a resurgence of spiders. I'm sure the woodland cockroaches will follow in due course. These are related to the despised and exterminated cockroaches, but apparently cannot live indoors and only come into houses because they're attracted by light. The fly screens I bought in Frankfurt last year are still up, so hopefully they will keep them out this year.

In other news - not much. I cleared Endless Ocean 2 and am now doing side quests. I need to do more tidying up and shredding. I haven't got any further on registering, other than the Migrationsamt saying I don't need to give the community office any documentation about work. I hope the community office doesn't have a different take on it. Himself is out testing his new road bike by seeing if he can go around the lake.

Time to empty the dryer and put the next load on.

Cats. Ants. Birds. など。Etw.

We have been feeding the birds recently, and himself is complaining that they wake him up in the morning. You can't have it both ways. It's a lot of fun watching them scamper around the garden and selectively pull sunflower seeds out of the feed and hammer them open on the tree.

On the other hand, we've also noticed ants in the flat. Time to start being ruthless about clearing up in the kitchen.

And seen in Migros today - catnip!

Success!

Behold the chocolate matcha muffins! The recipe is fairly fiddly and only makes 6, but they were delicious and very fluffy. Stuck to the silicone cups though.

Our first fondue on Sunday went very well. I had terrible memories of fondue from school ski trips, but enjoyed this one very much. We had the matcha cake I picked up in Narita duty free for desert - highly recommend it if you're passing through there!

So today it's back to being ready for work if it should arrive and also trying - again - to register here. I've spent the morning reading around what I'm supposed to do and have just confused myself again. I may go back to the town hall just to see if I speak to someone else and they tell me something different. I've had a few leads to try from different people, but still no clear path. All I can do is keep on trying, I suppose.

And I need more matcha powder. And a haircut. And to write loads of thank you emails.

Matcha! II

Back from our trip in to Zurich, and himself has everything he needs to do a fondue tomorrow. We just need to make the place look less like a bomb hit. ^_^;

In the interests of spreading around all that matcha goodness, here are the recipes I've found:
Matcha chocolate swirl cake/cupcakes
Matcha latte
Matcha cheesecake and fresh chocolate

Matcha!

After tasting so many tasty matcha (powdered green tea used in the tea ceremony) things in Japan - especially the matcha chocolate in Uji - I went and found some recipes online for matcha chocolate cake and ended up finding one for the highly desirable matcha latte as well!

Next step was to find some matcha powder and for that we headed into Zurich to check the wonderland that is the basement food shop in Globus. They had some matcha milk chocolate, which I snapped up. They had matcha powder too - from Uji! - for the exorbitant sum of 37 CHF.

I went to the Nishi Japanese food shop - they were closed, but I could see on their site that they have matcha powder for 13 CHF. I can either go there on Tuesday and get it, or else use the "green tea" mix I was given by Nozaki-sensei which appears to be matcha with added sugar. I can work with that...

[Note: my "green tea" mix appears to be tea with ground brown rice. Not sure how they'll do, but they make a very nice tea!]

Easter means pandas!

At himself's office anyway. I got back safely, stayed up for a bit then slept like the dead. Having a real bed helps lot!

On Thursday I amazingly woke up at 8am, got up and cleared the 200-odd emails that had arrived over the holidays and started listening to my new Asian Kung-Fu Generation CDs. I even went and tagged and filed the several hundred unsorted ones left over from when I moved my stored emails over.

Then it was a quick shower and in to himself's office for lunch and possibly my German lesson. It wasn't clear if it was happening because I was the only person scheduled to be there and the office was having a half day. The Berlitz office were utterly clueless. The lady at reception told me that our teacher had left but we had a new one in a different room. Maybe. Her info from Berlitz was out of date as well.

It turned out to be correct and there were three of us there, one guy from my class had got his holiday dates wrong and a guy from another class joined ours - which the new teacher hadn't heard about. I survived it remarkably well and hung around while himself finished up some things, then home to scan through photos and finally watch Ponyo before crashing.

Up early again today and trying a post from my phone here as it also has a camera. Not used to the keyboard yet though!

Because one flavour is not enough

That's it for this trip. Have to get this phone into the post and me into security. Thanks to everyone for such a wonderful trip!

Last breakfast

At Tokyo Soup Stock. Not Japanese food, but I like it.

That takes me back

The Uniqlo in Narita T1 is doing anime t-shirts - Dragonball, Galaxy Express 999, Cobra, Mazinger and this.

Last train

As usual, I don't want to leave!

Dawn out the window

Woke up - or rather ceased to be able to sleep - about quarter to six. Not sure where this is, but we were popping in and out of tunnels and the dawn was fading as fishing boats set out to sea.

The nobi nobi compartments are as uncomfortable as they look. The carriage is super-heated and the bunks have some kind of under carpet heating as well. It was fun, but I think I'll just plan my way out of needing it again. That or pay for a real bunk.

We've had the wake-up call for Yokohama, and will be in Tokyo in about 40 minutes. There's nowhere to put cases and when I asked the conductor he advised me to move into an unoccupied pair of top bunks and store my luggage in one. I was most grateful for the second blanket to use as a pillow.

Dinner on the move

I had planned to get something to eat at Fukuoka when changing trains, but the shop there was totally cleaned out - not even a rice ball. Thankfully the bullet train's on-board catering had a bento.

Peek-a-boo

The spectacles bridge in Nagasaki.

Last lunch

As I was going to be on the move from that evening, I had a proper sit-down lunch at a tonkatsu place.