what do you do

when you are really hungry and sitting at a cafe and someone hasn't finished their delicious treat and it is just next to you on the table and no one is sitting near you. let me tell you what you don't do. you don't eat it. even though you want to because someone WILL see and they will judge you.

the only time i have kind of done this is on an aeroplane where i was starving and had actually eaten the aeroplane meal and wanted more dessert and the person next to me was sooo obvsiously not going to eat hers and i just kept looking at it until she asked if i wanted it. and i said yes, but you can do whatever you want on an aeroplane cause you are a million miles in the air and probably drunk  or tranquilized if you have any common sense.

I'm in Greece.

On an island called Kalymnos. When I get back everyone will say oh how was Greece and then I will say oh it was great etc etc. You know what I WILL NOT say is, "oh it was great, wonderful food." That is a thing you are NEVER ALLOWED to say about a holiday because it just means you are quite boring. Like the highlight of your holiday was just eating food. Maybe it's not a real thing, but Joris and I have decided it is.

Also it's probably quite lame that I am writing a blog post while I am on this nice island.  I feel like that is the first thing I would think about a person who was on the internet when there is a beach about 1 minute away. It's the same as when you call someone who's having a party to find out the address or if they need ice (that NEVER happens. no one has ever called me during a party to find out if i need ice) and they answer IMMEDIATELY. that is not a party you want to go to.

 SO
GREECE

i've always wanted to go on holiday to a greek island.  i've always thought i would come back all bronzed and dreamy.  I'm more sort of dark white at the moment and I look a bit dirty. It was a pretty last minute decision to come to Greece  I'd thought I'd take my holiday in August, but Joris has had reeeaaalllyyy bad hay fever. Like not leaving the house because of the dangerous pollens hay fever. So he basically went ok I'm going away because this is unbearable and then I went ok me too and now we're in Kalymnos. It's way better not to plan holidays because I think you can get very confused about all the places you could go and where you could stay and it just becomes overwhelming. Joris is finishing off his thesis so I really, really have a lot of time to myself. We're in this tiny village called Massouri. There is a beach and a few little supermarkets which are really just corner stores and then a guy with a fruit truck and some restaurants and bars. My best is that there is a bar on the beach called super mario. My real best is that one of the restaurants has a sign outside that says "take away all the sandwiches." So I really spend my days doing nothing. Joris and I go for a morning swim and then he works and I read or lie in the sun or do "important" things on my computer. Then we have an evening swim and then we have dinner. It's great. It's a real holiday when you have nothing to do. Anyway.Here is a list of things I can tell you about Greece:

It's really hot
Dolmades are actually eaten warm
There are feral cats everywhere
NO ONE speaks english
I haven't even seen one pita bread
It has the nicest beaches for swimming. Nicer than any other beaches I've ever been to.
Roxette seems to still be quite popular.

There's way more stuff, but I want to go to the beach now so I'm going to stop writing. 

Here are some pictures:
 

making beans. "gigantes" beans.

outside out apartment

feral cat

View from our balcony

 

Beach

so it's been a while

which means i've probably lost all the 6 people who actually sometimes look at my blog, but i thought i should start writing again cause ya "creative outlet."

it's almost christmas which i'm VERY excited about because I LOVE christmas. i think i am one of the biggest fans  of christmas that i know. For someone who is so mad about christmas i have made VERY POOR CHOICES OF BOYFRIENDS because they have all treated christmas with a seriously raised eyebrow. So when I told Joris all the things that would have to happen in order for christmas to be the festive occasion I have grow accustomed to he went ya ok, but i seriously think he is lacking in enthusiasm. He thought Christmas was on the 24th of December. This is how Joris would be about Christmas if he were a cat:

You see the Withers christmas is a series of LONG ADHERED TO TRADITIONS. so firstly there have to be sweets in bowls everywhere leading up to christmas. The christmas cake has to be baked all together with everyone taking a turn to stir the mixture and make a wish. Obviously my mom has to bake a million mince pies and other "holiday biscuits" Then there's the decorating of the tree. Then there's Christmas eve where my dad reads the christmas story (no one else is allowed to read it, except for the one occasion i got the chance to because of withers related christmas eve drama) Obviously the soundtrack for all this is kings college christmas carols. One year john tried to put on Fabios christmas hits which was met with VERY LITTLE LAUGHTER FROM MY FATHER. Then my dad hangs a very special decoration on the tree.  Then we all say something nice about each other ( a tradition created out of necessity given all the christmas eve drama) then we all go to bed and await our christmas stockings and then in the morning it's down to the christmas tree for presents (i get to read the labels and the youngest child hands them out) Basically it's a long process that no one else could really get into unless they were a withers. So I thought ok obviously all this will be done in amsterdam cause ya keeping the withers christmas going. So far i have :
- no christmas cake
- no mince pies
- no christmas tree
- no stockings
- no presents for anyone who will be there for christmas day

I do have an advent calendar though and every morning I say with great enthusiasm Joris lets see what's in the advent calendar and he takes out some sort of sweet and goes oh great and then forgets to eat it. 

So I have no idea what Christmas day will bring. I feel like I could turn into a massive sulky brat if things aren't done properly, but really it doesn't matter. Maybe Joris and I will start our own traditions. Like eating steak for Christmas because we have no oven. And giving each other useful gifts like ice trays. And having a christmas tree with no decorations. In a way it's kind of exciting.

i am reading an article about the sex life of the deep sea squid

and here is a quote from the article which is find HILARIOUS


In a report published in the journal Biology Letters, the authors claim the behaviour "exemplifies the 'live fast and die young' life strategy of many cephalopods"

it's really great to imagine all these squids just you know being a bit like gangsters or something with weird hats and cigars all just swimming around going "yeah i don't care about nothin, live fast, die young. "

LOOK HERE IS A MOUSE THAT WAS TRAPPED IN A POT.

it's really, really gross. joris threw it in the river. i hope it's dead now.

i can ride my bike with no hands

this just happened so ya you heard it here first. hot off the press.

the next thing i want to learn to do is sort of lift the bike up while i ride. joris says i won't be able to. he's probably right.

joris killed a mouse with his foot. (in socks)

that's all. what more can i say about that really.

it's worth remembering that

once john and i were watching american idols and some guy sang some schmaltzy song and when steven tyler was sort of raving about it afterwards he went

"i especially liked the way you really brought out all the crescendos and innuendos"

what he meant to say was crescendos and diminuendos. it kind of made me like steven tyler more. like he was trying to speak in music, but he just couldn't. it would be great if he's been doing this his whole life and just no one has ever, ever corrected him because it's SERIOUSLY funny and i feel like you'd never get tired of hearing him do it wrong. 

i'm going to write about my vacation soon and put pictures up

but right now it seems like a momentous task because there are about 800 photos and a lot of them are just the same. It's that thing where you go ok well I haven't taken a photo for a while so you go beserk taking loads of photos and they are all basically the same except you look slightly more weird in some cause you finally get around to smiling after the 10th photo and you end up looking a bit insane.

I was just outside and there was this couple taking photos of themselves next to the canals and the girl went and posed and looked VERY awkward and then the guy went and posed and looked slightly less awkward, but still not like a real human. Having photos taken of yourself is the worst thing because

a) if there are people around you you know they are just going ooh look at her posing for her photo thinking she looks so great.
b) the person taking the photo is obviously going jees can't she just be normal or i can't believe she thinks that's a nice face to make etc etc

Everyone has a photo face that they think makes them look the most dreamy. Mine is probably to put my face a bit to the side and not totally smile cause my teeth look odd in photos. I only realised this when I looked through a bunch of my profile pictures on facebook and went OH GOD I HAVE A WEIRD "I THINK I'M SO MYSTERIOUS" PHOTO FACE. So to remedy this I just stopped looking at the camera properly when I was in photos and then there would just be whole albums where i was looking down a lot AND IT STILL LOOKED LIKE I THOUGHT I WAS BEING MYSTERIOUS. So now I don't even know what to do in a photo which means that I often just talk a lot and hope for the best. The thing is that this all means I'm really vain cause I can't really bear the thought of a photo capturing this moment where I just look the worst. The other worst thing is that when I finally see all the photos I just go oh man why didn't I just look at the camera in this one or why did I decide to really go for it with the smile in this one.

There are some people who just have tons of dreamy photos of themselves where they've moved their heads in just the right way or they sort of lifted their arms a bit and it made them look "interesting" or their skirt is all blowing a bit in the wind and they look from a nice movie and you just know that when they are a thousand years old their kids will show their friends photos of their mom when she was younger (cause EVERYONE does that) and will be all proud that their mom was such a windswept dreamboat.

Basically the way I am dealing with this whole problem is to just decide that you can't trust people who ALWAYS look good in photos because it means they are just spending most of their time practicing for photos and that makes them creepy.

now that i have done further research

i can inform you that i am absolutely right about not allowing a red hot chilli pepper to name your child because

the main singer's child is called Everly Bear.
the flea guy who plays the bass has a child called Sunny Bebop Balzary.

I feel like this could be a real dealbreaker for me, sort of marrying someone and never having spoken about what we could call our children if we had any and then having a child and being like ok i will call this one Thomas and he goes no no no we will call it SUNNY BEBOP.

something that always makes me laugh

is to say "one hot minute"

the other day joris asked me how long two people we were talking about had dated and i said ONE HOT MINUTE, THEY DATED FOR ONE HOT MINUTE. and then jees i laughed. 

then joris ruined everything by reminding me that the red hot chili peppers had an album called One Hot Minute. Let me remind you that this is from the same people that named an album "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" which is one of the worst things you could ever call anything. I feel like if you married someone in the Red Hot Chilli Peppers you would have to be VERY CAREFUL about allowing them to have any input into the name of your child.

actually i'm going to naples on tuesday

i still somehow haven't managed to get my head around the dates.


ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT NOTE
this weekend was gay pride weekend or something like that in Amsterdam. The main event is the canal parade where everyone goes out on their boats or stands alongside the canals and watches all the boats that are part of the parade. Obviously the boats are all playing loads of lady gaga and there are VERY naked male dancers writhing around and it's all quite something to see. Obviously it started raining halfway through the whole thing and obviously our boat had no cover so we jumped onto the boat next to ours to take shelter. Obviously rain has never been known to dampen a gay mans spirit.


Here are some photos

I'M GOING TO NAPLES NEXT MONDAY

Joris and I were sitting around and he was talking about how he'd like to be by the sea and sort of describing the house he'd like to be in and what we'd do and then he went ok lets go on holiday and then he looked up tickets and just booked two to Naples. So yup now we're going to Naples. I really like that Joris is a person like this. If it were me I'd go ok yes lets go on a holiday and then I'd spend a week thinking about where and I'd look for tickets and keep finding different places and then the place I'd go would be called nowhere.

I'm really excited. I've never been to Italy and also because it is HOT in Naples and also BEACHES.

look how dreamy

i have recently been informed

that I check the weather an abnormal amount. I'd say about 5-500 times a day. The reason I check it so often is because I am hopeful that the next time I look at it it won't still look like this:

Basically if you were anywhere in the world and someone put a gun to your head and said correctly tell me the weather in amsterdam right now you would almost certainly walk away unscathed if you said raining.

HOW GENERAL KNOWLEDGE EVENING WENT

not well. that's even an understatement. we were APPALLING.

they asked sooo many questions about dutch things. For example:

1. Who wrote the book Mijn vader woont in Brazilie?
2. What was the last hit single of the Dutch band, Krezip?

The answer to both these questions is:
WHO CARES. 


There were loads more, but I can't even remember them because they were about Dutch tv shows and stuff. Also the first round was just 10 pictures of different dutch ice skaters and you had to name all of them. Seriously, who cares about ice skaters, maybe figure skating is kind of pretty to watch if you're THE MOST BORED EVER. Ice skating is just dangerous and cold. That's it.

One of the most important people to have on your team if you are doing a general knowledge quiz is a person who knows about sports.So this week I am going to find a friend who is good at sport and then next week I'm going back and I'm going to win. Well not win. I'm definitely not going to win, but I'm going to go back and not lose. Aiming low. Low is great, never a disappointment.

andre told me my blog is lacking

SO HERE YOU GO ANDRE.

but really it's true. i never, ever write on here anymore and I'm not sure why that is. I think it's cause I finally feel like I live here or something so I feel like i don't have great little holiday things to say. This is really rubbish cause it's not like I was writing about sipping cocktails on the beach, or some epic mountain adventure where i found inner peace or anything. I wish. Only the cocktail part. It's kind of the same as inner peace. Tonight Joris and I are going to do a general knowledge quiz thing at the bar next door. The bar next door and I have become best friends since I locked myself out of the house a week or two ago and had to sit there for ages just waiting for Joris to come home. I met probably the worst people you could meet that night, a death metal drummer and a 40 something year old woman from Alaska who has sold everything (which I imagine wasn't much since she worked at a bar in Alaska) and was just travelling around the world. A real highlight was when she told me she could speak kiwi and australian. It's the sort of thing that maybe would seem romantic or courageous or something if she hadn't been
a) really unattractive (i know that's mean, but come on if she had been some nice willowy brunette it would just have been a better story)
b) not very bright
and
c) insane

So anyway tonight general knowledge quiz. The questions are going to be in Dutch so now not only will I have to suffer the indignity of probably not knowing that many answers (this is not true, i'm EXCELLENT AT KNOWLEDGE) , but just plain not understanding the questions. 

So yup. Probably got you all just eagerly awaiting the next installment called "how general knowledge evening went."

That's what it will be called. Seriously. Don't get too excited.

The weather is BEAUTIFUL

Really though not like oh yeah it's pretty warm and it's only beautiful because the weather has been so awful for the last few weeks. IT'S REALLY, PROPERLY WARM. This morning I very, very optimistically went out and purchased sun cream. Factor 20. Yup. I also got a new conditioner that I'm very excited about. If you have curly hair you get very excited about conditioner. I can spend HOURS looking at hair things. All these words like glossy and silky are very enticing. Now I'm going to take a book and cycle to Vondelpark and laze around reading and suntanning. I'm not sure how this suntanning business is going to work because it's weird to suntan in a park.  This is a thing about cities without beaches. I remember in New York and Boston that people would get pretty naked for a park that was in the middle of a city. Like bras and underwear naked. I don't agree with this at all. The only public place you should ever wear so little clothing is by a pool or at the beach.

Yesterday Joris and I took a looonnnggg cycle to the North of Holland. It was really dreamy. We took a ferry and everything. Here are pictures.

this is how a lot of the trip looked. joris referred to the scenery as "an acquired taste."

joris

i can now ride a bike and pose for a camera AT THE SAME TIME which is pretty impressive i think

MY hat and MY sunglasses which joris very cunningly took over during the course of the day

the "beach"

some adorable town that had LOADS of hydrangeas

I did some cool things this weekend

well. one cool thing which is that I went to this big festival type of thing all over the city called nuit blanche. I could write all about it and explain it nicely, but instead I'm going to let you google it if you're interested because I really don't feel like explaining it and also THE INTERNET. Ya. The main thing I would like to say in this post is PLEASE SEND ME PEPPERMINT CRISPS AND ALSO MONEY IF YOU WANT.

with love
emma

this post is mainly for rosie.

i have made myself dinner two nights running so now i obviously think i'm a real cook. Both of my dinners were salads, BUT one of them had quinoa in it and the other one had a courgette in it. Sometimes Rosie and I talk about things that make you a grown up. So I thought about it today and went ah ok here's a huge generalisation that if I said to anyone except Rosie they would think i was an idiot. A THING ONLY A GROWN UP WOULD BUY IS A COURGETTE.  Also a thing only a grown up would do is buy a bottle of wine and then only have ONE GLASS which is what I'm doing right now thanks.

Here are my salads.I only took these pictures because I was so pleased with what I made that I wanted Joris to see, but then I was too hungry to wait for him to come home so I just took photos.  I'm writing about food quite a lot which is really, really boring. I'll do something cool soon and then maybe I'll have something to write about. If that fails I'll just keep writing about the mouse because that proved to be a real hit.

a conversation i often have with joris

goes like this:

Joris:  What are you doing on blablalba night?
Emma: I don't know. Why?
Joris: There's a nice blablalba I'd like us to go to.
Emma: Oh ya sorry I forgot I'm seeing all my bejillion friends that night.

Then I laugh A LOT.

The point of this joke is that I don't have bejillion friends.I really like this joke, I like it so much that I would consider not making any friends so I can keep using it. I do know that it's not really a very funny joke. Joris doesn't really laugh at it anymore and he finds everything I say hiiilllaarriooouus.

Anyway the reason I thought about this is that tonight I'm going to watch a movie called source code which is, "An action thriller centered on a soldier who wakes up in the body of an unknown man and discovers he's part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. " The words in this synopsis that make me not want to watch this movie at all are action, soldier, mission and bomber.   Joris is so excited about it though which kind of makes me want to see it a lot more. Also I watched the trailer and it looks like it'll be quite a "fun" movie.