Goodbye, Forever

Travel stories are going to be a bit out of order now, I guess, as I'm just writing them as I remember them. We went to a restaurant in Rome, and I noticed that they had tartufo on their menu. Tartufo is Italian for truffle, but it also refers to a frozen dessert which is traditionally a ball of one flavour of ice-cream, inside a ball of another flavour, sometimes coated in chocolate and/or with a cherry in the middle. The one we got at the first restaurant was interesting, but didn't have the chocolate shell and flavour inside flavour that I wanted to see.

Don't get me wrong, it was still delicious, as it was chocolate and vanilla ice-cream, with a liquid chocolate center. But I wanted to try "the real thing". So I looked up the best place to get one in Rome, and a lot of reviews were saying Tre Scalini in Piazza Navona, which this blog nicely sums up about the "Tartufo Wars".

In particular, note that there's the "fake" one right next door. Which seems to have been forced to change their name, though they still have the "date' to make it look like they're the older one, even though if you look closely, it's just a number at the end of the name of their restaurant, and not actually the year that they started in.

This one below is the real one.

The truffle itself was good, very rich, so it really needed that giant heap of whipped cream on top. Also, if you do decide to go, as pointed out by the blog I linked, get the tartufo take-away! I think it was about 6 Euros take-away, and 12 if you decided to get a table and eat it there.

In preparation for going to Italy, and while were were there, I had been doing Duolingo whenever I had some spare time and WiFi access, so I had picked up some phrases. However, Duolingo doesn't really give you context on when certain phrases are appropriate. For instance, in French, there's bonjour and bonsoir for good morning/afternoon and good evening, respectively. I didn't really understand when the cutoff was to change from jour to soir, so I got into the habit of just repeating whichever one someone else said to me. I remembered learning buongiorno (good morning), buon pomeriggio (good afternoon) and buona sera (good evening) in high school Italian, but the teacher never really explained the cutoffs, so I retained the same habit when we got to Italy.

At Tre Scalini, after paying for the tartufo, the guy said to me, "A domani!" to which I replied out of habit, "A domani!" as I began walking out. But then I remembered that a domani translates to, "See you tomorrow!", and we were not going to return to this store tomorrow, as we were going to Naples and then leaving Italy. I wasn't going to be seeing him tomorrow! So I turned back around and said, "No! (awkward pause while I tried to think of what to say next) Ciao!"

Or as Grad Daniel translates it:

Tartufo guy: See you tomorrow!
Me: See you tomorrow!
(pause)
Me: No! GOODBYE FOREVER!

I'm contributing to the bad impression tourists have. =(

The Grandest of All the Canyons

It all started an innocent Friday afternoon. Some of my co-workers were about to leave for the pub, and one of them came over to my (now former) boss, "Hey Horse, are you ready to go?" I was still pretty new to the team, so I was in my getting-to-know-everyone phase. The next time I was alone with him, I asked, "So why did Nathan call you 'Horse'?" To which he responded, "Oh, it's just something we do back home, like how you call each other 'mate' in Australia. 'Hey Horse', 'Hey Horsebox, what's the craic?'" (Note: My former boss is Irish, and I think Nathan is Australian, but he worked in London long enough to pick up a bit of an accent.)

Seeing as I didn't know all that much about Irish culture, I just accepted his response. But it turned into a nickname. I'd call him Horse, and he'd call me Horsebox.

Well, I thought that Grad Daniel should be introduced into the equine family, so I decided to look up the term Horsebox (since horse would give too many conflicting results) to see if there were any other similar Irish slang terms I could appropriate for Grad Daniel. The top result was the Urban Dictionary definition for "horsebox", so I decided I should actually check if he wasn't just yanking my chain, because he told me some pretty stupid stuff about leprechauns before.

I look at the first result:

OK, so he wasn't just making stuff up.

But then I scroll down to the only other result:

Well, damn. Thankfully, I don't think he's ever gotten in trouble for calling me Horsebox at work, but I think I might stop calling him Horse so he'll stop as well, just in case. I know some people might get worked up over this with the whole women in tech thing.

On the other hand, I guess That Guy was right after all - I am the grand canyon!

(Also, he is my former boss because he got promoted, not because of anything bad!)

Wired on Schnapps, Benzedrine, and Those Little Chocolate Covered Peanuts

Scott: Let me handle this, I speak better German. Hello!
Truck Driver: Hello!
Scott: [in German] My German is ill, but I can understand on you if the speaking is slowly.
Truck Driver: [in German] German! I have been driving for 14 hours straight and I haven't slept in three days and I am wired on schnapps, benzedrine, and those little chocolate covered peanuts.
Cooper: What did he say?
Scott: He said he's driving, something...
Scott: [in German] Do you know where is Berlin?
Truck Driver: [in German] Berlin? Yes, I know it well. I stabbed a woman in a bar in Berlin. But I am going nowhere near Berlin.
Scott: Berlin!
Truck Driver: [in German] Berlin! I also sexually assaulted a horse in Berlin.
Scott: He's going to Berlin.
Jamie: Awesome.
Truck Driver: [in German] Nowhere near Berlin.
Scott: All right, come on, let's go.
[the group get in the back of the truck]
Truck Driver: [to self, in German] I'll drive this truck off a cliff before I ever go back to Berlin.
-Eurotrip

So, I left it a bit without explaining what was so great about Berlin. Before I start, I have to admit that part of the reason I wanted to go to Berlin is because of that scene from the movie Eurotrip (YouTube link).

I don't know if this is true of everywhere in Berlin, but every restaurant we went to have little superscript numbers on each menu item explaining any potential allergens it might contain. I should have taken a photo, but it's such a great idea. OK, maybe I'm biased, and London did have some restaurants say that an allergy menu could be provided on request. I don't know about any of the French or Italian cities we went to, because my French and Italian isn't good enough.

Also, one thing that Germans are fairly famous for is the Nazis and their involvement in WW2. It feels like Berlin is a city that says, "We're sorry" all over the place. We went on a walking tour of Berlin and got to see a bunch of attractions.

This is a statue in Neue Wache, which was created by an artist who lost her grandson during WW2. It's called Mother and Her Dead Son, and it's supposed to symbolise the pain in doing everything you can to protect someone you love, only it's too late, because they're already dead. Even though the statue is indoors, there's a hole in the ceiling so that it's exposed to the elements, which is meant to represent all the suffering during the war.

This is a monument to the book burning that took place during the war. The book shelves are supposed to be able to hold all the books that were burned at that time. 20,000, I think the number is.

As sad as it is to say, the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe was one of the most impressive things we saw in Berlin. You can't see all the blocks in that photo, but each block is supposed to represent 1000 Jews that were killed in the Holocaust.

On a happier note, the hotel we stayed at was awesome. A couple of the nights we were there, we had a pianist playing in the lobby. Holy crap. So fancy! Was very nice. We were too cheap to pay for Wifi in our hotel room, so we often went down to the lobby to use the free Wifi. Not really the ideal place to be watching Netflix though, as we were watching House at the time, and some scenes can be quite gruesome. They had a gym as well, so we could make a feeble attempt to try and work off some of the fat we had accumulated in London and Paris. Though we gave up on the last night though, as we decided to try giant 1L beers, and this giant meat platter. Walking back to the hotel (3 minutes away) was a huge struggle.

I also really preferred the clothes in Berlin over the fashion of London and Paris. I did go to Europe with the intention of upgrading my wardrobe, but in the end, didn't buy all that much. We had the misfortune of having 2 public holidays out of the four days we were in Berlin, and they seem to take their public holidays pretty seriously. There was a large shopping centre near our hotel, and all the shops were closed. It was kinda weird, the centre itself was open (not sure why), but every single store was closed. It looked like it was just me and some other confused tourists walking around this ghost town. It's a pity that I didn't get to buy anything, but not a huge loss, not like I can't get similar clothes in Australia.

By far the best thing about Berlin is currywurst. I thought it was a joke at first, we saw a store selling it at the station and I just wrote it off as some stupid fad. But after seeing it again on the way to the hotel, I thought that this must be one of those essential German things that you have to try, so I became determined to have some. So. Delicious.

It's basically sausage with tomato sauce and curry, served with chips. I don't know why it's so amazing, but it is. Just a pile of deliciousness. It's one of the things I want to try making back here.

Although it's an Austrian dish, Berlin is where we discovered Kaiserschmarrn, which is a caramelised pancake, that is broken up into pieces, and we had it served with vanilla ice cream. Also on my list of things to learn how to make.

We didn't get into any bar fights or brawls, everyone seemed really nice in Berlin. Oh! Another thing I forgot to take a photo of. Rather than horse pulled carts, they had a bed-cart, which was pulled by bike. So you can take a tour of Berlin while lying in a bed. We saw one pass us, but there were people in it, so I didn't want to take a photo of them. Another awesome idea.

Oh! And the streets were laid out in grid-style. Which I'm learning from Cities:Skylines is not actually ideal for good traffic management, but there didn't seem to be much of a traffic issue where we were. I love grid layouts, just so nice and neat, and you don't accidentally get turned around because the street you're on curves around in a weird way.

To be honest, I wouldn't mind living in Berlin. I'd probably get super fat from eating currywurst all day long, but I can live with that. MrFodder also really enjoyed being there. The only downside is that neither of us speak German, but it's such a cool sounding language that I wouldn't mind learning that, too. However, not speaking German really wasn't that much of an issue as a tourist. Pretty much everyone we talked to spoke English, and pretty fluent English as well.

Last thing, I promise! Our tour guide talked about how a lot of the buildings in Berlin got their names. And she said they're all pretty straight forward. If you try to guess the name by giving a physical description of it, you'll probably guess correctly. There's a little island called Museum Island, because there are a bunch of museums on it. There is also the Old Gallery, and the New Gallery. I think there was the Red City Hall and the Orange City Hall, or something like that. The naming scheme sounds like something I'd come up with in my town.

A Series of Fortunate Events

Despite wanting to stay in bed, I went to the Magic Origins pre-release a couple of weekends ago, mostly since I had already pre-registered, and I felt like some people were persuaded to go because I said I was interested. I bundled up, umbrella in tow, and headed out into the storm to collect my pieces of cardboard.

I have a pretty big umbrella. My mum was very fond of those cheap umbrellas with a collapsible handle, but after years of having an umbrella turn inside-out mid downpour, I finally got fed up and bought myself a $30 umbrella which is bulky to carry around, but at least I can rely on it to keep me dry when it rains! However, walking around with it can be a bit of a pain in the ass sometimes, especially when it's crowded, or it's a narrow walkway.

On my way to the games store, I was on a collision course with another person, but they politely moved into an alcove to let me pass, and I smiled, thanked them and moved on. The same thing happened further down the same street, and the same thing happened. I don't know what it is about people who don't know you doing something nice for you, but it put me in a good mood for the rest of the day.

I didn't pull any good cards during the pre-release, so my deck was a bit of a mish-mash of cards I thought were cool, but had no real theme to it, or combos. The pre-released was a sealed format, which means you get six booster packs and one seeeded pack of your colour, and you need to put together a 40-card deck to play with.

Every single one of my games was really close, and I ended up going 2-2. However, my second last game really stood out to me. I lost my first two matches, and the way that the matches work is that you are always matched with someone who has the same number of wins as you. So in my third match, I played against someone who had also lost twice. His deck was much better than mine, it had a lot more synergy, it seemed to do pretty well against mine, but I ended up going 2-1 against him. Mostly because on the turn before I was about to die, I managed to top deck the one card in my deck that would have saved me and ended up winning the match on that turn. My opponent displayed great sportsmanship the entire time. Even during our matches, he talked over optimal playing order with me, and reminded me of triggers that I had forgotten about. It's highly probably that I would have lost 0-2 without the help and reminders.

While playing my final match, I noticed my third round opponent sitting at one of the tables by himself looking downcast and sorting through his deck. At the end of the game, I went down to collect my winnings and bumped into him and his friends. I decided that I would give him the booster packs that I had won. He was hesitant at first, but I said that he should have them as he was going to get more use out of them than I was (that was going to be my final M:tG event for now), and that I thought he was a good opponent. I said that it was very nice of him to remind me of my missed triggers, and that I really enjoyed playing with him.

I don't know if I came off as a creeper or not. He and his friends looked to be about university age, and though I'm nearly 30, sometimes I can pass for younger with my Asian appearance, but I can never tell who does and doesn't know my actual age.

To be honest, I feel like people who behave well are almost never rewarded. I read so many stories from /r/talesFromRetail about customers who complain about things and are given discounts from managers who don't want to have those complaints go up to corporate - even if the customer is an idiot and the thing they're complaining about is something caused by their stupidity. Then you have the good customers, who never complain, and as such, end up paying full price for everything. Doesn't seem fair, does it?

With the two people who moved out of the way of my umbrella putting me in a good mood, I felt like I wanted to reward that guy for being a good sport as well, so that is why I wanted to give him those booster packs. I'd probably have just opened them and chucked them in the pile of cards in our closet that has slowly grown over the past couple of years, not to be brought out again until the next time the M:tG bug bites me again.

Waffling Around

I can't remember where it was, but I had a waffle somewhere and it was one of the most delicious waffles I've ever had. A few years later, I convinced my parents to buy a waffle maker, but it was one of those heart shaped waffle ones, that is a pain in the ass to clean.

(Sorry for the bad picture quality.)

The waffles were good, and I managed to make a semi-decent vegan version of them, but they weren't the waffles I had been dreaming about. It only took about ten years before I found out that there are different types of waffles, and the ones that I had fallen in love with are called Liege waffles. If you Google for it, you get probably the most complex waffle recipe I've ever seen. I have spent a lot of time looking for a waffle iron to make waffles like that, and I finally found one, thanks to one of my co-workers: the Breville Smart Waffle. The only ingredient I was missing was Belgian pearl sugar, which is what gives the Liege waffle that awesome crunchy sweet caramel taste, but not something that's easy to get around here.

Baker Bettie came up with a good workaround: crushing up sugar cubes. So now I have my waffle maker, I have my makeshift Belgian pearl sugar, nothing left to stand in my way!

(Actually, I don't have a mallet, so making this was also a huge pain in the ass.)

Here goes:

Right from the start, I messed up. I read the recipe which said milk and water at 100-110 degrees. Naturally, I assumed that was Celcius, even though water doesn't normally go above 100 (sigh, this is why I shouldn't cook while sick), so I chucked my yeast into the super hot milk and water. I don't know how much of the yeast survived, but I doubt there was much of it. I didn't realise this error until later though, when I noticed my dough wasn't rising, so on I continued. Oh, by the way, I made a dairy-free version of this, so that might also have affected things, as MrFodder says yeast works better in regular milk, rather than coconut milk. I also made a double batch, as I planned to give some to my parents. One of the comments said that they did it with the yeast needed for one batch, so that's what I did, too.

I didn't notice any rising, and lacking a stand mixer, I tried mixing it together with a hand mixer. It did not go so well...

That's my crappy $20 Kmart hand mixer (which I don't think is crappy at all, it has done pretty well for me so far), and it just couldn't handle the amount of dough. The dough also kept getting clogged up on one side. So in the end, I just mixed it by hand with a silicone spatula, then used the hand mixer to mix sections which I slowly moved into another bowl until it all was mixed.

Did all the fridgey stuff, left it overnight to rest, and mixed in the "pearl sugar" in the morning.

Fired up the waffle maker. I was a bit worried, as the waffle maker has a non-stick coating, and I thought maybe the sugar would burn and ruin it, but someone recommended using the waffle maker on the Belgian waffle setting with the darkness set to 4, so that's what I did and crossed my fingers hoping it wouldn't be too bad.

The smell coming out of the waffle maker was pretty good! And after the timer started beeping, I lifted the lid and the result was very nice. Unfortunately, the sugar leaves behind a mess in the machine.

I did two sets of waffles between cleaning it, as I didn't want burned sugar on my latter waffles. Cleaning it was also a pain, as I didn't want to scratch the coating. Cleaning the top half was easy, just wipe it down with a cloth while it's still warm-ish. Getting the cararmelised sugar out of the bottom was tough! The best way I found was to fill it with water, turn the waffle maker back on, and let the sugar dissolve into the water, and slowly wipe away any bits that you can. I swear it took me longer to clean the machine than it did to cook the waffles!

Despite the massive amount of work that went into it, I'm happy with the results. I made this one with egg in it, as I didn't want to play with the recipe too much for my first try. It was nice and crunchy on the outside, and soft on the inside.

I might have made my chunks of sugar a bit too big, as sometimes you bite into it and bite into a massive chunk of sugar. I'm not sure if that's how it's intended. I'm also thinking about changing it a bit, and just coating the ball with sugar before cooking it, so you still get that sweet sugary layer, but without the pain of making "pearl sugar".

A very successful continuation of the blossoming Fodder household Sunday waffle tradition.

Stupid Berlin

Late night post as I have to sit around waiting for some waffle dough. This is probably the most involved waffle recipe I've ever made so far, and they better be the best waffles I've ever had. T_T

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Yet another much repeated comment during our trip - "Stupid Berlin". It all started when I said I wanted to go to Berlin, and found a great sale price on the Hilton Hotel in Berlin (one of the benefits of booking your plane tickets 205 days in advance, I guess, and this ended up being our one super luxurious stay on our honeymoon). After convincing MrFodder that we should go, I booked it in, and started trying to work out which city we were going next. Our itinerary so far consisted of London, Paris and Berlin. We wanted to go to CERN in Geneva to see the LHC (if it was off) and the birthplace of the world wide web, and I thought it'd just be a quick train ride through the Alps. I had heard that the trains connecting Western Europe were plentiful and figured it wouldn't be a big deal getting from A to B. MrFodder was much more pragmatic than me, and said that it was probably a good idea to work out how we plan to get between cities before choosing where to go next.

That's when I realised I should have paid more attention in geography in high school. Berlin is not nearly as close to Switzerland as I had thought.

In fact, Berlin is pretty much on the other side of the country compared to where Geneva is. MrFodder really wanted to go to Strasbourg, as his parents had lived there for a while, and I really wanted to go to Monaco, to see the super high class casino, so spending more time in France was definitely on the cards, and our trip would have been so much easier if we didn't have to take a giant detour through Germany. So began the cries of, "Stupid Berlin!" We decided to get a Eurail pass, and though there are a lot of trains to get from city to city, people keep telling me that Europe is tiny, and you can drive for an hour and go from one country, through another and into a third. So I had the impression that all the cities would be fairly close together. Nope, it's nearly a 9-hour train ride from Paris to Berlin (through Frankfurt). Stupid Berlin.

That wasn't the only obstacle our planning took. We found out that CERN only takes bookings for their tours around 15 days in advance, which meant that we wouldn't know for sure whether we'd be able to get on to one of their tours while we were there. Of course, it was Berlin's fault. The Australian dollar was losing in value against the Euro (and pretty much everything else). Stupid Berlin. During the verification process for the card I applied for to be able to withdraw cash at a decent rate overseas, the system confused me with someone who has a similar name, and so it rejected my application. Stupid Berlin.

Not surprisingly, by the time we hit the part of our trip where we had to prepare to leave Paris and journey to Berlin, we were dreading having to go there. The morning wasn't that great, as Gare de l'Est was cold, and we didn't really find anything to eat for breakfast there (mistake #1, being wary of things to delay us, we left quite early for the station, only to find that there wasn't much to do while we were there as it was closed. Mistake #2, since it was such a long journey, we had to take quite an early train, which meant we had to be up super early in order to make it to the station on time. And we were supposed to be on vacation!). Well, we did end up finding a cafe that we could actually sit down at - all the other food places that were open only did take away, and the station itself was fairly crowded there wasn't really anywhere to sit down.

Once we actually arrived in Berlin, I was pretty in awe of the Berlin HBF station. It's huge! Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of it. The train ride from Paris was actually fairly comfortable. I think I slept most of the way. It definitely didn't feel like 9 hours. As for the city itself, it was amazing. My second favourite city of the whole trip. By the time our 4-days in Berlin were up, we didn't even want to leave. Which was the last time we said our mantra in earnest: "Stupid Berlin, why didn't you tell us how amazing you are?"

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If you care which cities we ended up going to:

• London
• Paris
• Berlin
• Strasbourg
• Geneva
• Nice
• Monaco
• Milan
• Venice (day trip from Milan)
• Florence
• Rome
• Naples (day trip from Rome)
• Dubai

Holiday Thieves and Scams

A lot of the Europe travel guides I read mentioned pickpockets and thieves a lot. They mentioned to always keep your bags in your sight, and if sitting down at a cafe outdoors, don't just leave your bag on a chair where you can't see it. One of my co-workers said that the metro in Paris is particularly bad. The electronic ticket machines in Italy constantly reminded us to be vigilant, and not to trust anyone other than TrenItalia staff. Signs all over the Louvre said that pickpockets will often strike while you are busy taking a photo of something. So yeah... it seems like pickpockets and thieves are abundant in tourist locations.

I tried to be vigilant for our trip. While MrFodder was taking photos in the Louvre, I was watching both of our bags and pockets. I constantly checked my bag to make sure I still had my wallet and camera (had a few scares, but it turned out I had just left my wallet in the hotel room, or put it back in the wrong pocket). When we were leaving Florence, the woman who ran the B&B that we stayed at warned us to make sure our bags were secure in Rome. In fact, Rome was the only time that someone tried to steal something (that we know of). On the train, there was a hand on my bag. I thought it was MrFodder, and it was a really crowded train, but I turned to MrFodder and could see both of his hands. Luckily, that was our stop, so I hopped off, and saw that my bag had been zipped open, but thankfully, I had clipped the clip to hold it down, which stopped him from unzipping my bag all the way, and it didn't look like anything was stolen.

But other than blatant thieves, there are the less blatant scam artists, which we encountered a few of. The first was the flower lady. She came up to us on Tower Bridge with some hand-made flowers, and put one in MrFodder's hand. Then she asked for some money "for the children", and he gave her 20 pence. It's probably not even worth that, it's some crepe paper and aluminium foil.

But she said the £1 and £2 coins in our coin purse, so she demanded one of those, and kept saying "for the children". Sadly, we gave in and ended up giving her £1. But from then on, we resolved not to give money for these crappy things.

Some of our uni friends went to Europe together, and one of them was given a bracelet and ended up giving the guy €20 for it, because the guy told him that he had bought it. So that story was fairly fresh in my mind, too.

We were scam-free until we hit Milan. We went to a park behind where the Milan Expo 2015 was being held, and this guy comes up to us and starts telling us about Africa. He asked if MrFodder was from Africa, to which he replied that he wasn't, and we tried to keep walking, but he followed us, and kept trying to ask us questions. I was the one who got baited this time, when he mentioned Kenya, and I stopped to talk to him. Then he said he'd give us these bracelets, and that they were free. So he picked some out, tied them to our wrists really tightly, and cut the ends off with a nail clipper. Then he asked us for money "for Africa". (What's with all these claims that it's for something else?)

We shook our heads, and said we'd give the bracelets back. And he kept saying, no, we had to give him money now. But with the flower lady still on my mind, I started walking away, and he kept following us, saying that he gave us bracelets, and now we had to give him money. We kept walking, and finally he gave up and turned away in disgust. I suggested we keep the bracelets on, as a deterrent to other people trying to do the same thing.

However, when we got to the cathedral, there were tons of people selling stuff. MrFodder was trying to take a photo of me with the cathedral in the background, when some guy puts some bird seed in my hand and starts whistling to attract pigeons.

I thought it was a funny gesture, so I offered him 1 Euro for the seeds. He said, "No, 5 Euros." And he saw that I only had €20 notes in my wallet, so he grabbed out €15 in change and started waving it at me demanding €5. Then other guys selling bird seed and other stuff came over and started telling me that I had to give him €5 as well. I kept refusing, and finally, I gave him the €1 coin and walked away. During that harassment, it seems someone else had come over to MrFodder and given him another one of those bracelets.

Three bracelets and a potential psittacosis* case later, we walked back to our hotel in frustration of scam artists.

Our free walking tour guide in Venice said that there's a human trafficking business around smuggling in disabled people from poor countries to beg for money in tourist areas, and the only reason such an industry thrives is because stupid tourists (like myself) indulge them. So while we did not give any money to beggars, we did fall for these tricks. On one hand, I do admire how enterprising these people are (as soon as it started raining, all of them had umbrellas in hand, ready to sell), on the other hand, I hate how they prey on people. Though I guess as they say, "A fool and his money are soon parted."

* Yes, we had just seen that episode of House where someone gets diagnosed with psittacosis and his hand rots and must be amputated. How am I supposed to play Dota 2 without my mouse hand?!

Monument Legs

To bundle up a few Monopoly streets together, we ended up doing a fairly long walk. The total distance as calculated by Google maps is 8.5kms (here's a route, though probably not the one we took, because we got lost a few times). That doesn't include walking around the Tower of London, and going to the post office to post the postcard for MrFodder's grandparents.

Monument (to the Great Fire of London) was the second last thing we did, and it was a bit crazy.

We were pretty tired by then, having spent most of the day walking, but I wanted to get that certificate, so I suggested we go up the stairs. All 311 of them.

This is a photo from about a 1/4 of the way up the steps, and you can't even see the steps at the top from here.

We took a few breaks going up, and luckily it wasn't very crowded (probably around 3pm?), as the stairs near the top are quite narrow, and so only one person would be able to go up at a time, which meant if anyone was coming down, we'd have to walk back down to let them past us. We did make it all the way to the top, and we got our certificates on the way down (so I'm guessing all you need to do is pay £4, walk in, and walk back out without going up the stairs).

In hindsight, it feels a little crazy that we did so much walking. Monument wasn't even our last stop, we also walked to Fleet St, which was not too bad, and we found a lolly shop that sold Jolly Ranchers so MrFodder was happy. But it did set the pace for the rest of our trip.

We obviously did a lot of walking after London, and whenever we felt like our strength was flagging, one of us would say, "Monument legs!" and it would conjure up the memory of having walked so far, and still made it all the way up Monument. If we could do that, then we could walk up whatever hill we had to walk up to get wherever we were going.

So I'm glad we went to London first, because if it hadn't been for Monument legs, we probably wouldn't have done as much walking as we did.

Tips for Finding the Good Gelato in Italy

Going to skip ahead a bit, because I was meant to write this to MrFodder's mum, but forgot about it, and thought if I'm going to write about it, I might as well make it into a post.

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As part of one of the courses we did in Florence, the instructor told us how to pick out the good gelato stores in Florence - or at least, how to avoid the tourist trap stores. All of these are rules of thumb, so your mileage may vary, but here are the general rules we were told:

Bad: Mountains of gelato

This is pretty much the number one sign that the gelato store you are at is a tourist trap. According to the instructor, good gelati is made with just sugar, milk and cream. The kind of stuff that you think would melt if left out in the sun for too long. So when you see giant mountains of gelati like this:

you have to wonder what else is in it in order to keep it frozen even though most of it isn't even in the freezer part, and has the sun beating down on it all day. The reason for the huge mountains is to attract the eye of tourists. The locals don't need to be drawn in, because they already know where the good stuff is.

Bad: Unusual colours

Again, see the picture above, you can see a really stark blue flavour. That's unlikely to have come from a natural source. Another "touristy" thing - the locals can read Italian, they don't need colours as a guide to which flavour is which. It might also hint to them using artificial flavouring. Note: this one can be a bit tricky. For instance, pistachio isn't green, but a lot of people expect it to be, as that's just what we've been conditioned to think. So some places will colour certain flavours just to match expectations.

MrFodder's favourite gelato place we visited (in Milan), you can see how pale the colours are, which have come from the natural colours of the ingredients. (The pictured flavours are top: melon, bottom: honey.

Good: Covers for the tubs

If you're at a place that has covers for their tubs of gelati, then it's a sign that they're pretty serious about it. Some of the really hardcore places will even have each tub temperature controlled differently, as different flavours have different optimum temperatures. The really serious ones will even scoop out your gelati, and replace the lid before anything else, lest the temperature vary too much from having the lid open.

This photo is from a vegan gelato store we found in Rome. She has to reach down into the freezer to pull out the tub of gelato.

Warning Sign: Many, many flavours

This one can go either way. One of the best stores we went to in Florence (Gelateria dei Neri) had maybe 30 different flavours. Our instructor said that it's probably a sign that they don't make their gelati fresh every day, because how can they possibly make so many different flavours before opening every morning? So it's something to be wary of, but having a lot of flavours isn't a bad thing on its own.

Bad: Expensive

Good gelato shouldn't cost much. Again, at Gelateria dei Neri, a small cup was €1.80. We actually got scammed in Florence! I asked for a small cup (in Italian), which was about €3. The lady behind the counter got our flavour, and told us the total: €12. Turns out she had grabbed one of the larger cups, and just gave us those, instead. I thought maybe the smaller cups were for something else, and so she had given us the smallest gelati cups, but nope, she purposely gave us a larger cup than we wanted (and it was a lot of gelati). Maybe it was a misunderstanding, it's hard to tell, but we paid our €12, and left. It was far too much gelati, and it wasn't very good, so we ended up tossing some out. I went back to that store, and checked the list again. The most expensive cup was €15 (yes, cup, not one of those take-home tubs, they had prices for those as well). Who buys €15 worth of gelati?!

So that's what we were told about avoiding bad gelati!

One thing I do like about gelati in Italy is that the size of the cup isn't tied to the number of flavours that you can choose. In Melbourne, at least, if you want more than one flavour, you usually have to go up a cup size. In Milan, Venice, Rome and Florence, it seems that you can order two flavours, even for the smallest cup - we never tried ordering more though, maybe it's possible?

Coping with Stress

Been a pretty tough week at work, which is just what I needed after a relaxing holiday! Note the sarcasm. On one hand, I feel loyal to the people on my team that I actually like, one who is pushing really hard for getting me to develop myself and hopefully get promoted to a senior developer position. On the other hand, I really hate having someone ride my back interrupting my thoughts to get pointless updates on my progress.

This is why I will rarely interrupt another person unless I feel like I don't have any other avenues to explore. I read a description someone else wrote (maybe it was Joel Spolsky?) of what it's like being interrupted as a programmer. When you're deep in the code, keeping track of multiple variables, trying to find the cause of a bug, it's like trying to juggle a bunch of balls. It's a very delicate balance, and when someone interrupts you, all the balls go flying everywhere. So you switch over and deal with whatever their issue is, and now you have to go crawling around your office trying to find where all the balls flew to.

We had an issue yesterday, and I was in that zone, trying to get to the bottom of it. It was pretty urgent, as it was the 30th of June (which is the end of the tax year for a lot of companies) and one of our consumers needed our system to be working and it wasn't. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a pop-up saying I got a new email from one of the support guys asking about my progress. Then he walks over to ask me in person. Every time I'm on the verge of getting back into the zone, he interrupts me in some way to find out my progress.

Normally, I wouldn't mind, but one of my other co-workers told me about a time that they needed him to do something for them. On the day, he showed up 2 hours late, and then declared that he was taking a 2 hour lunch break and disappeared. Would not answer his phone. It had to get escalated to his boss' boss before he would respond, and he came back all grumpy and reluctantly did his task. Yet in this case, he was all for making me work through my lunch break. When I returned from getting a glass of water, he said, "Where have you been?!" So I was pretty annoyed.

Anyway, enough ranting about work. Julian gave me the contact details of a police office who works in computer forensics, and I asked him some questions about his work. He gave me some tips on skills I should work on if I plan on pursuing this career path. One of the things he did stress quite heavily was that this kind of work is not for everyone. They deal with child pornography a lot, and he said that it takes its toll on a lot of people. I can't really speak for whether I'd be able to cope with it or not, as I have no experience with it. But that very night, something happened that made me realise that I could probably cope with high levels of vitriol at work.

I remembered that I willingly play Dota 2.

It feels good to have something to work towards again. Not every day at work is bad, but it helps me cope with the ones that are.