Some Halloween flavour

Pumpkin cupcakes

Foreword

From: The Simpsons, Homer vs Patty and Selma

At Moe's Tavern, Lenny, Carl, Barney, and a couple of other regulars all puff on cigars being handed out by Homer.
Moe: [sniffing a cigar] Ah, this place is going to smell classy all week.
Barney: To Homer, the Wall Street genius!
[everyone claps as Homer bows]
[Homer lights a cigar with a $1, then puts out the flame and puts it back in his wallet
Lenny: Hey, Homer! How come you've got money to burn? Or singe, anyway?
Carl: Yeah, Homer, what's your secret investment?
Homer: Take a guess.
Barney: Uh, pumpkins?
Homer: [pause] Yeah, that's right, Barney. This year, I invested in pumpkins. They've been going up the whole month of October and I got a feeling they're going to peak right around January. Then, bang! That's when I'll cash in.

Ingredients

266.7 g Pumpkin puree
266.7 g Sugar
187.5 g Flour
85 g Butter
83 g Milk
2 Eggs
1/2 Cup of walnuts
1/3 Cup of raisins
1 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Ground ginger
1 ½ teaspoon Ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon Ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon Vanilla
¼ teaspoon Ground cloves

Preheat oven to 180°C

In one bowel, mix together dry ingredients in one bowel:

Flour, ginger, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves

Mix milk and vanilla together in a cup or jug

In a large bowel:

1. beat butter until creamy.
2. Gradually add and mix sugar
3. Beat in eggs one at a time
4. Gradually add pumpkin puree until well mixed
5. Add a third of the dry mixture
6. Add half of the milk and vanilla
7. Add 2nd third of the dry mixture
8. Add 2nd half of the milk and vanilla
9. Add 3rd third of the dry mixture
10. Mix until the batter is smooth
11. Fold in 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts or pecans
12. Fold in 1/3 cup raisins or chopped dates.

Pour mix into a cupcake die and put in the oven.

A cupcake is ready when you put a knife into its centres and it comes out bloody¹ clean (I think about 15-20 mins, but your ultimate measure is the aforementioned condition because let's face it: no two ovens are quite alike.)

Let them cool for about 5 minutes and take out of the cupcake die.²
*****
¹Happy belated Halloween one and all.
²I am divided over the naming convention for a cupcake thing. It's not flat, so tray doesn't make sense to me, but it doesn't make sense to call it a tin - since that it is reserved for cakes/breads.

---- Thanks to Becky for the recipe!

Super Happy Family Nutella Meringue Wish Cake! (Part 1: the Journey begins... with the longest title ever)

I have developed a terrible, terrible, terrible vice since I moved to Belgium. I have become a Nutella fiend. It was pretty bad near the beginning. I would buy a 350g jar, spread it on crispy bread roll thingies (I have never seen them anywhere else, like really small bread rolls (5 cm long rolls that are cut in half and are... crispy), or crackers.. and eventually, once I ran out of the things to spread it on... I- I- I would... use a spoon [breaks down crying].

I learned to cope with my affliction. The key was not buying it when I went to the shop. As long as I followed this simple one-step program, things were fine.

But, of course, some days were harder than others... On those days I, well, I generally sobbed myself to sleep, cradling myself in Nutella smeared hands.

I decided, that when prevention failed, perhaps I could "manage" it.

Since I am wont to throw whatever I have handy into a cookies mix, I decided I would make some Nutella cookies. I did a Google and found this fantastic baking blog. I followed the recipe and it worked out well. Although, I suspect that the tastiest parts of the Nutella spread - the quintessence of Nutella, the true Nutellaness/Nutella-ality - were volatile organic molecules because the cookies don't have the same kick at all.

Next, I dumped Nutella into a cake mix. I used that standard base that I previously cited... huh, it appears, I've never listed it before:

125g sugar
125g butter
2 eggs
200g self-raising flour
a bit of milk¹

So I spooned lots (um... 5 tblsp?) of Nutella into the mix, and then I threw in some Maltesers. I had really hoped that the Maltesers wouldn't dissolve (just think of it! Maltesers in a cake!).

Unfortunately, the maltesers dissolved and were barely palatable in the end product.

So there I was, faced with a challenge - could I keep the Maltesers intact?

Stay tuned for my next post!
 ----

¹I usually melt the butter, add the sugar and eggs (letting the butter cool a bit in case it is hot enough to partially cook the eggs). Then sieve in the flour bit by bit a-mixing all the way. Then 50mLs of milk or there abouts. Preheat oven to 180°C, and leave it until it smells edible/a toothpick through the centre of it comes out without any batter stuck to it. I'm loath to use just this.

Generally, I'll throw in some cocoa powder to colour/put some flavour in.

Sometimes I'll go for a marbled effect, split the batter in two, one half cocoa, the other plain.

You can throw in some fruit (strawberries, peaches, raisins, apples, mango... but never grapes. Never.). What worked out nicely, was putting in sliced apples that I had rolled in cocoa before hand.

Something that just occurred to me was using nutmeg and/or cinnamon with plain mix and some raisins.

You should see the other guy

Dear Diary

[Edit: The following was mainly written twofour weeks ago... I ain'tain't changing it now]

The words of the day are ultimate and failure... And careened as in: I wrote careened¹ into a post.²

Today was the first day I used my Velo card. I only wanted to go from my apartment to my bus stop and I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those damn kids an unfortunate confluence of events. 

Just before I crossed the tram lines, my pedals lost tension. I froze, thinking I slid on the rails. Then the front tyre did slip into the rail. Naturally, the direction of the rails was contrary to my original course, so over/down I went... Shoulder first into a conveniently placed 5-by-5 soft sturdy wooden post at the edge of the footpath. You know, one of those things that is supposed to protect cars from belligerent pedestrians.

As I carreened into the post, I thought,"only one of us could walk away..."³ My finely sculpted shoulder and its newfound friend, momentum, broke me my first wooden block. And all I got was a 6" red mark along my shoulder.⁴

------

¹According to the Dictionary app on my Mac the definition is:

to move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way in a specified direction : an electric golf cart careened around the corner. [ORIGIN: influenced by the verb careerⁱ.]

²Lock and load...

³OK.. it was more like:"Shi-!"
⁴The crumple zones featured in smaller cars dissipate oodles of kinetic energy, instead of you getting crumpled. As far as I can figure, I wasn't in danger of breaking anything [Click here for the calculations], but the fact that something broke certainly made things easier on me :)

-----

ⁱThe verb career is "to move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way in a specified direction", not to be confused with career the noun,"an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with opportunities for progress."

You should see the other guy (Appendix)

I tried, for about 60s, to think of a funny title for this, but, as you all can see, I came up dry and my PhD training kicked in...

So here are my attempts at describing the mechanics of a gormless bogger¹ falling from his bike...

What I am looking to do is calculate my velocity on impact against the post, based on my total energy going into the impact (my Kinetic Energy from forward travel, that I am assuming smoothly segues rotation about a point and my Potential Energy from falling a bit). I can then have a go at the force on my shoulder, when I had bumped against the hitherto upstanding Mr Post.

The first picture below is an artist's [This guy... I'm pointing at myself with both thumbs] impression of the subject (me) on his bike, with the measurements of the rear wheel radius, a guess of the bike's and my centre of gravity and a guess of my shoulder height (0.2, 1.1 and 1.5m respectively)

The centre of gravity is somewhere just over the seat of the bike (arbitrarily taken as 10 cm, giving a total[-ish] height of 1.1m for the centre of gravity.

From the inset: The gears and chain are housed- to protect the poor things from the elements, doncha know- so I couldn't count the teeth on the gears, which would have been far easier.... From some surreptitious eyeballing, I have:

• Pedalling period² (T_F)=1.5s
• Front gear radius (r_F) = 0.08m
• Rear gear radius (r_R) = 0.03m

Let's say the gear ratio is represented by the ratio of the gear radii (which would be valid if they had the same number of teeth per unit of circumference), then the rear wheel's linear velocity is calculated using the steps below:

It is reasonable enough to assume that the velocity of the wheel is the velocity of the bike and me; A point of the wheel doesn't really move when it is in contact with the ground; ergo the bike and I move instead.³

A quick look back at my goals... Velocity ["check"]

Now to the change in height... Of all my ropey assumptions, here is easily the ropiest of them: I'm going to assume that the bike and I were a rigid body.⁴ Which makes things incredibly convenient, since the relative positions between my shoulder, what was a wheel and now a fulcrum, and the centre of gravity don't change.

My shoulder goes from 1.5m to 1.1m in elevation, which is a change in height of 0.4m. However, for potential energy we have to look to the change in height of the centre of gravity. By similar triangles, drop in height of the CoG can be calculated:

The next step is the total energy calculation and the velocity of a point object in the position of my centre of gravity:

Unfortunately, calculations using centre of gravity give lumped answers; I don't know what the velocity of my shoulder was [and frankly I want to finish this post in the next ten minutes]. If I was being correct and rigourous^4.5, I'd do moment calculations with estimates of the distribution of my mass, based on that I can get an expression that will tell me the velocity at my shoulder.

Let's say that my shoulder velocity is 4m/s (more than the CoG velocity, I figured this was reasonable because it is far from the turning point and centre of gravity). That gives an applied force of 800±25%N (mass by change in velocity (4-0) divided by deceleration time [writing on my white board takes time - use your imagination]).

Now, according to the internet a broken clavicle⁵ is a common injury for falling off of your bike onto your shoulder [LINK].⁶ According to this publication peak axial compressive force (compression along the length of the clavicle) is 2.41±0.72kN (listed in abstract). However, the paper itself lists the fracture force as a much lower value: 1.91±0.84kN.

Let's say I am on the frail side, one standard deviation to be exact, then force to do me damage is 1,070N. So the odds of me doing myself damage from this were disappointingly low (unless my head happened to hit instead, but that's another story).

If my straw-house of estimates is anything to go by, I experienced about 8gs on impact and an impact velocity of about 9m/s is needed for an average clavicle to break. This works out as 32km/h, which is reasonable enough, and is inline with statistics on to severe injuries and fatalities in road accidents.

In reality, I am not a rigid body:

• There would be energy losses due to my body's plastic deformation as I fell
• My soft tissues (read: amply muscled shoulder) would have absorbed more of the energy

And also,

• The post broke, so there is no telling how much of the force I actually experienced.

Now, if you will excuse me, it is the 2nd of October and over 25°C outside. I've got some kung fu to do.

----

¹Funny side-note, I grew up on "Bog Road"ⁱ - I saw nothing wrong with that until I went to Summer camp for the first time. [Spoiler alert] They laughed at me... Bad enough my home town is Lisdoonvarna [LINK 1,ⁱⁱ LINK 2ⁱⁱⁱ]
²The time for my right pedal to go through 360°. I estimated this from my nominal pedalling rate in instances after the fact: "it ain't 1s and it's less than 2s."

³Nothing new.
⁴Ooo-er vicar.
^4.5Not that the rest of it is particularly rigorous :/
⁵Am I the only person that finds this word rather lewd?
⁶OK, I am being a sophist here, but it's a convenient bone and it has a reasonable chance of being a common injury because it is such a wuss, in the area of interest and would be put under axial compression. This ain't peer reviewed :P

****

ⁱThe Fresh Prince has got nothing on me.

ⁱⁱI did not expect a Dutch article about Lisdoonvarna :/

ⁱⁱⁱA decided advantage of not being in Ireland is that this song  (heretofore known as my nemesis) is not known where I am.^A

°°°°

^APoint of note: Youtube has a new function that I noticed with this video; It listed Christy playing in Antwerp on the 5th October. How... convenient.

Necessity is the mother of orange cake

My oven and I have come to an understanding over the last three months. I can't say that I have figured it out, because I haven't consciously changed what I am doing.¹ The cookies have just started to set/bake better.

As it is, baking cookies is labour intensive... 2 hours non-stop, mixing dough, putting lumps on the tray, waiting a few minutes, taking them off the tray, putting on fresh dough. As a consequence, cake baking has become much more appealing to me; mix the ingredients, decant into a vessel of some form and leave in oven until it smells edible and is reasonably solid - watch TV, stretch, and/or read in the mean time...

My most recent foray into baking is carrot cake.

My Dutch teacher asked if I could make it (worteltaart - in het Nederlands), and I am not one to walk away when the gauntlet is thrown down.

After I emailed my mother for her recipe, I announced my latest experiment on Facebook:

My mother, everyone... Regardless of her declamations, she did give me a recipe.³

In principle, it worked out very well. Unfortunately, while I was checking it at half-time, I fumbled the dish and spilled a bit. Thereafter, the cake, she was a bit lopsided :(

I shared it around at salsa and it was well-received. And there was much rejoicing.

I decided to make another batch for my trip to Ireland...

I mixed most of the ingredients together... and I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those damn kids not having any carrots.⁴

...

23:00hrs and my usual [carrot] dealer wasn't at his stoop⁵ and I'd be darned if I was going to throw away a potentially good mix. I did a mental inventory of what I had in the apartment; The only reasonable substitutes were oranges. I figured because they were so juicy and had a stronger flavour (I don't have any data to support that, just a gut feeling) that I'd use 150 g oranges and an extra 77 g of self-raising flour to soak up the juice.

Naturally, it worked out perfectly.

I shared it around in Ireland and it was well-received. And there was much rejoicing.

****

¹Cognitive bias fail (or a win?).
²OK... not quite rocking.
³Cake:
175g soft brown sugar
175mL sunflower oil
3 large eggs
150g self raising wholemeal  flour (Orange cake: 227 g flour)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
225g grated carrot  (Orange cake: 150 g diced oranges)

"Mix sugar and oil, add eggs and mix well, sift in dry ingredients beat everything til everything is well combined. Add grated carrots and stir well through. bake in 180 degree oven till cooked."ⁱ

Frosting:
225g philadelphia cream cheese
225g butter
454g icing sugar
Zest of orange


⁴"Classic Máirtín"
⁵Or maybe he was there and I couldn't see him because I don't have enough carrots in my diet to see well in the dark.ⁱⁱ

----

ⁱWord of God:"Máirtín, I gave up making actual cakes and use this recipe for muffins now, they're baked in 15 mins."
ⁱⁱThat's a joke, by the way. (link)

Garlonime Chicken

Garlic, Lemon and Lime Chicken (GarlOnIme)

Ingredients: Garlic, lemon, lime, cashews nuts and whole chicken. [Opens mouth to say something,".... ." closes it again.]

It's been yonks since I wrote a kitchen related post.

I had guests a couple of weekends back, and they demanded, demanded I say, that I make them dinner. Were I an unreasonable man and/or not already planning out what I would do, I'd have taken offense.

The scheming

I started with a standard idea tree. I went with chicken as the meat. Then I decided it would be roasted.  Then I decided I would use cashew nuts, garlic, lemon and lime for flavour (henceforth known as GarlOnIme⁰)

Chicken was a safe bet. I picked Cashew because it is my favourite nut. Garlic is always welcome. Lemon brings an acerbic tone to things, and Lime is like her shy sister, there to rein her in a bit.

The preparing

I used the GarlOnIme in two ways.

1. I diced each of them up really fine [Except for the cashew nuts... I gave up trying to dice them eventually. I ground them with a soup spoon to make my bread instead]. I think I used one lemon, one and a half limes, 3-4 cloves of garlic and a Máirtín sized handful of cashew nuts. This I mixed it into a paste.
2. I made crude 1/8s of the limes (x2) and the lemons (x1.5) and ungainly chunks of the garlic (4-5 cloves ).

I shoved the rough bits into the carcass and I covered the chicken with the paste. To get better diffusion^{screw superscript numbering} of the paste into the meat, I made incisions/stabs into the breast and thighs and shoved the rest of the paste in. I placed it in the fridge and left it over night.

The cooking

To give it a head start on the vegetables, I first foiled the chicken¹ and put it in the oven at about 150°C.

About an hour or 90 minutes later, I put in the veg. Since Barry is Oirish, I went with potatoes as the staple food. I parboiled, sliced and rolled them in butter. Then I cut up carrots, parsnips and onions and threw them in as well.

I went for a slow roast, so everything was ready to eat 2 to 2.5 hours after I put the chicken into the oven (although, that is a rough estimate, because I didn't keep track of the time and just tested the meat every now and again).^1.5

As dessert, I sliced up some fruit (nectarines, strawberries, apple and grapes) with some raisins and threw them into a bowl. I melted some honey and poured that in on top of them. After I poured in the honey, I left it to one side² for about half an hour. All the juices pooled with it to make a surprisingly light, just-sweet-enough syrup.

The post-game analysing

- On the upside, the chicken was very juicy and tasty. [I think it was safe to say that the GarlOnIme was well-diffused through the meat.]

- On the downside, I used too much lemon for my tastes. In future, I'd use another lime or two to get it more balanced.

- The dessert was tasty.

- And of course, the guests were happy with the food. :)

_______________

⁰I thought that GarlOnImeEw gave the wrong kind of message - anything that ends with "eew" does.
^{screw superscript numbering}I wanted to use "penetration", but googling that with any item of food leads to TMI.

¹It crowed quite coarsely, which is like saying "curses" for a chicken.
^1.5I'm a real firebrand, I am. Or it is my occupation with Process Analytical Technologies barging its way into my private life...

²A self respecting chef chronicling his/her forays into the culinarial wilderness feels naked without this phrase. I challenge you to find a TV chef that hasn't used it at least once an episode.

Mean Girls II: Bitchiness is Back in XS

[Edit: my aunt PhD, pointed out that I should have the pluralised from of dramatis persona therefor the person- is rocking a nifty diphthong (æ)]
Dramatis personæ:
Molly as Molly
Deirdre as Mother


A couple came to meet Mother regarding work. They had a girl with them slightly younger than Molly (reminder, my sister is only 4). So they played together while the grownups talked. After they left...

Deirdre: Did you enjoy playing with the girl?

Molly: She's not my type.

Deirdre: What do you mean?

Molly: Did you see her clothes?

[End scene/fade to black]
---------------------
Notes and comments:

• This is, to the best of my knowledge what happened, as unbelievable as it sounds.
• My mother told me this by text. I responded with: "fantastic." She responded with: "cruel." I responded that she was being realistic. She responded with: "She's some yoke."¹ Not being able to help myself, I responded with: "She uses a yoke, she could never be one."
• I think I will be patting myself on the back for the double-meaning subtitle of my post for the weekend at the very least.

----------------

Doing this tomorrow. I am hoping to recount my tangle with the obstacle course on steroids (the obstacle course is figuratively on steroids not me literally on them) thereafter.

****

¹In Ireland the word is used to describe a person that causes consternation, vexation or exasperation, etc.

The European haircut experience

When I was in secondary school (out Wesht), I went to the local barber. He is, in country fashion, a laconic chap that, being the nerd that I was (still am, only nerdier), I didn't have a clue how to talk to. For the 5-10 minutes that I sat in that chair, there was an itchy silence peppered with "how's your mother?," "are you busy these days?," a "lovely/terrible weather we are having...", etc.

When I was in college, I went to... you guessed it, the local barber. The opposite to my previous one. A chatty fellow with that nasal Dublin accent. Generally he spoke to the other barber, or offered me his opinion on the latest news from the Sun or Mirror.¹ So again, it was not particularly relaxing as 10 minutes go.

The last time I was in Ireland, I met up with one of my mates, Neil. While we were chatting, I mentioned my reluctance to get my haircut in Antwerp. I had been putting it off for a while. Partly I didn't feel settled in Antwerp, and partly I wasn't happy with my Dutch. I wanted to at least try to speak it when I went in. He observed:

It doesn't matter what language the barber speaks; he is the one holding the scissors. When they ask you at the end if it is OK, you say,"Yes."

I feel rather silly for deferring it for so long. It was a million times better than getting it done in Ireland.

I got haircare advice (apparently my hair is too dry). He even put clips in my hair so that he could layer the sides! Clips! Sides! It turned out that he had studied Greek literature in College and he was planning to read Joyce's Ulysses. So we chatted about books as he snipped away.

It was thoroughly enjoyable and actually relaxing.

It was like going from being roophied to a candlelight dinner.

Screw you, Barbers of Ireland, you ain't touching this again.²

-------

¹I don't mean to sound snobby, there are nerdy equivalents thereof that I drawl about ad tedium, that other people would have no interest in hearing about.
²I don't know if you can see it, but I am pointing at my head.

Like that delightful family romp, Sliver

This evening, I got the bejaysus scared out of me.

I've used the same Laundr-O-Mat a couple of times. There are no indications of opening hours anywhere. Anyone I ask in there doesn't have a rashers what time it closes at.

Based on places that actually display closing times, I figured ten o'clock was likely one.

Anyway...

21:15ish

I got in later than usual. I figured that I could plead with the guy who would come to close-up to wait until the clothes were dry.

But when I assume things, I make an "ass" out of "u" me and "me".

About 22:05

The clothes were almost dry.

There I was, minding my own business, reading a paper, and some of the lights went out. Not all of them, just a single line. There was no one else there. I dismissed it as a malfunction of some sort, a happenstance.

But, much like the lone white female in a horror film [I'd look great in a teddy, I just know I would], I wasn't 100% sold on it being just a coincidence. I got up and began clearing out my driers. The rest of the lights started going out. I packed a little bit more furiously.

*Click*

The door had closed.

Bugger.

I finished packing my laundry away (Molly pronounces it,"lingerie"). All the time I was wondering how I was going to get out of this one. I had left my phone in the apartment. There was no pay phone there. For that matter there was no number to call.

Having finished packing up, I walked with trepidation¹ to the closed door - silently cursing the progresses of our time exemplified in this... this automated Laundr-O-Mat.²

I reached out to the door. Pulled down the handle.

It opened. I inspected the door. It had a magnetic doorstop, and no handle on the outside.

There it is. The place never really closes. There are just certain periods, when it is empty, that one cannot get in.

I wanted to juxtapose this discovery with Hotel California. But it is late. And having planted the seed of the idea, I can just walk way [figuratively], and let you do my work for me [literally].

***

¹Word of the day win!

²Or maybe it is haunted.

***

[Editorial note: I would have like to find a link to the quote/time that Mr Burns uses the line that I allude to in the blog title. But I lazily went for the next best thing.]

Dutch is a lot like-

It has been a while.

I did mean to put some things [stuff, ponderances, musings, philosophizings, thoughts, ponderances] here, months back.

Months back, I went to Delft to visit friends. There and back, I wrote extensively⁰ about learning Dutch; The similarities between learning a language and learning a martial art;^{0.5, 0.75} How listening and conversing are like sparring... This in turn led me to bemoaning the two most under-appreciated skills in the world today: Listening and Teaching.¹

It takes an awful lot of focus to actually listen to a person; not hearing what you want to hear; not just waiting to say your bit.

And teaching? Teaching?! Richard Feymnan, a the celebrated teacher and physicist, in the foreword to his lecture series,² worried at his own inadequacies as a teacher. How there was no room for feedback during the course, so that he could improve.

If this guy wasn't happy with his teaching, then I don't think there are many of us that should be.

I suppose it is open to debate. But if it is, I am firmly on the side that if they aren't getting it, you are doing it wrong.³

That is the bones of the writings from back then. Better for the brevity, I think.

--

⁰In longhand no less, with a p-e-n. It was actually very calming, not that I'd ever keep a journal or anything. Heavens no. Keeping track of day-to-day thoughts and anecdotes... No, no. Never.
^0.5Or learning one skill is like learning another skill, when you get abstracted/fudgy enough.
^0.75More recently I have been thinking about it like going from on1 salsa to on2 salsa, or cha cha cha, since they [English/German and Dutch] are in the same language/dance group: There's a fundamental change- in the dance it is the rhythm or how you follow the rhythm- that is hard to get over. But when you get comfortable with that, a lot of the things you knew previously are easily transferred.ⁱ

¹ My advertizers demand that I use sensationalist tag-lines. I tried to fight them on it; I wanted to go with: "[...] two skills that are harder than a number of people I know probably think they are [...]." It [sensationalism] is what gets people in the door. This is a numbers game. Not quality.ⁱⁱ

²My work place is so awesome that it has them in their reference library, I only had time to read the foreword on a lunchbreak, but it was worth it.

³Practically, there are limits to this stance. Of course. But. But, there is no telling when you actually reach the limit of your abilities to explain and enlighten and hit the corresponding limits of the pupil. So just keep going, trying to come up with a point of view that clicks.

***

ⁱComing from English and German, a lot of the syntax is similar, and some words sound the same, just "Dutchified." The easiest thing is combining prepositions with verbs for things, it similar for the three languages, and gives a huge jump in amount of things you can say.
ⁱⁱOK, I don't have any advertisers, but I just wanted to feel like someone that would have them. FYI: I am up to 1000+ views all told, not that I care or anything...

A commuted Dutch lesson

4 months down in Antwerp now.

It is coming along well - cashiers and servers don't automatically respond to me in English now. The entire process is really helped along by being in a native region.

As a language, it is really growing on me, it's very expressive, almost like a pantomime. This exchange below is a perfect example of it. It was like public performance art...

A couple of weeks back, some of my fellow commuters - keen to see me progress, surely - listed useful phrases for me. It was like a role-play that we would have done for our Leaving Cert. languages.

Women A: Mag ik hier zitten?
Women B: Nee.
Women A: ...
Women B: Mevrouw! Ik heb gezegd dat je niet hier zitten kan!
Women B: ...
Women A: Mevrouw! Je hebt mij met jouw krant geraakt!
Women B: Mevrouw! Ik heb gezegd dat je niet hier zitten kan!
Women A: Ik kan zitten waar ik wil. Ik zal de politie bellen.
Women B: Bel! Bel!
[...]
Man A: Mag ik hier zitten.
Women A: Je mag! Je bent hartelijk welkom.⁰

This woman (Woman A) regularly gets the same bus as me. She's is not a morning person. She storms down the aisle, directly for the seat her mental game of Russian Roulette picks for her. The bus was not full, maybe 20% of the seats were free. Even the seat she picked was one of a quartet (two facing two). She just had to sit facing the direction of travel, even though the woman declined her request and the two seats facing away from travel were free.

After 5 minutes of bickering, sniping and misty-eyed nostalgia at "that time you hit me with your newspaper", things died down. A Stranger gets on the bus and asks to sit in one of other two seats. The entire bus could barely keep it together.

Naturally, despite the blow-up, neither woman moved until it came time for them to get off the bus.

Were this Ireland, I would be convinced that this charade was, well, a charade. However, since I have previously noted the mysterious mechanics of Picking Your Seat On The Bus In Belgium, I'll allow it. I can imagine how Sandra Bullock's character felt about getting on public transport after the whole debacle she went through. Of course, the bus didn't have to move for us for "It" to go off.¹

********

⁰Woman A: May I sit here?
Woman B: No.
Woman A: [The woman sits down]
Woman B: Madam! I said that you cannot sit here.
Woman B: [Hits Woman A on the leg with her rolled up newspaper]ⁱ
Woman A: Madam! You have hit me your newspaper!
Woman B: Madam! I told you that you could not sit here.
Woman A: I can sit wherever I like. I am going to call the police.

Women B: Call away.
[The bus reaches its next stop]
Man A: May I sit here?
Women A: Of course you can! You are more than welcome.
¹Oh no he didn't!

-------------

ⁱClearly an avid follower of Jason Bourne.

Doctor, doctor, please

When I finished my PhD, I had intended on writing a quick note on my hard learned lessons.

A mate of mine is beginning his own shortly and he asked me for some advice... so here I am...

Nothing new...

1. Every month or so remind yourself what your "end game" is - or what shape you want it to be at least.
2. When you find yourself getting nowhere, go talk to someone else about their research problems - a change is as good as a rest.
3. When doing a presentation, write a paper for it, not just throw together a few slides. What I want for myself, is, if I give a presentation or write something, that it fits comfortably within what I know. This generally requires knowing more each time. That means thinking about the literature, which I found best done by writing at length about the context of my research. As "3.5" I don't like showing "frayed edges" to people unless it is to actually talk about the frayed edges. 
4. Also - I found I did my best thinking when I was writing down what I had done in the past. Since i was writing about something that was over and done with - I had some distance on it and could see better what to do next.

So nothing new there, but one must give the ego what it wants - in this case it is being redundant :/

I have a couple of ideas for some more posts, I will probably not get time during the week to do them though, being all busy in work and interacting with people. Socially. I started tango two weeks ago. It is a lot harder than salsa. Seriously subtle stuff - I am rapt.

Quantum buschanics

Our quantum physics teacher in college, was a gent who made the stuff pretty accessible.¹ I remember he made this nerdy [i.e. I laughed] simile.

We were learning about the particulars of the incestuous mess that is Hund's Rule of Maximum Multiplicity and the Aufbau Principle [and peripherally, the Pauli Exclusion Principle]. In a nut shell, in a given electron shell there are a number of orbitals and 2 electrons ultimately go into each orbital. The energy of the system needs to be a minimum for a given number of electrons in a shell (Aufbau), the energy is lowest when the orbitals are balanced - filled to the same amount, so 1 or 2 electrons (Hund's Rule). So the result is that the electrons fill each orbital first in a shell before doubling up.

He likened it to the way bus seats fill in Dublin: all the seats are filled singly before strangers start sitting side-by-side. It's practically a law of Nature.²

Of course that is not the case in Belgium. Every morning, I see the cosmic commuter ballet unfold. Firstly, the seat filling is quite different. There are some seats that are never filled, regardless of how many people there are, other seats are filled regardless of who is in the adjacent seat. For example we have the face-to-face seats. Here, they are all about facing the direction of motion; they'll preferentially sit side-by-side instead of taking a free opposing seat. To complicate matters further when a seat is vacated someone will usually trade up from their seat to the free one. Much like everything else in Belgium it is a complex dance, and I still don't understand the running order for the best seat - I've seen people going the length of the bus for a change.

Two other things that I have noticed:
Some take their commuter naps seriously; I've seen two bring inflatable neck pillows, and conk out for their trip. One of them even sports a really long lagging-jacket-like coat that she reverses as an ad hoc blanket.

There is a turn off a highway - it takes about 10 seconds to complete. It's fantastic, it's the longest turning circle I've ever been in! Once I figure out when it happens - I am going to eyeball the g's I'm pulling on this bad boy³... when I am starting to doze the shift reminds me of the falling van scene in Inception.

While we are talking about buses and commuting - there was another blooming vakbondsactie last Friday. To add some levity a chap sporting a knitted cap in the Jamaican colours came into the waiting room. He began with a boisterous "Goede morgen, Everybody!" He then spent 15-20 minutes bemoaning the fact that Belgium has been without a government (regering) for 6 months - he's wrong it is actually over 8 months, but he didn't sound like he was interested in accuracy. To add that Belgian flair to it he was soapboxing in a patchwork of English, German, French, Dutch and Italian.

For a finish, all the men except me had decided to brave the frost outside, instead of staying inside with the man of the moment, me and the women. After we, the audience, exchanged a few glances and smirks at his histrionics, our man declared that he had to work, pulled down his cap, put a rolled up cigarette in his mouth, swung open the door and left without so much as a by-your-leave.

------

¹He told us about his own difficulties with the subject as a student, and what he found helpful. Unlike our physics teacher in first year who could tell you how many students were in the class and recalled how many were at the last class; told us we shouldn't eat coming into his post-lunch lecture because it would make us sleepy. I couldn't never followed his lectures on Gaussian surfaces, it took a lot of thinking on my own part... I suspect this guy never had any trouble learning new things.
²Obviously the quantum mechanics is practically a law of nature, but I meant, as a figure of speech, that the system for seat-filling is such a thing.
³I can estimate how many degrees off vertical it is with a piece of string, or how far I moved away from the side of the bus - I have an idea of my centre of gravity - the law of the lever on from c.o.g. what ever datum I chose for moving away from the side of the bus - a bit of vector magic... then from Googlemaps I can estimate the radius of the curve - and then the speed of the bus. ⁱ

****

ⁱAlternatively, I could look over the driver's shoulder. :/

It really tied the room together

There it is - a Venn Diagram of part of my world view or more specifically {Things ∉ My World View}...

Four years of Chemical Engineering followed by another four doing a PhD [, which I have successfully defended; I will be graduating at the soonest convenience]²... I wasn't ready for this.

In the week leading up to "Mission In Furnishing," I kept having the exchange between Walter and the Dude go through my head. Well, that and the montage of Edward Norton's nameless character furnishing his apartment in Fight Club.

Thanks a bunch pop-culture.

Linen, towels, beds, shelves, tables and ladders and chairs [oh my].¹ It's a f**kin' mystery to me. The whole week I was thinking through what I needed, and a triage on the order to get them in.

It took three visits to Ikea to get the essentials [plus dealies I simply had to have]. The first time was tough going. Halfway through my Ikean trek, I was done, mentally. It was purgatory. Chairs, followed by bins, followed by shelves, followed by office desks, followed by office chairs, follwed by stools, followed by dining tables, followed by beds, followed by light bulbs... I just wanted it to be over. I strongly advice using the website to decide what to get beforehand and just go straight for the chosen items. Otherwise, you'll feel like this, but without the laugh track.

To cap it off, my poor choice in timing - stepping out of Ikea on a Friday at 1700 - meant that my taxi was "25 minutes away" for about 2 hours. The next two visits went far more smoothly, except for waiting over 30 minutes at the warehouse for oversized items.

So, Ikea, a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't live there.

At the beginning of my furnishing travails, I balked often at the cost of things, particularly in Ikea, since I was expecting "rock bottom" prices. Being the neophyte that I was,³ I had no point of reference for the costs. But when I took the time to think about it: compared to the amount I am prepared to pay for shoes, clothes and PC parts; the cost of having things to sit on, sleep in, eat off, hide under, etc. daily for years is very reasonable.

My favourite discovery has been Hema. It's just a few minutes from my apartment and it's got a sh*tload of housing stuff, almost everything a man about town could want.

Almost.

Up until yesterday I had not been able to find baking trays. What the hell, Antwerp? How hard is it to provide a planar piece of heat-conductive metal for the purpose of baking? There was no end to bread-, tart-tins and cupcake trays, but the most geometrically trivial of baking vessels... I never had this trouble in Ireland. Luckily, I found an Arnotts-like department store that has them, understandably a tad more expensive than Tesco.

Up until now, I wrapped my oven shelves in tinfoil.  My oven is going to take a while to get used to; The fan is weak so the forced convection isn't great, and the baking times are longer than I'm used to.  The first batch of cookies were OK, but a bit harder/crunchier than I'd like. The second batch worked out a lot better. Plus, the Nestlé cocoa powder I got in the supermarket is like a party in my nose where everyone is invited,^3.5 and yields a richer flavoured cookie than the Cadbury's cocoa in Ireland.

There isn't much to report in work. On my first day we had quite a time finding a lab coat that fit me because of my apeish armspan; I now sport the largest labcoat size we could find in the building. Sure, the sleeves go to my wrist, but it's like some kind of monk robe the way it is cinched across in front and goes down to my knees.

Much like Walter White⁴ I will sometimes need to have a full-face mask with a filter for my work with powders. During my safety training, the instructor, in broken English and gesturing with his hands, told me that I have a small face, which may be a problem [for getting a seal on the mask]. It turns out that it was not a problem, but I can't help feeling insulted by being told I have a small face. :-(    :-(

[Edit: it has since been pointed out to me that trays are available in Ikea:
http://www.ikea.com/be/nl/catalog/products/10196662
http://www.ikea.com/be/nl/catalog/products/00133043

This only serves to annoy me further... Ikeeeeeaaaaaaaa!]

-----------

¹Mick Foley's classic quoteⁱ from when he was the general manager in WWE, no youtube or soundbite of it... but trust me, it happened. Also, the ladder was "poetic license", i.e. "a lie" because I don't need one.

²"I didn't go to evil freakin' Chemical Engineering School for four years to be called Mr McNamara."

³I'm a paleophyte now. Whatever.
^3.5Don't do drugs kids.
⁴Breaking Bad shout out! What! I'm getting a buzz just recalling the season gone by.

------

ⁱItself a corruption of "Lions and tigers and bears. Oh my!" from Wizard of Oz

Vakbondsactie

I'm going through the process of registering with the Antwerp municipality.

It begins with notifying the police that you are living in the area. They drop in to your place to make sure you live there. If, as in my case, you are in work at the time, they leave a note for you to come to the local police station.

Mired as I am in pop-culture, I found myself thinking of any instance in a film where going into/dealing with continental police ended well... In Kiss of the Dragon and Taken the cops were crooked; in the Bourne films they were patsies/cat's paws.⁰ I can't think of cases where they've come off well.

Needful to say¹, I was carried away with flights of fancy.² What actually happened was a cursory glance at my papers and I was asked to sit in the waiting area until I was brought to have a quick chat with a pleasant middle-aged woman.³

As it happens, on the same day, I had my internet connected. The technician that turned up was, I must admit, good looking and stylishly dressed – sporting a fashionable square-faced, silver-framed wristwatch. Coming from Ireland it was rather incongruous, where technicians generally have jeans or overalls with the company logo. As usual, I was thinking "spy."

It reminds me of the holiday I took in Iceland a couple of years back. Two of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen were selling hot dogs at a tourist trap called the Blue Lagoon. These, these blonde goddesses selling hot dogs... it made no sense. If they were doing this job in a film, there would have been complaints about suspension of disbelief or lack thereof. As usual, Shakespeare and Hamlet got to it a couple of years before hand:

Hamlet: Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end [...] is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature [...]⁴

Hamlet was cautioning against hamming⁵ it up, but I think my anecdote illustrates the "ham" line is farther away than we actually think. 

No doubt, everyone is having what amounts to the revelation at the end of The Usual Suspects with cup dropping and all when you pore back through your life and see these people that don't fit. But don't worry, it's normal.

In other news, I feel settled enough to focus on learning Dutch. I have started listening to vocab on the way to and from work. And I have a handy pocket dictionary, which I take out now and again for key words. It was really useful on Friday morning when I arrive to see that my bus wasn't at its stop....   vakbondsactie - or trade union action - means I wait 40 minutes for a bus in the morning and 60 minutes in the evening.

Anyway, I really think I am getting the hang of it...

Gellukig Kerstfeest!

*****

⁰Imagine those poor unsuspecting cops trying to get some vagrant off of a park bench; they were just doing their jobs, and they get their asses kicked.
¹I know that the phrase is needless, but that is an apparent contradiction, since I am writing and I have decided that it needed to be said. It's like that phrase - "it goes without saying." What is really being said is: "I do not trust you to figure this out on your own, so I am going to prelude the information with a lip service to my belief in your competence....  'no offence'ⁱ."

²"Sorry sir, your papers... they are no in order. I just have to make a call, if you will wait in this room." At which point two burley 6 footers in riot gear come in with tonfas/night sticks. But then I clean house, and someone walks by going,"are you a special forces guy or something?" And I am all like "I'm just the crystallization expert."

³One thing that has bothered me about English language films set in Europe is how native languages would be used intermittently for filler and minor developments. but plot-critical information is relayed in English, no matter what nationality the source is. A month living and working in Belgium has made this perfectly reasonable to me because I have yet to meet someone that could not tell me in clear English what I needed to know.

⁴Hamlet Act 3, scene 2, 17–24 - granted my editing has ruined the iambic pentameter...

⁵The words are unrelated - hamming comes from the first syllable of amateur. [ORIGIN late 19th cent. : perhaps from the first syllable of amateur ; compare with the slang term hamfatter [inexpert performer.] Sense 2 dates from the early 20th cent. - from my Mac Dictionary]

*****

ⁱWhich happens to be another doozy, for carte blanche insulting. I think the best outrage against these veiled maneuverings is Jack Bristow (Victor Garber) on Alias: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0qaIvb3bGA^a

------------

^aMy former "study buddy [one lab removed]", John, pointed out that I forgot about the gold standard in thinly veiled condescending insult: "With all due respect." 

BYOK

I arrived in Antwerp somewhat later than originally planned...

Here's my advice about flying to Antwerp airport: Don't.⁰

It is a dinky little thing; From Dublin, there are no direct flights, I had to travel via Manchester. Unfortunately, the arriving and departing flights were in different terminals, and I arrived minutes too late to check in. On the upside, the airline and airport helpdesks were really helpful. Respectively, they had me on the first flight the following morning, and gave me directions to a reasonably priced hotel.

My temporary residence is palatial- from office through the hall into the living room there is a a 50 foot stretch good enough for lunges and leg work, but the hallway is rather narrow, so I can't do any jumping or hopping drills. :'(

It is just off the Belgian equivalent of Grafton st., de Meir. It's got all the mod cons, except for an Irish standard...  I had been cautioned during my cross-culture program that there is a large coffee culture in Belgium; an unforeseen consequence of this is that coffee makers are standard, not electric kettles. Fear not faithful readers, I bought one.¹

[At the risk of causing narrative whiplash, I am going to switch focus somewhat]

Coming out of my third weekend in Belgium, I have cobbled together some observations.

• On the buses, which have 2-person seats that don't fit 2 averaged sized males and face-to-face seats that are knee-caressingly close, the locals aren't going to make room unless you ask/gesture for some, but they do so without grumbling. Additionally, I've seen numerous strangers sharing an open chuckle about something or chatting idly.
• The public transport around Antwerp is super; imagine that they have timetables at all the stops that are accurate for the stop. The bus drivers themselves are generally pleasant.
• They are open, and welcome discussion about things; they want to be sure that all the options have been addressed and there is a consensus.
• Everybody speaks English, as well as Dutch and French. Comfortably. They are so blase about being polyglots² that I feel a bit silly having a sense of accomplishment in being able to speak Irish and English.
• The Flemish have a similar sense of humour to the Irish, I think. They like to poke fun at themselves and everyone else; pan-depreciating, if you will.
• The shops are closed on a Sunday - that took some adjusting.
• Walking around, I have either to focus on the sounds being said, to start training my ear for learning Dutch, or tune them out. When I choose the latter, there is a bit of a lag before I realise I am hearing English.
• Dutch reminds me of Japanese and Chinese; it emphasizes vowel sounds more so than the consonants - which is more common in other European languages [In my opinion, at least... it is certainly the case for English - where text speak contracts words to strings of consonants]. Every now and again, my ear catches syllables that I can parse into words I recognise from German or English, but for the most part I hear mysterious ululations. My Dutch lessons are due to start mid-February, which I am really looking forward to; I asked for directions is Dutch yesterday and the guy responded in English as if it is what I had spoken.

So far, the only practical advice I can give a body leaving Ireland for Belgium is: bring your own kettle.

----

Postword: I had sat down to write a bit more, but I got sidetracked doing the kettle experiment. :/

***

⁰Most people bound for Antwerp go to Brussels, since it is 30-45 minutes by rail or highway.

¹There is a kettle you can put on the hob. But the heat transfer is abysmal:

1. I put the same amount of water in each kettle
2. I let the hob heat for 5 minutes before hand
3. To make it more exciting, like a race, see, I started them at the same time.
4. The electric kettle goes off automatically, so I assumed it was calibrated for 100°C.
5. For the hob kettle, I opened the top and stared down until there was persistant bubbling ["nucleate boiling" to give its technical description; film boiling is when the surface is too hot and a film of vapour forms at the surface and further evaporation; and a reason that you can dip your hand in liquid nitrogen, if you're into that kind of thing - in technical gobble-dy gook it is known as the Leidenfrost Effect]
6. The heat transfer area for the hob kettle was the bottom of it, so I measured the diameter with my handy measuring tape.
7. For the electrical kettle, I cut strips of paper and stood them around the coil, holding them close to one of the coil's sides and added together the strip lengths. I got the coil circumference by wrapping a strip of paper around the coil an measuring its length. Working in the confines of kettle with my clown hands was a tad annoying though - if only I had some kid at hand to stick its hands in the kettle...
8. I figure the results are good to within 10% of the actual values. The main sources of uncertainty being the coil area, the starting temperature and my judgement call on when boiling was in the hob kettle. Even based on time-to-boil alone the hob kettle sucks, it might be able to compete if it was a gas hob, but that is not an option.

Here are my calculations:

From the trouble with mairtin...

From the trouble with mairtin...

²Related to this is that one of the people helping me find a place to live told me about her experience learning some Japanese to get by on a trip there. She complained that they were just these meaningless sounds that she had to memorise. Between French, English, German and Dutch she's grown up seeing a set of languages that are related to each other in some way or another; a situation where the fallacy of noises having a fundamental meaning can easily arise.  To me, learning Dutch language is like her experience with Japanese.

De Bulge

So... What do I know about diamonds Belgium?⁰

It all started back when I took part in the Chemistry Olympiad in Groningen. In the build up to the exams we had oodles of activities and events to get to know each other. We did a relay/obstacle course and the Irish (go us!/ar aghaigh linn!) teamed up with the Belgians (insert French/Dutch equivalent phrases here).

One of the tasks was four-man ski-walking, where the step timing was important. I, ignorantly, suggested that the country teams do it together, since we'd be speaking the same language. I then learned my first fact about Belgium - they have two [technically three] official languages (French and Dutch [and German]). Furthermore, to keep things copacetic¹, the Belgian team was half Walloon, half Fleming. So there was awkward shoegazing on my part, my shoes that is.

Years on, my buddies from "Space Camp"² and I went to visit one of the gang in Leuven, in Belgium.³ I can't say that I was particularly taken with the place,⁴ but they did have delicious, cheap kebabs the size of my head.

If I say: Irish, English, Germans, French, Italian, Spanish, Swiss, Greek or Dutch, an image or an idea will pop into your head. Belgians? Waffles... that's all you got?

A country that is the seat of European parliament; the European diamond capital; and an economy with serious leverage....⁵ I could chalk it down to my obliviousness to things that don't appear on Physorg, XKCD, IMDB, TV.com, and the Daily Show [with Jon Stewart], but shouldn't I be more aware of these people?

There is something rotten in the State of... ugh... Belgium.

I have a theory...

Preamble:

To give me the smoothest emigration a man can get, I was provided with relocation assistance by Cartus, part of which included a cross-culture training program; I was given presentations by native Flemings to vet me for life on the ground.

The first speaker gave a litany of Belgians in power - the IMF, the EU, etc. The program coordinator and I marveled at this, that they seem to be holding all the cards. He dissembled, saying that it was more a case of the Belgians being a harmless, inoffensive bunch with no real power.

I put it to you that this is representative of their national policy: "Don't mind little ol' us. We're harmless. What?... sure... One of our boys can head up this, if you think it is alright."

The second presentation was about Belgian history and day-to-day living therein.⁶ Despite my bland summary, the presenter unfolded a riveting tale of maneuverings, twists and turns. In a nutshell, the area that Belgium currently occupies has been passed around like a hot potato for centuries, hence two national languages.

Proposition:
By natural selection, they have gotten demonstrably good at negotiating, at handling people. They are like... like political ninjas!

So what do I know about diamonds Belgium?

*****

⁰It occurred to me to write the piece like Statham in Snatch, but the idea struck too late and I wasn't going to rework it. 

¹That is the first time I have ever used that word - WIN
²The Fás Science Challenge in Florida in Association with NASA is where we met [Whatevs/brushes finger tips on jacket breast]
³Think holiday special, like the time the Bradys went to Hawaii.
⁴The locals were very backgroundy... kept staring at the boisterous Irish crew.
⁵A study that used computer simulations to estimate the response of the global economy to individual economies has Belgium in the company of USA and China in terms of impact; really punching above its weight. (Paper link, and what I read myself first [don't look at me!])
⁶In Belgium that is, not in Belgian history.

The "E" word

The Irish have been doing it for a long time - Potato famine, economic recessions, boredom, warrants... any reason will do.

My great granduncle and a friend of his went out to Canada- to the Wild West, Eh- and bought themselves a 256 acre plot of land. Back in those days you got nothing just the land and it was a race against time to have the cabin ready or die of exposure come Winter. They drove 400 mule from Montana up to the plot. The venture didn't really work out; in the first Winter they had to eat a couple of mules.⁰ He packed it in after that, but his mate struck oil shortly thereafter. Literally.

As a young man, my grandfather lived in Canada, working as a mechanic with the Trans-Pacific Rail and for a uranium mine operation. Later, himself and my grandmother lived in the States. Of their children, 8/10 have lived or are currently living abroad.

Emigration isn't such a big deal now.

I am not going into a infrastructure-less wilderness with my life in the balance. The world is a tiny place now; it takes less time for me to get from Antwerp to Dublin than it does from Clare to Dublin. 

These days the biggest change caused by emigrating is who gets your taxes.

Besides, I've seen the worst that moving around in Europe has to offer thanks to Jason F*cking Bourne.

***

⁰I think "woof" is the technical term.

3 degrees of footnotes

The tail-end of my previous post reminded me of a quote, which led to layers of footnotes.

After a reluctant, but necessary review of the sprawl, I decided that they were more asymptotically than tangentially relevant and I dumped them here:

^[...]

One of my favourite shows in the last couple of years, Life, had beautiful koan-like story-lines^1,2 and lilt to its dialogue...  One that sticks in my mind at the moment is:

                  (In reference to uncooperative witness)

                  Crews: We have to use his strength against him.

                  Reese: Whats his strength?

                  Crews: His weakness.

                  Reese: His strength is his weakness?

                  Crews: Yeah, its like the one hand clap.

                  Reese: Are you really Zen?

                  Crews: Zen-"ish"

****

¹Farthingale and Hit Me Baby are probably my favorite stand-alone pieces; the primary arc has some really great moments, but I'm ambivalent as to how reasonable the course of events are that led to his initial incarceration.ⁱ

²It has many things going for it:

•  Damien Lewis plays damaged goods like no body's business
• The gorgeous Sarah Shahi and her flawed detective Reese
• A recurring guest spot by the voluptuous Christina Hendricks
• ... Who generally shared scenes with the excellent second-fiddle Adam Arkin.ⁱⁱ 
• ... and these scenes [sterling examples of the direction, cinematography and pacing of the series] had a very dreamy/floaty-light feel to them ripe with subtext and humour.
• An evil Garret Dillahunt,^iii,iv with an unfortunately ropey Russian accent :/
• The much under-appreciated Donal Logue (season 2) from Grounded for Life and Terriers.^v

****

^{iI could defend that clunky sentence as an analogue of the overarcing plot in Life, being all "meta", but I won't.
ii}FYI, Mr Arkin cut his directing teeth on this show, and now features prominently as a director in Sons of Anarchy^α

ⁱⁱⁱHe's currently in a combo-breaking role as a dim-witted, but well-intentioned recent-grandfather in Raising Hope. Up until now, I had only seen him as some flavour of psycho, but to his credit and ability, they are different characters; he's not doing-a-John-Cusack on us.^β 

^ivSpeaking of Deadwood, Life also has Calamity Jane as the Chief in season 1, and a guess spot by the guy that played E.B. Farnum-  maybe one or two others in it that I can't recall at the moment. And while I am talking about Deadwood, there are a couple of actors from it that appear in Sons of Anarchy.^γ

^vThat show is another good one to watch, Logue is the lead in it. A combination of critics liking it, poor viewing numbers and not being on AMC meant it got axed after one season [colon dash open-bracket].

++++

^αSons of Anarchy is one one of the best shows on television at the moment,^δ a well-written, intricate series. Kurt Sutter is the creator, it is his follow up to the Shield. It has a strong tragic element [with a phenomenal Katey Sagal as Lady Macbeth stand-in] and Ron Pearlman. The lead actor (Charlie Hunnan) improves steadily over the three seasons- and what starts off as histrionics and heavy handed deliveries and expressions become some great, great moments on his part.
If I was to put a tag-line to it:

There are always consequences [boom]

^βCome on people! Look at him... Could you tell the difference between him in Grosse Pointe Blank and High Fidelity?

^γOne of the persistent themes in Life is that everything is connected, how meta is this sh*t!?

------------

This is the last one, I swear.... [at least partly because I am tapped out of sequential symbols after two numeric layers and the Greek alphabet.]

^δMad Men and Breaking Bad being my other picks for top quality production values. Boardwalk Empire had its moments, it wasn't what I was expecting, which left me disappointed. I'd have to have another look of it to decide what I think of it. Dexter is another one that aims high - beautiful cinematography and Michael C Hall is a good actor- but the storyline/premise and generally 1-D supporting cast gives it a whiff of cheese as far as I am concerned.
There are other shows I adore for their campiness, and entertainment value, but listing them here is like bringing a gun to a fight where the other guy brings a Pontiac Aztec [Breaking Bad Spoiler Alert for that link].

This is just what I could think of off the top of my head; if I made a real run of it, I would really bore you to tears.