Recycling in Portugal

I was pleasantly surprised to find recycle bins on the beach in Portugal.
Yellow = plastic
Brown = brown glass
Green = green glass
Blue = normal trash
(There were other blue bins located elsewhere along the beach too.)


In the residential and hotel area there were more bins for paper, plastic, glass and trash along the streets at various intervals. Here new friend Ian is trying to follow the picture diagram which identifies what can be put into the Yellow bin.

Recycling in Portugal almost resembles the German standards, which was a little surprising to me.

From Portugal

Here's where I spent the past week:

Notice in the photo, the large white column? It's an elevator to the beach.

The EU built the elevator:

On the way to part 2 of the holiday, off to Wales!

On the way to Portugal

I missed summer holidays a bit this year. Instead it's a September holiday to Faro, Portugal,or more specifically, to the beachs of Albufeira. I am happy that in moving to the UK it changed my destination possibilities. I had done so many of the cheap Cologne and D'dorf options, having a new airport (Stansted), opens up so many possibilities.

The dream, it moves

A few months back, I wrote about getting into LSE for the fall, and finally deciding to attend. A few months later, I'm writing about passing up on my chance to go. A few things have changed in the meantime...

-there's been some internal changes at benevolent company J. At the end of the day they are the ones footing the awfully expensive tuition bill and I wasn't ready to mortgage my soul for five years (the full repayment time).
-It would have been a career limiting move under the new company direction.
-as i look at the big picture, this is a very indirect route to where I want to be. It would probably get me there, but slowly. Having put in my time in Germany to get to the UK, maybe I don't have so much patience anymore for due paying.

Someone's comment to me, 'that's a shame you pulled out'
-in the grand scheme of things, I disagree. I consider myself lucky to have figured out now instead of a year or two down the line. Principally:
-I don't really need another Master's degree at the end of the day. I require a Master's degree to be able to renew my work permit in 2012 and I already have that, and it's been UK certified and all that jazz for my intial permit.
-I have cobbled together a background that is appreciated by admissions people, recruiters and the like. If I change my mind or decide to do anything similar, I have faith that I'll be able to get into LSE or a similar level program.

So now what instead?
I've had a long-time itch to do law. It ties loosely into my career goals in a niche fashion. When I scrapped the LSE idea and started to look around, I figured out:
-one really needs to have done undergraduate pre-law in the UK (different from in the US where law school entrants have done pre-law or maybe English, history, or anything else under the sun).
-or to take a one year conversion course on an existing degree and then a two year traineeship, in order to get into law school.
-or one can muddle through this four year part-time program which will allow one to take the one year conversion without the traineeship, and then to bumble through to law school--a certified, centrally administered program which is aimed toward working people, many of whom start at the bottom rung of law office jobs like secretaries or clerks and slowly work their way up.

So why?
-It's just sort of an occupational interest. Law training will definitely enhance my current skillset, but I like what I do, I'm not looking for a career change.
-I've considered being a lawyer since a very long time.

• At my 8th grade graduation, when I mentioned this was my long-term career goal, the cranky pants priest suggest that I become a nun and then become a nurse or a teacher because, 'nurses and teachers help people and we have too many lawyers in the world.' (My grandfather used to refer to this particular priest as 'Father Cranky Pants')
• As I graduated high school, the dream still simmered. I received a $100 scholarship toward my college education from a local law office. (I was working one of my three jobs that summer, so I missed the photo op in the local paper).
• In my university years, I organized my scheduled to make a double major and a minor, so I wasn't able to p*ss around with taking random courses which didn't count, or double count. The one only I did take was 'Business Law'. (OK, so it counted toward my business minor).

-This gives me a very soft part-time entrance into law. Each of the four part-time years is independent; I can stop at any time, any of them will improve my CV.
-Locally, I found an offering of this course in my town in Essex, which makes things a lot easier than trekking into London.
-Socially, it could be interesting to me to meet people locally.
-The cost is on par with a US community colleage course, but the test is adminstered centrally. So as long as I pass the test, that is the certification at the end of the day, not where I took the lectures.

I've registered and paid on Saturday. Classes start two weeks from today for year one.

Riddle me this science people - platelet donation

I was dinking around online, the UK version of the bloodmobile is in my corner of Essex next week. In the US I was a regular blood donor. In Germany I donated three times through the on-site company bloodmobile visit, but found the officious brute of a bloodmobile doctor to be obnoxious on the third visit and thereby stopped. (She chewed me out that I did not have fluent German and she did not have time to talk slow German and on and on.) As it is an American company with many nationalities who do not speak German, I pointed out that they shouldn't put the posters up in English then. (The rest of the staff was very nice as they find her pompous as well, but I really didn't have the energy for such events in Germany after a while.)

So onward...I was looking online at the UK blood donation rules, having previously been a UK blood donor when I last lived here. I was specifically interested in donating platelets. I had looked into this one of my home visits to Philly after the above Germany debacle, but having lived in the UK during the Mad Cow years, I was ineligible to even be a blood donor anymore. I was interviewed by the platelet people by phone and then invited in but my travel history then disqualified me.

I was looking at the UK platelet donation site, apparently I'm already disqualified from the get go, due to being female. Really now. Off I went to google to figure this one out. I stumbled across platelet donation in Singapore which seems to shed some light on this mystery to me, although they only 'prefer' males as oppose to 'require' males like the UK. Funny the US doesn't set gender or size requirements for platelets, (although they do set male/female height/weight requirements for double red cell donation.)

I find it funny--for relatively similar cultures (OK, perhaps theoretically different in their means of providing healthcare) that one would allow females and one not. If we were comparing a country with a more conservative viewpoint of women (say, Sudan) and the UK or the US I wouldn't be so surprised. But this difference between the UK and the US surprises me.

Enlighten me please, science minded people.

keeping it moving

Now that I've been in the new flat for almost three months, I'm starting to get some ideas of how I want it to look. I've been living with the very minimal included furnishings (bed and sofa), and slowly putting together the rest during the evenings and weekends (a new mirror, a shoe rack etc.) while I try to figure out logically how the space should function based on how I'm using it each day.

One of the 'missing' things has been bookshelves. I couldn't bring myself to battle the crowds at the nearest Ikea (45 min away), and nothing at nearby Homebase really appealed. I've been keeping an eye on ebay, but a critical limitation is that 1. it needs to be a few shelves tall to maximize space here in the tiny flat, but it would need to then fit into my car so it cannot be so tall--a catch 22.

Until I happened to see some Habitat stackable cube shelves, gently used, on ebay. I managed to get lucky and win it so off I went to disassemble the shelves, fit everything into the car, bring it back, carry it up four flights of stairs and New friend Ian and I spent the afternoon resassembling it. I'm pleased as they are only very slightly used and as they were habitat they were hella expensive new and seem to be of good quality. In addition, the stackable function gives me a lot of flexibility to completely change up my tiny living room on a whim. :-)

Finally, my books which I started to pack up in December in Germany, which stayed boxed since my arrival here in February are getting to come out and play. I've missed them terribly, but didn't want to create a further mess of clutter here with uncontrollable books out and about, so thus they were kept boxed up. The camera cord is currently on vacation, but when it returns I'll get a photo up...

My new nickname

Growing up, 'Heather' doesn't really lend itself well to nicknames as to shorten it ends on a soft 'th' sound; it just doesn't work. I do, however, love a good nickname. As I've worked with the same people for years, most of them somehow have picked one up along the way, cute short versions of their name, English names for Germans, names which started from a funny incident on a night out, and on and on. I don't directly have one, although there may be a few I don't know about. ;-)

So I found it so terribly endearing then, that my parking spot owner found it fit to bestow one upon me. I sent her an email to make sure that she knew when I was coming to pick up the car (as I don't move it much, I have the spot behind the gate blocked by other cars). Her response:

no problem poppet. See you later xxx

Strange--I don't see in the definition 'cranky person who wears too black too much and tends to be too focused and serious' next to this one in the dictionary... :-)

Influencing consumer behavior and marketing to me

One area in the UK which reminds me more of the US than Germany is the ability and willingness of vendors to modify prices to change consumer behavior to meet their business goals.


Specific examples in the past week:

1. Asda - As mentioned, I'm a big fan of online grocery shopping to avoid the queue and hassle of carrying everything down the street and up four flights of stairs. As I don't buy fresh things online but rather heavy/bulky things (cat litter, paper towels, fizzy water, wine, etc), I have a good deal of flexibity in my ordering and am gearing up to do a big order once per month.

I was looking online and starting to put together my order last week, for this week. Asda (for whatever business reason they had--numbers to make, knowledge of consumer spending during school holidays, whatever), dropped the delivery change down to 2.50 GBP per order for a few days in the last week of August.

As it is, I'm already on the low end of the online delivery food chain. Prices from the big supermarkets generally go anywhere between 3.50 and 6.50. Tuesday/Wednesday from Asda tends to be the rock bottom 3.50 rate. Drop me down a pound further and I'm influenced to order a week earlier. I never felt that Germany was able to vary in their prices so much, or to be overly responsive to the market. Strawberries are cheap in July as they're in season, my favorite fizzy water would be sold 2 crates for 6.66 once per quarter (yeah, that one was easy to remember), but everything always seemed very planned in relation to prices or sales, or maybe that was just my small area with limited competition or choices...

2. Papa John's pizza - no better way to celebrate the end of vegan month than a discount pizza. I ordered online from them once, and now I get an SMS once a week with a special offer which isn't available online. It's specifically from my local outlet, so I guess they can be clever and anticipate what they want to move (if anything) during a particular week. Tonight it was 'any pizza 9.99 tonight or Wednesday'. In Germany I always went with the local pizza places but none of them 1. had online ordering or 2. did any sort of midweek special. The price was the price which was the price, be it Tuesday afternoon or Friday night. Although carryout did get you a 10% discount. Here these offers tend to come during slow times. Usually they would be Mon, Tues or Wed pizza at a special price, but with yesterday's bank holiday their offer came out today for today and tomorrow.

Speaking of UK pizza delivery--another thing I'm a big fan about here is ordering online. I hate to call and be on hold or not understand the UK accent. Even better, let me order and pay online--then, send me an email that the order is received and then an SMS when the delivery guy is on his way out the door. I'm a big fan of technology when used well.

into a 3 day weekend

i like how the UK seems to put all bank holidays on a monday. i'm also pleased with this one as it seems like a great time to schedule a bank holiday--the last week of August--odds are good for sunny weather. much nicer, than say, the November 1 one in Germany where it was usually raining that day in my corner of the world. ;-)

and even better--the stores are open here on a bank holiday, although on limited hours. therefore none of that crazyness of last minute shopping due to the stores being closed on sunday/monday--so feeling stress-free tonight. :-)

6 months

August 15th marked 6 months in the UK for me. I've been busy with other things, as well as that time is flying, so I haven't been overly introspective on this point.


However--I was out watering the roof terrace garden, specifically the pepper row that week:

Tucked behind them, between the peppers and the glass wall was a greeting card.

The front says 'Congratulations', inside is a handwritten message to someone (not me) about a training contract.

I'm not an overly religious person (although I have no issue with those who are), but I do retain some spiritual belief in the connectedness of the universe. I took it as my mother sending me a card from heaven congratulating me on 6 months here, and that things are going well.

Uninformed, analytical, agnostic Semi-significant other who misses some of the background details on this topic, looking at this from face values says: 'this card isn't for you.'

Heather: 'I'm four floors up off the street and getting a card down from Heaven isn't so easy in general, let alone four floors up onto a private roof terrace. It was deposited in my peppers on an anniversary, therefore it was most certainly for me, so that I knew she was thinking of me. And such good taste, a Marks and Spencer card no less, very impressive of her.'

I believe that the universe works in mysterious and impressive ways sometimes... ;-)

From the Saturday market and the rooftop garden

I went at 16.20 so the prices were starting to drop for the 17.00 shutdown. :-)

-In the photo, starting at 12 o'clock, 3 packages of strawberries from Kent, all 3 packages together were 2 GBP

-1 o'clock - 5 ears of corn for 2 GBP

-4 o'clock - 6 peaches for 2 GBP

-center - 3 bananas for 60 pence

-6 o'clock - 3 packages of berries for 2.50 GBP

-8 o'clock - young purple broccoli shoots and leaves, the giant bag for 1 GBP

So everything in the photo came to 10.10 GBP (16.51 USD/11.52 EUR). Food tends to be more expensive here in the UK, so I was pretty pleased at the above. To preserve the berries I am drying them as I would only be able to go through one package of the raspberries and one package of the strawberries before they would start to go off.

What aren't I buying there?

- Lettuce - I'm still a big convert of lettuce in a bag with the roots in dirt from asda as that extends its shelf life for me. Next week my roof terrace lettuce should be ready.

- Tomatos - those are coming from the roof terrace as well.

-Peppers - I'm not a big fan of eating them although I do enjoy growing them. Unfortunately, the roof terrace favors pepper growing. This proficient one has produced 3 so far with 18 more still growing, nevermind what her 3 sister are doing in their own right (the scotch bonnet, bell pepper and sweet pepper plants).

Other people get overwhelmed by zucchinni, I'm stuck with peppers. I never imagined this would be the case in the UK...

I've now taken to inviting people over so that I can make pepper based dishes. ;-) Tonight's guest is being treated to Mexican with a variety of chopped up pepper based salsas and fresh pepper toppings for the tacos.

Some German English fun

Yo H, where've you been?
Still here, busy with work and some holiday planning. In addition, I have a German visiting. She came to me through http://www.hospitalityclub.org/, similar to http://www.couchsurfing.org/ if you know that one.

She is a student who has never been to the UK before or to any native English speaking country. She's spending her time and limited student funds trying to see as much of the country as possible and rachet up her English, which until now has been only 'school English'.

Not wanting to deter someone from their dream, I've only been speaking English to her-- although I will give her the English word when she only knows the German term. She wanted to 'mitfahren' to save on expensive British train fares but was having difficulty to find a source in English without knowing the term 'rideshare'.

Of course she makes the classic German mistakes: 'I drive with bus'.

But I love the other mistakes or how someone comes up with a way to say something in English, which while correct is not how a native would usually say it, because it gives you better insight into their language and seeing things in differently in English. This morning as I'm trundling out to work she tells me:

Your cat, she was broken in this night.

(Pause, Heather thinking--looks at cat who is noisily gulping down breakfast--she is physically fine having ran into the kitchen upon hearing me...)

(thinking.....The cat does meow a lot, I did warn the girl that the cat can be locked in the hall so she is not so disruptive....or maybe the cat was walking on her while she was trying to sleep, meaning she's broken or not well trained, although I did warn her that she wakes up at 2 AM full of energy....the girl is not so much a cat person, she's always had dogs....I haven't yet had any coffee so I'm not awake enough to figure this one out....she's broken...kaputt sein...defekt...lots of words ending in brochen, what can she mean?)

On the floor...where you are standing...?

Oh! She threw up, she was sick = she is broken.

Sheesh, I must be losing my touch, I don't think I would have figured that one out even with coffee.

The face of new Europe

While shopping on High Street on Sunday, I saw these two. (Yes! in my corner of Essex, all the shops are open on Sunday--but that's a different post.)

Unfortunately I missed to get the fellow's face in the photo--his is painted with the Lithuanian flag, while hers has the Polish one.

I've been to the store they advertise, it's close to my flat. Specifically--this store has all sorts of Eastern European goods--frozen pierogis and jars of mushrooms from Poland, Russian juices, frozen Lithuanian cepelinai, that sort of thing. There's little in the store which isn't Eastern European--unless it's something from elsewhere in Europe which one can buy in Eastern Europe--i.e. German Milka bars.

I find it interesting that they advertise the store as 'European' rather than 'Eastern European'--or maybe that's how they see themselves--as opposed to British.

They have little competition in my corner of Essex, beyond Tesco's token attempt to sell to the Eastern Europeans here by importing their cheeses and jars of pickles.

Vegan day 9 - Fresh Saturday

Were you wondering what happened with the food from the Saturday market?

Everything looked so great and fresh, so I went extremely basic on the cooking--minimal spices and low, short cooking.

Here is a third of the carrot bunch. The were sliced in half and given a short fry in olive oil.

Here are potatoes, fresh from the roof terrace garden:

The broad beans were in the '1 pound' markdown area, so I knew they needed to be used Saturday or Sunday. They had gone for about three minutes into boiling water and then were rinsed in cold water. Right after that they were shelled. Here new friend Ian is demonstrating the appropriate shelling technique.

The cooked potatoes and beans were then combined together. I had some ideas from http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/content/recipes/, I like their photos, as well as that their recipes are not too complex. They were suggesting mint as the appropriate spice, but I wanted to leave out anything heavy as I wanted to truly taste the potatos.

Super Saturday - from the market

August is a great time to buy local produce here in the UK. Most of the 'local' produce here is coming from Essex or Kent. It's especially good if you go at the end of the market day on Saturday as the prices start to drop. ;-)

My photo isn't so great, but starting at the bottom and moving clockwise:

1 bunch of carrots
2. cauliflower - the carrots and the cauliflower were a deal together, for 1 GBP
3. 3 kilos of onions - 1 GBP
4. bunch of 4 bananas (the only non-local item) .90 p
5. in the back - tomatos on the vine and small tomatos - the gigantic bag weighing a few kilos for 2 GBP
6. broad beans - 1 GBP for the lot of them
7. strawberries - 2 containers for 2.50 GBP
8. in front - rosemary/olive oil bread - 2.50 GBP

I'm now set for the next few days with veg, excluding lettuce. :-)

Vegan dinner - day 7

Yeah, back to Mexican. :-)

Tonight: two bean burritos I assembled at home, easy peasy. A can of beans plus two flour tortillas. I was feeling a little edgy so I applied liberally jalapeno peppers to the interior. ;-)

To the right, I whipped up a little tomato mix to liven them up. I had roma tomatos from the weekly market. I added chopped garlic (from the roof garden) and as well as a pepper from up here. I finally have my first rooftop tomato which is about ready to be picked, looking forward to that one tomorrow...

Vegan dinner - day 6

It was warm and humid here today through this evening, now it's cool and rainy.

Today's dinner was pasta, two zuchinnis (we're in full zuchinni season here, they're dirt cheap!) in Dolmio's pasta sauce and a bit of bread. These pasta sauces have been on sale at asda, two 500 gram jars for 3 GBP. I'm a big fan, because there is nothing in these sauces which wouldn't be there if I made them from scratch.

You may notice this is a little carb heavy for me. I've noticed when I go vegan, to drop the cheese out of meals really knocks out a lot of the fat/calories. The rest of my work days usually look like this:

Breakfast: 08.00 - coffee in the office

09.30ish - cereal in the office. (I keep Bran Flakes in my desk drawer)

Lunch: 11.30ish - lunch in the office. Lunch is usually a leftover dinner. So when I made the above tonight, I made enough to have a second, smaller portion which will be tomorrow's lunch, usually with a side of salad, but sans bread.

Dinner: 17.00ish - tonight's dinner was the above.

19.00 - tonight a small bowl of cereal (again, focusing on the carbs a bit more than usual to keep the energy up--not normal when i'm my normal vegetarian self).

My morning commute

I walk about five minutes from the center of town to enter the park.

Most people are coming into town to work or catch the train to London while I'm heading out of town.

After about 15 minutes through the park, I continue on pedestrian paths.

The pedestrian paths finally end in a cute little neighborhood.

The final ten minutes are industrial areas similar to what you'd see on the intro to the Sopranos, so we'll skip those photos. :-)

A little over two miles each way, twice a day, usually four days a week = 16 miles of walking/week for the purpose of 'commuting to/from work'.

On each trip I burn approximately 145 calories for my walking speed/weight.

vegan eating - day 2 Mexican Sunday

It's difficult to find good Mexican food in Europe. Thankfully, finding the ingredients in the UK is a little easier and less expensive than it was in Germany.


Breakfast was coffee.

Here is the late lunch. Starting around the table, here we go...

11 o'clock is Old El Paso refried beans.

12 o'clock is a veg chili mix from Asda. The suggestion is to add mince to it, but it perks up nicely with dried soya chunks.

1 o'clock is some of those mushrooms from the freezer with Old El Paso Mild Fajita Sauce. I orginally bought this sauce because it was a markdown due to a torn label and I was pleasantly surprised with this one. It has a mild smokey flavor.

3 o'clock is partially hidden behind a glass, it's the lettuce, tomato and pepper salad from yesterday.

4 o'clock is fresh tomatoes, a smattering of garlic, and more garden fresh pepper - a light little flavor

6 o'clock is mild English cheddar for New Friend Ian.

7 o'clock is Heather's sauce. Chopped tomatoes, garlic, and Dave's Gourmet Insanity Sauce which I bought at Asda in the UK.

9 o'clock is some fajita wraps.

The setting is outdoors on my patio table, slightly in the shade because it was hot as heck.

Later in the day was leftover Chinese from yesterday.

Aug 1 - vegan eating day 1

Saturday started off with a long 'to do' list of things to do in town and tasks at home. As I've been living in this flat for almost two months, I'm starting to get more ideas about how I want to use the space in some areas.

Breakfast - coffee at home.

Lunch - since we were out and about in town, we went to Nosh+Coffee. The one in the center of my corner of Essex is relatively new...

On the plus side:

-they are less expensive than their coffee counterparts Costa or Starbucks

-their food selection is more expansive--salads, sandwiches, containers of fresh fruit for 1.50 GBP

-they have a vegan option - salad with beans, hummus, and falafel for 3.50 GBP (which I had), as well as plenty of decent veg options like a feta cheese salad or egg and mayo sandwich.

On the negative side:

-I suspect the people management is lacking at this particular one, or maybe they're all this this, it's the only one I've been to. When you go to the main Costa in my corner of Essex, it's staffed by friendly Eastern Europeans or Spaniards, the Costa above the bookstore is staffed by friendly students, the Coffee+Nosh people are always sour faced, or complaining to one another about their work hours. But anyway...the salad is quite nice...

Dinner: We start with fresh peppers from the garden...

I'm not a fan of eating peppers, but I enjoy growing them for my guests...

I did a stir-fry--it's broccoli from the Saturday market, zuchinni from my garden and tofu, which later had Sharwood's Kung Po sauce added:

The final results....

At 12 o'clock on the table is a fresh salad with lettuce, tomatos, and olive oil.

1 PM is a homemade dipping sauce: tamari sauce, olive oil, water, dried chilli pepers.

3 PM is homemade vegan spring rolls that oversprung

The bottom are our two plates in action

center of the table is the fresh peppers chopped up.

The fancy table setting is a giant cardboard moving box which gets a new round of paper to cover it weekly. I still haven't decided upon a dining room table or coffee table yet, so I'm making due with this one until I figure out how I want the layout of the flat to be.