Guus Bosman

Last night we went to see Delirium by Cirque du Soleil. The show was in the RBC center, an indoor arena for the Hurricanes and Wolfpack, about 25 minutes from our home.

It was the first time I saw a show by Cirque du Soleil, and it was very entertaining. I really liked the video projections -- they made for great visual effects. The show took around two hours and featured great music, dancing, acrobatics and nice characters. There wasn't much of a story, but most of it was around the "dream" of the main character who encountered beautiful and strange situations.

When the show was after we were from our seat on the I-40 in 10 minutes, a testament to the smart design of the RBC center and its traffic arrangements.

There is something very relaxing about preparing a meal, and I enjoy cooking a lot. Especially in the weekend I like to cook somewhat more elaborate dishes. I've been experimenting with new recipes the last few weeks, and tonight I tried two Asian dishes.

I made Thai Noodles, a very tasty stir-fried noodles dish with a coating based on fish sauce and soy sauce, with jalapeños peppers and garlic. I've made it twice before but tonight it was a lot more spicy than the previous times. I think I didn't clean out the spicy parts from the jalapeño pepper completely, and I can still feel the burn on one of my fingers also.

Next to the noodles I prepared a new dish: stir-fried shiitake mushrooms with carrots. I had never cooked with fresh shiitake mushrooms before, and wow, they are so delicious! I stir fried them with sliced carrots, ginger and a sauce based on rice wine, soy sauce and sesame oil.

Stir-frying is one of my favorite cooking methods and it has a wonderful dynamic. First, I spent about an hour preparing. Slicing, chopping and measuring and mixing the sauces -- everything slow and methodical, cleaning up the kitchen as I go. Then the last part is completely different: as soon as I put the noodles in the boiling water there are 10 minutes when everything happens at once. It requires some planning and it's great when everything is ready exactly at the same time.

It was a delicious dinner but next time I won't combine two stir-fry dishes, no matter how much fun the cooking is. It's nicer to have more variety in cooking style on the plate, like boiled rice or plain noodles. I marinated chicken with a ginger and hoisin sauce for tomorrow.

Yesterday I enjoyed a "Southern afternoon".

First off, the weather is amazing this weekend. Temperatures are in the mid-80's which is almost 30 degrees Celcius. In the Netherlands that's about as warm as it gets when it's a good summer day, and it's only March.

Since we moved to Durham I've been exploring the various local radio stations here. Lately I've been listening to two country music stations; 99.9 Genuine Country and 94.7 QDR. The latter has nice Americana music on Sunday evening, but most of the time these stations broadcast mainstream country music. It took me some time to get used to it but I enjoy listening to it.

I drove to Chapel Hill with the front seat windows of the car open, listening to songs such as "Sweet Country Music", "Tennessee River" and "Anyway" by Martina McBride.

I was on my way to a store in Chapel Hill that, appropriately, is called A Southern Season. I took an exit too early in Chapel Hill and on a parking lot I asked a friendly elderly lady for directions. She was very nice and told me that the store has a great reputation. She then asked me where I was from and said "Welcome to America!".

In the store I spent some time in the aisle with Indonesian condiments and an middle aged Southern lady asked me if I was "finding anything good". She said: "I like to hear you talking".

One of the things about the new site that I received feedback on were the comment subjects.

In the new system it wasn't always clear what article a comments was for, especially in the Recent Comments block on the right hand side. I didn't like that either.

The beauty of Drupal is that you can download and install optional modules that change the default behavior of the site. Today I installed the comment_subject module that makes the comment subjects a lot more logical. Users still have the option to change the subject of a comment but the defaults make more sense now.