An Intense Meal

(Based off a real meal in Hungary)


Aaaannnnd... it's dinner time! In the leftmost seat, we have Andrew! In the rightmost seat, we have Boyuan! May the eating commence!

Down the hatch each bite goes... but not without each diner staring at the other! Ah, yes, here come the narrowed eyes, the tense jaw, the lack of a smile! But wait- is that a laugh escaping from Boyuan's lips?

(10 minutes later)

After ten minutes of intense staring, we have come to the end of the main course! Our two diners must now prepare themselves for the upcoming predicted-to-be-equally-tense dessert. Wait- what's this? They propose a sculling competition with the carbonated water! All right then- the contestants are ready- on your marks, get set, SCULL!

Down it goes! 100mL down, 200mL... oh no, Boyuan has stopped to laugh- she'll have to pull herself together if she hopes to beat Andrew! Right, she's started sculling again... the score is now 400mL to 250mL... 500mL to 350 mL... and SCORE! Andrew reigns victorious!

***

INTERVIEW
Reporter: So, Andrew, how do you feel about your victory over Boyuan tonight?
Andrew: *BUUURRRP* <-- the result of drinking too much soda water
Reporter: Hmm... I see. Have you got any tips for an up-and-coming sculler?
Andrew: *BuuuURRRrrrp*

French vs. Chinese

One of the massive differences between French and Chinese is easily outlined in how you ask for food at a restaurant.

French: Je voudrais [insert food here], s'il vous plait.
Chinese: Wǒ yào [insert food here].

In the French version, "voudrais," a more polite form of the verb "vouloir" (to want) is used. After the name of the food, you say "s'il vous plait," which means "please," and in fact it's an even more polite form of "please" ("s'il te plait" is more informal).

In the Chinese version, you literally only have to say "I want."

Here are the two statements, this time translated into English (I'm not really sure what to call them, because you're asking but you're sort of asking indirectly by saying what you would like rather than asking if you can have that particular food).

French: I would like [insert food here], please.
Chinese: I want [insert food here].

Chinese is so blunt sometimes. In the Du Du Xiong books, one of the pigs is called Xiǎozhū féiféi which literally means "little pig fat fat."

And that is why I like learning Chinese.

We all need to gatecrash CHOGM and...

... rickroll 'em.

RICKROLL'D!!!!

Music Tour- Day Five

The next day, we returned to the Kodály School for morning workshops. Before we left, we saw a taxi with the coolest phone number ever- 5-555-555. Angus came around handing out Theodora water (the water that I quickly learned to identify and then avoid because of its taste). I took a bottle, simply because I figured that it was better to have horrible tasting water than no water at all. Angus agreed with that- in fact, when he was handing out the bottles, he did say, “It’s pretty gross, but it’s better than nothing!”

By the time we reached Kecskemét, Eden had somehow tied a knot in his Theodora water bottle. How he did that is, as yet, a mystery of life still to be resolved.

At the Kodály School, a class had been set up on the auditorium stage for us to observe (in a non-creepy way, of course). We watched as the class warmed up and I was wondering if they would make people sing on their own, Miss C-style, in front of all 166 of us.

They did.

And they were brave about it, too.

Such incredible courage they must have! I mused to myself that if we were asked to do the same and Miss C asked me to sing on my own, I would have outright refused. I learned something quite important from these Hungarian students, though: I learned that if I sang more bravely, then it would help me to sing better. I think it was this day that one or two of their girls’ choirs sang for us. My favourite song out of those that they sang was “Hello Goodbye” by the Beatles.

That afternoon, we travelled to Tanyascárda, a puzsta (I think it’s a type of farm) in Hungary. We had goulash for lunch, during which several musicians performed to us. One was a violinist, another was a double bassist and the third a percussionist playing an interesting keyboard instrument I had never seen before but had heard of in some country music. They played a lot of songs that we all knew, like Csárdás and Hungarian Rhapsody. During “My Heart Will Go On,” the violinist serenaded Claire (though from my point of view it looked as if he was serenading Jacinta)! The violinist then sold copies of his CD for 3000 Ft each. Unfortunately I only had 2 000 Ft on me at that point. It was a shame since that was the thing I wanted the most in Hungary.

After lunch, we were introduced to some Hungarian students in an advanced English class from the Kodály School before participating in some games such as the sack race and a wheelbarrow race (using a real wheelbarrow-type thing, not that thing where you lift up someone’s legs and they walk with their hands). Stevie J participated in everything.

We were then taken to a horse show by horse and carriage. We had to be taken in groups (I think it was bus groups again) because there weren’t enough horses to take us all. While waiting, someone managed to put a daisy chain on Stevie J’s head! Trent then lent him his sunglasses, and soon Stevie J was surrounded by everyone taking a photo of him! Angus then asked Boyuan to write “What a Gun” on his arm using a marker he had brought along, and Boyuan wrote “water gun” instead to really annoy him.

Eventually our time came to be taken to the horse show. Along the way, Scotty dropped his bag. The driver stopped to allow him to pick it up. When Scotty was nearly back to the carriage, the driver started up again! It was an amusing sight, watching Scotty sprinting after the carriage. (The driver eventually did stop to allow him to get on.)

The horse show was pretty interesting. The horse trainers could get their horses to sit like a dog and lie down on their sides. The horse trainers even lay down on top of the horses, and the horses stayed stock-still! Later, a donkey trainer arrived and demonstrated the same tricks. We also saw some games that the horse-riders played. One game had one player with a scarf and the other players had to try and get the scarf off them. After the show, we got a chance to look at the farm animals, some of which were very young.

Before we had to leave, we had to sing one final song for the advanced English students who had come with us. The song chosen was a parody of Viva la Musica- “Viva la Kecskemét.” I accidentally sang along with the basses at the start, but fortunately nobody noticed!

On the bus, the boys were going on about “sleazing for the camera.” Of course, Scotty did this the best- no surprises there. On the way back, while I was rejoicing in the fact that I wasn’t one of the people who stepped in horse shit, we listened to music on the CD bought from the violinist. One of the songs on there was Vltava- one of my favourites!

Music Tour- Day Four

On Sunday, we left our hotel early for Kecskemét, a town in Hungary. Towards the end of the bus ride, I finally got the Flower Duet out of my head, but unfortunately this only happened because the Tetris Song got stuck in there instead. We first visited the Town Hall and were greeted by the chiming of bells from both the Town Hall and a nearby church. Once inside, we were greeted by the Mayor of Kecskemét, and I felt as if I spoke a minority language because we needed one of the tour guides to translate for us! The mayor welcomed us and spoke a little about Hungarian history, and I felt that I would go home knowing more about Hungarian history than about Australian history.

After the mayor’s welcome talk, we left the town hall and sorted ourselves into bus groups. Two groups were to go directly to the Kodály Institute, while the other two groups looked around the town briefly (and I do mean briefly). While waiting to move off, a couple of guys cycled past on interesting bikes. It was like a fairly large unicycle with a trainer wheel at the back. They cycled forth once, then back, whistling as we snapped photos. Eventually, bus groups 1 and 2 moved off and we were left aimlessly looking around Kecskemét while waiting for groups 1 and 2 to leave the Kodály Institute.

A little to the left of where we were standing (from the point of view of leaving the Town Hall), there was a small model of Kecskemet. After admiring this model and the beautiful flowers nearby, our attentions turned to a small hill-shaped monument which everyone took turns sliding down. Next up was a fountain, followed by a wall with the year “1956” engraved on it (I’m not sure what the significance of this was, there was probably a description somewhere but most likely it would have been in Hungarian anyway).

We finally set off for the Kodály Institute. We were shown into an average-sized room with about 5 pianos in it (if I remember correctly, there were one or two grand pianos and a two or three upright pianos). We were shown a video about the Kodály Institute which had a song that we all recognised- we had had to learn it in choir so that we could sing it with Hungarian students at the Kodály School. The song was called Cohors Generosa and had lyrics in Hungarian and Latin. After the video was finished, we collected pamphlets about the Kodály Institute. The people there said that we could show them to our teachers, but our teachers already used Kodály methods anyway.

We then headed off for the buses. On the way, a car had to slow down for us as we crossed the road (then again, the car probably would have slowed down anyway as we were crossing at an intersection). My fear instincts suck because they aren’t helpful at all- in fact, they probably compromise my survival. I froze but then I quickly leaped to catch up with the others. There’s always safety in numbers when crossing the road. (Later on, I wrote in my diary, “standing in the middle of the road, even on a dotted line, is one of the worst things that you can do (*cough*Jasmine COJ-girl*cough.*)”)

The bus took us to the Kodály School, which was a mixed primary and high school specialising in music. On our way up the stairs, we encountered a poster which said that our school was famous, which intrigued us. At the top of the stairs, we were given morning tea- different types of juices and biscuits.

The toilets at the Kodály School were, to put it lightly, strange. They sounded like wannabe aeroplane toilets, and at the time I wrote that they sounded like vacuum cleaners on steroids, though not as loud as aeroplane toilets.

After morning tea, we entered the auditorium. The teacher there was pretty funny. He told us about the music program at the Kodály School and their ensembles. Boys’ choir wasn’t compulsory for the same amount of time as girls’ choir- probably because the boys there apparently annoy their teacher to no end because they’d rather play soccer than sing. A few minutes later, a bunch of Hungarian girls came in, and the teacher said, “Oh, these Hungarian girls! You tell them to come at 10.15, and they’ll come at 10.30! You tell them to come at 10.30, and they’ll come at 10.45!” The Hungarian girls sat in between us. The teacher told us to introduce each other, which we did. I wouldn’t be able to pronounce the name of the girl next to me even if I tried, but it sounded something like “Jill” except 10 000 times more awesome. As a group, we all warmed up and sang two songs together: “Cohors Generosa” and another song called “We Gather Here Together.” The Hungarians’ pronunciations of solfa put us off at times, because they pronounced “re” “ri.” “Ri” using Australian pronunciations for solfa is one semitone higher than “re.” Some people, including me, were tempted to sing “ri” instead of “re” because of the confusion. Another solfa-pronunciation difference which turned legendary was in what seemed to be their most common warm-up: “doh-re-doh-lah-doh.” The Hungarians pronounced this “doo-ri-doo-lah-doo.” Pronunciation differences aside, the Hungarian girls were amazing singers, and afterwards we all discussed how inadequate we felt beside them!

After singing together for a little while, we had lunch in the cafeteria of the Kodály School- a three-course-meal, which I thought was amazing for school food (especially considering that prior to Europe Tour I would have only had three-course-meals at restaurants if at all). Max managed to eat all of his quickly and go back for seconds, whereas I only just managed to finish mine. I seem to remember that there was one fruit that nobody wanted to eat (can’t remember whether that was due to it looking “suspicious” or whether everyone was full by that time) but I can’t remember what it was- I think it may have been an orange.

It was then back to the auditorium for practise for that night. If I remember correctly, Senior Chorale practised “Like a Prayer,” “Viva la Musica” and “Joshua Fight de Battle ob Jerico.” Wind Orchestra didn’t get a chance to perform because the stage was too small. After practising for half an hour or so, anyone who wasn’t performing in any other ensembles got to have afternoon tea and then go for a walk, though not too far. It was during this time that Jeff and some other boys discovered McDonalds, and when they returned, they returned with a hilarious story about Jeff ordering food. He wanted chips, but the guy didn’t understand him, so he had to point to a picture of chips. Then he wanted coke, and he had to say, “Coke! Coke! Coca-cola!” before the guy understood! (It doesn’t look so funny written down, but it was hilarious at the time.)

When most people had arrived back from their journeying around the neighbourhood, a few games took place. Boyuan, Jess C and Jacinta grabbed daisies from where they were growing nearby and stuck as many as they could onto Stevie J’s back before he noticed and tossed them all off his back. Eric tried to do a 720, and he succeeded before falling in a heap on the floor. A competition then ensued between the boys to see who could be the first to jump on to the raised circular platform in front of the Kodály School no-handed. Last, but not least, there was a limbo competition in which I was one half of the bar. A bunch of people participated, including Murphy Minor.

After performing that night in the concert, which seemed to have pleased the audience very much, we boarded the bus to learn that Nora was to be our tour guide no longer because she would have to work at BP on weekdays. (If I remember correctly, she said something about this on the way to Kecskemét- something along the lines of, “I started working at BP two weeks ago. I hate it!” and then proceeding to talk about BP’s rules for going down stairs!) Nora introduced us to our new tour guide, Eva. While Nora was talking, I decided that my favourite accent was now Hungarian and not British.

***

That night, I had the funniest dinner in my life.

Boyuan, Amy and I were sitting at a table with Andrew, who was sitting there really awkwardly. He even showed it by making the “awkward turtle” sign. Somehow, throughout the conversation, Andrew began glaring at Boyuan really weirdly, making us all laugh. The way Andrew and Boyuan were glaring at each other made dinner very intense. That in turn somehow managed to lead to a competition in sculling soda water. Andrew won, and burped lots of times, really loudly too.

After dinner, the teachers organised a walk around Budapest (which Amy and I didn’t go on). Apparently, a random Hungarian guy yelled “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!” at them, to which all the people who went on the walk (and there were a LOT of them, probably around about 100!) yelled back, “Oi! Oi! Oi!” Upon hearing about this, I was sad that I decided not to go on the walk that night, but at least I got the chance to have a good shower. I also got the chance to write in my diary:

“We are an Australian school in Hungary. We must represent our country with dignity. So we do. We:

·         Have soda water sculling competitions

·         Have intense limbo competitions in front of the Kodály School

·         Dive down the sides of a hill-shaped monument in Kecskemét

·         Say “Thanks, mate!” to the waiters in a Hungarian restaurant

·         Add loads of sugar to the soda water

·         Make suspicious-looking drinks that taste really weird by combining a bunch of available ingredients

·         Answer the phone in odd ways (e.g. “George Washington is not here!”)

·         Play saxophone in our rooms (I can hear one from here)

·         Make plenty of innuendoes

·         Wear our belts backwards

·         Sit in terrible positions

·         Stick flowers on Stevie J’s back

·         See who can be the first to jump on a particular point

·         Attempt to do 720s

·         Do everything “just casually” (this seems to have been the catchphrase of the trip so far)

·         Scream “SHUT UP!” at each other when an announcement comes on for our flight

·         Invade McDonalds in Dubai Airport and Hungary

·         Eat an entire main meal with a knife

·         Blow across the water bottles to make a sound

·         Tap on the bottles with cutlery to make sounds

·         Play UNO in the corridors of the hotel

Revolutions and Revolutionaries

I made this video for English a while ago. The music, composed by me, is a remake of The Singing Magicians (also composed by me- I wrote about it briefly in another post).

Chinese has some cool words.

Table tennis: PING PANG QIU.

Point made.

Music Tour- Day Three

This day was a sightseeing day for us. After eating breakfast and being assigned with a number for count-off (I was number 7), we waited outside for the buses. In the meantime, we played with the hotel’s revolving door. Boyuan kept on passing the entrance, saying, “Oh no! I missed it! Oh no! I missed it again!”

Our first stop was on top of that hill that the bishop was pushed down all those years ago (unfortunately, I don’t know what the hill was called- I believe it was named after the bishop). From the hilltop we had a lovely view of the River Danube and the buildings on the two sides of the river. Budapest, like most other cities with a river, has been divided by it. One side is the Buda side and one is the Pest side. The Buda side is older, and one of the two sides is also hillier than the other but I’ve forgotten which one.

On the way down from the hill, we passed by a cat. Everyone started taking pictures of it. One of the chaperones walked past us, and upon seeing what we were doing, said, “You’re going to see a cat in England, you’re going to see a cat in Belgium, you’re going to see a cat in France and you’re going to see a cat back home in Australia!” (We didn’t end up seeing a cat in all of those places!)

We then headed to the Castle District which had its fair share of historic buildings, one of which was the Matthias Church. Before going there, however, Nora told us about one of the superstitions of a nearby university. Near the university was a statue of a horse. The statue was greenish in colour except for its balls, which were gold. University students believed that if they climbed the statue and touched the balls of the horse, they would get good grades. We all got the opportunity to touch the balls of the horse, and we even managed to get Stevie J to do it too.

Right before we entered the church, we saw a man showing off a falcon (I believe it was a falcon, and, if I remember correctly, it’s also the national bird of Hungary).

The Matthias Church was the first cathedral I had ever been in (though it certainly wasn’t my last). Every pillar and archway was ornately decorated, and it was dimly lit apart from stained glass windows near the roof and at the end of the cathedral. The roof was high, making the cathedral one of those places where if you drop a pin it would probably echo.

We walked through Fisherman’s Bastion and saw a guy who could imitate all sorts of birds and animals with his voice. We didn’t have much time to marvel, though, because the buses were waiting to take us to the Kaltenberg Restaurant for lunch.

I can’t remember what we ate, but the food was good. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to sit with my friends because the tables were full. I sat at a table with the boys, who finished eating twice as quickly as I did. When we were served our main course, Scotty said, “Thanks, mate!” to the waiter. It was pretty funny.

After lunch, we all went to the Hungarian Parliament House. We entered the house in bus groups, which was just as well, because the poor old building would probably be overwhelmed by 139 kids storming in at once. It would have been a shame too- it’s a beautiful building.

While we were waiting, we could hear loud fanfares. We could tell the rough direction from which the noise was coming from, but we had no idea who had made it or why. Soon motorcycles started storming around the street and some special smoke of different colours appeared down one end of the Hungarian Parliament House.

The Hungarian Parliament House was an impressive building, both inside and outside. It had high roofs and a large dome in one of the rooms. It was also ornately decorated. The House of Representatives was quite large, seating over 200 people- and that’s after the number was reduced. Our own House of Representatives only seats 150 people.

On the way home, we passed by a Costa Coffee. It was as if Miss Costa, the scary Italian teacher at our school, was following us everywhere! (There was also a Costa Coffee at Dubai Airport!)

That night, we went to the Hungarian Opera House to watch an opera called Il Trovatore. It was in Italian, but fortunately, it had subtitles. Unfortunately, the subtitles were in Hungarian, so they weren’t very helpful. In any case, many of us were too tired and jetlagged to watch, so we were practically falling asleep in our chairs (which weren’t particularly comfortable ones at that). We felt so rude doing so, but we were so tired that we couldn’t help it.

After the opera, Eric moved his hand downward in a karate-chop-like motion. Angus was wearing a shirt with press studs, so that didn’t work out too well. During count-off, he had to yell his number from behind the pillar where he was re-buttoning his shirt. As we walked towards the buses, Eric told us that he knew how to undo regular buttons. Angus looked at him and said, “Eric, that is scary. You have a skill for undressing men!”

Music Tour- Day Two

Time to stop being lazy. Here goes...

Eventually, the plane landed at Dubai International Airport. We got off on the tarmac and boarded the buses which were fairly wide and had limited seating so as to provide for the luggage. Someone complained that it was like going on Transperth trains and buses again. Angus started singing Viva la Musica, so some people started singing “Friday” in return as they saw it as the only song that Angus would get annoyed by. Eventually, we arrived at the terminal and had to go through the security checks before seeing with our own eyes the sheer brilliance and amount of planning that had gone into the floor layout of Dubai Airport. To proceed past security checks to the duty free shops and departure gates, one must first go down two floors and then go up two floors (so basically you end up on the same floor which you started on, but in a different area). Once we got to the duty free section, we first checked which gate we had to go to before setting off in small groups. One of the first places we went to was the toilet which had a really long queue because some people needed to go and other people, including me, needed to brush their teeth. Later, we all somehow congregated as a decently-sized Year 10 group in McDonalds. Jonty eventually joined us, saying, “All the shops you could go to in Dubai Airport- and you chose McDonalds! Well, at least you can see ‘McDonalds’ written in Arabic (ماكدونالدز)! That’s worth seeing.”

The next flight was basically uneventful- I basically just played Nintendo DS and listened to some music on the in-flight entertainment system. I was a little scared of the toilets on that flight at first because I kept hearing a random noise that sounded like a vacuum cleaner on steroids, especially when people came back from the toilet, so I began to think that that really was the sound the toilets made on that flight. I realised that this was not the case when I did go shortly before landing.

Eventually, we touched down in Vienna. We were stuck at the airport for a little while as people checked their instruments. I wonder what the random people thought of a whole bunch of teenagers playing instruments in the middle of an airport!

After a while, we left the airport through the “Nothing to Declare” gate. I could go through the gate relatively early since I had an instrument of my own and thus was not required to help out with the percussion instruments. It didn’t occur to me that Europe’s climate was colder than Australia’s, not even when someone said that they wanted to go outside to “feel the cold.” I didn’t put my jacket on before I left the terminal, and consequently I was fumbling with my bag and my neck pillow a little later in trying to put it on. Fortunately, a random guy held my neck pillow for me so my job was made a little easier.

I ended up in the bus parking lot of Vienna International Airport. I was thirsty, but I had been assured that we would be given food and drink shortly. Sure enough, before we boarded the buses, a tour guide named Nora stood up in a shopping trolley and spoke to us. I can’t remember all of what she said apart from introducing herself and the other tour guides and that they had provided us with food. I took the food- a chicken and salad roll, a chocolate bar and water. In my thirst, I gulped down some water, and soon reeled at the taste. It tasted a little like toothpaste mixed with water! I examined the bottle, but it wasn’t very helpful as all of the labels were in Hungarian. All I could understand were the symbols for calcium and magnesium. The chocolate bar tasted a little strange, and I didn’t feel much like eating since I was full on airline food. In the end, I chucked the second half of it in the bin, and saved the roll for later (which I eventually got rid of as well).

Eventually we got around to boarding the buses. I was on Bus 4, which happened to be the only bus of the four that was orange. Nora was our tour guide on this bus, and she promised us that she wouldn’t talk continuously for the entire three-and-a-half hour bus drive to Budapest- a promise which she failed to keep. On the way to Budapest, she talked about Hungarian history and language, as well as giving us special Music Tour badges.

One of the first sheets of paper, if not the first, that she gave us had a list of Hungarian words on one side and English words on the other, and we had to try and guess which Hungarian word went with which English word. I pointed to “hogy vagy?” and asked Nora if it meant “how are you?” Her response was, “Yes! How did you know?” I then proceeded to tell her that I’d looked up a few Hungarian phrases on the Internet beforehand, though neglecting to tell her that “hogy vagy” was the only one that I’d remembered. Nevertheless, Nora announced to the whole bus that I’d achieved an “advanced level” in Hungarian!

Here are the words:

I can’t remember too much of the Hungarian history Nora was trying to teach us. All I remember is that one of the kings (the first king of Hungary, I think) was crowned in the year 1000. All Hungarian children love that year because it’s so easy to remember. I also remember that she said that all of those years ago, when they tried to introduce Christianity into Hungary, Hungarians didn’t like it so they put a bishop in a barrel and rolled him off a steep hill into the river below.

She also said two things about Hungarian money. First, she said that 1000 and 10000 Ft notes are the same colour. Secondly, she said that 200 Ft notes are counterfeit. The smallest note you can get in Hungary is a 500 forint note.

Finally, we arrived outside the Hotel Ramada Budapest. We were given our room keys, and Boyuan, Amy and I set off for Room 403. We crowded into the larger of the two lifts in the foyer and set off for the fourth floor. Our room was near the end of the corridor, surrounded by people we knew, which was good.

Our room was fairly large in comparison to others- not huge, but comfortably big. We had two single beds and a sofa bed which had been made up. Boyuan took the sofa bed and Amy and I took the single beds. It worked out pretty well because Boyuan liked the harder mattress the sofa bed had to offer, and she also liked the extra space. We turned on the TV in our room, and freaked out because our TV said my name (through writing on the screen) and then welcomed us to the hotel!

After freshening up a little, we went downstairs for dinner. Our school dominated the hotel restaurant. We were served three-course-meals, beginning with tomato soup and followed by a main course which I’ve forgotten because I practically fell asleep in it from sheer exhaustion. There was ice cream for dessert, though, and I managed to leave room for that.

After eating, we went back up to our rooms.

“Wow! We’re in Hungary!” Amy said.

All Boyuan and I could say in response was, “Oh, yeah! So we are!”

It simply felt so unreal to be in another country on the other side of the world from home.

Finnish people must hate writing numbers out in full

Finnish numbers 1-20:

1. yksi
2. kaksi
3. kolme
4. neljä
5. viisi
6. kuusi
7. seitsemän
8. kahdeksan
9. yhdeksän
10. kymmenen
11. yksitoista
12. kaksitoista
13. kolmetoista
14. neljätoista
15. viisitoista
16. kuusitoista
17. seitsemäntoista
18. kahdeksantoista
19. yhdeksäntoista
20. kaksikymmentä

It starts off nice and innocent... for the first six numbers.