UK - Live Football Match @ Old Trafford, Manchester

I don't really follow football matches but I do get excited watching football games. And by football, I mean what North Americans would call 'soccer'. 

Since my brother is a big fan of Man United, I therefore automatically become a Man United supporter, and there is no better place to watch the match other than the Old Trafford.

My first live match was actually a big one: Man United v.s. Arsenal. We were standing (yes, not sitting) on the West Block 3102. That's directly behind the goal post of Man United on the first half of the match. Which means... there were no one else around us other than the hardcore fans of Man United. We pretty much did not sit down at all throughout the entire match. It's a 'standing seat'.

If you come about 15 minutes before the kick off, you can also see the Red Devil mascot wandering around the VIP area.

Soon after some warm up exercises, the players entered the field. 

And ready for the kick off!

Now, unlike watching the match live behind the TV, you don't hear any commentators at all throughout the match. There is no replays, too, so if you missed something... you just miss it. That's why it's much more engaging than watching American football where there are plenty of advertisement moments in between the match and that people are easily distracted with beers and cell phones. There is no time for you to lose focus on the match. Unless it's a really boring one, I guess.

So, you came to the stadium, watch the game, and... that's it?

NOPE!

One crucial part of enjoying a live football match is the singing and the chanting, which was annoyingly replaced by the buzz of vuvuzela in World Cup 2010, South Africa. You should also prepare to memorize the songs and chants before you go to a game, especially if you sit in the 'hardcore fans' area. For Man United's chants, you can check them out in websites like here and here. The most commonly chanted one was 20 Times!, and I even memorized the gestures now :)

And have you ever heard pounding sounds of drums throughout the match? Ever wonder where the drums are located? Well, here are the 'drummers':

See the men standing at the corner? They're the 'drum' bangers. They bang the aluminium structure they were leaning against throughout the game. 

The nicest part of watching a live game on site? When the team you support won the match!

Your first time watching a live match on site? Here's a few of my tips:

1. If you're watching the game in winter, make sure to dress warm enough. Chanting makes you feel warm, but when the game is not very exciting, sometimes people don't cheer that much and you'll feel cold. But if you forgot to bring your scarf or hat, you can always buy their official merchandise from the mega store just outside the stadium. Or if you prefer to save money, you can buy scarfs with Man United logo or faces of the players for 10 pounds.

2. Get some food before the game.

 There are hot dogs and burgers, and if you are the curious type, you can also try roasted pork with stuffings and gravy in Yorkshire pudding. I don't know if this is also available in other areas, but at least they are available in Old Trafford.

To be honest, I don't like Yorkshire pudding that much. It's spongy, it tastes unusual, it's rubbery, it's chewy... well, it just doesn't suit my taste. But hey, I tried it! :)

3. You can't bring drinks from outside, although you can buy it once you're inside. Of course, the drinks are more expensive than if you buy them at the supermarket, but I think the prices are not too bad.

By the way, because of my curiosity and because I trust my brother too much, I was led into buying Bovril because... I haven't heard of it and my brother pretended to know what it is. Chocolate drink, he said. Bah.

I feel like drinking a cup of beef bouillon from a coffee cup. Not the best drink to have in a football match.

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France - Cachou Lajaunie

One day in the supermarket I saw these on the shelf next to the cashier.

These look somewhat fancy, yet classic. I didn't know what it was, and I didn't have time to Google Translate it because I was on the line at the cashier, and it was my turn in 5 seconds after I saw this Cachou Lajaunie.

There's no English or Dutch translation on the packaging. Well, might as well try these. Recently I've been having troubles keeping myself focused for 1.5 hours non-stop in class. Delicious or horrible-tasting, this little peep will be useful.

I opened the package at home and gave these pastilles a try.

The flavour was so similar to what we call Pagoda Pastilles in Indonesia, with stronger cooling effect and perhaps less sugar. It's definitely licorice, but it's so different from the dropjes I had in the Netherlands, so there has to be something in it. My Italian friend really liked it. As for me, I' not really a big fan of these pastilles but these keep me awake in class.

Thanks to Wikipedia and Google Chrome's page translation function, I managed to find out the ingredients: licorice, sugar, starch, lactose, flavored gelatin powder, catechu, iris powder, mastic ressin, essence of peppermint.

Well, the peppermint explains the cooling effect. I'm not sure what iris powder tastes like by itself, but catechu? Cachou? Never heard of it before!

Thanks to this, I did a little research on cachou. Almost all professors who taught me said not to trust Wikipedia, but somehow my gut feeling says 95% of what's written on Wikipedia is correct. Well, it always never hurts to start from Wikipedia and then go on with a more refined research.

So, according to Wikipedia, cachou or catechu is an extract of Acacia that can be used as food additives to provide astringent sensation from tannin, or to provide colour. Catechu, in Indonesian, is also known as gambir. I don't think I've ever heard gambir used as food additives in Indonesia. More like it's a traditional cure for toothache.

I checked on Malaysian Wikipedia on gambir sarawak (still the same catechu) that catechu can also be used as anesthetics (which means eating this will result in less headache during calculation class for me? LOL). But apparently, in Malaysia and Indonesia, catechu is also a cure for early ejaculation. Actually, the moment I searched for gambir sarawak, the first few search results gave me "early ejaculation cure". Seems like this plant has a lot of functions.

By the way, I just realized how nice it is to understand a lot of languages. There are just search results you can read when you type the keywords in languages other than English :D

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The Netherlands - Brain Tonic Mushroom Soup

I forgot to include this interesting story about finding a brain tonic herbal soup mix in Den Haag's China Town. 

I can't read Chinese characters, especially when they are too fancy. I can only read a word that means "monkey head mushroom" and "brain". The rest looked like some encrypted ancient language to me. Lucky enough, I was there with a friend from China. She translated almost everything on the package, and it says that it can improve your brain and also make you smarter. Ha!

The only ingredient I recognize was monkey head mushroom and golden mushroom. And it's actually pretty weird they didn't include goji berry in the ingredients list even though I clearly saw goji berries (on the first picture, the red seed-like dried fruits at the bottom of the package). The rest of ingredients can actually be found in Google and Wikipedia (and I'm actually quite surprised I was able to find good information about those ingredients).

All of the ingredients for Chinese herbal soups are normally preserved by drying. In this case, I have to rehydrate the monkey head mushroom (above) separately in a bowl of water for 10 minutes, then squeeze out the water from the mushroom. They call it monkey head mushroom because when it is at its original or rehydrated state, if you rub the caps, you feel like rubbing a monkey's hairy head :)

The ingredients were nicely and individually packaged. It made me think that this herbal soup premix is actually of high quality. The goji berries also look fresh (they are bright red; some poor quality goji berries look pale orange and are shrunk too much).

In the English instruction, they only said "add lean pork meat" into the soup but when my Chinese friend read the instruction written in Chinese, it actually said "add lean pork or chicken meat" into the soup. Why would they change the instructions? Is pork meat better for English speaking communities? LOL. Lost in translation.

I simmered the soup in low heat for 3 hours. It's very delicious (to me, who is used to drinking herbal soup since young). It's slightly earthy but also sweet because of the goji berries.

Do I feel smarter? Well, you tell me. I left my favorite gloves in an iceskating rink 1.5 hours away by car from Wageningen during an iceskating rink event organized by Thymos, a sports association in my university, a week after I drank this soup. It definitely doesn't improve my short term memory. But hey, it tastes great. I don't mind eating this soup again :D

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The Netherlands - Shiitake Beer

Stir-fried mushrooms are my favorite. I was really excited to find a mushroom specialty shop at Wageningen's open market. They had a stall that specializes in mushrooms.

They have almost all types of edible mushrooms I've encountered in my life. Before this, I enjoyed a large variety of mushrooms cooked in many different ways in a restaurant called Mushroom Pot in Singapore. This stall sells monkey head mushroom (because the texture of the cap feels like a monkey's hairy head - when I rub it with my hands I felt like petting a monkey's head), one of my favorite mushroom. It has a texture like a meat when deep fried: slightly chewy, slightly fibrous.

I bought a small jar of black truffle sauce as well. It costs 7.95 euros, but I think it's worth the price because you only need a little bit of black truffle sauce in a dish. It has a really strong fragrance and taste.

And then, next to the jars of truffle sauce lies beer bottles. Shiitake beer, yup.

I was super curious about this. Technically, mushrooms don't contain a lot of sugar. I'm not even sure if the beer is completely fermented from shiitake mushrooms, or they just added shiitake flavor to it. There was no other information on the label, and the only information available was on paddestoelenrijk.nl.

Google Chrome automatically translates foreign languages into English, but it has some limitations. The translation I got from the website about the shiitake beer was:

"On craft brewed beer with Shii-Take your own nursery.
Made by Special Brewery Oijen."

The original text was:

Op ambachtelijke wijze gebrouwen bier met Shii-Take van eigen kwekerij.

Gemaakt door Speciaalbierbrouwerij Oijen.

It would be great if someone could help me translate this properly, but my guess is that this beer is uniquely crafted by brewing the beer using self-grown shiitake. To simply put it, there is no further information about this beer. Not even the alcohol percentage.

The taste? I'm sorry, I had to stop drinking it after the first sip. It doesn't really have a strong taste, but it's weird. As a mushroom lover I might be a little bit more sensitive towards the aftertaste from mushrooms, especially shiitake because it's the most commonly used mushroom in Asian soups, and I've been eating it for years. I would expect this kind of flavor to go well with savory applications. Not beer.

I couldn't finish drinking it, but I saved it. Have you ever heard of chicken cooked in beer? Yes, it was quite popular, at least I know it was popular among college students when I was in the US. Cooking chicken in shiitake flavored beer? I think it would taste awesome: extra umami factor added. I'll post the results when I'm done cooking it tomorrow for dinner :)

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Weird (read: ecchi) looking bento

This is one of the moments where I say "WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING!?!?!"

^^;

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