log 15: amsterdam
flowers
Amsterdam was absolutely incredible. My parents have always talked about the beauty of the little city but experiencing it myself was such a blessing. My first impression was that it was so similar to Singapore. A pleasant twist to some of the other European cities I visited during my trip. It was incredibly clean, the metro was very fast and very modern, and the food was incredible. But what shocked me the most was the amount of nature present at every little corner. Parks, random flowers on the street, the slight overgrowth on the sidewalk, everything felt so much brighter because of the greenery. I was extremely impressed with how well the Dutch people take care of their city. My highlight of the trip was dining at a Michelin Star restaurant, Bolenius. What drew me to them initially was their efforts toward conservation and sustainable gastronomy, which earned them one of the first green Michelin stars. The food there was on another level. The entire menu was based on local ingredients and vegetables that were grown in their own kitchen garden. Their ability to create such complex flavors using simple natural ingredients absolutely blew my mind. Often times in my own cooking, which I’m still improving day by day, I think I need to add more flavor. But dining at Bolenius showed me that I should be focusing on unlocking the flavors of my ingredients instead. It was truly a humbling experience. I also learned that texture and temperature could play a huge part in the dining experience. Having a little crunch, or having a contrasting tempered ingredient are two other tools that I would like to play around with. In the coming weeks, I’m going to play around with food, especially vegetables, to see what kind of flavors I can create simply in my own kitchen.
progress:
I haven’t been able to get a huge amount done on my app but there have been some slight advancements. Now that I am almost done with the basic structure of my app I am able to start the refining process. The way that I am doing this is by following the flow of a first-time user. By putting myself in their shoes I’m trying to develop a seamless transition from downloading the app, to registering, to answering a survey, to start using the program immediately. It feels great to begin adding data and to start thinking about the mathematical processes that I am going to have to start developing. It feels like I’m finally putting my engineering degree to work. So for the coming weeks, I am going to be working on getting the barebones of my app implemented so that a rough draft MVP can be used. After that, it’s just more refining, a little development, then testing. Goosebumps.
