Last night luxury theory.

I read a travel tip recently that a good way to be frugal and still have a refreshing/fun holiday is to be budget for most of your holiday (stay with family, backpack, public transport, eat cheap) and then go all out on the last night (restaurant food, nice hotel, taxi to airport) so that you finish on a high note. That idea suits me to the ground. I'm giving it a whirl in July when I visit Perth with D, we are staying with my sisters all week, and then the last night D found a hotel deal for the city, so we have decided to splurge and be fancy tourist ladies for the final 24 hours. We wouldn't be able to afford a week of hotels in WA by any means, and anyway the whole point is to see my sisters, so this is the perfect way to do it.

Extreme delayed gratification

Jelssie is into delayed gratification, usually to save money. Is there a more extreme case of delayed gratification than this one?

Buy something from US -> get it sent to a US forwarding address -> every two weeks or so, stuff at this address gets shipped to a friend -> friend passes it onto her husband -> husband passes it onto Jess -> Jess to me. Sometimes this process can take up to six weeks.

Washing hair less often.

I've always liked the idea for efficiency reasons. But now I've got back-up from Hamish Blake's wife, who is a beauty writer. She suggested a system of doing your hair before the weekend to have great hair for days without much effort, so I bought some mousse and tried it, and it worked! Less conditioner, a squirt of mousse foam in damp hair, dry it normally with the hair-dryer, go to bed. Wake up and straighten it, and boom! Good hair for 3 days. 3rd day is ponytail day, but it's still a classier ponytail than normal. I'll never again have to take shampoo and conditioner away with on a weekend.

On the other hand, I still want to do Jillian 3 times a week (ideally) so I'm still going to have to wash my hair 3 times a week minimum. Anyway, I feel completely validated by this post too, which advocates washing hair as little as possible, and also using less conditioner, and also I am glad I didn't let the hairdresser do layers in my last haircut.

The last self help article.

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/10-resolutions-for-mental-health

John Piper's resolutions for mental health, or at least for thankfulness and appreciation. I enjoyed reading it. We'd do well to open our eyes and actually see what's around us "declaring the glories of God". Tip 7 I have doubts about, I don't remember being a "child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder" aka Lewis Carroll; I was a child of the wooden spoon on the bottom. But maybe I should let myself be naughty more often. An inspiring example from Andrew: http://www.dailyvowelmovements.com/2013/05/the-definition-of-dropout.html

I find #5 more difficult to apply I think. "I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work." Happy to stare at the sky, not so easy to stop reading articles online.

Too much dessert.

I had a very nice Friday night. Elsie and I saw Ben (and others) do amateur standup comedy in Glebe. Before that we did Japanese things like eat Japanese for dinner and shop in Daiso for Japanese plastic things that all cost $2.80 (I bought 2 laundry bags!!). After comedy we went to the cafe in Glebe that does churros and chocolate. (I don't think the churros were nearly as nice as the ones Lindeback and I made for dessert for bible study people one time.) I had a sundae with 3 scoops of ice cream and brownie in it and it was too big, I didn't finish it. I think I've reached some sort of grown-upness where there is such a thing as too much dessert. I'm putting that on a list of "will regret eating" right after Burger Rings.

Personal compliments.

James Valentine did a segment on bald men once because apparently bald men get told they are bald and its annoying. Der! They aren't the only people to have people point out a very obvious physical trait on a regular basis. I have been guilty of pointing out that someone is very tall. Other targets for comment are pregnant women, red-heads, curly heads, short people, freckly people.

In my study of the works of Jane Austen I have discovered that any personal comment at all was rude. If you met someone and said "that's a lovely dress", rude. Compliment someone's hair or whatever, no. Physical appearance was off limits. The only characters who do it are the vulgar ones, Lucy Steele for example. Today, maybe it's just that all my friends are vulgar, but we quite happily say "nice dress!" and then the person says "I made it!" or "it's from blah shop!". That's the formula someone told me girls have. Swap compliment for source. But maybe it's still rude? Maybe it still implies that your other dresses are less nice? Maybe it does make people feel self-conscious about their appearance for a moment? Maybe the rule is you can compliment people on things that they have made a choice about, but never point out something they have no control over?

The same old story.

Magazines today are filled with unrealistic and unattainable images of women? Nothing new. Real life women have had ribs removed surgically to look like this:

I can only imagine what women had to go through to be this thin:

(Photoshop has some catching up to do in terms of distorting the female body for the sake of fashion.)

(I know photo manipulation is sneakier than illustration, but illustrations still set an unattainable goal, and women have always dieted and maimed themselves for the sake of "beauty". Today's thigh gap is last century's flat chest or the century before's 16 inch waist.)

(I recommend The Sartorialist etc for the tenth time. Images that are real, of actual—albeit usually thin—people, in interesting clothes.)

May never eat chocolate challenge.

Halfway through, hooray! Pats on the back.

It's actually getting harder because I'm more emotionally tired at the moment. And what seems cruel, someone at work keeps refilling a bowl on the kitchen table with chocolates from America. That's really unfortunate timing. First twix, then peanut butter cups, then snickers. But I am proud to say that chocolate eating has been zero, and chocolate-ish things have also been quite low: a hot chocolate on Sunday, some cookies here and there. I'm proud of myself.

Safe and well-off.

Walking across the Domain last night after an hour at the art gallery listening to a jazz trio (free music in the cafe on wednesday nights is a good deal, people!), JK observed that we were lucky to be able to walk around our city at night on our own and not be attacked. That's pretty rare in the world. I agree. We are SO lucky. On a similar theme, I've come to a place in my mind where I don't mind the cost of living in Sydney being so high (3rd most expensive city in the world?) because I know I get a LOT for my money.

No Chocolate update.

So it's been a week. And it's been fine. Tuesday night I realised that I absolutely didn't miss chocolate at all. I had a steak for dinner that night, so I was feeling particularly satisfied I admit. It was hard to go cold turkey off having a bit of chocolate after lunch with my cup of tea, but the craving is much less now. I helped by covering the m&m jar with a plastic bag, because out of sight out of mind is true. And I weaned off evening chocolate by eating my special yoghurt/cookie sundae. On Friday night I scoffed down a little packet of chocolate filled koala biscuits, but didn't realise until afterwards that I'd been eating them for the chocolate not the koala, which is why the challenge is just about avoiding chocolate bars and blocks, not chocolate in all forms because it's so impossible to be vigilant when you are hungry and someone waves asian koala biscuits at you.

How to handle difficult phone conversations.

I'm signed up to Smart Grid, the trial electricity usage thing. (lol, just realised that I got a smart meter installed probably without my landlord's permission. Oh well!) So far, after 6 weeks or so, the fun gadget I was promised which tells me electricity usage in real time has not appeared, I've received non-stop ALERT! text messages from something called Budgetsmart which I took a while to realise is to do with Smart Grid not spam, and basically I don't feel smarter, I'm just being billed more annoyingly. However the customer support people on the phone have been nice, and even when I grumpily replied to the automated SMS "going into debit" reminder ("No I'm not I just paid lots of money!" or something along those lines) I got a courtesy phone call the next day.

So I'm getting good at talking on the phone about stuff that I don't understand but am annoyed about.

0. Write a list or a summary. This is optional, it just helps when I'm out of my depth on an issue.

1. Assume the person in the call centre wants to help you. Expect them to be trained in courtesy and helpfulness. (Smart Grid have all been polite and articulate young men, or possibly all the same man. I'm imagining Jason from the hotel in Miranda.)

2. Speak to the point. It's hard to do this when you feel frustrated and out of your depth. My list helps me be clear and brief when I don't really understand my own problems.

3. Then wait and listen. If you are confident you explained it clearly as per your list, shut up, don't keep waffling uncertainly. You've handed the problem over, the onus is now on them. If you want to sound SLIGHTLY pushy, ask something like "what can you do about that?"

Over-explaining weakens the complainer, I think. You can sound more assertive if you talk less. When I went to the apple genius bar, I kept it friendly but minimal as well. "Carked it. Probably the hard drive." They ask a question, answer it: "it's empty because I already restored it." "yeah it turns on, but it doesn't show up in iTunes." I managed to avoid filling the silence by going on and on about how I plugged it in and it said connected but it froze mid-sync etc etc, and just sat there letting him run tests. If you feel like the silence is awkward, embrace it, and even think of it as a weapon. Speak to the point, and then engage the silence like an invisible sword.

Saucepan lid.

A nifty handle repair. Wire is my favourite tool.

Bobby pins compare.

On the left, common pharmacy or supermarket pins. On the right, the hairdressers secret weapons. You really notice the difference when you pin things, the hairdresser ones grip about 10 times stronger.

Shared living

Having lived in a few different shared households, it doesn't matter who you live with, there will always be something a person does that annoys you. You'll never find the perfect flatmate (though, I think someone came close once). Let's continue the thought with this conversation from jelssie:

E: "I wonder if I were married, if I'd get annoyed with my husband for all the things I get annoyed with all the housemates I've ever lived with, or whether I would just clean up after him and not care."

J: "You'd get annoyed. Everyone is annoying. Although I think it's also a part of marriage to work on not being annoyed. To love the person and serve them, and hope they serve you by not being a mess. But James Valentine does a segment on "what I live with" and couples ring up and complain about a bizarre thing their spouse does, like, never squeeze out the dish mop and leave it gross, or, puts a towel down over the bathmat to keep the bathmat dry. Both extremes are weird!"

Different people make you realise the different things you get annoyed by. I wonder which habits of mine my flatties find annoying...

The Song

There's something about studying for exams that leads me to discover new music. When I studied for my last set of uni exams a couple of years ago, I stumbled upon Two Door Cinema Club.

I have an exam coming up and my song of the moment is Keane's Somewhere Only We Know. Truth be told, I only discovered it after watching Michael Paynter cover it on The Voice:




I love it when he starts wailing from 1:12 onwards. You can purchase his cover from iTunes and listen to it non-stop, just like me.