Here's your opportunity to live with me!

I'm looking for a flatmate. Preferably a mature-minded woman. You know how to contact me for details.

What I'll be doing to celebrate the The Royal Wedding:

Getting on with my life.

A season for everything

I don't know how I used to live without it, but CAJUN SEASONING IS AMAZING! It is the most delicious way to a quick meal.


For example, if I want a quick dinner, I steam vegies in the microwave (two-three minutes max), shake bucketloads of cajun seasoning on a steak and pan-fry (a minute each side if it's a minute steak), serve with mixed beans (for carbs, takes you as long as it does to open a tin) or with bread. EASY! Add some walnuts or olive oil for healthy fats.

Soy fish earrings.

As suggested. Took no time at all to put these together on Saturday morning. I used my tiniest screwdriver to drill through the tails, cut some hooks off some old earrings and pulled open the wire circles enough to put the fish tails through.

They are a little bit heavy to wear, I suspect. They might look good half-filled with liquid. I shall experiment with that later. After I've eaten the soy. I plan on wearing them to the shops to buy sushi for lunch one day.

Tea/Time.

Every blogger will eventually make a chart. I should make a chart about that. Which reminds me, I love that episode of How I Met Your Mother with the charts. I felt like making one today. Maybe I already made one about thongs, optimal comfort being a short window of time between discomfort and breakage of the toe bit. I forget if I ever posted it.

I call this one Tea/Time. The name is a pun! The point where green and red overlap indicates the short minute I have to scull my tea.

KESC 27: Red Hat review

Red Hat Noodles is a Cantonese style Chinese restaurant, apparently. The place was busy with families as well as students. There are fishtanks which they fish dinner out of. We were sitting at the front, which means you play door lotto because of the gale when someone walks through and leaves it open a crack. It is the worst door in Kingsford.

We decided to go fancy and ordered some quail for entree. Tasty. Having been so bold, we were then very conservative with the mains we ordered: Shan Doon Chicken (which was super delicious, could not complain about it at all except the price, but it was a big serving) Shredded Beef (rather aptly described by Matt as 'lolly chicken') and a stir fry veggie thing (the sort with black rubber mushrooms) and I forget anything else.

The food was all very good, by the way there was the usual average-tasting soup for starters but this one had lotus root in it. It came to $16 per person for the 6 of us, which is more than usual because of the quail but also prices were higher than most Chinese dishes in the area. The service was friendly and quick, the main annoyance was the door.

ALAS! ABCafe was closed. We explored the new Bread Top where Kevin bought Durian ice-cream and then retired to Gloria Jean's to share some cake.

Air!

The office air-con has been literally on the blink most of this week. After 20 min or so it stops and the light blinks. I start to feel stuffy and sleepy and get up and push the button to get air out of it again. If we had windows it would be so much easier. It's even the right temperature outside and everything. All that autumnal freshness going to waste.

Things that are not actually useful #1

Soy sauce fishes. I don't make my own sushi. What else are they good for? Why do I keep them?

KESC 27: Red Hat

We're trying again, this Friday at 6.30.

Job hunting and dating

I think I understand why it's hard for some guys to ask girls out. It's a lot like applying for a job. You send the company your resume and cover letter. You sell yourself and put yourself out there. Only you don't know if they're going to like you or reject you. It can be tough, but you've got to do it if you want the job. You've got to be in it to win it. You've got to be tough enough to handle rejection and move on.

Amen and Shared Amen.

I'm a bit weirded out by the lack of Amening in my new bible study. I'm used to group prayer times where you pray, say Amen, and others say Amen like an echo. The Shared Amen says "yes, I am with you in that prayer." Without the Shared Amen, I pray, say Amen, and feel like the other group members have been listening respectfully but may or may not be with me. It's just taking turns to pray, not group praying.

I guess maybe it's different depending on culture and shyness and habit. Praying in front of people is pretty nervous stuff. But I think the more Amen love the better. I'm a recent fan of the Mmm mid-prayer, as well. When you pray for something, and someone agrees so much that they can't wait till the end so they need to add a "Mmmm" while you pray, it's very encouraging.

Moneysmart plug

There is a new government website, I saw on TV last night, to inform consumers. It is a confusing world. I know I dread buying phone credit and comparing plans.

In my family I was the spender, but frugality was beaten into me with meager allowances ($1 a week from which I had to put half in the bank and give 10% to church so that only left 40cents to actually spend) followed by meagre fast food pay rates, and family jokes about my spending habits ("fashion victim", which I wasn't). As a result, I am now pretty frugal. Pay cheap rent, don't get a credit card debt, shop the sale racks, never update technology, avoid takeaways… it's hardwired into me now. I have confess I do need to fight to be generous, because it's easy to feed your frugality with greed.

Anyway, I've never been disciplined with actual budgeting, cos it's so fiddly. I did once force myself to live off $400 per month (by instantly transferring out my rent, saving and giving). It didn't last very long. But it was nice in a way.

Moneysmart.gov.au has an excellent excel budget. I like that you can put your different expenses in weekly/monthly/quarterly/annually. Rent is monthly, haircuts are quarterly, don't make me do maths! It's all done for me. I also like that you can see instantly how much something costs over a year. Like eating out once a fortnight or so: the annual total is significant. Good thing we eat in Kingsford! So at least I have a budget to work off now. If I can follow it that would be nice.

Actually—what would be nice would be if you could divide your bank account into dozens of sub-sections, flow your pay into them in designated amounts, and then when you get money out or use your card you choose which pool it comes from: entertainment, clothes, medical, travel etc. When your clothes pool is empty, no more clothes. If you have any left over let it accumulate, or if really good designate another pool to switch it into like holiday saving or appeal giving. I shall write to a bank about that.

Plug for Julia Booth.

Our friend Julia is having some "gigs". Her last show was lovely fun, she played her own contemporary Christian music plus a pop set, with her band of boys. The next concerts will be even better cos she's rounded up a bit of a string section and written some new songs. Should be a fun, relaxed night of live music.

Upper Chapter House, St Andrews Cathedral
7.30pm on 15/16th April
$25

Stages of loss.

1) You see your camera lying around somewhere and think "I'll take that with me on the weekend".
2) The next day you pack for the weekend, and it's apparently not lying around somewhere.
3) You spend a few days waiting for it to turn up, because maybe it's lying around somewhere under something or behind some stuff.
4) You start randomly looking under stuff on obvious horizontal surfaces where things might lie around.
5) By this point it is the next weekend. You tidy up significantly, because if it is lying around it won't escape exposure if you tidy up all the way down to the surface of the furniture.

It's still lost, so I'm currently at this stage. My plan going forward is:

6) You wait a few more days or a week, because you need to build up strength and give it another chance to be found accidentally.
7) You look behind heavy furniture.

You buy a replacement. Lucky always buy cheapest camera.