Here is Cho.

Korean American cop probably not the same to Elsie but he's deadly cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJEwAFlGhOQ

Look! Asian!

I'm about to prove my point about turning into my parents here.

So I go to SMH to check out the headlines and see this picture:


So what was my first thought?

"Look! It's an Asian cop! And he's wearing glasses too!"

One thing they were right about on Masterchef…

Olive oil makes things better. I watched a bit of George? repairing some failed meals and he dribbled oil all over them—gross, I thought. Shiny, yes, but yuck. But then a couple of weeks ago I had a friend over and baked bread, and she asked for olive oil with it. WOW. I never realised. It's my new sweet chilli sauce.

Thoughts on interpersonal communication

[I dislike using the term "them", "themselves" when I mean a singular person in general, so I will use the term "he", which is what I was taught in high school Latin, but I really mean any singular person, male or female]

If you are getting to know someone, and if he reveals something to you that is surprising, unexpected or shocking to you, I think you'd do best to keep it to yourself at the moment, because the moment you reveal it, it can make the other person feel a number of things e.g. judged, like a bad person etc etc, which can in turn, lead to him putting up barriers, losing his trust in you, and not wanting to reveal more of himself. Reactions like those interrupt the flow of the conversation.

And really, when someone is telling you about himself, it's not about you, or your reaction to the information--it's completely about him, so give him all your attention, and the care that he needs.

Of course, context dictates how we should react e.g. if a friend runs up to you excitedly and says, "Guess what! Guess what!", it would be appropriate to express shock, excitement or whatever.

But if you're having a deep and meaningful, I try to accept what the other person is saying (which is not saying that I agree with him, or condone what he's saying), understand where he's coming from, and what led him to say what he did.

My affairs with cafes.

Chai in Hobart with accompanying cup of honey.

I don't care much for cafes normally. There are a lot of them around me and I can't be particularly bothered with them. Good to go and sit in when my unit is too cold, but not very close to my heart.

But whenever I'm OUT of Sydney, I love finding a special cafe and owning it. Making it my cafe in Bathurst, my cafe in Maitland, in Katoomba, in Meriwa, in Goulburn. They are burned into my brain as "Cowra has a cafe with cinnamon toast and the bread is like a cloud" and I want to go back there. "Mudgee has a cafe with clean face-washers in the bathroom to dry your hands on, and Zero Japan teapots" and I want to go back there. "Morpeth has a cafe with banana chai lattes and white chocolate macadamia cookies" and I want to go back there. Obviously I'm so much happier when I'm road tripping than when I'm just trying to stay warm at home on a Saturday afternoon in winter, that the emotional connection makes the memories and attachment stronger.

Read, memorize, learn.

I was super impressed to listen to a recorded sermon where a guy preached Hebrews from memory. He memorized it over 2 years, and then spoke it like a sermon. I've listened to it a few times and it's much more dynamically spoken than the audio bible.

I'm going to give Big Chunk Of Bible Memorization another shot. You read a verse, and repeat it to yourself a lot. That's it. I'm going to do 1 verse a day. My chosen chapter has 34 verses. I've written verse 1 on a note to carry around and check if I forget the words. I've also discovered that you can go to ESV online, bring up the tiny fragment you want, and then download the audio of just that verse or fragment. Which means you can put it in itunes and play it on repeat, and say it along with it.

Landlords and cockroaches.

I am a walking dictionary on the real estate market in Sydney. It's become one of my biggest obsessions. I was able to pull a statistic (!) out of my head in conversation that I'd read somewhere this week: When someone was complaining that their landlord was stingey and wouldn't pay for fumigation, I said "they don't have to be nice, there is a less than 2% vacancy rate in Sydney right now. They don't have to suck up to renters". To which this person amusingly replied "I know, but what about integrity! It makes me want to let loose a host of cockroaches when we leave!" I love a strong turn of phrase.

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