5. Things I've eaten... hmmm, perhaps we shouldn't do this. But I will. I've been known to eat pretty much anything. It all started when I was about four. When you only eat one lolly a week, and it's a dried plum Chinese Haw Flake, you find that dried bird droppings on the verandah rail have quite a sweetness to them (the wet ones are just gross - don't do it.
A few years later, after an unchaperoned appearance at a birthday party in grade one, I was vomiting up my food from overconsumption when I noticed a whole frankfurt. In my enthusiasm I hadn't even realised I'd swallowed a whole one. What a trick!
Quite some years later (I was 26) I bought a bag of Oysters in Nambucca Heads. I like Oysters a lot. Much too much in fact to let the fact that I had left them behind the seat of my car in summer for 5 days deter me. The handy thing was that in the heat they had all opened up and were QUITE accessible! Sue berated me for it when she found out as it was SO dangerous - but she was wrong. I was fine.
6. I purchased a snack vending machine, "the Snack Shack" from the Tender Centre and set it up anonymously at work, collecting an grand margin of about 15 cents per item (at $1.20 per item). Not only did I have to sit by and listen to people whinge about how skanky it looked, and 'all the food is off' (it wasn't even!), and while people demonstrated to me the new ways they had found to pilfer from it (my wife included)- BUT when I went on company business for 2 months to melbourne to live in a warehouse and take one for the team, the TEAM upended my Snack Shack, took the money and dumped the machine in the industrial bin. I never saw it again.
7. It's pronounced "ěr'on", or for those of you not so clever in phonetics as I "Air-on". No, not like the girls name, that's ErIN - which is quite different. No I don't need you to correct me. Because two a's makes an E vowel sound. Yes I know it's not pronounced 'Air-dvark'. I'm sure your friend's name is pronounced AAAAron - but I'm not your friend now, am I?
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Prawns and Chicken Wings
Two of my favourite foods; prawns and chicken wings. Some complain that they are too much work for too little reward. To them I say, don't complain - take control. It's a simple study of the effort to reward ratio.
In this case - Effort:Meat
In the modern times the benchmark or expected effort to reward ratio is skewed toward your 1:2 or 1:3 on average, even 0:3 is not uncommon. Leaving behind our hunter-gatherer roots, the humble chicken wing or prawn is just too hard for some. But here's how you leverage the ratio in your favour.
Adjust either component of the ratio, increase the reward, or reduce the effort, and you are starting to appeal to modern stadards. You can't put more meat into a prawn or more flesh on a chicken gun. But you CAN reduce the effort.
If a 0:3 ratio on prawn and chicken wings appeals to you then join with me people. Prawn shells and wing bones are food stuffs.
I am prepared to make just one concession. Lychees ARE too much hard work.
'Black Widow' Sonya Thomas took her second straight victory at the National Buffalo Wing Festival eating contest by devouring 173 wings in 12 minutes.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Brazilian Cherries and other lies…
I grew up spending a lot of time, or a greater portion than I desired, at my father's workshop. One of the few treasures, perks if you will, of this job were the abundance of Brazilian Cherries available for me to sup on.
Brazilian Cherries taste like poison. A bitter and disconcerting taste. But I always figured that was because the tree had grown out of a swamp of sump oil. But there were two great things about this lavishly abundant treat which aligned perfectly with my demands; they were free, and they were food. Or were they?
I just looked outside my office window and was overcome with nostalgia upon seeing that they were growing outside my very window. As pictured…
Pretty little berries aren't they? Does anyone know what I have been eating? Because on googling I has found that Brazilian Cherries actually look like this…
Which is perhaps why I never had co compete with birds for them. Anyone? Anyone? Would be keen to know.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Four of Seven Things
My sister tagged me for this ‘Seven Things’ activity where you tell 7 things about you then tag seven people who then do seven things themselves and pass it on and so on. I am going to do seven things, albeit in two installations, but then spare the further tagging. I have 5.5 friends, and if you are one of them, you will appreciate that I did not want to jeopardize that standing with a tag. But if you feel so inclined – please complete your own and let me know. So here is the first 4 of my seven things.
1. I’m Colour Blind. But have got through life quite well I feel.
In my young life it meant leaving all the red pegs on the lawn and ridiculed for having finished of my finest work of Grade 5 cartography with meticulous colouring and shading work for the ocean in purple and the land in orange. Oh, and when I was sent to school by my mother in a new matching shorts and t-shirt outfit (Grade 6! Who makes their child wear a matching outfit at ANY age??), my teacher commented “My aren’t we pretty in pink today?!”. It was news to me. My mother is not colourblind – she is mean.
As I grew up it meant that after studying and training to fulfil my dream to become a cab driver – I failed the fitness test. Colourblind = Unfit. I went to a speacialist who put me through a series of tests – which I nailed… but at the end he told me that I was as colourblind as colourblind gets. I still don’t believe him.
It also meant that I had to bluff my way through two years of my tenure as a self-employed graphic designer. I did find myself in a few interesting binds. One of the notable ones was a turf grower who asked of the logo that I had just designed for him and emailed for approval, “Why is the grass baby turd brown?”. He is now aware that when you convert a vector files to an jpeg image, it sometimes plays with the colours.
What it has ALWAYS meant that when folk find out you are colourblind you are subjected to a 5 minutes of “So what colour is this to you? What colour is this? So what colour do you think the sky is? And what colour is this? And this?
Truth is, I am actually pretty good at this, because I can see colour. I really can. And get most of them right. So my G’ma tells me that I am actually just “Colourmistaken”.
2. I can’t stand Marcia Hindes. “Darl’n. Darl’n. Darl’n. Darl’n. Bless y’ ,Darl’n. You like a sweet, sweet angel. And I love that song, it’s so very dear to me. And Sweet Child, you touched my heart. You go girlfriend! Uh-uh.” How could you dislike that woman??? Let me count the ways. In fact, I would rather spend a day locked in a room wallpapered entirely with Family Circus cartoons with Rosanne Arnold, than have a lunch with Marcia.
3. I am a devout advocate for Tea Tree Oil – primarily as a never-fail cure and prevent sore throats an other mouth infections*. I have not had a sore throat for over 5 years. It’s antiseptic AND anesthetic! Cure AND Instant Relief!
Put five drops of Tea Tree Oil in a cup – add 10 parts water. Gargle – don’t swallow or you will die. If symptoms persist, do it again in an hour. And again. Forget your doctor.
And now that you know, don’t complain to me about your sore throat. Not only do I not care – I think you are an IDIOT. And never say, ‘it tastes nasty’. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.
4. My first car, a Citroen GS, green, with panels told the story of 16 individual traffic incidents from days past, cost me $450 with 6 months of rego included ($250 worth). Replaced a lower control arm ($30) and an oil pump o-ring ($5). Drove it for 18 months – flatout – then wrote it off in spectacular fashion (priceless). Removed the engine and gearbox and sold them to dad ($500), who sold them both within a fortnight ($1100).
More to come. 5,6 and 7 to be precise.
1. I’m Colour Blind. But have got through life quite well I feel.
In my young life it meant leaving all the red pegs on the lawn and ridiculed for having finished of my finest work of Grade 5 cartography with meticulous colouring and shading work for the ocean in purple and the land in orange. Oh, and when I was sent to school by my mother in a new matching shorts and t-shirt outfit (Grade 6! Who makes their child wear a matching outfit at ANY age??), my teacher commented “My aren’t we pretty in pink today?!”. It was news to me. My mother is not colourblind – she is mean.
As I grew up it meant that after studying and training to fulfil my dream to become a cab driver – I failed the fitness test. Colourblind = Unfit. I went to a speacialist who put me through a series of tests – which I nailed… but at the end he told me that I was as colourblind as colourblind gets. I still don’t believe him.
It also meant that I had to bluff my way through two years of my tenure as a self-employed graphic designer. I did find myself in a few interesting binds. One of the notable ones was a turf grower who asked of the logo that I had just designed for him and emailed for approval, “Why is the grass baby turd brown?”. He is now aware that when you convert a vector files to an jpeg image, it sometimes plays with the colours.
What it has ALWAYS meant that when folk find out you are colourblind you are subjected to a 5 minutes of “So what colour is this to you? What colour is this? So what colour do you think the sky is? And what colour is this? And this?
Truth is, I am actually pretty good at this, because I can see colour. I really can. And get most of them right. So my G’ma tells me that I am actually just “Colourmistaken”.
2. I can’t stand Marcia Hindes. “Darl’n. Darl’n. Darl’n. Darl’n. Bless y’ ,Darl’n. You like a sweet, sweet angel. And I love that song, it’s so very dear to me. And Sweet Child, you touched my heart. You go girlfriend! Uh-uh.” How could you dislike that woman??? Let me count the ways. In fact, I would rather spend a day locked in a room wallpapered entirely with Family Circus cartoons with Rosanne Arnold, than have a lunch with Marcia.
3. I am a devout advocate for Tea Tree Oil – primarily as a never-fail cure and prevent sore throats an other mouth infections*. I have not had a sore throat for over 5 years. It’s antiseptic AND anesthetic! Cure AND Instant Relief!
Put five drops of Tea Tree Oil in a cup – add 10 parts water. Gargle – don’t swallow or you will die. If symptoms persist, do it again in an hour. And again. Forget your doctor.
And now that you know, don’t complain to me about your sore throat. Not only do I not care – I think you are an IDIOT. And never say, ‘it tastes nasty’. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.
4. My first car, a Citroen GS, green, with panels told the story of 16 individual traffic incidents from days past, cost me $450 with 6 months of rego included ($250 worth). Replaced a lower control arm ($30) and an oil pump o-ring ($5). Drove it for 18 months – flatout – then wrote it off in spectacular fashion (priceless). Removed the engine and gearbox and sold them to dad ($500), who sold them both within a fortnight ($1100).
More to come. 5,6 and 7 to be precise.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Not another list...?!
I had to scroll down so far to retrieve Michelle's last comment that I figured it was time to write a new post.
We'll first thing's first. Welcome to the world Hamish Samuel Scott, or Hambo, to those who object to him having 3 first names, new son of our very good friends, Dividacom and Leah Scott. Leah is very well and both are stoked. Leah has someone to share the burden of responsibility for David's behaviour. David has someone to share the the blame for all the noises and smells.
There are two criteria by which I assess new borns. 1. Neck control and 2. New-born looks. And this chaps got them both in abundance.
Now for my list... actually, before I head on I should make brief mention of the missing blog entitled "I don't have a job" that should have been inserted between "Matt Damon" and "Not Another List...?!". There. I think that suffices as 'brief mention'. Now onto my list.
I hate to be exclussive on this medium which should essentially be the medium by which the entire world should appreciate me. But I had a brief list of nostalia snippets that will likely mean nought to all but lewis's... even honourary lewis's may struggle to derive meaning... but I will keep it breif.
"Aye! It's dulicious! But it's still nor how you meke porridge!"
The Contometer... entering '9999999999999' then hit '1'... prrrrrrrrrrrrrrr- ding!
Grandad's tiddley-winks in the carved wooden box.
Grounsel! How could we forget our old floric nemesis that preceeded the battle of 'The Giant Paspalum'
"Who's kicking the back of my seat??!" accompanied by furious blind whopping.
"Press enter! Press Enter!" and How many were there dan?. "Sixty-eight!!"
Well that's it for now. Sorry, I will write something that mean more to the rest of the world soon. Might even bring you up to speed with the job situation, though I will have to make it 'based on actual events' to introduce enough interest to warrant the pixels.
We'll first thing's first. Welcome to the world Hamish Samuel Scott, or Hambo, to those who object to him having 3 first names, new son of our very good friends, Dividacom and Leah Scott. Leah is very well and both are stoked. Leah has someone to share the burden of responsibility for David's behaviour. David has someone to share the the blame for all the noises and smells.
There are two criteria by which I assess new borns. 1. Neck control and 2. New-born looks. And this chaps got them both in abundance.
Now for my list... actually, before I head on I should make brief mention of the missing blog entitled "I don't have a job" that should have been inserted between "Matt Damon" and "Not Another List...?!". There. I think that suffices as 'brief mention'. Now onto my list.
I hate to be exclussive on this medium which should essentially be the medium by which the entire world should appreciate me. But I had a brief list of nostalia snippets that will likely mean nought to all but lewis's... even honourary lewis's may struggle to derive meaning... but I will keep it breif.
"Aye! It's dulicious! But it's still nor how you meke porridge!"
The Contometer... entering '9999999999999' then hit '1'... prrrrrrrrrrrrrrr- ding!
Grandad's tiddley-winks in the carved wooden box.
Grounsel! How could we forget our old floric nemesis that preceeded the battle of 'The Giant Paspalum'
"Who's kicking the back of my seat??!" accompanied by furious blind whopping.
"Press enter! Press Enter!" and How many were there dan?. "Sixty-eight!!"
Well that's it for now. Sorry, I will write something that mean more to the rest of the world soon. Might even bring you up to speed with the job situation, though I will have to make it 'based on actual events' to introduce enough interest to warrant the pixels.
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