"I love it when the parents are out of the house!"
It's endorsed by this cheery fellow:
and from what I can tell, peoples favourite things about their parent's absence include:
"crashing the house"
"doing illegal stuff"
"rading the frige"
"haveing the TV up really load"
and
"eating LOADS of sweets"
Sounds like a hoot, right?
I'm rather pleased with my culinary exploits over the last week:
Pancake day was Tuesday, and instead of settling for pancake mix as I did last year, I followed an online recipe and learned how to make them properly. The first pancake was a bit dodgy due to an overestimate on the amount of butter required, but from my experience the first is never up to scratch.
To strengthen my pancake skills, I made them again on Tuesday evening with a savoury filling instead of a sweet one as I had done earlier. The filling of choice was sausage casserole, and despite making enough food for ~3 people, it was delicious.
Yesterday evening, Emily, Charlotte and I decided to make cocktails (on account of being too poor to go out for drinks). The cocktail we settled on was Strawberry Daiquiris. (Mainly because it meant only one kind of alcohol needed to be bought (white rum.)) Breaking the ice led to some undesired consequences (a broken jug for example), but eventually we figured out that beating the bag of ice with a rolling pin was the way forward. We then blended strawberries, brown sugar and white rum with the ice and 3 delicious daiquiris were born.
Now I've ran out of things to write, despite acknowledging that I have a huge amount of things to write about. I'm not sure how that works but I don't feel so groovy and I'm really tired so I guess it doesn't matter too much right now :)
Expect approximately 6 posts later - for some reason my blogging habits have developed like this. Suits me fine though.
Isn't it a nice day today? It's relatively warm, and the incessant precipitation from the last few days has finally given up and allowed the sun to shine. I noticed this on the way to a job interview this morning, and decided that appreciating the weather from the inside of a bus wouldn't suffice: instead I decided to go for a walk in the nearby woods after a bout of washing up (~4 days worth...).
The walk was nice. I chose to just put walking shoes on my interview outfit, and so took to the woods in smart trousers, a shirt and a v-neck, which in retrospect probably isn't the most desirable outfit. Especially because aforementioned precipitation all seemed to coalesce into giant muddy puddles all along my planned path through the woods. After jumping across puddles to safe patches of dry for a while, I decided I looked a prat and decided to man up, and from then on strolled carefreely (word?) through the puddles, deciding that any mud on my trousers would come off in the wash so fuck it.
About half way through the walk, a dog (Mollie) took offence to my presence and started barking at me. I wouldn't mind but the owners assured me 'she doesn't normally do that!', which is little comfort anyway but combined with the fact that it's not the first unprovoked barking I've received this year, makes me feel slightly uneasy.
Mad dogs aside, I continued, and found an unspoiled patch of grass atop the hill. Unspoiled of course, apart from the 2 grafitti covered benches at the far side, one of which I sat on for a while and had a think about some things. I then walked to the bus stop and got the bus down the hill (lazy? Perhaps, but I'm determined to get my money's worth for my weekly travelcard).
Now I'm going to watch an episode of Scrubs, eat a Cornish pasty, 24 oven chips and ~half a tin of beans, then wash up the remainder of the dirties, tidy up a bit, and then commence my blog rampage.
Tara.
Pour apprendre le français est maintenant sur le mon pour faire la liste - après étude japonaise et obtention d'un degré de Leeds.
Cette chanson est par une bande appelée Malajube, qui sont Quebecois et qui j'aime:
Je suis désolé si un quelconque de ceci est mal traduit.
Hi.
I'm reading a book called "The Blue-Eyed Salaryman" at the moment. It's about a guy who travelled a lot, then decided to get a career in a Japanese multinational. Those of you who know anything about the Japanese work ethic will realise this is a huge transition from travelling the world as a free agent. The book has some good (or at least thought-provoking) quotes in it, such as these (adapted for tense / person etc):
"set off for a year of living free while [you] have the chance, because you only get the chance once and there [will] be plenty of years for a normal, everyday job later"
"when I get letters from far away I sometimes ask myself what I'm doing here. I'm free to leave anytime, go anywhere, am I not? But I'm not free. I've started something here. I want to see it through."
"Collect those fond memories of a carefree youth, something to look back on when life gets serious, because if you've nothing to look back on, then what've you got?"
"I don't care much for fancy titles and I'm worried that [they] might tie me down. I don't want to build my life around a piece of paper. Still, I have to get a job in the conventional world sometime."
Observant readers will notice that the title of this post is taken from the last quote. It was a pun - as a post title it implies that I don't care too much for fancy titles in my blog, whereas in the book he is referring to titles such as PhD and the like.
I put these quotes up because they seem quite relevant at the moment - they deal with wondering why you're slaving away at something when you could be elsewhere, something that's on my mind at the moment (Canada). They deal with seeing things through - something I'm trying to do at the moment despite things trying to distract me. I'm not sure about the third one - I don't like the idea that the only thing we have to hold onto are memories of the past, but I agree with the sentiment that we should collect fond memories as we go.
Another disjointed post here unfortunately. Perhaps you see where I'm coming from, perhaps not, but either way it's an interesting book and I'll probably write more about it sometime soon :)
This is a bit abstract, so bear with me.
After waking up today feeling a bit weird, I decided to go for a walk in Greenwich to clear my head.
I got the bus to Blackheath (the stop furthest from the park) then walked across the heath to the park, which I planned on walking through to Greenwich. I ended up taking the most random route possible, shown in red on the map below:
In Greenwich I walked through the market and had a look at a few stalls and in a couple of shops, then went for a hot chocolate in a swanky café nearby.
I felt better after thinking over hot chocolate, and so decided to head home via the Greenwich University campus (to get my bearings for tomorrow). I walked along the river a bit and into the campus, then round a couple of buildings, out the other side and up through the park (route back shown in blue on the map above), and got the bus home from the bus stop closer to Blackheath (but further from home).
The metaphor is this: I felt 'a bit weird' when choosing universities originally, due to circumstances at the time etc. I decided to go to Keele (represented by the first bus stop). Greenwich is now, and I've taken a really random yet enjoyable route to get here. Now I'm heading elsewhere, a goal, which is represented by the bus stop further from home. There were more roads to cross on the way to the latter bus stop, representing the hurdles I have to / have had to overcome to get to Leeds (application, finance etc) - but now I'm on a straight path there.
I told you it was abstract. It sounded more sensible in my head haha.
Just got in from a nice night out with Mum, Connie and Sharon. We went to a pub on Blackheath for a couple of drinks after curry and some Baileys-esque cocktail at home. After incinerating the poppadoms and drinking aforementioned cocktails we got the bus up to the heath, then sat in the garden and talked over a pint of Frúli (strawberry beer).
We talked about a variety of topics - some disturbing - before moving inside for another round of drinks (a lemonade, a brandy and 3 random shots (the barmaid chose tequila gold, sambuca and jagermeister, of which I had the latter)).
After leaving the pub unusually early (10.30!) we had another drink at home along with an episode of bottom, before a cab arrived to take me back to the dogs at my Granddad's house. I opened the door and they nearly knocked me over out of excitement, so I immediately attached them to their lead and took them for a walk. Sky nearly dragged me along the first half of it, but she gradually calmed down and we took up a pleasant pace.
I'm listening to Darwin Deez now and thinking just how great things are / have been recently. Obviously some things haven't been ideal, but I think considering the circumstances some people find themselves in - I'm not doing too badly. I'm also thinking about how nice it would be to spend another week at 620 Huron before everyone moves out - and unfortunately how unrealistic this probably is.
Still it can't help to dream, eh.
Now I'm going to make a drink, relocate to the living room, watch whatever is interesting on TV at this hour and have a mong out until I feel the need to sleep. Then I'll get up tomorrow, walk the dogs for the last time, prepare a fried breakfast, and greet my Grandparents as they arrive home from their holiday in Borneo.
It's been a nice day.
As you may know, Terry Pratchett is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He has begun campaigning for the right to assisted suicide, and plans to use the method himself to die before the disease progresses to it's final stages. He said:
"And so I have vowed that rather than let Alzheimer's take me, I would take it. I would live my life as ever to the full and die, before the disease mounted its last attack, in my own home, in a chair on the lawn, with a brandy in my hand to wash down whatever modern version of the Brompton Cocktail some helpful medic could supply. And with Thomas Tallis on my iPod, I would shake hands with Death"
Quite touching, I thought.
