19 October, 2006

Dogpile

Oh look, it's another mess I'm in.

Does it really surprise me to know that some people are incompetent but manipulative? Nice on the outside, rotten in the middle? Well-paid and nasty? I thought I knew that that was the way things worked in this world.

The guard has changed, the executor has wielded the axe, beheading the smart ones who were not smart enough to get out of the way. I must keep my head down to avoid the aim. I will be good, I will work hard and I will smile at the new ruler although the blood shed is still bright on the blade. This is an obstacle course of the mind and I will survive to the end - intact.

17 October, 2006

Haw Flakes

When I was a kid my mum used to buy haw flakes for recess. I had no idea what they were, I just ate them. They were somewhere between a snack and candy, sweet with a crumbly kind of melt-in-mouth texture. Anyway, today when I went to see The Devil Wears Prada (okay movie, not as good as it could have been but not bad either) we did our ritual of eating sushi at Blue Fin and then killed some time in Jusco. I found Double Coin Haw Flakes - the packaging has not changed in over 15 years.

Anyway, so the internet is a wonderful thing and I found out that haw flakes are made out of Chinese hawthorn and sugar. Cool. And I also found out that you can buy them online for US$5.99 for a packet of ten. Like, WHAT? I bought a packet of ten just this evening for $AU0.55. That's right, less than 10% of the price, even if you don't convert. Who would actually buy them for $US5.99? As far as I can tell there's nothing all that special about them. Also, if you have a Chinatown, you will find cheap haw flakes. I think that was 55c well spent just to find out, after all these years, what I was eating in my childhood.

15 October, 2006

Blue versus Red


I'd just started thinking about cricket season. I'd just started thinking 'hey, wouldn't it be cool if some of the state games were played at North Sydney Oval?' (which is conveniently 15 minutes walk from my house). I'd just started going glassy-eyed over the prospect of going to matches and to meet dashing young cricketers on the boundary fence when I spotted a massive advert in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald's sport section on a NSW vs SA game at North Sydney Oval. The only one at the ground this season, in fact (the rest are all at the Sydney Cricket Ground - not walking distance from my house - or, oddly, in Canberra).

So I went. It sprinkled a bit. The second innings got cut by 7 overs and the target reduced to 267 (the NSW Blues made 5-291, an excellent score in any weather and particularly scintillating on an inclement day). The Redbacks (SA) needed 105 off 10 overs (difficult) but managed to do okay and needed 18 off the last over. A six, a single, a wide, a six and a six later and they had it in the bag. We wuz robbed!

However, I did have a great day out despite the fact that it was 35C yesterday and about 20C less than that today. I was shivering as the cold breeze swept across the ground, wishing I'd gone back for my jacket having paused just outside my building this morning. Some sixes hit the roof or went over (North Sydney is a pretty small oval) so they had to bring replacement balls out. I was amazed that, out of the dozen or so sixes (some sort of record, surely?) in the game, no one in the crowd caught one. It's $100 a catch!

Anyway. No more games there so thus ends my cricket season (seeing as the Ashes tickets have sold out). I entered a comp to win some so I'll see how that goes...

14 October, 2006

Dia Cookies



An empirical recipe for delicious disaster

Ingredients:
180g butter
1 1/4 cups raw sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 egg
3 cups plain flour, sifted
1 1/2 teaspoons sodium bicarbonate, sifted
packet of hundreds & thousands
some milk

(Makes 60 small cookies or 30 cookies that are twice as big as the small ones)


  • Beat butter and sugar in a bowl with a rotary beater until you wish you’d bought an electric mixer.
  • Give up and proceed to the next step by adding the vanilla and egg. Mix well.
  • Add the flour and the sodium bicarbonate.
  • Divide the dough into three and roll each portion into a sausage shape about 3cm diameter. Wrap in cling wrap and refrigerate until firm (about 30 minutes).
  • Come back about an hour later, having read the paper, and curse at the rock hard dough in the fridge. The rolls will have flattened at the bottom, giving it its natural ‘Dia’ shape.
  • Preheat the oven to 180C.
  • Unwrap the rock hard dough and cut it into 7mm slices. Arrange them neatly on a tray or trays (preferably non-stick) and allow for spreading.
  • Pour a thin layer of milk into a jar lid. Use your finger to paint the milk onto the surface of the dough slices.
  • Sprinkle the hundreds & thousands onto the dough slices and hope that they stick to the milk. Don’t bother chasing the ones that escape onto the tray. It isn’t worth it. Trust me.
  • Place tray/s in oven. Bake for 10-15 mins. Remove before they get brown. Or even golden brown. Discover that they haven’t spread quite as far as you thought they would.
  • Bemoan a lack of wire racks. Allow cookies to cool on the trays. Prise them off before the trays are cooled down and flash burn your fingertips. Eat some and get your flatmate to taste one. Take a photo of nicely arranged cookies. Transfer into an airtight container.


This Dia cookie recipe is a bastardisation of a basic Family Circle cookie dough recipe and a recipe for Hundred & Thousands biscuits that I found in an English textbook. Apparently you can keep the cookie dough in the fridge for up to a week or frozen for up to a month. Presumably you will need to let the frozen cookie dough defrost a little before you can safely cut it into slices.

They are called Dia cookies because the individual cookies resemble half moons*.
(* only people used to my warped sense of humour will understand this explanation).

P.S: Obviously I did not superglue my fingers together.

This time it will be different

If I never blog again you'll know it is because I have superglued my fingers together.

09 October, 2006

Sounds Like Thunder

Woo! I finished my tax return! Okay, so it's a total mess, but I figure I didn't earn enough to matter to them. I earned around $12K last financial year, $8K from freelancing, $2K from one month of current job and $2K from interest. Of that, I gave about $2K away to various charitable organisations. So Oxfam is NOT allowed to send me letters asking for more money, methinks more than 15% is quite a substantial amount given that I didn't earn a lot at all.

The only thing that is worrying me now is whatever's outside that sounds like thunder. I bet it's train-related. They are opening the new track at Chatswood soon, which is rather exciting.

Today I ate a large bag of hot chips for afternoon tea. The pizza for lunch wasn't enough. I had (processed) noodles for dinner followed by a large bowl of chocolate pudding (instant). Gotta get back on the good food diet - am giving blood on Thursday so will need red meat at some stage.

I have a full week, too. Tomorrow am going to see 'Macbeth', on Wednesday it's writers' group, on Thursday donate blood and lay out the staff newsletter (as I do every second Thursday night). Somehow I have to find time to do my own thing.

08 October, 2006

Like Drawing Blood

I can't finish my tax return. Filled with determination, I went out to get the supplement for sole traders. It turns out, however, that I'm now missing the second supplement for sole traders. I may as well give up, I am drowning in paper. Tomorrow I'll need to visit the tax office and get that goddamn second supplement and finish this once and for all.

Needless to say, I am rather tetchy today. I know I won't get any tax back, or very little, so all this paper-shuffling is essentially for nothing. Speaking of shuffling, for some malign reason my iTunes Party Shuffle is not automatically playing the next song on the list, which is very annoying as I have to keep going back to it and pressing 'play'. The Help section isn't helping. Any suggestions? All other playlists are acting normal.

Instead of tax action, I'm going to eat some chocolate pudding and have a cup of tea. All I want to do is have a normal Sunday afternoon, dammit!

05 October, 2006

More

Dream: trying not to defaecate at a train station adjoining a creepy forest museum.

Reading: Westside Angst #10, Ianto Ware
Previous: Dear Writer, Carmel Bird

Listening: the winds through Waverton
Previous: Days Like These, The Cat Empire

Browsing: Neil Gaiman's Journal
Previous: Compassion Australia (donation as a wedding gift)

Thinking: I should probably do my tax return THIS WEEKEND.
Previous: Little Miss Sunshine was one of the best films I've seen this year

To do: write more

02 October, 2006

Cyclops

FRIDAY:
It begins with a one-eyed tail-light struggling along the freeway, our white 2-door chasing its cycloptic red glow northwards. To Newcastle. We are indebted to Mel, goddess of hostels, who checks us into my favourite room and lets us all have member's rates on the flash of a card. We pace the aisles of a jumbled Bi-Lo until closing time, then mix words in a bag of Scrabble. My score doubles hers.

SATURDAY:
Misplaced steps around the streets of Newcastle to find WEA. High-ceilinged classrooms and a soporific mix of boys who lounge in plastic chairs as if waiting for us to answer the question 'what is experimental writing?' We don't know, who does?

Lunching with the masses at the Juicy Beans Cafe. An internet relationship plays for its 15 minutes of relative fame, as we munch on pide and sip sweet mocha from white china cups. Applause and exeunt to TAFE, to TAFE, to find a first-time author. There's nothing new in the room, just old acquaintances and an uninspiring exchange. She cannot place the willowy young writer in her memory.

Cheap chocolate freckles, in handfuls, then stop. The nasty sweetness subsides like etchings under a palimpsest, overwritten by a triumvirate of readers who project words to the back of the gallery. Buy, buy, buy. $10 gone, and the zine fair to go.

He's Nick and he's nice but he disappears in a flutter of a flier thrust in my hand. We use the media without communicating. We act without activism. What has the world come to? Baby boomers who care, wearing Crocs and enunciating their opinion to a pre-converted room. I have my say too, so we get back to business - how to harvest interest without selling our soul..?

Quick quality food with a capital K, no chicken too tasty for this little miss. As Solo streams down over salty lips, I pause at the thought of a teenage memory, eating the same meal all those months ago. I was different then, and so was he.

He chants a little ditty about Darren Costello, a cute hippie rhyme that solicits a laugh. There are warblers and dreamers and drummers and a window that frames the world walking by. Who is watching who?

A cup of green tea and another victory on the Scrabble board as the Scrabble queen blames her tiles.

SUNDAY:
Breakfast on the beach: toasted but soggy bagels and a latte to go. My pink-lashed shoulders shrug into town hall where a crisis takes place: biodiversity comes off the agenda as the activists form and reform in a political dance meant for one. The panel is propped up by a handsome young man called James. He speaks for wildlife, not for politics. I want to walk with him to the Wild Country.

Call of the zines, but all is not fair - a budget in my pocket and so much to buy. Crumpled numbers swapp'd for words crumpled into shape by faceless authors. Smile into the sunlight as the day turns into a dark and seedy night. Sex, violence, depravity - and that's just between the covers of a book. The hangover is The Poets Breakfast, furious and witty in a beer-soaked blur. We make love to the sofa in the corner and listen to the wordsmiths speak in tongues. Sublime.

Bi-Lo, burritos and beer. Enough said.

The edge of the world is lit by a beacon, a flashy tall thing with a hill up its arse. We meander out to a point beyond the light, where white water eats away at the concrete blocks that have tumbled into the sea. The Stockton Bridge smiles a smile of even lights and the glow to the north is a mystery.

Five voices debate 'Love, Actually', New Zealand and reality television. A block of Cadbury Crunchie goes missing in the meantime. I drink another cup of tea.

MONDAY:
A one-armed tan manifests itself at Hornsby station. My backpack is full of zines and I still own a block of Cadbury, though I've lost my bottle of water. I eat fake arrowroots instead and pay for two months' worth of train travel. There is a load of laundry waiting for me when I get home.