Slumming it

The interviewing phase of the Shed evaluation has finally arrived. We've been led around the horn during the surveying phase so many times that I don't even know ... (ooh, shiny object!) As the Shed's client base is mostly in the Mt Druitt area, even though we're only interviewing the service providers (that God we've got someone else doing the clinets interviews for us) they still mostly are located at the slums of Mt Druitt. Today, interview no.1, was at the delapidated Mt Druitt Hospital. It's quite interesting to get back on that horse (conducting interviews I mean, instead of being interviewed). It's been a few good years since I've done them. There were a few technical problems that we needed to resolve prior, but the hospital guy didn't want to be recorded so we didn't get to test it out. Ended up practising my mic technique when we got back to the office (unfortunately the song that was stuck in my head at the time was Delta Goodrem's In This Life, now promptly been replaced by Oasis's Don't Look Back In Anger). Got 2 more coming up next week & at least a couple more after that so all the mic practice won't be wasted. Only down side is that we can't get a student placement to come in & do the transcribing for us ... ... Who says Work Choices is not good for nothin'?!?!?!

The King's sandwich

Came home from watching Stardust 1:37-ish so I decided to keep lunch simple. Grabbed a few slices of italian bread & schmeared on some health food store peanut butter so it's a healthy, wholesome meal while watching something (what I can't remember) on TV. Then it hit me - I'm only taking carbs, fats & nuts. Must balance out with some vegetation. So I poured myself a glass of OJ-mango, & peeled a banana & promptly washed it down. Then I thought, "if I have a handful of prescription drugs this'd be Elvis' midnigth snack!" Alas, no prescription in the house, so I had to settle for fish oil & glucosamine capsules instead. But I still felt like a King nonetheless! :)

A day of 3 seasons

Well, ok, not quite a day, but definitely within a 24-hour period. Yesterday was my last day of teaching (probably ever) & I had my usual 4 straight hours of 1st year tutorials. (Sad day, more because I lost my Kiwi carved bone pendant :'( I had it around my neck still when I arrived at uni & half way thru my classes I realised it was gone. Five years & not even a goodbye, how rude!) All I have now is 1 more 3rd year online tutorial then marking & we’re done for another year. Hopefully by the start of the next academic year I’d have buried the beast & gotten a real job. Anyways, back to topic. It was a bloody hot day yesterday. It was already mid-20s when we left the house before 8am & hit low 30s by the time my classes started (10am). It was also very windy throughout the day so it wasn’t very pleasant at all (not that it affected me seeing that I was indoors during those hours). I stayed at uni much later than usual because I was meeting Anne for dinner at the Night Noodle Markets down at Hype Park & when I finally left at quarter past 5 it was still gusting & down to below 20s. Little old me only had a short-sleeve shirt, Bauhaus shorts & thongs on & not a jacket in the bag. More still, Anne was late stuck in traffic, so I was out in the element an extra ½ hour waiting for her. I was so cold I had to find tents to hide behind! I think it was below 15 when we were finally sitting down to eat. Anne settled down with a duck fried noodles while I went off theme & went for Thai entrees & Japancake (okonomiyaki) instead. The food helped with ‘heating’ a bit, but as soon as we were done eating we went straight for the underground (to get warm & to get away from the crowds so we could hear each other. Man, the queues were long!) Luckily I was going home via tennis so at least I had the very tight tights (they were one of those “stop you from pulling a muscle” type tights) & hit for almost an hour to give me back some body heat. It cooled down so much that I needed to plug the heater back in for my upstairs tank (I got 2 freebie Siamese fighting fish from uni people Monday). Today was cool again (mid-teens) but a pleasant cool when we went outlet walking. Well, not so much walking but shopping. Finally found myself pointy black leather shoes (plus some more of course). Need to hunker down & restraint myself a bit now, except for Anne’s bday present to get tomorrow, pay for my new Yonex, some fresh veg, the Ponting signing at Towers next thurs, games night… Oops…

Starting from scratch

Was on a cooking buzz yesterday so I made my whole lunch from scratch (well, almost the whole lunch). It started with picking my home-grown portobello mushrooms from my kit, rolling out my own fettucini (with added parsley for gd health :P), shredded bacon (this is where the 'from scratch' part ended), before slurping them all together in a creamy white sauce made from hi cal milk & butter. Hmm, delish...

Lacked total concentration. Only did 1 paragraph yesterday... Sigh...