It's warm today (29 degrees) and sunny and I'm at work. I have not worked on Christmas Eve since I went to University and worked on the holidays in a shoe store. Work is quite empty and people don't seem to have that much to do, there are a lot of people in shorts and flip flops, I have never seen that before as people don't even wear casual clothes on fridays here. More importantantly no fruit was delivered. Which is annoying as I rely on the fruit supply to not get to hungry before lunch.
Tonight we are having meatballs, we had plans for making a big swedish christmas feast tonight, but then we couldn't get ahold of any sill and the rest of the Christmas food I'm not that keen on. So we are having meatballs instead. I like meatballs, next year maybe we do Lax Pudding, I love Lax Pudding...
Tommorow we are doing "big" christmas with a turkey and all that stuff and we have so many presents under the tree. To be honest, most of them are for me, I'm a very spoilt girl this year.
I must have been very good. I have also eaten spinach almost every day. So that should have put me on the Nice list with Santa.
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Monday, 21 December 2009
Lusse Bullar
As I said before this year there will be a different kind of Christmas for me, it is not the first time I spend Christmas i a hot climate, but it feels more different this year anyway. With all the heat and the sun I have found it hard to grasp that we are in December, it is like for a December I need wet shoes, a runny nose and very busy shopping centres to get the Christmas feelings started.
To counteract the non Christmas feelings that I have been having Mr T and I have been very busy being Christmassy (which is by now my hate word and that is all Nigellas fault), we have made Lusse Bullar, which is a Swedish saffron bun, but they are not very saffrony as the saffron we bought weren't of very good quality. Next year I will make sure to get a more reliable saffron supplier then coles the supermarket. We have also made chocolate "kola", which is nice, I have already tried it many times, You know to make sure it's not gone off or anything.
While we where doing all this "Julstok" I was watching Nigellas Christmas, 4 hours of it. And let me tell you, she is one crazy lady and she is obsessed with pomegranate. Anything can be made better with pomegranate.
Me, I'm not a fan of pomegranate, I do not like any meat mixed with any fruit. But the strangest thing that happens in all of the Nigellas cooking shows is that at the end of episode, while the credits run, they always film her eating something smeared with cream or cheese or something else dairy based wearing her bathrobe alone in the dark in the kitchen. Like she is sleep eating or something.
I find that very disturbing, like she is eating as a secret and she can only really enjoy it in the dark all alone. I'm sure there is a technical term for that type of behaviour.
Friday, 18 December 2009
Londonderry
Today after work I sat at a real nasty Irish themed pub, with real shitty irish Christmas music, looking out the window at the grey skies with the rain with wet shoes and it felt just like London.
It was kinda nice.
Then I turned my head and watched the big screen TV and found out that there are 80 bushfires surrounding the Sydney area and that the little rain fall that we have had has done nothing. Except making me feel mellow and wintery.
It was kinda nice.
Then I turned my head and watched the big screen TV and found out that there are 80 bushfires surrounding the Sydney area and that the little rain fall that we have had has done nothing. Except making me feel mellow and wintery.
Short
Today it's bring your child to work day, the place is brimming with people under 4 feet tall. It is a change in mood on the floor today, normally guys who sit around swearing and making fart jokes making sure to stake out their territory of desk space and ownership of pens are handing out chair space and stationary solely based on the fact that the person asking is so short.
I think it shows a little hummanity in this strange society. It is very nice to see, eventhought they are all very loud and I have almost tripped over one of them at least twice.
Today it is also bucketing down rain, which is great as there has been so many bushfires out in west Sydney, but it also raining on the day that Sydney busses decided they where going on an unplanned 24 hour strike. I was fortunate to be able to hail a cab as I start early in the morgning, but I can't imagine what it was like for people who get into the office around 9. Most of them would have had to work.
So I hope the rain gives up in the afternoon so that I can walk home. Feels a bit wastefull going on two cab trips in one day.
I think it shows a little hummanity in this strange society. It is very nice to see, eventhought they are all very loud and I have almost tripped over one of them at least twice.
Today it is also bucketing down rain, which is great as there has been so many bushfires out in west Sydney, but it also raining on the day that Sydney busses decided they where going on an unplanned 24 hour strike. I was fortunate to be able to hail a cab as I start early in the morgning, but I can't imagine what it was like for people who get into the office around 9. Most of them would have had to work.
So I hope the rain gives up in the afternoon so that I can walk home. Feels a bit wastefull going on two cab trips in one day.
Thursday, 17 December 2009
My ode to Libraries
I love libraries, just by going into a library it makes me feel more clever. I like the fact that they are so quiet and often very cool and has that very strange smell of dusty books. I think this is something that I'm brought up with, we used to go to the library a lot as a child and I have used and stolen books from every school library I have ever attended. I do feel a little bad about the stealing, I'm sure it was not intentional at the time, just a case of forgetting to return them and then skipping the country.
The thing that I love most about libraries is that the books are free. Which means you have the right to use/read/surround yourself with such an abundance of books that you will never be at a loss of what to read next. It also means that every book does not have to be good, it is not so bad if you get a book that is quite crap cause you do not have to finish it. You can be wasteful (obviously without ruining the books). Whereas if you buy a book, especially here in Australia where even paper back books are extraordinary expensive ( it's horrendous the price of books here) then if the book is not good, you get very disappointed and feel you wasted your money. This leads me to read books by the same few authors that I know I like. Hence no new interesting book types or stories.
The library allows me to overcome this. To expand on the authors that I normally read I decided that I will pick books from the library using the randomized technique in a colour system. To be specific this works such that I walk along all shelf's in the library and pick 6 books, all having different colours. The first time I did this I ended up with 1 gay porn book and 5 books about people either dying or being dead already. So the first time the system didn't really work out. It wasn't real porn, more like a really steamy chicklit book for gay men about men. The other books where all about death in someway. Not good for my mood at the time.
Last time it worked much better. I got an acid green book which has the craziest story in the whole world, obviously written by a guy that has smoked to much fun things. It has all things a good book should have, disappearing flatmates, hippies dressed up cockroach suits trying to take over an American naval ship by running into a fence repeatedly and really vengeful lesbians with huge motorcycles. Very entertaining. It was also a book about thrifty living, one about taxi driving and a whole heap of stories about love. I even found one that was the first book in series I read at 13 but had never read the first book of (VC Andrews). It was terrible. I remember loving it at 13 thought.
On Saturday I'm going to the library, I'm getting a whole new load. I think this time I will only pick books in the red-pink-orange colour scheme to accommodate the Christmas feelings that are coming along nicely
The thing that I love most about libraries is that the books are free. Which means you have the right to use/read/surround yourself with such an abundance of books that you will never be at a loss of what to read next. It also means that every book does not have to be good, it is not so bad if you get a book that is quite crap cause you do not have to finish it. You can be wasteful (obviously without ruining the books). Whereas if you buy a book, especially here in Australia where even paper back books are extraordinary expensive ( it's horrendous the price of books here) then if the book is not good, you get very disappointed and feel you wasted your money. This leads me to read books by the same few authors that I know I like. Hence no new interesting book types or stories.
The library allows me to overcome this. To expand on the authors that I normally read I decided that I will pick books from the library using the randomized technique in a colour system. To be specific this works such that I walk along all shelf's in the library and pick 6 books, all having different colours. The first time I did this I ended up with 1 gay porn book and 5 books about people either dying or being dead already. So the first time the system didn't really work out. It wasn't real porn, more like a really steamy chicklit book for gay men about men. The other books where all about death in someway. Not good for my mood at the time.
Last time it worked much better. I got an acid green book which has the craziest story in the whole world, obviously written by a guy that has smoked to much fun things. It has all things a good book should have, disappearing flatmates, hippies dressed up cockroach suits trying to take over an American naval ship by running into a fence repeatedly and really vengeful lesbians with huge motorcycles. Very entertaining. It was also a book about thrifty living, one about taxi driving and a whole heap of stories about love. I even found one that was the first book in series I read at 13 but had never read the first book of (VC Andrews). It was terrible. I remember loving it at 13 thought.
On Saturday I'm going to the library, I'm getting a whole new load. I think this time I will only pick books in the red-pink-orange colour scheme to accommodate the Christmas feelings that are coming along nicely
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
a clear first world problem
I went to the hairdresser last night, 3 hours it took them and I look no different really. I think it was one of those classic cases of this guy standing and snipping in the air around my head. You can't see much difference except perhaps I'm a little blonder and I smell nice of the product that he put in it afterwards.
What is with hairdressers believing I want to have hair like the 1980:s version of Princess Di.
I'm fully aware that this is only a problem for people who live in the developed world with far to much time on their hands and a job that allows their brains to run wild as it requires no talking
What is with hairdressers believing I want to have hair like the 1980:s version of Princess Di.
I'm fully aware that this is only a problem for people who live in the developed world with far to much time on their hands and a job that allows their brains to run wild as it requires no talking
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
scary
I had some very strange and scary nightmares last night. It is strange as I can replay them as a film in my head. I don't always remember my dreams but this one was so surreal that I'm happy that I remembered it. It would make a great scary movie, that I would never go and see as I hate scary movies.
It's winter, the snow lies high in the landscape. It's very cold and for some reason I'm out walking in the Forrest close to where we live in the dream. We live in a big apartment building shaped a like parentheses. The back story is that we have some kind of organisation that is close by, with a huge house which is a church or some other volunteer organisation, but actually it's a front for drug dealing, child labour and a brothel. They apparently weren't able to choose what bad things to do on the side of their volunteer work. As I'm walking in the Forrest I am thinking about a meeting with Mr T's best friend (in the dream, who will turn out be the leader of the bad organisation but I don't know this yet, except in that film way I still know this already) where he has been talking about his new girl friend who has gone missing, she is a beautiful, eastern European girl with raspberry red hair. He hasn't heard from her and he is very worried.
As I'm walking along I suddenly realise that the Forrest have change, it's still a forest but it's covered with a glass ceiling, but there is another forest growing on top of the glass ceiling. I can see the bottom of this Forrest, with the roots of the trees hanging down and the snow lying in patches on the glass. As I'm looking up I'm seeing this outer worldly beautiful young girl with raspberry red hair. She is yelling something to me through the glass ceiling in a language I do not understand but I believe to be Russian or possibly Lithuanian. She is yelling something important, but I do not understand until she yells Barbara Streisand, I touch my face and I realise I have a huge nose.
She is running fast through the Forrest and I'm running after to try to see where she is going so I can help her. She needs help and I'm trying to save her. Then I get to a huge cottage style house, it's dark and ominous but I decide to go in anyway (as you do In scary movies). I get into a huge hallway where the walls are clad in pine, it looks very much like a alpine chateau but American style huge with 20-30 rooms or more. I take my shoes off as you do in alpine houses and as I'm sneaking through the house a dark haired woman comes out of what appears to be a kitchen and she is yelling at me as she is mistaking me for the cleaner. So I step on top of the floor washing brushes and starts to clean the floor Pippin Longstocking style. I realise that I'm in danger, as soon as she realises I do not speak the language that she is yelling at me I will be caught and probably locked up so I decide to get out of the house. As I'm rushing to put my shoes back on she is starting to run towards me to stop me from leaving the house and the shoes wont go back on, the heel keeps folding on, so i run out the house with just the one shoe on. I know this is dangerous as it's very cold outside and I might get hypothermia, but I know that I'm in more danger in the house.
As I finally get out the door the lady is rushing after me and she has a frying pan which she uses to launch big snow blocks after me as I'm running down the snow covered road. As I'm running along I see two young girls who are standing outside a big red house in red snow suits and white winter hats with big furry balls on their heads (not unlike the winter hats I used to have as a child) and they are also throwing icy snowballs after me...
And then I wake up..and it's only 1 am. And I've just stared in my own at least 3 hours long scary movie.
The thing I don't get is where the two young girls came from. I think they looked a lot like me and my older sister did as kids.
It's winter, the snow lies high in the landscape. It's very cold and for some reason I'm out walking in the Forrest close to where we live in the dream. We live in a big apartment building shaped a like parentheses. The back story is that we have some kind of organisation that is close by, with a huge house which is a church or some other volunteer organisation, but actually it's a front for drug dealing, child labour and a brothel. They apparently weren't able to choose what bad things to do on the side of their volunteer work. As I'm walking in the Forrest I am thinking about a meeting with Mr T's best friend (in the dream, who will turn out be the leader of the bad organisation but I don't know this yet, except in that film way I still know this already) where he has been talking about his new girl friend who has gone missing, she is a beautiful, eastern European girl with raspberry red hair. He hasn't heard from her and he is very worried.
As I'm walking along I suddenly realise that the Forrest have change, it's still a forest but it's covered with a glass ceiling, but there is another forest growing on top of the glass ceiling. I can see the bottom of this Forrest, with the roots of the trees hanging down and the snow lying in patches on the glass. As I'm looking up I'm seeing this outer worldly beautiful young girl with raspberry red hair. She is yelling something to me through the glass ceiling in a language I do not understand but I believe to be Russian or possibly Lithuanian. She is yelling something important, but I do not understand until she yells Barbara Streisand, I touch my face and I realise I have a huge nose.
She is running fast through the Forrest and I'm running after to try to see where she is going so I can help her. She needs help and I'm trying to save her. Then I get to a huge cottage style house, it's dark and ominous but I decide to go in anyway (as you do In scary movies). I get into a huge hallway where the walls are clad in pine, it looks very much like a alpine chateau but American style huge with 20-30 rooms or more. I take my shoes off as you do in alpine houses and as I'm sneaking through the house a dark haired woman comes out of what appears to be a kitchen and she is yelling at me as she is mistaking me for the cleaner. So I step on top of the floor washing brushes and starts to clean the floor Pippin Longstocking style. I realise that I'm in danger, as soon as she realises I do not speak the language that she is yelling at me I will be caught and probably locked up so I decide to get out of the house. As I'm rushing to put my shoes back on she is starting to run towards me to stop me from leaving the house and the shoes wont go back on, the heel keeps folding on, so i run out the house with just the one shoe on. I know this is dangerous as it's very cold outside and I might get hypothermia, but I know that I'm in more danger in the house.
As I finally get out the door the lady is rushing after me and she has a frying pan which she uses to launch big snow blocks after me as I'm running down the snow covered road. As I'm running along I see two young girls who are standing outside a big red house in red snow suits and white winter hats with big furry balls on their heads (not unlike the winter hats I used to have as a child) and they are also throwing icy snowballs after me...
And then I wake up..and it's only 1 am. And I've just stared in my own at least 3 hours long scary movie.
The thing I don't get is where the two young girls came from. I think they looked a lot like me and my older sister did as kids.
Monday, 14 December 2009
Hot Christmas
This weekend we had glorious weather and I found myself thinking that it felt so strange to sit on the Danks street Christmas market listening to Christmas carols sung by the local church choir in 30 degree heat drinking diet coke. For one I don't normally drink softdrink but I had caffeine withdrawal headache and it was far to hot to drink coffee and most coffee shops version of an ice coffee here is a basically a milkshake with huge lumps of ice cream and some coffee in it. Very nice tasting but for us who has a limited tolerance of dairy product it's just not worth it.
I know this year it will be a very different experience with Christmas, I have bought a magazine which has Australian Christmas food in it, and it's quite exiting cause it's little bit more inventive then your average English roast turkey with gravy. Not that I'm slagging of the turkey, but you know, there is a limited interest in plain roast turkey from my side. So in this magazine they have a Lime roasted turkey, now I don't know what Mr T's parents are thinking about this one. I know they are looking forward to spending Christmas in the comparatively cool Sydney instead of the extraordinarily hot and humid north Queensland. So maybe they want sometime more traditional, old school roast. I think we will have to have a chat and decide what they want to eat. I promise not to force feed them pickled fish. Mainly because I have found any suppliers of pickled fish yet. I have however found a packet of gingerbread house pieces, that I'm planning to put together as decorations. Maybe even tonight. Now that I finished all the stars, I found last night that as soon as I don't have anything to do with my hands when I'm watching TV I tend to binge eat whatever is in the house and drink anything that is cool. Last night that meant cherries and white wine, which has lead to a slightly tired head today and really dodgy stomach. 1 kilo of cherries apparently is not that good for you almost as bad as an Australian Style Ice coffee.
I know this year it will be a very different experience with Christmas, I have bought a magazine which has Australian Christmas food in it, and it's quite exiting cause it's little bit more inventive then your average English roast turkey with gravy. Not that I'm slagging of the turkey, but you know, there is a limited interest in plain roast turkey from my side. So in this magazine they have a Lime roasted turkey, now I don't know what Mr T's parents are thinking about this one. I know they are looking forward to spending Christmas in the comparatively cool Sydney instead of the extraordinarily hot and humid north Queensland. So maybe they want sometime more traditional, old school roast. I think we will have to have a chat and decide what they want to eat. I promise not to force feed them pickled fish. Mainly because I have found any suppliers of pickled fish yet. I have however found a packet of gingerbread house pieces, that I'm planning to put together as decorations. Maybe even tonight. Now that I finished all the stars, I found last night that as soon as I don't have anything to do with my hands when I'm watching TV I tend to binge eat whatever is in the house and drink anything that is cool. Last night that meant cherries and white wine, which has lead to a slightly tired head today and really dodgy stomach. 1 kilo of cherries apparently is not that good for you almost as bad as an Australian Style Ice coffee.
Thursday, 10 December 2009
Little Tired
I think I'm a little tired tonight, I just got home from work and I realised as I stood outside our flat that I was trying to open our front door by swiping my work security pass in front of our keyhole.
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Excuse the crap photos
But I'm really exited to show my Christmas tree and all the ornaments I have made. The 1 of December in Australia is the first day of summer and also the first day when you can put your Christmas tree up. Normally I would not have a Christmas tree, but this year we are celebrating Christmas for the first time in our house. So I get a Christmas tree.
And I have a lovely fake 17 dollar tree from Coles (the supermarket). My plan was that I was going to make so many ornaments that you wouldn't be able to see the actual fake tree. But I forgot how darn long these beaded stars takes to make. The felt figures I made last year, so that is cheating a bit I guess.
Now we do have quite a bit of decorations in our tree, I think Mr T would like to make it even more sleek and streamlined. He has for example banned tinsel (but said nothing about bead garlands so that might make an appearance at the end of the week, who knows).
So please excuse the crap photos, it's hard to take photos indoors without a flash and no tripod.
But I give you My Super Tree 2009
Monday, 7 December 2009
A lot of things are happening and gut feeling.
People say you should listen to your intuition and that you should go on your gut feeling. Every time you watch an American cop show they go on their gut and bust a huge case, just because they had a feeling something is askew.
I wonder how many times they go ahead and go with their gut and they do something stupid. I guess they don’t make shows of those occasions.
Now I have no communication with my body, I’ve spent most of my life not listening to what it says so that I can run faster, jump higher and drink more. I understand now that was quite foolish. I would be good to be able to say that the very strange feeling in my stomach is fear of new exiting ventures or whether it’s something as simple as this situation is a bit fishy.
So I don’t know. I have to make some decisions right now, big ones. And I don’t know. And my gut is quiet as a mouse or more rumbling like a lion but that means nothing except I need to eat something I guess.
In my next life I will practice listening to my body and stop running when it hurts. Maybe then I could listen to my gut, if nothing else that would make me an awesome American cop. Maybe I would even get my own show. Then I could wear small sunglasses that I would take of dramatically and say totally random things like.
-I will see you again. I will make sure I do.
I wonder how many times they go ahead and go with their gut and they do something stupid. I guess they don’t make shows of those occasions.
Now I have no communication with my body, I’ve spent most of my life not listening to what it says so that I can run faster, jump higher and drink more. I understand now that was quite foolish. I would be good to be able to say that the very strange feeling in my stomach is fear of new exiting ventures or whether it’s something as simple as this situation is a bit fishy.
So I don’t know. I have to make some decisions right now, big ones. And I don’t know. And my gut is quiet as a mouse or more rumbling like a lion but that means nothing except I need to eat something I guess.
In my next life I will practice listening to my body and stop running when it hurts. Maybe then I could listen to my gut, if nothing else that would make me an awesome American cop. Maybe I would even get my own show. Then I could wear small sunglasses that I would take of dramatically and say totally random things like.
-I will see you again. I will make sure I do.
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
In waiting
I’m waiting for London to get to work so I can have a meeting on the phone. I should be to do the meeting on the phone from home, except I have no home phone. Well I have a home phone number but no actual physical phone. I think I might have to get myself one of those.
Other than that, today it’s the first day of summer here. Which is strange as its colder today then it was on the weekend when it was still spring. It’s also the day when people have the “right” to put up their Christmas tree. Mr T is really exited. He wants to put it up tonight, but I think we should wait till the weekend.
This is our first Christmas tree which is a big step on creating new Christmas traditions. My family tend to have a very traditional Christmas where the same thing has been done year after year. Now we will have the opportunity to create our own traditions. I reckon it will be a mix of all the old ones from our respective families. I know Mr T will most likely have a fried breakfast with ham and egg as that is what his dad used to make. I will make rice porridge I think.
The big question is, when do you get presents, on the 24:th or the 25:th or should we make it such that you get a double load…
Ohh these are issues I entertain myself with.
Other than that, today it’s the first day of summer here. Which is strange as its colder today then it was on the weekend when it was still spring. It’s also the day when people have the “right” to put up their Christmas tree. Mr T is really exited. He wants to put it up tonight, but I think we should wait till the weekend.
This is our first Christmas tree which is a big step on creating new Christmas traditions. My family tend to have a very traditional Christmas where the same thing has been done year after year. Now we will have the opportunity to create our own traditions. I reckon it will be a mix of all the old ones from our respective families. I know Mr T will most likely have a fried breakfast with ham and egg as that is what his dad used to make. I will make rice porridge I think.
The big question is, when do you get presents, on the 24:th or the 25:th or should we make it such that you get a double load…
Ohh these are issues I entertain myself with.
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