Prepping for Uni

Last holiday post (for now)!

This post is just going to be a lot of random little things because I haven't really been doing too much lately.

So if we reflect back on my holidays, I'm actually quite proud of myself. I was quite productive and explored a lot of new things. Hopefully I can keep this up during Uni though...

I'm still a bit annoyed I didn't do much artsy stuff besides scrapbooking (which I actually just finished today by the way! YAAY!)... I really wanted to draw and paint a lot these holidays. That was probably my only goal and I ended up doing everything else apart from that.

Oh but speaking of artsy stuff... I went to Daiso in Parramatta and browsed around and I saw this thing that is literally just a coil of material and they have instructions for you to weave a basket!

Because I think it's the sort of thing where you need quite a lot of time to do, I haven't gotten started on it yet. I've cut out all my strips but they've just been lying around on my desk, hopefully I get around to it soon and hopefully it doesn't turn out like my sock bear...

Needless to say, I stuffed that one up... (pun pun pun!)

I also bought some embellishment stickers from Daiso, which I think were totally not worth $2.80 but they were so pretty I couldn't resist. I think I managed to buy two of the very few items in Daiso that actually aren't worth it but hey, without people like me, Daiso wouldn't thrive so yeah.. next time you buy something from Daiso thank me for keeping their business alive.


What else is there?

My bro bought a few more board games but we've only played one called Pandemic.

I think this is the best game so far! The interesting thing about this game is that it's a co-operative game, meaning all the players actually work together to win against the board game.

As you can tell by the name, the game has to do with diseases spreading across the world, and you have to work together with other players to cure all four diseases. You get assigned role cards, each with their own special powers, and you get to move around the world treating and curing diseases. However, each round you need to infect at least two cities and this can cause outbreaks. If you get eight outbreaks, then you lose. You also lose when the deck runs out and when you run out of infections. The crazy thing is that every now and then you get Epidemics which increase the infection rate and intensify the infections. This probably doesn't make any sense but it's seriously such good fun I really loved it!


I also watched Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

This movie was...alright... I mean yeah it was a good enjoyable film but it's not great or anything. My family kept cringing at the British accents, but it added to the humour. Honestly, I'm really sick and tired of this Gemma Arterton acting in these types of movies (she acted as Io in Clash of the Titans as well). Her voice for some reason really unsettles me. Okay maybe it's the voice I'm sick and tired of and not this film genre. Actually no, I still don't like her because I feel like I keep seeing her in this sort of film and it's just annoying.

Another thing was that the ending totally didn't make sense to me. It just contradicted what they were saying the entire film like "NO! You can't possibly let this guy do this because if anyone does that then they will unleash all of Hell's Wrath!" But then at the end they're like "Yeah, nah..." and just do it anyway...

But yeah, it's a Disney family film so I suppose it's not meant to be an amazing film. It's funny in it's own way and Jake Gyllenhaal's muscles are highly defined (although I still can't find his face super attractive, there's something about his eyes that make him look very creepy and unnatural).


And speaking of movies, on Facebook, Civic had this instant win thing and I won a double pass for The Internship.

This was on like Thursday or something. The terms and conditions said to be used from 13 June 2013 until the end of the film's season. I was like "13TH OF JUNE?! THERE'S NO WAY IT'S STILL SHOWING!" And so I checked ALL NINE cinema companies and it was only showing in ONE HOYTS LOCATION! How ridiculous is that. I probably won't watch it because I ceebs anyway, I wouldn't even have entered if I knew it was a double pass to the Internship but oh wellz...


AND since we're going on films anyway, how cool is this behind-the-scenes shot of Django Unchained! YOU MUST MUST MUST CLICK ON IT TO ENLARGE THE PHOTO IT'S JUST AMAZING!

Ugh, that's so awesome! I love how in-character Leonardo DiCaprio gets!


And one last film-related point! I didn't realise but Disney did a short film that was a sequel to Tangled!!!!! How did I not know this?!?!? Well, actually I do know how I did not know this, it came out together with Beauty and the Beast 3D (I think it was 3D but if not, it was one of those special things like Diamond Edition or whatever).

WATCH IT NOW!!!


UGH I LOVE TANGLED!! Rapunzel and Flynn Forever!!

And that's the end of my rant!


And now onto some cooking stuffs!

My great-uncle and my second cousin's birthdays are soon, so my great-aunt wanted me to make a dessert. I needed to try something different so I looked through my baking cookbook and I found something called Impossible Pies! The author said something like "These pies are more magical than impossible. You pour the pudding-like mixture into the pie pans and bake it and it separates into three layers: a base crust, a custard filling and a coconut topping."

I was like I NEED TO TRY THIS! Except I didn't want to fail on the day so I tried it out yesterday and OH MY GOODNESS IT WENT TERRIBLE!

Actually, it wasn't that bad, the taste is really good, it's just that I didn't realise the 'base crust' was going to still be sort of soft, and because I don't have a springform pan I just used a normal baking pan and when I flipped the impossible pie onto another plate, half of the soft crust layer separated and stayed in the pan! OH NOO!! I was so annoyed but good thing I didn't do that on the day! The first thing I did this morning was go to Kmart and get myself a springform pan! Actually the pack came with two so I'm happy now. Tomorrow I get to serve up a lovely impossible pie!

So here's a pic of the final thing:

And a close-up on the coconut on top:

And a badly unfocused image of the slice which doesn't really show you much but in real life you can distinctly see the base, custard filling and coconut topping!

Later maybe I'll take a photo of me making it, it's really easy, just whip everything up in a blender!


AND THAT'S IT!

Hope everyone has a lovely start to Uni!

Up next:

A Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire themed blog (I know I keep saying this, but it's coming up!)

More stories

More drawings

Most likely two songs (I have one song learnt but I sound really retarded in the recording so I'm not sure about that one, and I'm really close to finishing off this second song so hopefully I sound alright in that too otherwise there will be no songs blogged at all!)


And here's some links:

Shel Silverstein: The Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas

George Carlin: On assassination

Neil deGrasse Tyson: The most astounding fact

18 Amazing Facts About the Human Body

Multicolored Layered Paper Sculptures by Maud Vantours

Blind Ears and Deaf Eyes

So recently I discovered a Youtuber called Tommy Edison. His channel is TommyEdisonXP, and he's a blind guy who answers a ton of questions relating to blindness, like what colours are to blind people and even unanswerable questions like What Do Blind People See?

He's such a lovely guy, and so funny! I watched the majority of his videos and it's just so interesting how blindness really affects things like how he fears still water because it's not moving and that's really creepy to him.

He also has this channel called Blind Film Critic, where he reviews movies he 'watches'. It's funny how in things like X-Men First Class he was just so confused because no one explicitly stated what their powers were.

Anyway, the entire point of this is because I saw a comment in one of his videos (and I'm not sure which one because I watched too many and can't remember) that said something like "Have you ever met a deaf person before? Because there's pretty much an entire barrier of communication there :/" (paraphrased). And that got me INSPIRED to write another story! Yay!

It's really short, less than 500 words actually but that's all I could manage. I could add more but I felt like it wasn't really needed.

Tell me what you think!!

---***---

When a blind man and a deaf woman fall in love, what happens?

----------

“What do you hear?”

She saw his mouth move as he spoke into the microphone, the words appearing on the screen.

“I hear”

What do I hear? He thought to himself. He felt the sunlight streaming down on them both. He tasted the cherry-flavoured lip balm from when he kissed her. He smelt her perfume, a sweet smell that made his heart flutter. But what do I hear?

“The steady hum of the computer that brings us together. The small birds perching outside as they serenade their loves. The annoying crickets calling for their mates. The cars rumbling past as they search for their soul mates.

“It is a quiet day, and I can hear you. The beautiful breaths that come from your lungs. The soft beating of your heart. And I can hear your smile right now. In a world of lost souls finding their lovers, here I am listening to mine.”

It was true. She was smiling. She loved that about him; the way he could hear things other people couldn’t.

“What do you see?”

She stared at the words on the screen.

I see everything, she thought, heartbroken. I see more than you could ever imagine. I see colours, and shapes. I see what makes the sounds you hear. I see what makes the sensations you feel, what makes the flavours you taste, the fragrances you smell. I see a whole world you never can.

“So many things.” She typed onto the computer. The words sent a clicking of braille underneath his fingers. “But I can only focus on you. And you look beautiful.”

His smile was received by her tears.

“Don’t cry.”

----------

A world of five senses makes no sense to me. The gods have decided I should lack of one, and for that they make up with the other four.

Our sense of touch is strong, and our most important.

We are not two wholes; we are two broken pieces that join to become one whole.

At times we cannot understand each other. There is as much difficulty in explaining the beautiful strums of a harp as there is in explaining the joys of a brilliant purple sky.

But we have our touch. And we have our love. And through the difficult times we hold each other in silence, because that feeling of love makes up for the lack of sight and hearing.

If Helen Keller could make it through, then surely we can better her.

----------

When a blind man and a deaf woman fall in love, what happens?



The same as any other couple:

We find a way.

For love’s sake.

Some new randomness

It's been over a week since my last blog post yikes! Gotta get back into it before I take another six-month hiatus.

Honestly, I haven't been doing much that is blog-worthy. I've been reading a lot of A Dance With Dragons, even forming my own opinions and theories and whatnot. I'm nearly finished, so once I'm done I can Google everything yayy!

Also, I got three new English students, and they're all from Baulko Year 12 so I've been spending lots of time markings essays since Trials are coming up soon. So fast! I can't believe we're starting Semester Two of Uni when they start their Trials but anyway.

And my guitaring is getting better! My calluses are starting to form, ever so slightly. My fingers are so weak though =[ Maybe it's time to do finger exercises!

I still haven't started drawing yet. I was going to buy some black paper today for my drawing of Tyrion but I forgot and so I guess I'll just have to do it on normal paper.

And speaking of drawing, I re-discovered this book that Alice bought me some time ago.

The entire book is just blank, but there are ideas all over the book on things to draw with blank space for you to draw them. It's kind of weird how people would pay $17 for a book of drawing IDEAS. It's got "refreshingly basic" things, like a paperclip, to "deceptively simple" things, like a bicycle, and even "conceptually mind-bending", like the sound of girlish laughter. What.

After I do the drawings I have already planned, I will attempt to do maybe one drawing out of this book a day? I don't know how long that will last but hey, I could give it a shot.


I also stumbled on this really cool thing.

Look at this picture:

At first, it doesn't seem that amazing... until you realise IT'S A SINGLE PHOTOGRAPH!

This site includes a different angle and a video of the process of creating the image.

Pretty cool right!?! I'm so fascinated by this stuff! But in all honesty, I guess if you think about it... I don't really get the point. Like, it's for an album cover and I just don't understand how that adds to the album but anyway, it's some good artwork there.


Another thing is, my brother has been buying more board games so here goes:

Ticket To Ride

As you may guess, it's based on train lines. I think the original is the U.S.A:

My brother also got the Africa and Asia (including Russia and stuffs) expansions. The Asia one has two sides, and one of them you can play in teams. We haven't tried the expansions, but the original is pretty fun. You are given some routes to complete, and you need to try to collect different-coloured trains to make your routes possible, and others are unaware of what routes you have. You get points based on what routes you complete and how many train lines you put down.

It was rated really well, and some people who have a website and rate board games all rated this as #1, but I didn't find it that amazing. It's fun when you don't want to use too much brain-power but I wouldn't say it's the best. I think it's because those experts can remember all the routes and know roughly where others want to go and try to block the others so they lose points.


Mr. Jack

I love this game! The concept is amazing! So hard to explain, but briefly it's based on Jack the Ripper. It's a two player game, one player is Mr. Jack and the other is the detective. Mr. Jack gets a character (from the eight in total) and that character will be Jack. The weird thing is that there are only 8 rounds, and in each round both players move ALL the characters depending on what their strategy is. Each character has a special power that can help both players in different ways.

The detective's goal is to find out which character is Mr. Jack and catch him, kind of like in Cluedo. Mr. Jack's goal is to NOT let the detective catch him. The way this happens is that at the end of each round, the detective asks Mr. Jack whether Jack is "seen" or "unseen", either seen by a lamp, light or other people (which you would understand when you play). If the detective is good and by the end of the round half the characters are seen and unseen, then he has already eliminated half the players, realising they are innocent. If he keeps halving the characters each round, then he will be able to find out who Jack is really easily.

It's actually a really difficult game and you need A LOT of brain power to work it out. There is a lot of strategy, like in chess. Similarly to chess, it's amazing how the board is always the same at the beginning, but different things can happen along the way and it gets really intense. Usually the detective wins (I think it's 80-20, but with experienced players it's still 60-40 or so) and it's really stressful being Mr. Jack! Each game takes approximately 30 minutes but it's still exhausting.


Out of all the board games my brother has bought, I would say BANG! is number one, followed by Mr. Jack. We haven't even gotten the expansions of Mr. Jack yet!


Oh and when I came home today, I started re-watching Potter Puppet Pals, which led me to rewatching Charlie the Unicorn! DID YOU KNOW NOW THERE IS CHARLIE THE UNICORN 4?!??! It came out just at the end of December last year!!


Honestly though, the first and second are still the best!


Also, I saw on 9gag this post on a Pixar theory that all Pixar movies occur in the same Universe and all effect each other. It sounded pretty interesting so I looked into it and found the original article. I was a bit confused because he jumps back and forth but I saw that he did a timeline of the events he described, which is a condensed and neater version. It's pretty cool, check it out if you've seen the Pixar films and this intrigues you.


Lastly, I'll end on two TED talks. I love TED talks, they're amazing!

This first one is done by a Victoria's Secret (I think) model, and she talks about the dangers of how our society focuses on appearances, how "Image is Superficial" and answers some questions people have about models. I think her message was really powerful and makes people really reconsider how they view things, give it a watch!



This second one is very interesting. It's done by a neurologist that focuses on hallucinations. Here he talks about how visually-impaired (even blind) people can get very striking hallucinations and how this happens. Surprisingly, it even occurs in auditorily-impaired people! It's close to twenty minutes but trust me, it's worth it!



Coming up in the next few blogs:

A Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire themed blog (once I finish A Dance with Dragons)

More stories (there are several other stories I haven't finished)

Drawings

Songs (maybe but most likely not)

Curing Holiday Boredom

Bored during the holidays? Well, look no further! Here's a list of things I've done and you can do too to make that holiday time pass quickly and productively! If you can't be bothered reading, at the end will be a summary list of things you can do these holidays!


VOLUNTEER

On Saturday the 29th, I did a training course for the Salvation Army Emergency Services. This is for when there are disasters or accidents, ranging from small scale to large scale, and people are left in an uncomfortable position. Salvation Army Emergency Services then comes in to cater and provide food for these people. Other services such as Red Cross and ADRA will cover other areas such as clothing and accommodation.

The training course looked at what sort of things SAES volunteers get called out for, what preparations are needed and what is involved in the catering (included OH&S, food preparations, etc.). The course is accredited and everything and you get a uniform and certificate and all that and it's all very formal and proper.

I don't think training courses are very frequent, as there aren't many volunteers doing this. I think I'll do a separate post talking a bit more in depth about the training day and how you can be a volunteer too if you so desire, but that will come at a later point.


ENTERTAIN YOURSELF


On Thursday the 4th, I watched Monster's University!

I loved it SO MUCH! Especially the ending. Without any spoilers, I'll just say that the ending was so powerful. It gave us a moral to our educational stories: it's not about your failures or successes, it's about working hard. You can fail once, twice or even three times but as long as you have the determination, the hard work and the right attitude, then you can go wherever you want to go!

Of course, I think the original Monsters, Inc. is better, but Monster's University was still very good! Lots of hilarious scenes, the colours and quality are AMAZING as usual, and I reckon this was better than Despicable Me 2!! The plot was very funny, and I guess would be more understandable if we actually went to American colleges, but whatever we can still sort of relate after watching American college movies!

Also, did anyone see the Monster's University website?! It's so cool, like a real Uni website! It's even got News and Events, Maps and Directions and even Financial Aid!!! Ugh, it's just so cool!!


And, as we all know, Pixar always releases a short film before their movies. The short film ahead of Monster's University is The Blue Umbrella.

My first thought was... WOAH this is SO realistic! And it was all animated, but it looked amazingly realistic! HUGE props on that. However, it did put me off a bit. But I loved the idea of hiding the humans and making the normally inanimate objects animated. It's so great how Pixar always finds ways to make you associate with inanimate objects as if they were people too!


Finally, on Sunday the 7th, I also watched WORLD WAR Z!!

OH MY GOSH! THIS WAS SO GOOD! I was expecting crazy zombies, similar to I Am Legend, but I was most definitely not expecting or prepared for zombie scenes 10 minutes into the film!!! It was so intense, I just started getting comfortable with my 3D glasses and then ALL OF A SUDDEN there was MADNESS! Oh yeah, and I didn't have any choice but to watch it in 3D and I fully hate 3D, so I reckon the movie would be SO MUCH BETTER in 2D, but a good thing was that I was able to get a break from the scary scenes just by taking off my 3D glasses and relaxing because my heart was pumping like crazy and I think I have high blood pressure now!!!

Apparently, the film is really really different to the books, but I definitely want to try reading the book! It seems really interesting reading off Wiki...


And speaking of books, I'm still reading through A Dance With Dragons, I haven't been able to progress very far because there have just been so many things I've been doing! But after this, I want to read World War Z, The Great Gatsby, The Millenium Series and so much more!


DEVELOP YOUR SKILLS

On Monday the 1st, I went to this community group/club thing called Toastmasters. I heard about it from Kaveh, who goes to the one in Epping. Basically, it's a group that helps you develop public speaking and leadership skills. Every meeting (which usually occurs every fortnight), people will make speeches, both impromptu and prepared, and these speeches are evaluated by other members of the group. The meeting is run like a business meeting, which would help you get used to formal procedures, agendas, keeping to time and keeping organised. Everything is really flexible too though, so you get to choose when you want to do a speech and which speech you want to do etc.

Toastmasters is internationally recognised and there are so many clubs/groups out there! I went to the one in West Pennant Hills and I probably will become a member soon (membership prices start every September, otherwise you have to pay some expensive pro-rata stuffs) but there are so many all across Sydney! From this page you can already see how many clubs there are! They're everywhere! Each club has different pricing schemes and different atmospheres so they encourage you to visit different clubs to get an idea but the one in West Pennant Hills is literally like a 5 minute drive from me so yeah I would just stick with that. But yeah it seems like a good way to build up on your skills with speeches, public speaking, listening and leading (as you stay longer in the club).


On Tuesday the 2nd, there was TRIVIA NIGHT! Every Tuesday at Castle Towers Gold Class, they have Trivia Night for FREE and you can win prizes if you come first!

As we went only in the second week, there were only three teams and we came second! NOT BAD! Except... the winner beat us by like twenty points but anyway......

The trivia was on all sorts of things: general knowledge, geography, history, movies, celebrities, etc. It was really fun and the guy gave us free popcorn too! Yay! We're probably gonna keep doing it every week because it's just so much fun!! In fact, we're doing it again tonight!


GET HEALTHY!

Despite a lot of people saying how unhealthy they get in the holidays, I think holidays are the best time to get healthy! Why? Because you're not as busy as you are at uni or school, you're at home where you can exercise and find the time to do more energetic things and you have more time to cook and plan your meals. I was making my lunch for uni last semester and even though it was a healthy lifestyle, some weeks I just couldn't and I'd be exposed to the expensive and unhealthy foods that uni offers, which is not good at all!

So Blogilates has this series called Cheap Clean Eats, and she made healthy crepes so I figured I HAD to try them out!

Here is the result...

Pretty cool right!! They're like actually crepes and no flour was used, no sugar, no salt, it was all pretty healthy and tasted alright too! I found it so smart that she used oats and processed them to substitute as the flour.

BUT!

I have a problem with this. Sure, they did taste nice. And sure, they are a good substitute for crepes if you want to get healthy. But I think... they're crepes!! They're supposed to be unhealthy! If you're going to eat crepes, you need to go hard and eat the unhealthy version! Sure you can eat the healthy version, but if it's not up to your standards then don't force yourself to eat it! There's other things shes makes like flourless pizza dough where she processes cauliflower for the dough, and low-carb ravioli where she uses sliced squash as the pasta, but I really don't like cauliflower and I really don't like squash! And in this case, I probably won't try making those recipes. I'm all for being healthy, but you can still have healthy pasta. Wholegrain pasta! Pizza with not as much cheese or oil!

So all in all, the crepes were delicious. But they do contain banana in them. If you don't like bananas then whatever, just eat delicious, normal crepes. And actually I was thinking of swapping the banana for sweet potato for a savoury crepe, I wonder how that would go!

But anyway, if you don't like the taste as much, and I didn't really like how it wasn't as crunchy as a normal crepe, then don't try to do a substitute because you will just end up craving the real stuff. Eat in moderation, be healthy, but don't go crazy! Trust me, it's not cool being obsessed with health! But it's also not cool eating junk food every day!


PURSUE YOUR HOBBIES

In testament to what I just said, I made pizza on Saturday the 6th with Shannelle! Specifically, Garlic Prawn Pizza! YUMMMM GARLIC!

Here is the recipe, but we also made our own pizza dough using this recipe.

I kind of didn't think it through properly because the cooking time for the prawns was really little so I should have pre-baked the pizza dough before putting on the prawns but whatever, it turned out alright in the end!

Sorry for the terrible quality! I must have been moving the camera so much and the lighting is terrible but yeh, don't you just love my OCD prawn patterns?

And here is all of them in a pile!

And finally, the slice I ate.

It was pretty filling! There was SO MUCH CHEESE! And too little garlic, but I guess I always want more garlic because garlic is DELICIOUS!!


And then, because I stopped trying to learn guitar because it was too hard, Shannelle taught me some guitar!! Its a bit easier now that I know my problem isn't really stupidity, it's just that currently my fingers aren't strong enough to hold down the strings, and sometimes my fingers even lock up straight instead of bending, and apparently that's bad form! I thought other people did this too, but now that I think of it, when I play piano a lot, like heavily for an hour or so, my fingers will start to lock up and it really hurts and I can't move or bend the finger to play the next note and it totally ruins my song!!

But oh well, I shall try harder and eventually I'll build up my calluses and I'll be playing like a (semi) pro! =]

What other hobbies are there...

I started pianoing again!

And SCRAPBOOKING! It's so fun! I feel like an old granny who knits and scrapbooks and stuff but seriously, it's actually pretty fun! It's exhausting though, planning all your decorations and what goes where and how your layout will look and what your theme is. Or maybe it's just because I have OCD and everything needs to be perfect... it seriously is a curse, this OCD.

And I've been writing, as you have seen from my previous post. Well... I didn't write the whole thing these holidays. I started a few years back, but it's a start to my writing period again... maybe...


Oh and I played another board game! My brother is in a board game phase at the moment so he's buying LOTS of games and stuff. We played Carcassonne.

Basically, each round everyone draws a tile in turn and then place it on the board depending on what the tile is. Then you have little people that you can place, and you can score points depending on whether you built a city, road or farm. It's pretty fun and the board can end up being all different kinds of shapes and sizes:

GO EXPLORING


On Friday the 5th, Diwan and I went bush walking in my backyard! As some of you know, I have a forest behind my backyard and there are actually trails to walk around and even a small waterfall! I went previously with my parents in a group with a tour guide, and it was free because the Hills Shire wants to let residents know that you can bush walk here. I was going to take Diwan a bit further than the waterfall but there was this huge puddle across the track and we didn't want to cross it so we stopped it at there.

Other stuff I want to do is canoeing, fishing, rock climbing, whale watching, etc. Go check out your local council's website and look at the events they have! THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS YOU COULD DO! And I'm sure there are other things in the city you can do!

And... this doesn't count because Vivid is already past so you can't even do this anymore but I wanted to tell you about my Vivid experience! Diwan and I got a cheap cruise for Vivid through Groupon I think and so we went there during one of the nights it was on. It sounds really romantic, but it wasn't even that great. It was FREEZING and the boat kept circling from Opera House to Harbour Bridge and back... for 2 hours... I guess it would have been alright if the Opera House displays didn't repeat every 30 minutes... so the whole thing was pretty boring and repetitive. I expected them to just constantly go near the Opera House so that the displays were always in view but they didn't. So yeah... wasn't superbly amazing but still cool.


TLDR; TOO LONG, DIDN'T READ

If you couldn't be bothered reading, here's a summary of the blog

VOLUNTEER at the Salvation Army Emergency Services or other places (I will blog more about this later)

WATCH MOVIES like Monsters University and World War Z

READ BOOKS

JOIN A CLUB like Toastmasters or anything you're interested in

TRIVIA NIGHT TUESDAYS at Castle Towers!

GET HEALTHY!

COOK!

PURSUE HOBBIES like art, music or writing

PLAY GAMES like board games or card games

EXPLORE THE OUTSIDE WORLD through bush walking, canoeing, fishing, climbing, etc.!


Or, you can...

SURF THE INTERNET

Lord of The...

God of Jenga

Minimalist Posters of Disney Films

Buzzin'

Charles Bukowski: Air and Light and Time and Space


Coming up in the next few blogs:

A Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire themed blog

Salvation Army Emergency Services blog

Drawings, stories and stuffs

Happy holidaying! Be sure to be productive!

A Lost Love

Yay! I just finished a story I started writing in about Year 10 or 11 (I can't remember).

It started off with just a concept so it's not that well-written, but please bear with me and just keep reading and let me know how well you find it!

Hope you enjoy it!

And please don't take it too seriously!!

---***---

Walking into the supermarket, I saw you.

After 4 months and 27 days, I saw you.

At first glance you looked just as beautiful as I remembered. At second glance, I noticed you put on a bit of weight. Your attire was… less elegant… simpler…cheap. And yet you still looked as beautiful as ever, if not more.

I wanted to approach you; I needed to approach you.

Alas, I thought it too…hazardous. Our relationship was unhealthy since the beginning; bringing you into my life again would only cause me great grief.

I noticed a woman attractively strut up to you, embracing you in her arms.

Oh.

So… you have moved on. And quicker than I have been able to. A deep sorrow overcame me. You seemed happy; I was forced to wonder if that happiness would ever reach me. Or were you just faking it like I was a couple of months ago? At that time I was searching, desperately searching for men, friends and useless shopping sprees to mend the void you left in me.

The woman carried you from aisle three to four. I stood there, helplessly observing you moving farther and farther away from me. I couldn’t bear the pain anymore, and so I turned in the other direction.

I filled my trolley with chocolate-coated croissants, heart-shaped lamingtons, apricot Danishes and jam-filled donuts from the bakery section. Anything to distract myself from you. I even contemplated a Coles Select pastry bun… this is the sad level I have stooped due to your doing.

Passing the deli became a big blur of pre-cooked hash browns, mild-hot salami, smoked ham and bacon dice. Anything to justify the morbid pile of sugar I knew was in those jam-filled donuts.

Milk. Yes, I definitely needed a carton of milk.

I opened the fridge and a blast of cold air numbed me for a second. From the corner of my eye, I saw the same woman. It was her… your lover. I ran, frantic. I could not bear for you to see me like this. A few steps more and I realised I left my trolley behind.

It didn’t matter.

I couldn’t let you see me.

I hid behind a shelf, waiting for you and your lover to leave.

And, all biased aside, I couldn’t help but notice…

She’s ugly!

Uglier than I would ever be. She had caked-on make-up that would shame the desserts in the bakery section, yet from afar I could still see her wide-set eyes, the down-turned lips, the squashed nose and loose, wrinkly skin beneath her eyes.

But she had confidence. She dressed sharply, like a woman of power. Is that what you love? I admit, I was never confident in myself but you were always there when I needed the comfort. Always there to raise my esteem. In fact, I even dared to think that you loved my insecurity. It was an outlet for you to express how much of a man you were. It allowed you to show your powers in comforting fragile women like me. Didn’t you like that? Didn’t you like comforting me in times of distress?

Or did I make you sick of that? Did you instead turn to this woman, looking for some confident and new person that would bring excitement to your life? Of course, I can’t blame you… I was the one that ended our relationship.

I watched in great grief as you and your lover leaved that section of the supermarket.

I returned to retrieve my trolley. I was utterly depressed.

I pushed my trolley along. Slowly, ever so slowly. I’ve forgotten about the milk I left behind in the fridge, but it didn’t matter anymore.

What matters is you.

I turned to leave and check out the items in my trolley, all symbols of pathetic defeat and surrender to life. I placed all my sugary desserts and all my fatty meats onto the conveyor belt. As the person in front of me finished their transaction, the conveyor belt whisked away my items… similarly to how life whisked you away from my arms.

And yet, here we were, in the same place. But I was avoiding you.

----------

I turn around… just in time.

Your lover… she’s upset about you it seems. She storms off to another section of the supermarket, leaving you bewildered and lonely.

You look so sad and isolated, I want to run up to you and embrace you in my own arms… but how could I? My thoughts run back to when we were together. We were so happy… or at least I was…

I think about what would happen if we did get back together…

Would you even want me back?

“Excuse me, Ma’am, that’s $54.70.”

I turn back to the cashier, crying at the thought of you.

“I…. I’m sorry…” I manage to mumble, “I… I have to do something!”

I turn and run again… But this time, I’m not running away from you. I want you. In my arms. I need you.

After 4 months and 27 days, I couldn’t resist you.

Oh sweet Toblerone, please forgive me!

Reviews All Round

So, in the last few weeks I've discovered quite a lot of things so here is a blog full of reviews (And I'm warning you, it's a really long blog)!

BOARD/CARD GAMES

I recently went to a friend's house and we played a card game called BANG!

It's like a more in depth and legit version of the card game Mafia.

You get assigned roles:

The Sheriff, who is identified

The Deputy Sheriff, who needs to keep the Sheriff alive

The Outlaws, who need to kill the Sheriff

The Renegade, who needs to be the last character (which means he has to kill the Sheriff last)

The Deputy, Outlaws and Renegade are unidentified so it's quite fun because the Sheriff doesn't know who's truly on their side and you're trying to determine who you need to kill!

And you also draw two character cards and you need to compare their features to choose which character you will play with. You will choose depending on the initial number of lives the character has and any special abilities that can be used throughout the game.

In each round, each player takes a turn in drawing a card. These cards may give you lives, bullets, weapons, larger distance range and other cool things.

My brother also bought two expansion packs, one of which comes with the bullet case you can see in the picture. These expansion packs allow you to play with more players (by adding more of the assigned roles) and add some extra crazy features such as weird scenarios every round (for example, one of the scenario makes everyone switch roles with each other).

It's really fun! If you enjoyed playing Mafia I guarantee you'll love this game!


Another game my brother bought was Settlers of Catan.

This game is interesting in the fact that you can make up the board game yourself, creating a different scenario and different strategy each time you play. The board is made up of individual hexagonal pieces as you can see in the picture. The aim of the game is to get 10 victory points, and you do this buy basically expanding your land.

So each hexagonal piece correlates to a specific terrain (e.g. forest or mountain), which correlates to a specific resource (e.g. forest= logs, mountain= rock) and a number is placed on each terrain. Players at the very beginning place a settlement on the board and get whatever resources their settlement is placed on.

Then the dice is rolled. If, for example, you roll a 9 and there are two 9's on the board, one on a forest and one on a mountain, then whoever's settlement lies on that tile will get those resources. You can then use resources to build roads, buy more settlements or convert your settlements to cities. You can also trade cards with the bank or with other players.

The blue border in the picture is the sea. Some areas of the beach have bays where you can trade with ships at a lower cost (e.g. instead of needing four of the same resource to trade with the bank, some bays let you trade 2 rocks for any resource you want and other bays have other trading schemes).

The rules are a bit more complex than that but that's the general gist of it.

The picture is a board we made up and it's part of the 5-6 player expansion pack, so the normal basic pack is smaller and it goes for 3-4 people.

There's also a version where the board is only half completed and if you build a road towards the incomplete half, you draw a hexagon tile from the deck and place it there, which is really interesting but I haven't done that version yet so I don't know how well that would turn out.


I also really want the Game of Thrones board game, but I think i'll dedicate a whole blog to the series because there are other things I wanted to talk about.

Now moving on to...


BOOKS

AGES ago (like a few years I think), my mum bought me PIXARPEDIA for a present.

I got about halfway through, forgot about it, then just picked it up a few days ago and finally finished reading it!

It's so interesting to learn about all the behind the scenes things that go on, all the technicalities with each movie and all the fun facts about Pixar.

The majority of it (the middle section) does get a bit tedious though because it's just a very long list of like ALL the characters in each film and a lot of it I found quite unnecessary.

But the beginnings and endings were really good.

Did you know:

Each frame is 1/24 of a second and each frame takes approximately 6 hours to render (but in some films like Cars, each frame took an average of 17 hours to render and in some scenes like the airport baggage scene in Toy Story 2, each frame took about 70 hours to render)

Steve Jobs was a CEO at Pixar

In WALL.E, EVE'S iPod-like design is probably because she was designed by the guy who designed the iPod

They also talk about all the Easter Eggs, such as A113, the Pizza Planet Truck, The Luxo ball etc.

It's so exciting and fun reading about this stuff I love Pixar!

Unfortunately the book was published in 2009, so it goes to UP and a second volume is probably going to take its time to be released! =[


My brother also bought the Simpson's World: The Ultimate Episode Guide for Seasons 1-20.

It's got details on all the episodes, all the little Easter Eggs and references and all the characters and stuff.

It's HUGE and SO HEAVY I am not likely to read it, ever.

My brother has been reading it a bit and he hasn't even gotten about an 1/8th of the way in, but it does look interesting for die hard fans.

It's really nicely bounded, unlike my Pixarpedia book.


TV/MOVIES

For TV, I wanted to just make a really quick observation on The Voice Season 2 which just finished recently. For those who didn't follow, this won't mean anything to you but anyway: Harrison Craig won. Actually, Danny was my favourite but I did suspect he would come last and I did predict that Harrison would win. I was so thankful Luke Kennedy didn't because his original song was shockingly bad!

But anyway my weird observation was...

Did you guys realise that the order of the winners was the same order as the First Season?

Fourth place: Team Joel (Sara De Bono/Danny Ross)
Third place: Team Delta (Rachael Leahcar/Celia Pavey)
Second place: Team Keith/Ricky (Darren Percival/Luke Kennedy)
First place: Team Seal (Karise Eden/Harrison Craig)

ISN'T THAT BIZARRE?!??!

Anyway, I thought it was bizarre.


Now for movies...

The Great Gatsby!!

Ugh, even that poster for it looks amazing!

I never read the book (I know, shocking!), so I was really confused at the beginning. It felt like too fast paced and all over the place but it was actually really good that they made it like that, because it reflected Nick's (Tobey Maquire) confusion as well.

I LOVED Carey Mulligan's acting as Daisy. My favourite line is when she says, "Gatsby? ... What Gatsby?" I don't know why but I just found that line AMAZING!

Leonardo DiCaprio of course as Gatsby himself was amazing, but I don't think it was that great to have gotten him an award (missing out again Leo). But yes, actually the entire cast was really good.

I can't really explain much about what the story is without giving anything away, but it's pretty much the main character, Nick, and his story about how he met Gatsby. The rest I can't really say but trust me it was pretty good!

I'm just in love with all the costuming and all the props, they were amazing! And the dancing looked sooo cool!


And then there's

Despicable Me 2!!

HOW.

ADORABLE.

IS.

THAT.

GAAAAH!

The minions are seriously adorable! I remember laughing in maths class because Sangavi and I were watching the Despicable Me 2 trailer on repeat and we kept saying "BABABA BABANANA POTATONAAAA".

But anyway, that brings me to my next point...

This movie wasn't as good as the first movie, and I suspect that the main reason this series was so successful was ONLY because of the minions. If you look at the plot line, I mean it's good but it wouldn't be that famous without the minions. If you look at the humour, it's funny, but the minions are a very big part of the humour (and also the Despicable Me 2 humour was trying a bit too hard, but nonetheless I laughed because I'm secretly a three year old inside).

So I'm not actually sure what I make of this.

I might not have even watched this film if it weren't for that fact that Despicable Me was the first film Diwan and I watched together (okay who am I kidding, I probably would have watched it anyway).

But yeah, the film focused on how Gru is now trying to juggle being a dad and leading a normal, non-villainous life now (which obviously he struggles a bit with because he misses playing with all the fun gadgets).

They also bring out a different, eviler side to the minions that are TOTALLY NOT CUTE! But that's all I can find myself to say.


MISCELLANEOUS

Last week I was at towers and I bought this lovely fish teapot from Simbala, which is on level two near EasyWay, for my ex-English tutor (she was really nice and lovely to me even though I only had her for about a term).

The teapot is from a brand called Britto and I am absolutely in love with their stuff! They have other teapots in the shape of dogs and cats and the designs are so clever! They also have collectables like mugs and signs and dog/cat/animal figurines. They also have a Disney line!

How cool does that look! I'm totally in love with that brand. I would buy EVERYTHING if I had the money, but they're relatively expensive. The fish teapot was a small teapot and cost $45. The larger-sized teapots are about $100 and I think that's the same price as the larger figurines. But the colours and patterns are so clever!!


ANNNND that's kind of it for my reviews! The end of this blog is nigh!

I'll end on a video. It's 23 minutes long, so if you have the time it's really worth it!

A warning: The guy is a bad speaker, he's really out of breath and talks really fast and it's a really high sort of whiny voice but it's good!

It's a TED talk so you know it'll be amazing.