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.
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.
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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!
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!
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!
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 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:
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.
If you couldn't be bothered reading, here's a summary of the blog
Or, you can...
Coming up in the next few blogs:
Happy holidaying! Be sure to be productive!
