Food for Me Meme!!

Painfully aware of the current Flickr malfunction with all my associated websites, I felt I absolutely HAD to post this, courtesy of Fiona (AKA my twitterpoop @Fifikins)

Now, DO IT.

How ya do it.
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more (but I am willing to accept donations towards achieving this!)
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette (maybe! Not willing to cross it out, but then again…)
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. (This is definitely on my list to do though!)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Oh my gosh... 15 out of 100, that's terrible!

And I couldn't find strikeout in the tools here... but I will NOT eat roadkill.

Yuck.

:Sammyjo:

Mix N' Match

Oh how it hurts to be broke.

Back to uni, and this session I'm going Environmental Science, Media Comms B, History/ Philosophy of Science and Computing Science (Yay for programming!)

You'll probably see my HPSC journal mentioned in posts here or there... http://hpsc1200journal.blogspot.com/ where I'll be talking about the tutes and lectures. Not the most exciting thing in the world, but necessary.

I got my hair dyed red on Friday!! I've been dying (Pardon the expression) to have something different, and I thought it would be perfect to try it. Mum and Dad didn't quite expect the red to be the blood red reminiscent of my room, but I think they're getting quite used to it... and maybe, just maybe, they'll like it; eventually.

I'm doing a presentation to the Farm on Wednesday about Twitter... Although I'm petrified to be doing a presentation in front of my work mates, I'm pleased I'll get to talk about twitter more... it's actually become an integral part of my life, and I don't think there are many days where I don't tweet. The immense functionality of it all mean I can't be anywhere where I can't have a tweet... well, anywhere where there is an internet or GSM signal, that is.

No more spending, I promise, but my self confessed addiction to Poker machines means I'll really have to save if I want to enjoy myself on weekends. Oh Outback Jack, Oh Zorro, Oh Where's the Gold! There are several things I want to save for:

• New Laptop (High, HIGH spec one, so it'll last me) Or a Desktop, either way, A new mahcine.
• SLR camera... I love my Fuji, but I've seen the immense difference in photo quality between compact and SLR photos. Not only this, but my 5.1 MP resolution is quickly falling behind in specs... there are compacts out there with 12MP! (but then again, look at my dad with his 4yr old 3MP, lol)
• Camcorder: It's not a high priority, but I've found that I am going to need it in the future, particularly for my mimes, and for projects that are going to surface.
• Car - Oh god yes, Again, not a high priority because a) I don't have enough experience to drive a car of my own, b) I can't afford the cost of one and c) I couldn't afford to maintain one, but I always dream of owning my own Bright red 05 Holden Astra (dreams)
• Like I would ever save without spending it on something, but I would love to save up extra money for bond and rent for an apartment. I love living with the family, but I'm scared of being dependant on my parents for the rest of my life. What will happen if I don't make it in the industry? Am I going to leach off my folks and not break away? What happens if they suddenly aren't around anymore? I hate to think it, but even at 19, I need to prepare for the day when I don't come home to screaming siblings... and that's a scary thought.
  

well, that's all I can think of. I understand now how easy it is to be sucked into spending habits once you have an income... and how horrid it is to rip yourself out of it.

Anyway, I'm going to go on eBay and pretend to work while I look for Cooking Guide for DS... cheap.

later.

--
Sammyjo

Gone bush

Well, since my last post (which was about a month ago, sadly) there's been a whole heap of changes to my holiday...

Thanks to world youth day, my aunty and uncle couldn't have me to stay...because they had do come down to sydney anyway!
As a result, Dave and I decided to get away from the WYD SYD madness another way... by heading north to Port Stephens. We stayed at a lovely place called Wanderers Retreat, which contained cosy little tree houses nestled in the bush. Ours contained a double spa, had a private BBQ and balcony, and we had a blast, walking to the beach, lazing around the house and occasionally driving around Nelson Bay to see the sights.
Despite the disappointment of not being able to go on an interstate train, I still enjoyed that week break very much, and looking at the masses packed into the CBD, I was even more grateful for it. I was thinking about going on the train later some time anyway...

On a different note, I was thinking about taking another stab at designing my website. I don't know what the design will be like, but I know I wasn't happy with the design I came up with. I guess I'll make it a bit more user friendly too, seeing the flash aspect wasn't the best solution cross-browser. I wonder if I can chuck a simple CMS system in there to help manage it better,but I don't know if I can manage the coding through Umbraco (the preferred choice in CMS for me)

I dunno.

I've been thinking about other things, but I don't know if I'm ready to say them. Maybe later.

Ciao.

:Sammyjo:

It's a habit

I think it's a little depressing how I'm only writing to this blog about once a month now. It raises questions as to the movement of the whole blogging phenomena.

I mean, blogs were huge about 6 months ago. Has society gotten over blogging? Potentially society has become too fast paced for the blog. Thanks to IM, twitter and mobile applications that let you interact with the web on the run mean that people don't find it worthwhile to sit on a computer and type their thoughts anymore.
Look at twitter for instance. Now a self confessed "twitter-holic", I tweet what I'm doing on an average 20 times a day. That's enough to let everyone know what I'm doing every day. After doing all that, why would I want to sit and blog about my thoughts? I've just summarised everything into 190 character sentences, and if you really wanted to know you could look up my feed on twitter.

But then again, like paper diaries used to be, blogs are great if you feel particularly strong about something and don't feel 190 characters is enough to get your feelings across.

So here I am, right?

I also like the spontaneity of blogging. I can totally change direction and talk about what I just forgot about.... lol....like... exams? Yeah, lets talk about exams, and school, and stuff.
It's the end of semester one, yay! I have two exams in the next week, media and Philosophy. close together, but once that's over then the holidays can really begin!

Oh gosh, my fascination with trains... I didn't really think much of it, but I realised I had a curiosity for them when I noticed people weren't as excited about getting a millenium train as I was, and as excited about going the long way home to see a different set of stations.
I even find myself occasionally looking at the Cityrail website to look up the different technical specs of each of the trains.

I even think it would be a awesome goal to one day travel to every city rail station on the network... it would cost a bit of money, sure... but it would be so much fun in my eyes.
Now, since i work at surry hills I'm very familiar with central station, and as I pull up to central I see the interstate platforms, where the intercity and long distance trains are located... the mystery and allure of those trains always excite me, and I've always wanted to go on them!

Well, I think my little longing may be finally satisfied. During the holidays I plan on going to the blue mountains via train, and hike along some of the waterfalls for the day... and, to top it all off, I'm going to visit uncle henry and aunty anne in armidale on the Xplorer long distance train... with on-board meals and comfy recliner seats!!!

Oh gosh, so excited!!

Well, I have run out of things to say. So I'm going to tip out my stone cold tea, grab my sandwich and take me for a wee walk.

later.

--
Sammyjo

I can haz drive!! ;-)

After a year of allowing arrogant people to zoom past me, being swamped at an intersection, and even some people doing U-Turns seeing me coming, I'm finally what Dave likes to call "Learn-ed".

:-)

I only lost four points of of my test, for minor things like going 1km over the limit and braking a little too hard...
I thought I was going to fail when I misjudged a few cars coming right and I almost blocked an intersection, but apparently my testing officer said it wasn't long enough to cause a major obstruction. Phew!

The weather was even nice, the heavy rain held off until I'd finished the test... only to dump on me driving home.
Ah, my licence... the key to a relative freedom!

.... so, anyone got a car? LOL.

Thankyou, Davey, for letting me drive your car so much, for wasting your power steering fluid from doing all those reverse parks and 3 point turns... thanks to Aunty Maz for being the only one brave enough to teach those first few lessons... and thanks to Joe from ABC driving school for showing me a reverse park method SO GOOD, I haven't screwed up one since I've learnt it.

*dances around the room flashing licence*


:Sammyjo:

What goes up comes crashing down

Right now, I feel horrible…

Rushed, flustered, trapped, like the elixir of time is slipping through my fingers?

"What?" exclaim my audience. "What horrid, ontologically despairing matter could be troubling out effervescent young blogger? Is it a death, finances, or maybe issues of a criminal sort?"

Well, my insane readers, it is none of that. In fact, it is much worse.

Assignments.

The worse thing about all this is that most of this rubbish has been brought on by myself. University is so… loose on the leash, so to speak. Everything rests upon your shoulders, your responsibility to go to classes, to listen, to do the work, and it's quite frightening to see how relentlessly the lecturers and tutors power through the course material.

With all this free responsibility there comes many distractions. For me, the biggest of which is my laptop. I was so happy to bring my baby to uni… to be able to keep my notes in one place. I was even more delighted when I found out about the free internet. Unfortunately, it's been by biggest weakness.

I've often spend entire lectures distracted by things on the internet; shopping, games, research, talking to others.

In fact, I'm doing it now.

It's a bad habit that needs containing…

But I hasn't been contained yet. In fact, it's so bad that in Philosophy (one of the courses I'm least interested in) the lecture I listened to this morning has been the first in about 3 weeks. 6 lectures.

It's come back to bite me in the ass.

I've got about 8 assignments. 3 essays, 1 class test, 2 tutorial papers, 1 folio project, 1 presentation… the list goes on.

And guess what, I haven't started them yet. It's quite bad in philosophy, as I'm completely puzzled with the essay question.

Don't get me started on philosophy. Nothing in philosophy is ever right or wrong, it's always about pondering, analyzing, musing. There doesn't seem to be any specific information for me to draw on, it's all on what I think. What happens, dear pray, if what I think is seriously wrong? How do you mark something that's not right or wrong? It confuses me so… so much it frightens me. I don't enjoy being confused at all.

Even my favourite subject, Media is a pain. Not only are they doing strange work, but I'm competing against people who are so much better at media than I am….

Another bad piece of luck, the next couple of weekends are full of family commitments, that leave all my work to be done in the week days.

I know my work will let me take a day or two off, but my parents (rightly) believe it's bad work ethic to just take days off… but I'm seriously concerned it will mean bad things for me If I can't take a step back from all of this.

This worry could all be generated by hormones, or lack of sleep… probably the latter as I can barely keep my eyes open at the moment…

So many things are flying around my mind… It's just so overwhelming… I wish I could just pause time so I can think about what to do,

But If I stop to think, time, and people will go flying past me…

I wish this could end, even for a moment.

 

:Sammyjo:

P.s – I know it's my fault, be quiet.

Neoliberalism

I really have run out of titles, i just pulled that from the media lecture I'm sitting in at the moment.
I hope I didn't excite anyone with the possibility of having REAL information... it would be quite a disappointment.

The problem with this diet I'm currently on is that I can eat a tonne of food, yet still be really hungry. I feel like that now. Diets, heh. If I wasn't doing this for my health, I wouldn't be really doing it at all.

I guess I'm like -

(sorry, caught my eye on the rather cute lecturer up the front... I liked it when he was wearing the suit one day...that was nice.)

I guess I'm like an addict. [unnamed friend] the other day was telling me how they fell back into the smoking habit, and how they were going so well, only to have an emotionally trying situation make them begin again.
I have a similar addiction to food. It sounds horribly cliché for someone like myself, with such an insatiable appetite, but after going on this diet I've realised how much food dictates my day, and my news.
For instance, when I had my love affair with the slurpee I would structure my day around it; I would get it at 3:30 on the dot, I would make sure my meals were always 1-2 hours before or after to give my tummy time to prepare for it, I'd even have a preset design to it.

Kinda creepy.

On this diet where I have to force myself to eat breads and healthy crackers, the thought of food never seems to pass my mind.

I lost my train of thought, so I'll end that there.

Thinking about going to Wollongong on sunday, depends.

BTW, photos aren't going to be embedded on the blog anymore, they'll be on Flickr.
www.flickr.com/sammyjospics

Later.