Consistency

Don't you hate those annoying people who leave massive gaps between new blog posts? 

I will curtail self hate there, because it would be contrary to the title of this blog to rant. All ranting must be done in an indirect manner. 

To give readers a quick update of random stuff recently liked:

• Finishing another degree.
• Summer.
• Having nothing to do and actually reaching the point of boredom.

To prove that I have not completely wasted the last seven years, I will honour an important point often drilled home in lectures by many a professor, tutor or other academic type person and provide substantial explanations for why I like the above stuff. 

Finishing another Degree

The main reason why I experience feelings of happiness over this occurrence may not be immediately discerned by the average reader. Conjecture may dwell on popular themes 

1. intellectual freedom (aka. having the ability to loll on the couch and master the art of using the least amount of brain power possible by a living creature); 
2. economic factors (improved future earning potential).

However, in reality, I believe the main reason for my happiness regarding this matter is that I am now able to start some more study (updates soon!).

Summer

While living on the top floor of a poorly insulated, non-air-conditioned flat may not prove conducive to a sweat-free summer experience, there is still something magical about this time of year. Maybe it is the memories associated with this weather. Weather-memory association means that every time it starts to get hot, I am reminded of holidays, barbecues, beach and sometimes....

Having nothing to do

Actually, stopping to think about it, these three elements are really intricately interconnected and the intellectual freedom point is undoubtedly actually quite high up there. But ironically, I think the main happiness factor behind having nothing to do is the opportunity to get stuff done. Having nothing to do actually is having a lot of things to do but actually having the time to get some of it done. For example, I can now see the floor in my laundry and have got on top of the cooking to the point of being able to freeze a couple of meals for future consumption.

Look at that beautiful floor and room for 

cupboard doors to open! *domestic drool*

The happy conclusion of this post will be my realisation just now that the three above likes tie in nicely with the original post title: for me, Summer, the pleasures of domestic monotony and study are all things that have come and gone, come and go and will no doubt continue to come and go in the future. 

A special note of thanks to the cicadas outside my window for their constant (consistent) applause throughout the creation of this post.   

That first touch of Summer...

That smell is in the air - the slight warmth, at sunset and into the evening. That feeling that anything is possible, that something is going to happen. That things are coming back to life.

Summer is coming.

Lamb Tagine

One of the best meals of my life was a slightly-overpriced lamb tagine with couscous at a restaurant in Geneva (second only to a communal dish of assorted curries and big stretchy flat-bread from an Ethiopean-Eritrean restaurant on the other side of the lake. Actually, come to think of it, the Eritrean was much better - but I just would not know where to start explaining, let alone reconstructing it myself!).

So coming to my point, I have a lot of lamb that we were supposed to cook the other day in something but didn't and I was trying to think of what to do with it and what better to make on a chilly end-of-winter day than a nice hearty tagine?

Grating Limes

The previous tenant at our new place was kind enough to bequeath us a strong stale cigarette smell (complete with filled ashtray!). Since moving, we have spent the last couple of weeks trying everything short of black magic to try and rid our home of the lingering smell - incense, scented candles, oil burner with lavender oil... even leaving the windows open and turning blue around the edges with cold... all to little or no avail - while all the tricks gave us great smells, they were only transitory and apparently only covering rather than removing.

Enter the answer to every question I've ever posed or not posed yet: google. My dear search engine friend tells me that one great way to remove that odious odour is with the help of a little peel from any of the noble citrus family. After raiding my dwindling fruit collection, I had the luck of finding:

• One very ancient, bordering on petrified, lemon
• A few old and slightly too soft oranges
• One healthy looking lime

Forever the optimist, I decided to give them all a try! The orange came up okay, the "rock-lemon" didn't really want to play along, but I still managed to scrimp a bit of rind off it. 

Finally came the lime.

If you could believe this, smelling was perhaps even better than tasting one. The pungent, fresh, sweet and ever-so-slightly spicy aroma was literally visible. Intoxicating droplets burst into the air from the first scrape.

With such a promising start, I hope this google advice proves effective. If not, at least I will have made the precious discovery of another small wonder of the sensory world. 

Clean Kitchens

I LOVE clean kitchens - more specifically, mine. I think this is the type of love which develops out of the rarity of the lover coming into contact with the lovee, generally due to reasons related to the difficulty involved in obtaining it. While others may long for caviar, truffles, pearls or diamonds, clean kitchen is my thing.

Chocolate fondue

Whoever came up with the idea to create a meal that revolved around melted chocolate is okay in my books. Stay tuned for a Chocolate fondue II, coming to a blog post soon (hopefully!)....

This Blog

I am feeling quite down lately - We've just moved house and are facing all the joy that that brings: trying to reason with (ie. begging for mercy) electrical, phone, internet providers*, landlords and real estate agents. In amongst it all, I have also managed to get sick.

So, having decided it was about time to update my blog, I was momentarily haunted with the thought that I had nothing that was making me brim with happiness to write about. Then I realised that I am a selfish cow who has constantly has so many awesome things in her life that she has become completely blasée about them and takes them for granted.

Okay - enough self-hating, but it's true. I have many massive blessings in my life and recent examples abound. Take my parents, for example, who when they heard we had to move house, jumped in the car and drove the 700 or 800km to Sydney with trailer in tow (literally - ha!) to help us with the move. Or our friends who put in hours and hours of heavy lifting and putting up with everyone's stress and fatigue and all this while fasting.

So, why the post title? Well, I just realised how wonderful it is that I chose to make a blog about stuff I like. It makes me remember - even if just a little - how lucky I am.  





*I am feeling smug today, having finally figured out how to connect to the internet on my computer with the help of my mobile and bluetooth.

Learning.

I don't know what I will do once I finish university at the end of November. 92% of my life so far has been spent in some type of learning institution. That may seem excessive, but I haven't gotten sick of it yet! In fact, some days I feel like I'm only just beginning to get the hang of it, like it is just the beginning.

If only someone would pay me to stay at university forever!

Staying at home when it's raining outside.

This one is self-explanatory,

My Husband.

Awwwwwww! :)

Not so random, but true nonetheless.

Comments.

Don't you just love it when people give you feedback on your blog/social media?

Theoretically I do too....

*HINT HINT*

*WINK WINK*

*NUDGE NUDGE*

Having a life.

I am extremely proud to say that yesterday I was actually too busy to write a post! Haha - Triumph! I have a life!

DISCLAIMER: Being a contradictory character, I equally enjoy doing nothing and not having a life. Everything in good measure.

To be fair, most of the day was taken up with being at and travelling to and from work. Sigh.

But... BUT! The day was made pleasant with the prospect of spending the evening catching up with some awesome friends whom I hadn't seen for a long time. This inevitably led to the combination of a deluxe-pack of stuff I like:

• Friends
• Laughing hysterically over very little
• Reminiscing over the good old days 
• Too much delicious food (Tandoori Chicken, vine leaves, lasagne, pizza, garlic bread...)
• Dessert (Thanks Nat!!)
• And lots of HUGS!

This massive influx of so many of my likes in one place at one time undoubtedly outweighed missing a post. I only hope my anonymous readers agree...

Porridge.

Aka. 'Oatmeal'.

Funnily enough, I thoroughly enjoy porridge accompanied by Tea, books, such as the one I'm currently reading, along with a cool winter's morning.

I come from a long line of porridge pioneers. My paternal grandmother would make us porridge topped with those travel-sized kelloggs cereals as breakfast treats during stays at her home and my father is a great porridge connoisseur, specialising in using uncooked-muesli with lots of dried fruit to create fruity porridge extravaganzas.

I continued the family tradition, exporting porridge to continental Europe. During a stay in Switzerland, I introduced it to my Bulgarian flatmate, who promptly adopted it, making one large saucepan to nourish him continuously throughout the day. A fellow Aussie expat also jumped back on the oat-wagon and started re-teaching herself how to make it, calling me for advice regarding re-heatability and the like.

As a child, I quickly became aware of the fact that porridge was not a 'cool' breakfast food, but now I am finally comfortable to stand up loud and proud and proclaim my ongoing love for this amazing grain, the oat.

Do you have any secret, uncool loves? And if you're an oat-supporter, what is your favourite way to prepare them?

Acting.

This is one of the things I love doing, regardless of whether I can do it well or not.

My most recent acting experience was a couple of years back and involved professional make-up artists and camera crew, my creative friend, a lot of rain and me doing an astoundingly poor American accent. Here's a preview.

Before that, there were many years of random community musicals as a child and drama throughout high school.

For many years, I seriously entertained the idea of being an actor... then I decided I didn't like the hospitality industry all that much... *boo-boom chik!*


Poor humour aside, have you ever had a crazy dream career? Did you ever consider pursuing it seriously and if so, what steps did you take to make it a reality?

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Somewhere in the back of my brain, I have the desire to be different or special in some way (Ha!). This usually does nothing more than temporarily inhibit me from trying things I consider to be too mainstream. I'm fairly sure I delayed reading the Da Vinci Code well and truly long after I'd heard raves from every non-reading-type friend I had (rest assured, I will not be dedicating a post on this blog to that particular book. Although, in fairness, I like the fact that it got those particular friends of mine into reading - quite a noble feat!)

While I possess a plethora of despicable faults, one thing I believe I am is reasonably fair. So it is now that I admit that, having been pushed by various members of my family to read the first book of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy,  I am actually quite enjoying it! I am only about a third of the way in, but I must say it's got me. I'm there with Mikael as he sits freezing in the small guest house in northern Sweden, getting set up to investigate the decades-earlier disappearance of a teenage member of an extremely complicated and epic family. I also feel a connection with the ironically incredibly-enlightened Lisbeth as her quirky and troubling life unravels before me.

I should also mention that this particular stuff goes quite nicely with my previous like.

Tea.

As much as I'd like to well and truly separate this from the seemingly all-engulfing world of facebook, it would not be fair if I did not admit that I first had the idea for this blog yesterday, after writing a simple status remarking on the pleasant discovery of a new tea and being surprised by my friends' interest in this observation. From this, I have made the naive and possibly arrogant assumption that people may be interested in following my small discoveries and knowing what stuff I like!

On that note, I dedicate this inaugural post to Dilmah's 'pink' tea: Rose with French Vanilla Real Leaf tea (part of the Exceptional range). Check it out here. How can I describe the experience of my first cup? Well as I said to my friends, it literally smells like pink! My husband brought it home for me - I am naturally inclined to the practical (read: cheap) options so it would probably not be something I went for myself - but I'm so glad he did so on my behalf. Having said this, I am a bit of a weak touch when it comes to the Greys (normally Earl, but Lady when I'm feeling a little more adventurous).

For all those weight/health-conscious people, the awesome conclusion I have reached regarding flavoured teas is that they are a really great way to avoid the need to add sugar. My sweet tooth cries out for at least one teaspoon of sugar in every cup of plain black tea I drink (which can be copious) but for some reason, the special touches of flavour in the Greys, and now their new niece Rosey, distract my needy taste buds enough to allow my daily sugar quota to be saved for other things (many of which are sure to appear in subsequent posts).