Melbourne 5: Finale

Jealousy. The green eyed monster, as coined by Shakespeare in a couple of his works, notably Othello, where Iago says:

Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.

And this was him metaphorically describing jealousy like a cat playing with mice before eating them.

Then there's envy. I have massive problems telling the difference between "jealousy" (吃醋) and "envy" (妒忌) in any language. I often got picked on for my bad Cantonese and using words wrong. Simply put, envy is wanting what someone else have, while jealousy is fearing what you have will be taken away.

In which case, the term "food envy" is when you see someone else order a dish that you really want, and yours isn't as good. This problem can be solved when you go with good friends who don't mind sharing food with you, because then you can try everything. And that is probably one of the reasons why this Melbourne trip worked so well- because we're all single, we can share food like good friends do. However, sharing food can also be quite intimate too, and just imagine if any of us actually had partners, the jealousy it would cause.

From melblog

Overall, we had a near seamless trip, nothing particularly bad happened, nothing that was upsetting... we did have a few moments where we'd speak crudely of reckless drivers on the roads, or of rude people in petrol kioks, nothing serious at all. Loads more laughter than frowns, especially since we came for the Comedy Fest!

Melbourne 4

So there was a blackout today. With no electricity, it meant no computer, no internet (wifi down), no baking, no movies, nothing! The lack of activity brought about this stifling ennui that seemingly stretched on, and even though it was only for a couple of hours, I got all fidgety, wandering around the house like a ghost and not knowing what to do with myself.

I managed to wash my car though, AND waxed it. Got rid of this big spider spinning its web all over the side door too. Thing is, I got most of that done before the electricity died, and the sense of achievement at having a bright shiny car kicked up the adrenalin in me, so I was literally running up and down the house annoying my mum. She found it rather amusing that I was stuck at home with nothing to do like a hamster in a wheel, but she was definitely feeling the boredom as well. First world problem indeed: what to do when there is no electricity.

Dreading work next week, but let's try to get Melbourne entries out of the way before that happens, or it'll never get done.

From melblog

9am

Melbourne 3

I'm fast running out of rubbish stories to tell, so let's go for interesting stuff instead.

Recently, my high school group of friends got together (without me, I was in Melbourne) and apparently had some table talk about personality tests. You can take one here. That one is a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), an assessment categorising sixteen personality types. Letting out my secret, the results I got 2 years ago is still the same when I took it 2 nights ago- INFP: introversion, intuition, feeling, perception. I must say this is one of the more accurate psychology tests out there... uncannily accurate. It seems like JRR Tolkien, John Lennon, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are amongst some notable INFPs... maybe that's why I admire/respect them so much.

A couple of my friends are of the same type too, so the test is not just for introspecting, but also to understand friends and family, which can be useful. Those having problems with relationships? Definitely should check out each other's personalities and work out how to compromise from there. I might be asking some of you for your type after this, just out of curiosity.

Back to Melbourne:

From melblog

7pm

Melbourne 2

Story for yawns:

I don't usually have much trouble sleeping. It can be anywhere- on the train, bus, car, stiff bed, floor, table... how it works is, I don't usually get consistent hours of sleep, nor do I have a sleeping pattern to follow. Similar to meals- i.e. eat when hungry, I sleep when I'm tired. Usual case is, sleepy at 3pm but unable to sleep due to work, get home thinking yea I'll have an early night, end up 3am wide awake.

People who say they can't sleep when it's not their own bed, I can't relate to that because I'm usually so tired by the time I get around to sleeping, it's pretty much KO as soon as I hit the bed. Or the bus. Or wherever I am that allows rest. Funny thing is the dreams that come with this kind of sleep. Sometimes, it might be a doze that lasts only 5 minutes in reality, but with the dream that accompanies it? Feels like hours.

The stay in Melbourne was pretty comfortable. I had my 4 pillows (perfect number) the whole time, a heater/air con and a spacious bathroom. Except I had that odd dream of loose teeth that everyone gets. Some say that indicates indecisiveness about a problem in real life, others say I'm hiding something, or that I'm grieving loss, or that I need to loosen up. 

Whatever it is, I made sure to be extra vigilant when brushing my teeth the next morning. Don't judge- I like to take things literally.

From melblog

Alright! Back on track. Exciting times ahead because we went back to Little Lonsdale Street. I never blogged about my previous trip to Melbourne before this one. I went on my own because someone ditched me on that trip. That's story for a rainy day I think, but it was a wonderful experience and it was then that I discovered Little Lonsdale Street and the quaint cafes that dotted along it.

Lunch!

From cookkk

Just to spite someone who is expecting Melbourne 2, here's reviving an old thread. After a few days of superb food and coffee, it's time to... go cheap. Egg sandwich costs next to nothing if you've got chickens in your backyard. Yesterday, it was a plain egg sandwich (boil a small amount of water, 7 mins 2 eggs, covered) that's been seasoned with salt and pepper and some kewpie.

Today, added a bit of tuna, some baby capers (already a jar opened in the fridge) and chopped up some of that yellow pickled radish (leftover from sushi making last time). Open sandwich because... well, I ran out of bread.

Melbourne 1

Boring title because really, who has inspiration to blog at 11am? Actually, come to think about it, the most uninspiring hours should be around 2-3pm, which coincides with a lot of people's downtime I would imagine.

Breakdown of a typical day at work:

6-9am: Bleh getting up, travelling to work.. never fun.

9-11am: still trying to wake up and struggling to get into the roll of things for work.

Past 11-12:30pm: so close to lunch time. Stomachs start to rumble, motivation to work heightens due to impending break.

12:30-1pm: Lunch!!

Around 1:30pm: Work extra hard. Energy gained from lunch depleted...

2-3pm: Just. Want. To. Go. Home. Already. Need a nap.

4-5pm: so close to home time. Pack up and think about dinner.

That doesn't work on your days off though. Days off, you'll just hate on everything and everybody that wakes you up before 1pm. Like today. Anyway! Melbourne.. here we go. Will be going through this trip super quick hopefully. It was a long drive to Melbourne from Sydney.

From melblog

4am

Started off at Eastwood and we stopped by a Maccas on the way, (B turned into some storage warehouse place and missed the first one), grabbed a coffee and toastie before hitting the road again.

"Practice makes Permanent"

Food for thought:

There is the ongoing joke. A tourist asked a famous violinist How do you get to Carnegie Hall? to which he replied Practice.

I've never been into poetry, but since seeing this one youtube clip of Phil Kaye and Sarah Kay reciting spoken word poetry, I have been hooked. One particular clip which Sarah Kay did on long distance relationship titled "Postcards", she metaphorically speaks of the ongoing practice of a drummer living downstairs. How practice does not make perfect- it makes permanent. We may be repeating the same mistake over and over and it truly does not get us any closer to perfection- in fact, it draws us further away as we learn our mistakes. Phil Kaye further talks about repetition in this clip. If we repeat something enough times, it loses its meaning, be it words or actions.

It is always so much harder to unlearn a mistake and relearn it the right way, than to start from a blank slate and learn from no prior knowledge. Be it music, sports, relationships... /emo rant.

From baKEE

So after a long time of not baking anything, we decided to go back to basics and make a mud cake. With cream cheese frosting.

A party for Two

They say bad things come in threes. Actually, that is more a luck thing- bad luck comes in threes, apparently. I'm not a superstitious person at all- though as a kid, I always thought there was a ghost living in my parents' room. Or specifically, their bathroom, and I hated going into their room, especially during the evening when the sun is setting and the world is shadowed in this unnatural semi-darkness. Perhaps it's because out of all the rooms in the house, their room is the one place I visited the least.

Where was I? Oh, three. If we were to be superstitious, three is a good number because it's meant to sound like "live" in Chinese as opposed to 4. Saying goes that it's always third time lucky as well. Then again, there is that weird superstition that you should never take photos with a group of three because the middle person will bite the dust. Yep, this world works in strange ways and one cannot define a number as being simply either good or bad. HOWEVER, I've had my three unfortunate events and would like to believe that things can only get better from here. It's all about being positive and optimistic.

From cookkk

No better way to do that than to have a party! And since it's a weekday, few people could make it. Rather, it was a party for myself and PS (aka Princess) only.