/karen/
The view from the top
Thursday, 15 May, 2008
Thursday 24/4/08
Back at work—the only full day I would do this week. I was very busy with You things (just when you think you're done with a project, it comes back to bite you), Briefing things for June (compile and clean) and the usually stuff I will now refer to as “foo” for want of a better term—dealing with emails, fixing little coding things, little editing jobs, etc. etc.
This body will never be safe from harm
Wednesday, 14 May, 2008
Wednesday 16/4/08
I rose ... when? Late, I think. It was a much-needed day off. I dealt with the accounts, cleaned up my desk and put things away, and was generally quite productive at home.
In the afternoon, Ben and I caught the train into the city to see U23D at the IMAX. We aren't U2 fans but my mum likes them (well, their old stuff anyway) and she wanted to see it. So we went with her and treated her because it was her birthday.
Blinks
Tuesday, 13 May, 2008
- Ten Tasty Tips for Photographing Your Food (via Photojojo): must bear these mind when offering up tasty digital morsels for Michael;
- And speaking of photographing your food, I saw this book in BerkelouW the other day: Face Food: The Visual Creativity of Japanese Bento Boxes. Where do these mums get the time???
- Speaking of food, have you seen cuisine.com.au? Name three ingredients in your fridge and it will endeavour to come up with a recipe for you;
Panda!
Tuesday, 13 May, 2008
I heard about the earthquake in China this morning, discovered it affected Chengdu and immediately thought, “Are the pandas okay???” (Never mind the people; what about the pandas? What's wrong with you, Karen??? *Sigh!* I apologise for not caring as much about the state of humanity—even that part of humanity I am more closely related to—as pandas ...)
The answer isn't for our eyes
Wednesday, 7 May, 2008
Two weeks. Huh. I'm starting to get emails saying, “Where-are-you-are-you-okay-are-people-DYING???” All right, I exaggerate. I'm rather irritated this evening, and perhaps one should not blog when one is irritated. But there you go.
Anyway, I haven't been blogging because I've been up to my ears in Things To Do—
Your love is the place where I belong
Wednesday, 23 April, 2008
Lately I've been thinking about belonging and our desire to belong. I know that it's because instinctively we want to be comfortable; if you feel like you belong, you feel at ease—at home—accepted—even loved. If you don't, you feel the opposite: uneasy, alienated, ostracised, ignored. Michelle U was talking about this yesterday in the session she led: she shared with us her experiences of finishing college and going with her husband to their first parish where he serves as the assistant minister. She talked about how, for her, it was a huge shock: all her life, she felt like she belonged because she grew up in a Christian household, attended a Christian school, went to a close-knit church, engaged in ministry like leading camps, then went to college where she studied with like-minded people who were as keen about doing ministry as she was. All of a sudden, in this new parish, she found herself somewhere where she did not belong. She was not like these people in any way, and really struggled to relate to them. For example, she didn't know what to talk about with the women. Her natural inclination was to talk about the bargain purchase she made the other day while shopping, whereas these women were so rich, they didn't need to go bargain shopping. She wanted to talk about the new recipe she tried the other day, but these women all had cooks. She wanted to talk about the dramas of child-rearing, but these women all had nannies. Discovering all this was quite a culture shock for her because, for the first time, she was in the minority.
Blinks
Sunday, 20 April, 2008
Food (and food-related)
- I Love You, but You Love Meat: Interesting article about what you do when you and the one you love eat different things because a rejection of the food you serve feels so much like a rejection of yourself. I found it interesting that one woman said, “I need someone who is ethically on the same page” (i.e. vegan). Yet some couples learn to make compromises. Certain Ben and I have done that: he mostly went off wheat and dairy but we still keep milk in the house because I can't live without it.
- Of Valentine's jinxes and packaged gnocchi: I love this piece of writing—I love that it's about relationships and learning stuff as much as it is about cooking.
- Free Lunch Isn't Cool, So Some Students Go Hungry: This is article is so sad. It talks about how, even though there are programs set up to provide free food for poorer students at public schools, a lot of them forego it because it's not seen as being “cool”. They'd rather starve than let their social standing slide.
- Google's free beer and ‘big-ass’ barbies: An interesting (and slightly disturbing) approach to boosting work productivity: offer free, really good food: “They explained my job was to create this ambience, to build this captivated audience where people wanted to come in super-early and stay super-late.”
- Can Sips at Home Prevent Binges?: One journalist wonders whether teaching his sons the joy of fine wine at home will prevent them from wanting to binge-drink later. One man argues,
“If you are taught to drink in a ceremonial way with food, then the purpose of alcohol is taste and celebration, not inebriation,” he added. “If you are forbidden to use it until college then you drink to get drunk.”
- How the fortune cookie crumbles: Is American Chinese food really Chinese? (Apparently not!)
Whistle while you work
Saturday, 19 April, 2008
People say I do a lot. I don't know what the rest of the world does with their time, but the number of comments I get on the topic seems to indicate some sort of disparity. In part, I suppose, it could be attributed to my structuredness. That's one of the things I like about myself: I'm organised (mostly), systematic and efficient, and I find it easy to sort and slot things into categories to help me deal with things. Combine that with lots of self-motivation and an ability to grasp new things fairly quickly and—well, you've seen the results.
I realise there are down sides to all of this. I'm not heaps relational (but can pass for being so), I'm not good at being spontaneous and sometimes I can be incredibly inflexible, and certainly these days I'm finding it harder. But nevertheless I thought perhaps it might be beneficial to share some of my working habits so that you out there in cyberspace can benefit from them. The pace of life is getting faster and the trickle of information that comes our way every day has turned into a torrent. Here are some of the things I do to stay on top of everything:
When I see you smile ...
Friday, 18 April, 2008
Sunday 6/4/08
Ben was up early to go hear his brother preach at our old old church. I needed a rest so I stayed home and slept in. The rest of the day was spent doing laundry, ironing and dealing with various computer-y things. Ben made risoni for lunch. I really needed to get into the knitting though—I was making this scarf for Bec and I wanted to finish it before she left for Paris on Sunday. So in the late afternoon, I finally sat down with Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 7 and got some serious knitting done. By the time church rolled around, I had two episodes of the series to go.
I went to church, stayed to help clean up afterwards, then came home and got stuck into some work for C.S. Lewis Today, and ended up going to bed way too late.
Tube duel
Wednesday, 16 April, 2008
Saturday 5/4/08
I got up, showered, did breakfast/Bible/pray, turned on my computer to print some things, then caught the train to Circular Quay and walked to the Customs House Library where Bec and Guan met me for our writing day.
Current:
read: The Complete Polysyllabic Spree (Nick Hornby) {27/02/2008}
Bible: Matthew (ESV) {26/02/2008}
Bible: Joshua (ESV) {25/02/2008}
seen: The Jane Austen Book Club {22/02/2008}
seen: August Rush {20/02/2008}
Bible: Psalms (ESV) {18/02/2008}
seen: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 5 {17/02/2008}
seen: Whisper of the Heart {08/02/2008}
seen: Kung Fu Hustle {08/02/2008}
seen: Extras: Season 2 {06/02/2008}
read: Whatever You Think Think the Opposite (Paul Arden) {05/02/2008}
seen: Sweeney Todd {03/02/2008}
seen: Howl's Moving Castle {01/02/2008}
Bible: Isaiah (ESV) {31/01/2008}
seen: Juno {29/01/2008}
seen: 27 Dresses {26/01/2008}
seen: Serenity {23/01/2008}
Bible: Deuteronomy (ESV) {22/01/2008}
listening: Trigun: The First Donuts (Tsuneo Imahori) {22/01/2008}
listening: Cowboy Bebop OST 1 (Yoko Kanno) {22/01/2008}
seen: Firefly {19/01/2008}
seen: Enchanted {16/01/2008}
seen: Amazing Grace {15/01/2008}
seen: Whisper of the Heart {11/01/2008}
seen: Extras: Season 1 {10/01/2008}
read: Boy Meets Girl (Meg Cabot) {09/01/2008}
Bible: Revelation (ESV) {07/01/2008}
seen: Sex and the City: Season 1 {05/01/2008}
read: The Dreaming (1-3) (Queenie Chan) {01/01/2008}
read: The Devil Wears Prada (Lauren Weisberger) {01/01/2008}
seen: The Golden Compass {30/12/2007}
seen: Pride & Prejudice {28/12/2007}
seen: I'm Not There {27/12/2007}
seen: Elizabethtown {27/12/2007}
seen: Atonement {26/12/2007}
seen: Mirrormask (director and writer's commentary) {22/12/2007}
read: Civil War: Front Line (Book 1) (Paul Jenkins, Ramon Bachs, Steve Lieber et al) {15/12/2007}
seen: Finding Neverland {15/12/2007}
seen: Suddenly 30 {15/12/2007}
seen: The Muppets Take Manhattan {14/12/2007}