S#78: Adopt a Pet
Generally, if you want to improve your mental health, a cat or dog is best. But since I already have two lovely/neurotic/deadly cats, I chose to get fish.
Like most awesome things, it was more difficult than it seemed. Last time I had fish, no-one said I needed a filter or a heater or a pH balancer. All I had to do was let water sit for a day before putting it with the fish. And I fed them every so often. Although I had zebra danios both then and now, I apparently now need all those things. So getting fish costs around $200 if you want a choice of more than one or two super-hardy fish. I chose the semi-tropical route, meaning that my fish need to live in an environment between 22 and 28 degrees Celsius. Since this is the year-round temperature of me and any room I’m in, I may not need a heater. I’ll get a thermometer and monitor the tank carefully.
It turns out that photographing fish is difficult, so here’s my best effort:
The male fighting fish is definitely the old man of the tank. Fighting fish are generally introverted, placid types (when they’re not killing each other, but since I only bought one it’s chilled out) who don’t mind having no other fish around. He takes his time investigating, and is smarter than the others (I put a mug in so they could have privacy if they wanted, and he’s the only one who realised you can swim inside it). If he could speak, he’d say: “Hmm. . . *snore*.”
The neon tetras are the nerds, clearly stuck in the 80s and even more perpetually wide-eyed than the other fish. “Are we the ONLY ONES wearing orange?! I hope no-one beats us up. . .”
The zebra danios are the jocks. They spend every waking moment racing around, running into each other and the other fish, and bashing their heads against the glass as they catch sight of their reflections. They stick in a close group, which gives me the thrill of knowing I have a whole school of fish, not just several fish in the same tank. I’ve always loved danios, so I bought three. “What is it? Kill it! Race you! Race you again! Hey what’s that? Kill it!”
Play along at home: Adopt your own pet, or borrow someone else’s (especially if they need a dog or cat sitter, or their dog is bored).
My six fish lack names. . . suggestions welcome!
#120: Christian Passover Celebration
I found out today that some Jews object to Christians stealing their tradition and celebrating a much-modified “Passover” in the belief that the Messiah has already come.
I was always brought up to think of Jews as the closest thing to a physical Jesus here on earth, and it was a huge shock to me when, as a teenager, I found out that some Christians dislike Jews. (FYI, if you are one of them, you are deeply stupid.)
I’ll keep celebrating Passover, since I’ve always thought of it as honouring to Jewish people, not stealing their tradition. If you are offended, I am sorry. Ultimately, it’s a Christian ritual for me, not anyone else’s.
Here’s one possible script for Christians to use: http://www.wf-f.org/Seder.html. My family uses horseradish as the bitter herbs, and uses a blender to mix the harosis ingredients. We buy flat bread, and use parsley as the green herbs. I’ll post our own script below this post, so you can take it for yourself if you wish.
I love the ritual nature of passover, and the distinctive tastes that are so familiar to me although I only have them once a year: the taste of boiled eggs dipped in salt water, the mushy deliciousness of harosis, and the solid mass that is unleavened bread. I love the meanings, too – especially when the bread is broken and hidden, then brought out and unwrapped to be eaten. According to our ritual, this is the point at which Jesus said, “This is my body, broken for you.” The wine cup at that moment is the cup of redemption, and the bread beautifully represents Jesus’ own death and resurrection on Easter weekend.
The “youngest child” is a crucial part of the ritual, and my nephew (age four) was unexpectedly entertaining. We primed him heavily for his big line: “What is the meaning of the eggs?” and when his moment came he took a deep breath, shuffled the script in front of his face newsreader-style, and said loudly, “What is inside the toilet?” He then answered, “Dirty water, which goes down and down to the sea.”
Not so long earlier, he’d been raptly listening. So much for that!
The first part of the passover is the welcome, and the lighting of the candles. I have childhood memories of waiting HOURS AND HOURS until the main meal, with only ritualistic snippets of food to keep me going. That’s ritual for you – it must be difficult, and a little foolish, or it doesn’t feel like a ritual.
Play along at home: In Western culture, we have rituals for death and marriage, but very little for birth or coming of age (a party, which is a good start). Make an annual ritual for yourself, perhaps eating hot cross buns on Good Friday or painting pictures on boiled eggs – or a special birthday meal. Rituals bind people together, so choose family to do your ritual with you – or someone who you feel closer to than family.
Tomorrow: Go Fish!
S#64: Lego (aka Secret Number 1)
Why was lego kept secret? Because my partner loves it. In the last month, he’s probably mentioned the lego of our future children once a week on average (not that we’re either pregnant or trying to be pregnant). I also know he particularly approves of the stuff that ISN’T a kit – the stuff where you need to invent your own style.
So today, I went and bought some.
Here it is (a $30 box of Duplo):
Here’s what I made with it (the people are from a different set):
I SMSed to let CJ know there was something on the table for him, and not to wait for me.
Here’s how he found it, when he came home (the heart wall fits inside the box):
Here’s what he did with it (for the record, that’s not a bird and a dog, it’s a dinosaur and a crocodile):
In other news, my cat likes the new quilt so much that she poked her head underneath and posed herself like so:
Play along at home: Got a lego set in a dusty corner? Play with it. Or find something else recommended for ages 1 to 5, like this is.
Tomorrow: Passover Celebration.
#108: Guerilla Gardening
I woke up sore from yesterday’s sewing. Pretty sure that makes me an ATHLETE OF AWESOMENESS.
This idea came from another awesomeness enthusiast, http://www.yesandyes.org/
Here’s how to guerilla garden, Louise Style.
1. Grab an enthusiastic bunch of friends.
2. Select a public garden that needs love (the half-dead plant in the pot is my oh-so-generous donation).
3. Weed the patch, pausing only to realise that gardening tools exist for a reason. Drive home, scour the house for tools, and come back with a kitty litter scoop and a pair of scissors. Weed more.
4. Admire what you’ve done.
5. Pause and be picturesque.
6. Drive home while brushing ants, centipedes and spiders from your clothes, hair and skin.
7. Strip naked, burn your clothes, and shower until you stop twitching. Bonus points if you remember to close the bathroom window first (the one overlooking an innocent neighbour’s kitchen).
8. Feel strangely good about having made a tiny piece of the world better.
Play along at home: Is there a plant blocking your pavement or driveway? Prune it. Are there weeds in your elderly neighbour’s front yard? Sneak in and steal them away. Do you live in a completely unmaintained rental property? Pick one corner to make your own tiny garden (remembering that it’s illegal to plant new things there – which makes it way more fun). Proclaim your criminal acts right here.
Coming soon:
Secret Number One (it’s from http://steffmetal.com/101-ways-to-cheer-yourself-up/).
#121: Celebrate passover (you can find scripts and recipes online – my family is Christian and uses one that notes all the Messianic symbolism along the way). I believe Thursday is the best day, but I’ll be doing it on Wednesday.
#109: Create and eat a whole meal of one colour.
S#78: Adopt a pet.
#122: Spend a whole day in a mega-size bookshop, including having coffee there (my partner, CJ, is RATHER excited about this one).
S#13: Take a bubble bath.
#110: Secret Number Two. . . you’re gonna love it.
#96: Sew Something
I’ve had a basketful of semi-sewn scraps for about ten years. That’s over a third of my life.
Today was the day to attempt to make something of them. Specifically, a pretend quilt. Some of the pieces have stories – my Year 10 formal dress (first in a dynasty of similar dresses, two others of which are also represented), a sarong, part of a woven bag from Indonesia, some curtains, some of the wrap my mum made me for my Year 12 formal, part of a cushion cover, etc.
This is how they looked when I started (after cutting many squares and sewing them in rows a decade ago):
This is how they looked partway through (sorting out the rows so they made a doona-cover shape; getting attacked by cat):
(The foot isn’t mine, incidentally. I’m not THAT hairy.)
And this is how the completed doona cover looked when I finished – and added a possessed cat I’d prepared earlier (I had sewn the combined pieces to the doona cover, cunningly remembering to leave a doona opening):
I have now spent five hours on what was an “almost finished” doona cover thingy. I ran through half a dozen bobbins (that’s a lot of thread), but accomplished the whole project without ever using a pin. Yay for “near enough is good enough”!
I also read another person’s manifesto today, which is here: http://chrisguillebeau.com/3×5/a-brief-guide-to-world-domination/comment-page-8/#comment-19751
The most important part is to ask yourself two questions:
1. What do I want out of life?
2. What can I give the world that no-one else can?
My answers were:
What do I want?
To matter.
Specifically, I want to inspire others to live heroic lives by writing excellent books, and by living a heroic life. I’ve recently altered my blog to more overtly live a life of Daily Awesomeness (as you may have noticed).
What can I give to the world that no-one else can?
My writing.
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I think the one thing the author should also have said is that courage is like muscles – it needs a gradual increase in exercise to get strong. So if you’re scared to go to a party – go to a party, but take a friend. Then build up to further heroic acts. If you’re scared of sewing, FLEE! FLEE LIKE THE WIND!!!!
Play along at home: What is a small fear you have (sewing definitely counts)? Do something a teensy bit brave this week, and/or fix one thing from that stupid mending basket.
S#98: Embrace Another Culture
PS Part of this article was moved here, where I get paid for it if you click through.
I’ll be embracing Japan for twenty-four hours. This is everything I know about Japan so far:
1. Sashimi is yuck and makes me feel sick (which should make S#2: “Sushi” rather interesting) but most anime is very good.
2. Whales are hunted, killed, and eaten.
3. Konichiwa, sayonara, arigato, mitsubishi (hello, farewell, thank you, three diamonds).
4. Japan is a rich country with wacky game shows, heated toilet seats, bizarre vending machines and odd inventions (including a functioning breast for fathers to strap on so they don’t miss out on the breastfeeding experience).
5. They have a bad history with China, although their languages are visually similar (not aurally).
6. It is on a major fault line, which means there’s lots of earthquakes, volcanoes, and dramatic scenery (including Mount Fuji).
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I’m going to go and do some research, visit a Japanese restaurant for dinner, and write the rest of this entry later!
———–LATER————–
Things I’ve learnt:
1. ヤクおよびあなたバナナの臭いである
Means, “You are a yak and you smell of bananas.”
2. It is rude to blow your nose in public.
3. Japanese pizza can have mayonnaise, corn and seafood on it.
4. The “Walk” signs at traffic lights make a chirping noise so the blind know when to cross.
5. People sleep as they ride the train home.
All but fact #1 are from this patently unreliable site: http://www.tooter4kids.com/Japan/interesting_facts.htm
For dinner I attended a birthday party at Shogun Teppanyaki restaurant in civic. To be honest, I was dreading it. I like Japanese style, though, especially in restaurants.
We all had teppanyaki banquets, which I reviewed for money here.
At a certain point when we were enjoying the show so much that we were feeling completely relaxed, the cook threw food at us, which we attempted to catch in our mouths. CJ is first, then me.
Mmm. . .It cost $85 altogether, for both of us.
I’m just about to watch a Kurosawa movie. This has been quite an epic 24 hours.
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I also watched the Japan episode of Charley Boorman’s “Sydney to Tokyo By Any Means” series today, and quickly realised I’d forgotten something I already knew about Japan. In fact, you know it too.
Japan is the country that was hit twice by atomic bombs. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed in the first seconds, and burns and radiation killed many more in the decades that followed.
In the DVD, a woman talked about her experience of the bomb. She described an intense blast of light followed by utter quiet, then darkness and the smell of burnt hair. At the time of the Hiroshima bomb, she was eight years old.
Since childhood I’ve been taught about the national shame of what non-Aboriginal Australia did to the original inhabitants of my country. But no-one ever taught me to feel ashamed of what my side – the “good guys” of World War 2 – did to Japan. Millions of Japanese people are still alive today with the memory of those days. How is it possible for me to forget so easily? It’s because of the Japanese – they don’t want or need my help, my money, or my pity. In the healthiest possible way, they’re over it.
My impression of Japan is that it is a beautiful, hyper-efficient, hyper-bizarre country with unstomachable food and a toilet obsession. That hasn’t changed. I chose Japan for this task because I have absolutely no desire to go there. But when I consider what this strong, powerful, reasonably happy country has survived, I want to know how. How are they okay? How have they managed to find the perfect balance – remembering what has happened without any rancour?
I’ve never thought of the Japanese people as the most forgiving people in the world, but that is the inescapable conclusion.
Japan, you are my hero. (And I LOVE teppanyaki.)
Tomorrow’s awesomeness: Sewing.
Like the boys from “Top Gear” I myself am ambitious, but rubbish. Wish me luck.
S#53: Be a tourist in your own city
Today my partner took a flex day (a paid day off he’s earned by doing overtime – probably the world’s best invention ever) and we and a friend of ours who I’ll call Hannah went and visited the Australian National Botanic Gardens.
Instead of dressing as a tourist (as per Steff Metal’s instructions), I dressed like a princess. All the better for crossing streams beside waterfalls. This article has been moved, and I get paid if you click through here.
#90: Write a letter to my future self
Yay! It’s time to begin the saga of daily awesomeness. The concept is simple: I do something awesome every day, and blog about it. For a year. My total list is already well over 200, and I’m sure to think of more awesome things along the way (suggestions VERY welcome).
I’ll still write twittertale-related things each Friday (including the weekly story so far – plus the complete story on whatever day that story finishes – including today if you scroll down).
Today I’m writing a letter to my future self – specifically, a letter to the me I’ll be roughly a year from now.
Here’s roughly what I’ll be doing for the first little while (S indicates it’s from Steff Metal’s blog):
#90: Write a letter to my future self (making a note to ensure I read it in one year).
S#53: Be a tourist in my own city.
S#98: Embrace a culture I know nothing about.
#96: Sew something.
#108 Guerilla Gardening (inspired by http://www.yesandyes.org/).
S#64: SECRET NUMBER ONE (it’s secret because my husband will LOVE it – he is currently forbidden to read the Steff Metal list http://steffmetal.com/101-ways-to-cheer-yourself-up/).
S#13: Bubble bath.
#109: Cook a whole meal of one colour.
I’ll keep telling you more as I go along! But yes. . . there will be sushi, suspenders, midnight snacks, horseriding, more secret items, and a hot air balloon ride.
Here’s a visual diary of many hours of colour-coding (for difficulty level and expense) and sorting into which items need to be done soon, late, in Winter, etc.
Play along at home: Pick something off the list, and do it yourself this week. Then, if you dare, share the results.
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25 March 2010
Dear Future Louise,
There’s just one question I have to ask right away: have you been accepted for publication yet? If you’ve gone yet another year without a major acceptance, I don’t know what to say except that truly sucks, and I’m sorry. Go eat chocolate, stat!
It was hot today, but not too hot. I’m starting to like autumn. In the past it’s always been a season of dread as Winter approaches. But now I understand why people like it. It’s honestly pleasant. And pretty.
How’s married life? You’ll have been married over two years now. I have a theory that the first two years are the years that your happy biology chemicals help you through. After that, you’re REALLY married. What do you think?
How are you mentally? Is your anxiety disorder getting better? Do you still get headaches all the time? Are you still afraid to go to work? Do you still panic on special occasions, and are you still afraid of crowds and/or shopping centres?
What advice would you give me if you could write to me? Would you tell me to avoid this new blog system of daily awesomeness, because it’s just too hard – or because it horribly backfires a month from now – or because it’s too expensive? Or would you tell me it was the best decision I ever made?
Good luck. . .
Louise
January 7: Chair Skating
It’s skating. On a chair.
Specifically, chair skating is skating on a pair of chairs made of cheap iron (and plywood for the seats), welded onto an iron frame at the bottom. The whole thing is like a sled with two chairs welded onto it (one behind the other).
Since the Great Wall, our camera is NOT HAPPY. It’s functional inside (where it’s warm), but lasts about three seconds outside, and only then if it’s been in your armpit for at least half an hour. It’s a good camera, too. Fortunately we have at least one chair-skating photo, which (when we have the cable again later today) I’ll add here:
The chair skating was great. Other than the sled-chair, you get two iron thingies that resemble ski poles (sharp on the end). You use these to push yourself around. The whole place was outside, on one section of a frozen lake (which is used for paddle-boating in the summer). I’ve never seen natural ice thick enough to stand on. It was beautiful. We could clearly see through the ice, and it was about 15cm deep. Many fault lines spidered across the surface of the ice in fine lines, and shone pure white all the way down through the ice to the water. Inside the ice there were patches of snow and curious formations of bubbles, like forests of white fungus under my feet.
A lot of young children (as wide in their down coats as they are high) were there with a parent or grandparent. Three 16-year old girls gathered their courage and actually had a conversation with me (I really don’t think Beijing people care about seeing foreigners much – unless they’re selling something and you foolishly made eye contact).
Readers familiar with aerodynamics will realise at once that sled-chairs don’t turn particularly well. They don’t turn at all, unless you’re actually moving – and the only way to turn is to slide. Which is great 🙂
We also went and visited the CCTV Headquarters (aka the “underpants building” because it’s roughly the shape of a person’s legs if they were sitting in a chair with their legs far apart). It is a ridiculous building, and I don’t blame people for not wanting to go inside – it really doesn’t look like there’s any good reason for it to stay up. And it’s huge.
Interestingly, there’s a burnt-out shell of a high-rise hotel next to it (Chinese New Year fireworks happened rather too close last year). It’s so badly burnt that one wall is completely peeled away, showing hundreds of individual rooms. The rest of it is black.
Other than building a giant keep-out fence around it, no-one has done anything about the burnt hotel. Rumour has it that it’s built on the same concrete foundation as the underpants building, and helps to balance it. So if the burnt-out shell is removed, the underpants fall down.
That’s pretty much not good.
Today’s taste of the day is some kind of lolly. It’s made of gelatinous rice (similar in taste and texture to the inside of a jelly bean) coated in sesame seeds. I like it.
So tired now that when I walk I veer left.
Each morning when I wake up, I hear the scrape, scrape, scrape of the snow shovellers. There is still heaps of snow and ice and slush everywhere, and trucks are constantly passing with piles of snow in the back. Even though the scraping is unusual, I will always associate the sound of a shovel on concrete with Beijing.
Tomorrow is our last day here, and we’ll spend Saturday travelling to Indonesia (at roughly the same time as our hero). You can read more of our adventures at https://felicitybloomfield.wordpress.com
January 5: Real Life Adventures
Today I walked on the Great Wall with my husband and Bil (my Brother In Law), who lives in Beijing.
I should probably mention about now that, on Saturday and (especially) on Sunday, Beijing had the heaviest snowfall it’s had in sixty years (you can read more at https://felicitybloomfield.wordpress.com ).
So we caught a train (10 points for awesomeness) through the countryside (10×10 points for awesomeness) after heavy snow (10x10x10 points for awesomeness). The day reached maximum awesomeness before we even reached the Wall.
Beijing is a beautiful urban landscape made even more beautiful by the snow. I woke up at 7:30, with the sun, and saw a perfect blue sky. By midday the sky above still looked good, but every horizon was hazy with pollution.
I realised today that the reason I keep coughing when I go outside is that the pollution outside is even worse than inside the house (because the outside pollution is refreshed daily, and the filthy stuff takes a little while to really get inside – which, of course, it does. It’s the same air). The air of Beijing is so bad it irritates my throat. Yet it still has blue sky.
As we rode the train to Badaling we passed several industrial places belching smoke into the bright blue sky. Over the course of the day, the pollution grew visibly worse. For the first time, I realised that pollution isn’t something that makes things worse over decades and generations – it makes things worse minute by minute. I saw it with my own (swollen and irritated) eyes.
But it was still a beautiful day.
My partner has never been overseas, so the sudden change from flat Beijing land to instant sharp mountain peaks blew him away. Me too 😉 We saw several small structures perched in unlikely places on the way.
***
We were hungry and cold by the time we reached Badaling, so we had lunch. I remembered having “thousand year old eggs” in China when I visited many years ago, and how it looked like boiled egg that was turning black with age, but tasted just fine – so I ordered something translated as, “Preserved eggs”. I thought it’d be the same thing (and maybe it was, just a regional variation).
It was a little like egg-flavoured jello, and I barely managed to finish a single bite (the yolk part left a green residue on my chopsticks, too). Fortunately the boys were fine with it.
And then we went to the Wall. Because of the bitter cold Winter, there weren’t many people. We walked to the highest nearby tower (leftward, for those who’ve been there) and it was very very cold and very very hard. My legs shook with exhaustion, and breathing hard just brought Siberian wind into my lungs. Being in the mountains meant it was much colder than Beijing. Being ON the mountain was much worse. Wind hits the mountain and flies up it, gathering friends along the way, then BAM it rushes straight over the wall and then (presumably) wanders off at a more sedate pace. Many snow scrapers were at work, and we saw several trucks taking away loads of snow (to dump in the next province over, I bet).
Bil’s drinking water was increasingly solid (he says that “usually happens at around -15 degrees”), my pen stopped working (not that I attempted to write anything until we were back down at Badaling), and although I’m usually comfortable in just my voluminious skirts in Beijing, I was very uncomfortable today in my thermals, tracksuit pants, AND voluminious skirts. Much urg. My super-powered down jacket didn’t stop the wind any more.
But it was utterly stunning, and worth every second.
***
Every day I’m in China, I try to eat as much interesting Chinese food as possible, and blog about the most delicious one. (So far, the preserved egg is the only thing I haven’t loved.)
Today’s taste of the day is actually Vietnamese. Although my partner and I are SOMEWHAT excited about the huge and delicious variety of Chinese food on offer (most Australian Chinese food is very Southern in style, which leaves out a lot of excellent stuff), Beijing is truly a world city, with spectacularly good food from. . . everywhere. (Bil’s Chinese housemate is becoming an Italian chef, for example.)
I ordered a dish I unfortunately can’t remember the name of. But it was a deliciously thin, crispy pancake (my absolute favourite kind) wrapped around mushroom, shrimp and shredded chicken and served with lettuce, crispy bean sprouts, and a sauce (which I also can’t remember the name of, but it was like honey and lemon with chilli pieces). The menu instructed me to cut up the crepe, wrap the pieces in lettuce, and dip them in the sauce. I did, and it was excellent.
A random man wandered by and asked about our food. We swooned a little, and said it was delicious. “Oh good,” he said, “because I own this restaurant.”
When we were on the wall, I kept an eye out for Jimmy Bind, but didn’t see him. I hope for his sake he was taped to the lee side of the wall. Wherever he was, he was freezing his shapely arse off. (But is just too darn heroic to whine about it like I am.)
Felicity Banks 