Bad title for a blog that only barely touches on it, as it will come up for wheel of time searches, but its somewhat appropriate.
The last book in the wheel of time franchise is due out in march next year? At least thats the latest pushed back date I have heard. I finished towers of midnight earlier this year. But in the last couple of days I have been reading online forums about the series and just been having a lot of "what if..." daydreams set in this series.
I started reading the series when i was in year seven, which coincidently was the year book 7 was released. And i powered through those books (at least it felt like powering through them to me at the time) in a few months. And they provided a wealth of escapism for me during school life. and with the occassional release of a new one every two years or so since then, each time i read, i am reminded of the same sort of escapism.
This has come to the point now that when i read them, its almost like a nostelgia for me. Like i half remember the story as a previous life, since my memories of school have faded more than my memories of this book. And now when i think of it, its like how the kids in the Narnia chronicles must feel when they grow up, able to remember their adventures but cant ever find them again (locked out of the world they and only able to remember it as a nice story from their past).
And this nostelgia, it makes me feel as if i should be able to go out into the world and find some new, exciting and possibly fantasy inspired life... Then i watched some documentaries by louis theroux on sub-cultures in america. And it was so depressing. The people have a life that entertains and consumes them, but im stuck with one foot in the camp of "admire that they found something to satisfy their lives" and the other in "condescending derision of their frivolous persuits".
Its as though i can see that the direction of your life is self defined (ie what you see as important, if you commit yourself and your attitude to it enough, is important) but at the same time, feel like i need to be doing something awesome and world changing.
The upcoming release of AMOL is like the release of the last lotr movie or hp movie. They were such big parts of my "escapism" self, and now they done, and finished, without a significant change in my life or the world. a "well thats over, what now?". I really want to know the ending, but once its done, it will no longer be a living place to escape, but a memory past.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Car Hopping
So when you are stuck behind a line of cars on a two way road which allows overtaking, but there is a steady but with gaps stream of cars coming the other way. The lead car is going 5/10k's below the speed limit. But the cars immeadiately behind it dont overtake, they just follow along.
This is a job for Car Hopping!
On a motorbike you can overtake one/two cars at a time in the gaps of the oncoming traffic, very easy if you speed.
But here's the thing...
I have trouble justifying car hopping. there is speeding involved, every other car in the line has decided that the low speed of the lead car is not worth the effort to overtake. Its also not a defensive/safe driving style.
And consider, the person who i first noticed doing this was my ex flatmate, and he has lost his licence twice, 6 months the first time and 1 yr the second, and has been involved in 2or3 minor accidents... Is this the kind of person I should be emulating?
On the other hand, damn car is going slow and I'm impatient!
This is a job for Car Hopping!
On a motorbike you can overtake one/two cars at a time in the gaps of the oncoming traffic, very easy if you speed.
But here's the thing...
I have trouble justifying car hopping. there is speeding involved, every other car in the line has decided that the low speed of the lead car is not worth the effort to overtake. Its also not a defensive/safe driving style.
And consider, the person who i first noticed doing this was my ex flatmate, and he has lost his licence twice, 6 months the first time and 1 yr the second, and has been involved in 2or3 minor accidents... Is this the kind of person I should be emulating?
On the other hand, damn car is going slow and I'm impatient!
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Did they get him coming or going?
So my big plan for next year is to try and get employed in an automation engineering firm in Germany, and move over there for a few years.
But in the last couple of days I've been feeling isolated and lonely, and that has got me wondering whether the move is a good idea or not. On one hand I realise these feelings are temporary and related to having not had enough sleep lately, on the other hand it worries me that I won't have any existing network of friends or activities, and that could lead to me being a shut-in.
Why do I want to go:
-I would like to try living in a different city/environment
-I feel that if I were outside my comfort zone I may achieve more socailly/vocationally (an all-in because I have nothing to loose and everything to gain in a new city)
-Germans have a really good engineering reputation and I'd like to develope that kind of work ethic
-Automation is fun and interesting (and I not-so secretly want to make Von-Neumann machines to dominate the universe!)
-I would like to get the EU equivilent to the Certified Practicing Engineer accreditation and that requires fluency in two european languages (ie i learn Germamn and know English)
-Europe is bigger socailly, socio-politically, culturally and so on... more interesting opitunities.
-I feel like I'm in a rutt I cant get out of in Melbourne, coasting on what I have already managed without any impetus to improve my situation.
Cons:
-If I get in trouble financially etc, I'm a long way from home/help.
-Foriegners dont get as much help from governments as locals
-What if I don't make any friends?
-What about the people I leave behind?
-How will I talk to people if I can't communicate like a first language (some people may suggest this will improve my chances of making friends :P)
There is a list of things that must be done before I can go overseas tho anyway:
-Finish Masters
-Get Passport
-Get Job
But in the last couple of days I've been feeling isolated and lonely, and that has got me wondering whether the move is a good idea or not. On one hand I realise these feelings are temporary and related to having not had enough sleep lately, on the other hand it worries me that I won't have any existing network of friends or activities, and that could lead to me being a shut-in.
Why do I want to go:
-I would like to try living in a different city/environment
-I feel that if I were outside my comfort zone I may achieve more socailly/vocationally (an all-in because I have nothing to loose and everything to gain in a new city)
-Germans have a really good engineering reputation and I'd like to develope that kind of work ethic
-Automation is fun and interesting (and I not-so secretly want to make Von-Neumann machines to dominate the universe!)
-I would like to get the EU equivilent to the Certified Practicing Engineer accreditation and that requires fluency in two european languages (ie i learn Germamn and know English)
-Europe is bigger socailly, socio-politically, culturally and so on... more interesting opitunities.
-I feel like I'm in a rutt I cant get out of in Melbourne, coasting on what I have already managed without any impetus to improve my situation.
Cons:
-If I get in trouble financially etc, I'm a long way from home/help.
-Foriegners dont get as much help from governments as locals
-What if I don't make any friends?
-What about the people I leave behind?
-How will I talk to people if I can't communicate like a first language (some people may suggest this will improve my chances of making friends :P)
There is a list of things that must be done before I can go overseas tho anyway:
-Finish Masters
-Get Passport
-Get Job
Tea eggs!
I made some tea eggs last night, I improvised the recipe from online.
12 eggs
4 tblspoons sweet soy sause
4 tblspoons brown suger
2 star anise pods
1 cinemon stick
5 cloves
a pinch of black peper corns
Boiled eggs for 15min, rinsed in cool water, lightly cracked with spoon, then returned to boiling water, added other ingreadiants, put on lowest heat for 2 hours. took off heat, left to steep overnight.
They are somewhat tasty. Deffinitely more tasty than normal boiled eggs.
The idea was to use them as a healthy, protien rich, alternative snack for at work instead of eating the mars bars all the time.
Think they work ok, because i had one for breakfast, and ate about 1/4 packet of cheezles afterwards. whereas normally i would eat a full packet and still be trying to find some more to eat.
Ill put a picture up later.
12 eggs
4 tblspoons sweet soy sause
4 tblspoons brown suger
2 star anise pods
1 cinemon stick
5 cloves
a pinch of black peper corns
Boiled eggs for 15min, rinsed in cool water, lightly cracked with spoon, then returned to boiling water, added other ingreadiants, put on lowest heat for 2 hours. took off heat, left to steep overnight.
They are somewhat tasty. Deffinitely more tasty than normal boiled eggs.
The idea was to use them as a healthy, protien rich, alternative snack for at work instead of eating the mars bars all the time.
Think they work ok, because i had one for breakfast, and ate about 1/4 packet of cheezles afterwards. whereas normally i would eat a full packet and still be trying to find some more to eat.
Ill put a picture up later.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Boys Weekend!
Actually it was a work christmas party, and there were two girls there, but 30 guys. And the girls were somewhat bogan/easy going girls, not girly-girl.
So the weekend started with paintball on saturday. It was alot of fun, although i spent alot of time sneezing from cold/hayfever. It was paid for by the boss, which is cool. I played in 4 games, then I ran out of paintballs so sat out the last one.
The first game was one team advanced to capture a flag while the other team defended. the advancing team could respawn infinitely at their respawn spot for the first five min, then they had only one life, the defending team had two lives. As attacking team we won, although I died twice in first 5 min, and got pinned fairly well for the rest of the game, I think I took out at least 4 other people. As defending team we also won. I lost one life to a paintpellet to the facemask and then I managed to take out 4-5people. It was awesome, the pellets droped off at about 20m, so if someone was on the very edge of your range, you could "drop" the pellet down on top of their hiding place. The pellet didnt travel in a very straight line, but it was fairly consistent, so you could learn to aim it easily.
The next game was a little village style thing with a commander one each team. The commander was the only one who could catch the flag, and could only die if hit in the chest or back, and everyone else could inifinitly respawn at the commander while they were still alive. First game was a draw. I got hit in the elbow, then when i raised my hand to signal i was out and going to respawn, i got hit 3 more times... After we swapped ends, my team won. I got lots of hits, but i also got a surrender/kill. Thats were you manage to sneak up close to someone (less than 3 mts) and you shout "surrender!" and if they dont imeadiately, then you shoot them point blank, hehehe... so our commander made a run at their's and we came out the victor, while i was covering the left flank, the greys were routed, so i kept moving up, and there was one sneaky grey in a building, and when i saw him turn to kill our commander, i came round the corner, ask him to surrender, then shot him in the elbow. T'was awesome.
James says it may have been an older guy who ended up with a massive bruised bicep, but i think it was a younger fat guy, who had a big welt on his elbow. Then i sat out cos i didnt want to pay $20 per hundred pellets, as i had already bought 200 above the starting ones.
After that we had a pretty good dinner with bar tab and a local hotel. I had some "party" shot drinks called skittles, they were pretty much a jager-bomb with contreu instead of jager.
Then when i went to get some cash out of the nearby commonwealth atm, I passed a dero who shouted out "what you looking at!" and i was like, oh damn, not this crap. Anyway he was hassling some druggy lady and I was like, should i do something? I was going to ignore it, but then he pushed her over, so I went up to them, and asked her if she was ok. Anyway, the two were having a fight over some stuff (who knows why druggies fight?) so i stood between them. All i could think was, i will feel so guilty if i dont help out, but damn i dont want to be here, and please dont hit me. But the guy was alot of talk, i kept eye contact, and tried to move between them whenever he went for her. Although i think i should have been more physical, kept him back more, cos he managed to spit at her, and to slap at her maybe 3 times after i turned up. But i didnt really know what to do. So i just kept trying to stand between them. Then i led the girl to the pub where we were drinking, just to get her away from him. But she was as helpfull as druggies always are, egging him on from the safety of behind me. Spitting and occasionally trying to slap him. Anyways, we got to the pub, and she sorta hung around with us, even after the guy was gone. I was very uncomfortable with this, I only helped her out of my own sense of guilt, then she started saying I protected her and stuff to the others, and i was extremely uncomfortable with this since i did it out of guilt, and i didnt like being ascosiated with her druggie ass. Then one of the bogan guys from work started chatting to her, and him and her dissapeared for a few minutes together, all very dodgy imho. She left behind a tablet on the table when she walked off also, super classy. When we moved on, she stayed behind, which i was glad.
I think that the druggy guy was too intimidated by me to actualy throw a punch, i was 4-5 inches taller, and I forget sometimes that i dont look small and waek anymore (and that i have done boxing before so i should be able to defend myself fair reasonably). Anyway, i kinda feel bad that i didnt help her out of alturism, and that afterwards I showed my own ego-centered-ness by feeling like i was too good to ascosiate with her. I also feel like i didnt really help her properly, I should have done more than just stand there. And i feel a little guilty that I would a liked some more acknowledgement, like i did some amazing thing.
Anyway, we went to a different place, played some barry, then i went home cos i was tired, to a very nice hotel room that was paid for by the boss.
Then on sunday we had a big breakfast, with two kinds of drink! (this is a reference to a friend who believes if you have coffee and oj with bf then it is an epic breakfast, so saying "two kinds of drink" is like saying "with all the gold trimmings") although the bf didnt actually have a huge selection of food, just bacon and eggs with toast or english muffins (which were yummy).
And we finihsed it up with some go-karts. They were some low qualitiy ones, that didnt accelerate that fast, but it was still super fun. The warning light, which meant you had to go slow kept going off, whihc was annoying, but other than that i did heaps of drifting. My best time was 27.57, nearly a whole 3 seconds slower than our overall best performer. But I blame the fact that on my run there were 8 ppl on the track, which made it near impossible to pass. whereas everyone else was doing 5-6 ppl on the track at once, since the operators changed their minds after my run. I got some epic bruises just behind my shoulders from the seat and sliding round corners, one is about 8cm in diameter accross, that light brown color of a shallow bruise.
Then we drove home. In total an awesome weekend.
So the weekend started with paintball on saturday. It was alot of fun, although i spent alot of time sneezing from cold/hayfever. It was paid for by the boss, which is cool. I played in 4 games, then I ran out of paintballs so sat out the last one.
The first game was one team advanced to capture a flag while the other team defended. the advancing team could respawn infinitely at their respawn spot for the first five min, then they had only one life, the defending team had two lives. As attacking team we won, although I died twice in first 5 min, and got pinned fairly well for the rest of the game, I think I took out at least 4 other people. As defending team we also won. I lost one life to a paintpellet to the facemask and then I managed to take out 4-5people. It was awesome, the pellets droped off at about 20m, so if someone was on the very edge of your range, you could "drop" the pellet down on top of their hiding place. The pellet didnt travel in a very straight line, but it was fairly consistent, so you could learn to aim it easily.
The next game was a little village style thing with a commander one each team. The commander was the only one who could catch the flag, and could only die if hit in the chest or back, and everyone else could inifinitly respawn at the commander while they were still alive. First game was a draw. I got hit in the elbow, then when i raised my hand to signal i was out and going to respawn, i got hit 3 more times... After we swapped ends, my team won. I got lots of hits, but i also got a surrender/kill. Thats were you manage to sneak up close to someone (less than 3 mts) and you shout "surrender!" and if they dont imeadiately, then you shoot them point blank, hehehe... so our commander made a run at their's and we came out the victor, while i was covering the left flank, the greys were routed, so i kept moving up, and there was one sneaky grey in a building, and when i saw him turn to kill our commander, i came round the corner, ask him to surrender, then shot him in the elbow. T'was awesome.
After that we had a pretty good dinner with bar tab and a local hotel. I had some "party" shot drinks called skittles, they were pretty much a jager-bomb with contreu instead of jager.
Then when i went to get some cash out of the nearby commonwealth atm, I passed a dero who shouted out "what you looking at!" and i was like, oh damn, not this crap. Anyway he was hassling some druggy lady and I was like, should i do something? I was going to ignore it, but then he pushed her over, so I went up to them, and asked her if she was ok. Anyway, the two were having a fight over some stuff (who knows why druggies fight?) so i stood between them. All i could think was, i will feel so guilty if i dont help out, but damn i dont want to be here, and please dont hit me. But the guy was alot of talk, i kept eye contact, and tried to move between them whenever he went for her. Although i think i should have been more physical, kept him back more, cos he managed to spit at her, and to slap at her maybe 3 times after i turned up. But i didnt really know what to do. So i just kept trying to stand between them. Then i led the girl to the pub where we were drinking, just to get her away from him. But she was as helpfull as druggies always are, egging him on from the safety of behind me. Spitting and occasionally trying to slap him. Anyways, we got to the pub, and she sorta hung around with us, even after the guy was gone. I was very uncomfortable with this, I only helped her out of my own sense of guilt, then she started saying I protected her and stuff to the others, and i was extremely uncomfortable with this since i did it out of guilt, and i didnt like being ascosiated with her druggie ass. Then one of the bogan guys from work started chatting to her, and him and her dissapeared for a few minutes together, all very dodgy imho. She left behind a tablet on the table when she walked off also, super classy. When we moved on, she stayed behind, which i was glad.
I think that the druggy guy was too intimidated by me to actualy throw a punch, i was 4-5 inches taller, and I forget sometimes that i dont look small and waek anymore (and that i have done boxing before so i should be able to defend myself fair reasonably). Anyway, i kinda feel bad that i didnt help her out of alturism, and that afterwards I showed my own ego-centered-ness by feeling like i was too good to ascosiate with her. I also feel like i didnt really help her properly, I should have done more than just stand there. And i feel a little guilty that I would a liked some more acknowledgement, like i did some amazing thing.
Anyway, we went to a different place, played some barry, then i went home cos i was tired, to a very nice hotel room that was paid for by the boss.
Then on sunday we had a big breakfast, with two kinds of drink! (this is a reference to a friend who believes if you have coffee and oj with bf then it is an epic breakfast, so saying "two kinds of drink" is like saying "with all the gold trimmings") although the bf didnt actually have a huge selection of food, just bacon and eggs with toast or english muffins (which were yummy).
And we finihsed it up with some go-karts. They were some low qualitiy ones, that didnt accelerate that fast, but it was still super fun. The warning light, which meant you had to go slow kept going off, whihc was annoying, but other than that i did heaps of drifting. My best time was 27.57, nearly a whole 3 seconds slower than our overall best performer. But I blame the fact that on my run there were 8 ppl on the track, which made it near impossible to pass. whereas everyone else was doing 5-6 ppl on the track at once, since the operators changed their minds after my run. I got some epic bruises just behind my shoulders from the seat and sliding round corners, one is about 8cm in diameter accross, that light brown color of a shallow bruise.
Then we drove home. In total an awesome weekend.
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