N.B. [Image credits for the margherita and the sesame balls]
Archive for May, 2008
Good morning sunshine
May 24, 2008What not to eat
May 19, 2008Being a non-cane-sugar-eating vegetarian, I am often asked random and needlessly intrusive questions about my diet. This is often coupled with looks of abject petrification upon the discovery that I do not self medicate with chocolate, or conversely, people are much too sympathetic. And sometimes, they are all of the above (and to the side, because this blog has weird formatting). For example, on one memorable occasion a new acquaintance decided that not consuming lollies or dead animals restricted the possible food groups I could eat from to bread and butter. Hm.
Another bone I have to pick is that a lot of people seem to think being a vegetarian means I eat more vegetables than carnivores do (or omnivores, judging by the rather bestial quality the Year 8s seem to have taken on this year). But no. I am quite fond of pumpkin and broccoli, but there stops my vegetable safari. My mother, on the other hand, is a strange and (dare I write) misguided creature, who is prone to bringing home all sorts of innocent-looking but actually infernal vegetables from the market. And now, being the wholly magnanimous person that I am, I shall warn you about which foods to run away screaming from if sighted:
KALE
I am not exaggerating when I say that this is the most vile vegetable on God’s green earth. It is disgusting. It is putrid! It will automatically trigger violent bursts of gagging until you’re body has rid itself of every last molecule of this loathsome, green-hued being! Sure, it looks OK. So does Windows, until you try to use it. But like most abhorrent things, kale has a nasty habit of cloying everything around it. It took me months of teeth-brushing and listerine to get the taste of it out of my mouth. Don’t make the same mistake. Avoid kale like the plague.
PARSNIP
Similarly revolting, this beastie tastes as bad as it looks.
ASPARAGUS
Lately this abomination has made its way into the mainstream, but don’t be fooled by its tantalisingly verdant stem.
CHICKPEAS
OK, so technically not a vegetable, but I’m not too keen on these either. Actually, ours has been a lifelong hatred: my very first memory is of sitting in my high chair throwing chickpeas onto the floor. I like hommus, though. That stuff’s good :D
N.B. [None of these images are mine --open them in a new window to find their original source]
The Open Letter of a Crazed Teenage Girl (i.e. rant)
May 13, 2008Dear Australian Government (I use this broad term for the sake of posterity, because even if we leave the whole constitutional monarchy thing out in the proverbial cold, I assume the country will not subside into anarchy and will retain some variety of “government”),
It has recently come to my attention that Australians holding dual citizenship cannot stand for council, state or federal elections. Apparently this is beacuse we are considered to have sworn allegiance to a foreign state or somesuch (cannot be bothered checking the constitution for the exact wording). As a dual citizen of both this large and largely unpopulated island, and the USA, I feel the burden is upon me to describe in particular detail your stupidity regarding this matter:
1. It’s not my fault America makes better pancakes (”flapjacks”). It is also not my fault that many more extremely excellent Japanese video games get localised in the US than they do here. With this reasoning alone, you will no doubt be able to understand my reluctance to part with my American pasport. This, however, does not mean that I swear allegiance to them. I don’t need to. After all, by upholding Australia’s values, are we not all swearing allegiance to yankeeland anyway? Clearly the only difference between our two states these days is that they have more squirrels, and we call flipflops “thongs”.
2. After discovering that all of our intrepid political leaders can have in their possession only one, solitary passport, all I could think of was the exorbitant visa fees. No doubt all those bloodsuckers get paid for out of the consolidated revenue fund when they want a sojourn in Europe, but think of the tax payers and “working families” you always blather on about! While we scrape day in and day out to make ends meet (two cliches in one — wohah!), you’re spending all our money on visa transactions because “you’re fully Aussie, mate”. Instead I propose a scheme by which political candidates are chosen not on their smarminess (I haven’t seen the preselection criteria sheet for the major parties before, but I think complacency must rate pretty highly) but on how many countries they’re citizens of. This would mean Average Juan, born in Thailand, raised in the Republic of the Congo, with an Australian mother and an Puerto Rican father, would have an easy advantage over Donald Thwaites, who knows a lot about Holdens and the mechanics of the hills hoist (but not much else).
3. Finally, this discrimination against dual citizens seems to be founded on one egregiously incorrect presumption — that anyone would want to be a politician. I mean, come on. You get satirised in the newspaper every day, have the hospital on autodial because of all the backstabbing, and in the end, you spend most of your year either trying to win office or making faces at the opposition when you do win office. Not for me. This admission of detesting your guts, of course, does not mean that my letter is pointless. I’m championing the rights of other misguided dual citizens who have political aspirations (save their souls).
If you don’t like what you read, please recycle the paper. That’s what a good citizen would do.
Sincerely,
Aviva “I can waltz into the US and gorge myself on johnny cakes anytime, haha” Kidd
Cheese croquettes, at last
May 12, 2008(Continued from Guangzhou).
Shanghai is hands down my favourite city in China, and I was lucky enough to see in 2008 there (actually, I slept through the whole shebang, but I was there). Leaving my scholarship at SCUT and Guangzhou’s lovely weather only to arrive in temperatures of a few degrees C, and suddenly a tourist, was hard. I waited in a forty minute queue for a licensed taxi and wound up with a fierce betel-nut-munching woman who would wind down her window every minute or so and spit the debris of her snack onto the freeway. She got me to the hotel and charged me only a marginally inflated price though, so who’s complaining?
Dear old Mum was waiting for me at our hotel having recently completed her own tour of China, and knowing my needs well, led me to the first available source of cheese. This was at one of the several Ajisen noodle chains along Nanjing Rd (shopping Mecca of the Mainland). Like most eateries in China, this joint typified the idea of 热闹 — that places should be hot, noisy and crowded. The faux Japanese decor was equally distracting.
Am I the only one who thinks these sumos aren’t just wrestling?
‘Remote’ Repost
May 10, 2008This isn’t being particularly creative (unless you consider appropriation an art), but I’ve had a loooooooong week, and right now I’m supposed to be researching an essay on gender perspective in art over three centuries. But then I figured I should probably post something before I forgot my login password.
Anyway, back in the old days (circa 2005, aged 14), I fancied myself as something of a reviewer, and set up my first blog to regale the world with my (rarely favourable) opinions. At that stage I was still reading a lot of manga, so this was naturally reflected in my short career as a cultural critic (which only spanned about five reviews). Below is an example from those halcyon days when I didn’t fear the wrath of authors, illustrators and publishers worldwide:
Remote Volume 1
Story by Seimaru Amagi and illustrations by Tetsuya Koshiba
“The blurb of this Tokyopop Manga proudly declares “A serial murderer is on the loose, someone who dresses up as a clown…a killer clown.” Not very alluring. I’ve never been fond of REAL clowns let alone murderous ones that romp around the pages of an otherwise average manga wielding cryptic discs to mock and confound the law-enforcing protagonists. But luckily for me, the artist, Tetsuya Koshiba, was kind enough to include some lovely graphic images of car crash-battered clowns and tower jumping suicidal clowns, complete with untranslated “SPLAT!” noises in hiragana. “Now you’ve spoilt the plot!” I hear you cry. But believe me, if you hadn’t worked out what was going to happen before it did while reading Remote, then either you’re about as undiscerning an audience as the authors seem to think you are, or you just weren’t paying any attention, understandably.
Thankfully lacking in doom and devastation
May 3, 2008Yesterday I found yet another way not to attend my Literature class (sorry Ms O’Heare!), this time by way of speaking on a panel session at this year’s CBCA Conference.
One of the conference areas: less about books and more about marketing?
Accompanied by the ever-supportive Mary, head manager of Reader’s Feast and my defacto agent, we arrived at the Melbourne exhibition centre and were soon stopped by a guard because we were lacking ID. After discovering the registration desk (well-hidden by a giant sign emblazoned with REGISTRATION), we made our way to the session room and met up with my co-panelists Clare Renner, Jack Heath and Alex Adornetto. Despite the fact that none of us had met before, Clare had just driven down from Queenscliff and Jack had flown in from Canberra, I think we clicked rather well and our audience of publishing industry people were on the whole attentive and appreciative. The format of the panel called for each of us to make a speech, and it was interesting to see how everyone had prepared. Jack had brought no notes other than what he’d written on the back of a receipt, but his great sense of humour and exuberant rambling was a real crowd-pleaser. I’d made dot points of what I wanted to say and managed to stand and deliver without too much stuttering, and Alex had a lot of poise as she read from her sheet.
After we’d all had our rant from the lecturn we commenced our “conversation”, though during this period I was not really sure whether I was supposed to be eyeballing my other pannelists (they were the ones I was conversing with, after all), or the audience (who’d paid for the privilege of watching said spectacle). Actually, the conversation turned out to be the most genuine and interesting part of the session, because we each got to air our views on writing, publishing and being “young authors”, and chimed together quite a lot.
After the session there was a book signing, and I think I did pretty well not being greviously insulted when no one bought my book to sign (though I got a fair amount of networking done, and was told to hurry up and write book #2).
Overrall, the whole thing was a positive experience, and I even got a free conference satchel.
I mean, what more could one possibly want?
