Mm, noddle

Lovely day of eating

Was a lovely day of eating today. Had breakfast, then dimsum (sorry,
yum cha) brunch, then a mini burger the size of my mouth for lunch.
Then a nap, then pizza and parmagiana for dinner. Then some toast and
a glass of lactose-free cow milk. Best.

This is a photo of a Lego version of some part of Melbourne, on
display at the Eureka tower.

Comfortable chair

Lovely bar with couches and tasty cheap food.

So high right now

Aah bees!

Southbank

Just ate dim sum with cousin michelle at red emperor in southgate.
Can't believe I've had 2 meals back to back. I love being on holiday.

Dear breakfast

Breakfast place

Coffee love

Horse bazaar

Hello from croft

International coffee & cake house

Saharan toilet

That's how it rolls.

Seriously

Seriously, they have one page of food and 4 pages of drink.

Saha!

Stairway to sahara

YES!presso

Sectioned off toilet

Section 8

Fenced off corner of an alleyway

What

Rooftop bar

Grass on the roof, for sitting - lovely!

Prudent frontage

Prudent toilet

Prudent crotch inspection

Prudence beer garden

Breadou loves to nap

Hello from a mystery location

Can you guess where!

from my fireyfox history

Snippets from my Firefox history:

• Four stages of competence
• Theory of multiple intelligences (I like to think I'm clumsily-kinesthetic)
• Dunning-Kruger effect (aka. the Stupid Jerk Effect)
• Lake Wobegone effect (aka. a group of people who think they're hot shit)
• Narrative therapy (the theory behind fixing bad self-fulfilling prophecies)
• Self-efficacy (how you perceive your ability to do something)
• Self-serving bias (claiming of praise and justification of mistakes)
• Learned helplessness (yuck)

Check out that horrible dog experiment in the last one. It's not gruesome, just sad. Hits near home for me cos it was just a few years ago that I'd quite happily yoke myself to other people's jaunty lives.

No, that sounds strange - let me try again...

I think when you depend too much on other people - for approval, for timing, for good favour, for money, for whatever - you become like a Group 3 dog (from the first experiment). Things happen, stop happening, happen at seemingly random intensities - all under someone else's control. Then you "simply lay down passively and whine."

I was like a Group 3 dog once. I'd have a good time with a close friend, or date someone I really got along with, and over time seek more and more to preserve that "good time" and "getting along" by letting my "happenings" depend upon what they wanted to do and when they wanted to do it.

This also gave me a lovely way out of taking responsibility for decisions and my own "happenings" - if there was a bad happening, I had someone to blame; if a good happening, well, I was there and I stood behind that great idea from the start - ra ra ra.

This isn't a sad story. After awhile I realised what a waste of my time it was and came unstrapped, grew some balls, took some ownership. According to that study, this makes me an optimist. But I like to think of it as simply "growing up".

So - woo - happy ending. But I do feel sorry for the Group 3 dogs in that Wiki article, and other Group 3 dogs in my neighbourhood.

Here is a picture of a cat.

it's like they photoshopped his face onto the plate

testing another blog post

Testing another blog post. The paragraph stuff isn't working properly for some reason. Quite annoying. Lorem ipsum is boring and unpresentable, so here I am writing another few paragraphs to you.

I had a pressed chicken sandwich for dinner tonight, and home made sweetcorn soup. Definitely ate too much. It used to be that if I prepared food for myself, I'd get so bored of looking at it while preparing that I wouldn't be able to eat much of it. Nowadays it seems that I eat much more than my stomach is comfortable with because I fall in love with the meal whilst cooking.

By the way, I don't really like to call it cooking. I get an icky feeling when talking about "liking cooking", then sharing interesting tricks for preparing meat and such. Something about it feels so contrived.

I love swapping food tricks, sure, but not with that air of one-upmanship, that unspoken contest for who loves cooking more and who can share the most gourmet-sounding trick. This bugbear comes to mind every now and then - not because it's a pertinent issue really, but cos it reinforces the feeling of being a little isolated. Nobody else seems to have a problem with the thing that strikes me as competitive wankery, and I can count maybe 4 people I've had enjoyable food-preparing conversations with.

Guess I'm just an emo kid blogging on my emo blog. :) Hokay, looks like enough paragraphs now.

testing a blog post with a longish title

I am currently doing some website hackery on sanlive.com. This is a test of a blog post. Oh la la la, lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Please bear with me for the next couple of weeks while stuff takes shape.

Man, what a tired day it was today. Work went all right and managed to hit the gym after. My head is light and sore from all the humidity lately. A cold front would be lovely please, bom.

Lalala more text here. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Landed the possibility of some vocal work. Will be fun to see where it goes. My cat Tigger is very excited, so excited he is sitting on a bag.

One more paragraph, please. No, I will not just use lorem ipsum for my text. That's really boring.

Hello Internet!

Beh!

Volatile organic compounds (voc) toxicity

Indoor chemical smog emitted from furniture, carpets, paints,
varnishes, electricals and cleaning products - makes body complain.

Maybe it's not just 'hayfever'. Hm!

Oh breadou

Breadou and I spent the whole day hungover and surly. Right now, he is
having a rage at how dizzy he still is after half a frickin day.

Just for being a petulant bastard, I am leaving him at home and going
out to eat steak. Mm, steak.