october 28, 2005
all hot air
The annual Hawke Centre lecture is coming up on November 9th (5.30pm) and Greg Bourne will be speaking on sustainability.
I attended a couple of the Festival of Ideas sessions he was in earlier this year (All Hot Air - climate change and Changing Lives) and I was talking about them for weeks afterwards. The reasons why Greg Bourne (an ex-oil man) is now head of WWF-Australia are strong: he "knows" the enemy (big business) and he knows how to communicate the need for change to industry and consumers.
It will change the way you view your lifestyle and most importantly will encourage you to change your lifestyle.
For more information about the lecture, visit the Hawke Centre's website.
pipstar @ 12:15 PM | link | Comments:
october 24, 2005
tikka masala
Apart from a couple of reasonable attempts in my own kitchen, I've always left cooking curry up to my Mum. It's not that I'm scared of curry, but Mum's are always very good and due to my formative cooking experiences being vegetarian, I'm not that experienced at cooking meat.
Nevertheless, when Dan asked if I could cook curry as well as my Mum I took that as a challenge and said "This weekend we shall try to make curry!"
So I did what any daughter (aspiring to follow in her mother's culinary footsteps) would do. I asked Mum for her recipes, only to find out that whilst her beef and lamb curries are often made from scratch, she relies on a shop bought curry paste to make a chicken curry.
Which made the curry cooking much easier. I'd had a feeling that I'd have to go out and buy a mortar and pestle and spend an afternoon grinding spices. Instead I spent the morning crying ♥ whilst Dan scurried across the market to buy the
chicken and vegetables.
Of course we forgot to buy rice and chutney until the last moment. Despite that hiccup and the tears, we actually ended up with a good dinner.
We weren't satisfied at that point though. Following on from the success of The Breakfast Sushi (bacon, eggs, avocado in sushi rice and nori - dipped in Worcestshire sauce) Dan and I were inspired to make a dessert from coconut cream, mango, banana, dessicated coconut and lemon juice. It was amazing. And far too rich.
I don't think that I'm anywhere near the cooking skill and experience of my Mum (I still must learn how to make her Goldfish Pie), but I can now cook curry. But not yet from scratch.
♥
On a side note to the curry preparations, I had one of the worst bouts of PMS I've ever experienced over the weekend. A deadline's coming up for the project, so I was feeling stressed about getting work done whilst having a normal life anyway. But the addition of hormonal fluctuations meant that not only was I unable to apply logic to any situation in work or my personal life, but I was beginning to cry for any reason.
"Oh! Those nesting birds are so cute!" [tears]
"ThegameisnotworkingandIthinkI've brokenitit'sallmyfault." [tears]
"Dan, you are the sweetest most loving boyfriend ever and I'm just a psycho woman, I don't deserve you..." [tears]
"I don't know what to have for breakfast. I'm so confused." [tears]
pipstar @ 10:50 PM | link | Comments:
october 11, 2005
monday's child
michelle & pip
I have to admit that I was not feeling particularly full of grace on my birthday Saturday.
I'd planned to go for a massive bikeride, "Le Tour De Pippa" with the Chester Carlson Memorial Cycling Society but because of bad weather we ended up making the ride less massive and just rode from Elder Park back to my house (via the markets for brunch of course).
Once I got home I was so busy getting things prepared for an indoors picnic, that I never got around to doing my hair. Ladies, Gentlemen, I'm sure that you are aware that entertaining with bike helmet hair does not make one feel particularly gracious at all.
Despite the challenge of not being perfectly coiffed, I did have a lovely day with some lovely people.
Food was eaten, music listened to, bad jokes made, tea consumed and lovely gifts received.
Thankyou to everyone who came along and a particular thankyou to MonkeyWithAGun for taking photos and for looking after me while I was hiding in The Well of Stress.
pipstar @ 10:37 AM | link | Comments: *
october 02, 2005
a shot in the arm
The fear of failure or worse, mediocrity, has prevented me from accomplishing so many different things, particularly when improvement has been linked to practise and commitment.
I gave up studying piano and never took up another instrument. I couldn’t stand the continual criticism from my peers at my all female high school, so I didn’t really make any attempt at sporting activities. Whenever I’ve had to approach academic activities I’ve relied on my natural strengths rather than making that extra effort to study at something I’m challenged by.
I’m afraid of finding that my potential isn’t really as outstanding as I imagine it to be… Imagine making an effort only to discover that you haven’t achieved anything more than you started out with?
The idea of making a personal investment in something, only to have it fail, effectively paralyses me. I’ve often preferred to take the guaranteed disappointment involved with never trying, rather than accept the risk involved in accepting a challenge.
So much of this is related to the need to be in control, because many of the challenges I avoid involve opening myself up to criticism and implicit in that is a loss of total power. Sadly, my control freak persona is best mates with my inner critic and together the two of them have almost helped me justify avoiding the fun stuff in life altogether.
That’s going to have to change. I’m going to accept and then rise to the challenges in front of me.
I want to write. I want to make beautiful things. I want to do well in my job. I want to sing out loud more often. I want to ride my bike fast down hills. I want to make this world better. I want to stay by the side of this person forever.
I have to live this life properly.
pipstar @ 11:08 PM | link | Comments: *****
october 01, 2005
ride
While riding my bike home yesterday I noticed at one set of traffic lights:
- A man on crutches walking (limping?) his dog.
- A bearded man holding crutches in the old red station wagon next to me.
- A very long and shiny limousine (there were sparkly lights on the side).
A limousine and two guys with crutches all within 20 square metres? Glorious.
(At another intersection I saw a very similar limousine but it couldn't have been the same limousine unless it had driven very quickly along a rather boring route.)
Once I started up onto the footpath to home I saw a full bag of bread lying by the side of the road. Did someone leave the bread on top of the car when they were loading their groceries in?
© 2002 - 2007 Pippa Buchanan