79 - enter canon photo5 competition every year (1/2)

i will run into the competition twice in these 1001 days. these are my entries for 2009 - unfortunately i was stuck for ideas on the splat category and didn't submit anything.

 

 

 

75 - drink 1L water a day

it has been sooo hot in recent days and our aircon was broken, awaiting a spare part that needed approval from our landlady for purchase. so i drank water whilst i sweltered. overwhelmingly greater than 1L for at least a week. i think i can tick it off now. yay?

my review system

just to clarify:
0 i want my life back

* terrible, but i guess it was an experience...

** if life was facebook, and facebook had a DISLIKE button, i'd click that

*** good. i'm glad i read/watched/ate/[verbed] it.

**** oooohhh... that was cool. something that made an impact. or maybe it was just really funny or had hugh jackman in it.

***** all time favourite! on par with indiana jones and the last crusade or to kill a mockingbird or mum's beef stew noodles.

45 - watch all quentin tarantino movies 5/10)

reservoir dogs
***1/2 loads of tension, gore, humour and surprises.

as of today, tarantino's directorial accomplishments include:
1987 my best friend's birthday
1992 reservoir dogs
1994 pulp fiction
1995 four rooms (only part of the film)
1997 jackie brown
2003 kill bill vol 1
2004 kill bill vol 2
2005 sin city
2007 death proof/grindhouse
2009 inglourious basterds

so i've seen pulp fiction, kill bill 1 and 2,* and sin city. and tonight, i add reservoir dogs to the list.

loved the opening scene, talking about the meanings of songs. reminds me of my own conversations (did you know whitney houston's 'saving all my love' is about adultery?! and that 'careless whispers' is so confusing i'm going to say it's nonsensical). anyway, i was thinking, 'hmm this ain't so gory. i have been misled about this tarantino fellow...' and then -CUT- to scene of mr orange writhing in his own blood in the white leather back seat of a getaway car.

i liked this film, thrilling ride, had to think but not too hard to follow. i always like it when the story is leaked (coherently) in bits and pieces.


* incidentally, here is an example of an 'oxford comma', preceding the 'and' before the last item in a list for the purpose of removing ambiguity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma

22 - get a tripod

one of the canon photo5 briefs this year was to take a bokeh effect photo. a tripod was highly recommended. who am i to question canon? so i bought one yesterday - love it. it's quite light, it has a ball head for 360o in three dimensions and height-wise is taller than me :) nice sturdy rubbery feet too, and a little spirit level.

in the end i didn't bother taking the bokeh photo (issues with canon website plus laziness) but i played around with a few shots in our backyard. i'll post them tomorrow.

18 - day spa

otherwise known as a D-A-I-Y-E spa.

went to daylesford for a weekend of pampering - late afternoon drive through scenic towns such as woodend (twinge of townal-inferiority on benalla's behalf), gorgeous holiday cottage with an outdoorsy indoors spa in which we soaked whilst watching zoolander, bric-a-brac shopping, awesome chowder, mini golf, lookout tower at wombat hill, dinner at the swanky lakehouse where i had the best cocktail ever (bombay blossom if you're interested, it's a gnt with elderflower and coriander), and finally the day spa treatment the next day.

how was it? meh. nice, but i didn't feel thaaat much better afterwards. the massage wasn't hard enough on my neck and shoulders, the jets in the spa were nice and strong but only lasted 20 mins, i realised i prefer diy facials and the scrub was good but not $280 good. conclusion - i'm glad i did it, but i don't think i'll be going again. i'll just rent a cottage with a spa and spend the rest on a good physio.

 

the daylesford day spa

our own spa at 'home'

ps. i still like benalla.

37 - read 20 new books (2/20)

"George's Marvellous Medicine" - Roald Dahl
** 1/2 interesting, but i don't like reading lists much so it lost half a star.

good to know i have approval to continue indulging my inner child. you may be wondering, 'why roald dahl?' well, apart from his sheer brilliance and the delightful associations with my childhood, it's because we have a discounted books catalogue at work and i recently bought the box set of 15 for around $50. i shall treasure them for ever.

i thought this book was a little rude actually :P i mean, sure grandma was an unrepentant meanie, and there was a disclaimer about how most grannies are actually sweet old ladies, but it still seemed a little harsh. oh well, i guess she brought it on herself.

37 - read 20 new books (1/20)

'The Giraffe, The Pelly and Me' - Roald Dahl.
*** very amusing.

is it cheating if i read kids' books? i am arguing that the genius of roald dahl is for all ages, thus it is not...

anyway, i just read 'the giraffe, the pelly and me'. it's about a super-efficient magical window-cleaning company and a boy with dreams of owning the best sweets shop in the world (admirable aspirations).

i wonder how much roald dahl influenced jk rowling?

33 - learn US states

will you forgive me for the lengthy absence? i have been busy.

just realised that a lot of my goals actually require quite a lot of effort, though are inter-related so i can kill a couple of birds with one stone (eg run 5km lose 5kg), but very difficult because it requires consistent prolonged discipline, eg a change in lifestyle such that i drink water instead of caffeine/alcohol, and not just on days when i eat chinese takeaway or kfc where the msg/salt content impels me to do so.

anyway, something somewhat more achieveable is learning the names and location of the states of the united states... i've been testing myself with this cool online game and set myself the target of consistently getting 90% + on level 7 over several weeks before i could tick it off.

i'm pretty sure it's now in my medium- if not long-term memory now. so whoohoo!! now all i have to do is learn where major cities belong :S

23 - get an ipod

this is the story of how i was coerced into doing this 101 thing.

i'm a total apple newb, and it became shockingly apparent this year as we travel long distances in the car and as a passenger i am occasionally asked to adjust the songs, forcing me to ask questions like 'how do you go to the next song?'. so my friend convinced me that i should get an ipod. i went online and wanted mine inscribed, but couldn't think of a non-lame message from me to me, so she offered to 'buy' it for me in exchange for some other similarly valued gift, and my participation. what was the inscription?

65 - keep a diary of 2009

run along now... nothing to see here...

miscalculated

awww i just watched streetcar named desire (1951) but it doesn't fit anywhere on my 101 :( boooo.

anyway, i liked it. unsettling, but intriguing.

16 - stay in a 5* hotel

last friday i had a course on oral surgery which was held at the langham hotel - ranked #1 in mebourne according to tripadvisor. we decided it was time to spoil ourselves (not that we usually deprive ourselves) and booked a table at oyster for dinner, and a room at the langham. it was to be a night of luxury - fresh oysters, delicious grilled fish, gorgeous hotel with complimentary hot chocolates on arrival, king bed, and the richest chocolate mousse from the room service menu. We also ordered a banana split - topped with pistachios no less! peanuts are clearly far too pedestrian.

the only downer to the evening was the bitter cold of melbourne streets, and the unchivalrous boys we had dinner with who ignored our unsubtle hints to give us a lift to our car which was parked a few blocks away.

11 - build a snowman

there was never enough time in europe to build a snowman, so this winter, being so close to the snow, i was determined to realise my dream. there's even a snow wombat.

25 - get the herd/hilltop hoods cds

some time in first/second year i got interested in aussie hiphop and was actually listening to jjj's hiphop show a lot. then at barry and franklin st reception was pretty bad so we drifted apart. this year, i've found that the only breakfast show that i have access to while driving my car in the morning that i don't cringe at is on jjj (country radio ads are consistently worse than frank walker's from national tiles, and one of them still does prank calls and secret sounds), which got be back into the hiphop a bit.

so i popped into jb again and picked up the herd (summerland) and hilltop hoods (the hard road). i found them under skiphop - a very endearing term :)

90 - carve a cusp in amalgam

occasionally i see people come into the dental surgery with such shocking oral hygiene (ie non-existant) that i think resin composites will just not last in that mouth. so for ages i was whacking the ol' fuji ix in everywhere, until i figured i should just learn to use amalgam properly. a few weeks ago i had some time out to observe another dentist work for a day, and got some pointers about carving. a few days later, i had to do a cuspal coverage of an upper molar. as i took the band off, my nurse said 'very nice! that's a work of art!' because for once my amalgam had a cusp! it wasn't actually thaaat nice, but a cusp is a cusp :)

he also suggested sketching more teeth to understand the anatomy (uhh.. yeah i'll do that later).

20 - get a portrait lens

22 Aug 09. my work demands as a freelance photographer had increased significantly this year, with one patron particularly eager to preserve the memories of her culinary endeavours. it was time to up the ante, so i invested in a portrait lens. canon 50mm f/1.4 in case you were interested. these were the inaugural experimental shots. and one of me and my new baby.

 

24 - get air supply cd

a few weeks ago i got an email about air supply's comeback tour in melbourne, and started youtubing their clips. their 70s/80s classicism was undeniably awesome. the next weekend i was in melbourne i dropped into jb and picked up a best of album for $7.99 and struck it off my list. it has been playing in my car non-stop ever since :) sadly the album doesn't have 'without you' (can't liiiiiiiive... if living is without youuuuu) but it does have 'two less lonely people in the world'.

now let's see if i can work out how to embed youtube videos...

i love puns

in case you hadn't noticed, victorian refers to both my life-long fixation with historical england (makers of some fiiiiine ironwork) and my current location. originally i was going to use this picture as my background -

as it would highlight the reference to 'tales of the arabian nights', jam packed with crazy life lessons. PLUS it is actually a photo taken in Taiwan of all places - my homeland. i stole it from a girl on flikr. i ran the idea past a friend who gave me a confounded look and denounced it as working on toooo many levels... so i have dumbed it down a notch. but i couldn't let my wit go unnoticed so i've digressed significantly from the primary purpose of this blog to explain myself :P

anyway, this blogging thing is hard work. i'm going to take a break.

02 - keep a 101 blog

i was determined to make this inaugural post a thrilling start to captivate my readership, but i ran into some problems editing the textbox in the title image and am consequently fatigued. for now, just be satisfied that this blog exists and i can cross #2 off my list.