Eat your fork.

 

Heston is such a fun chef. He challenges the connection between our eyes and taste buds, our perceptions and assumptions of food and the way we eat. And he makes it so entertaining. 

Thank You Cupcake

I've spent a semester working on my first project with my first architecture firm and have been relocated as of tomorrow. It's daunting heading into place where you will belong at the bottom of the ladder for some time due to incompetency of how things work in the workplace and knowledge in general. 

There's a threshold one has to pass upon starting at a new place, when productivity outweighs needing to be taught and I think it is safe to say I'm very well on my way to feeling comfortable doing what I'm asked to do as a student employee. 

I can't imagine the burden I would have been at times when it came to crunch time where people just wanted things to get finished and I sat infront of the computer screen like a lost child trying to comprehend what to do. For the team that helped me across into the land compentency, I'm grateful to them and are in definate need of thanks hence the Thank You Cupcake.

The only thing that makes this a Thank You Cupcake is the flag (and of course your attitude when you give it to them :D) and it is simple as to make. Tooth pick, paper, pen, scissors, glue and you're good to go.  

Flag Making Advice: The end stuck to the tooth pick should be slightly longer to be able wrap around and put glue on. 

Bake what ever cupcake you fancy and chuck the flag in there!  

Cupcake Baking Advice: Make sure you set your oven to Fan Forced not Fan Forced Grill or your cupcake will turn out looking like a pimple!

I think it's important to say 'thank you' once in a while in what sometimes seems like a thank you-less world. The people you work with aren't nobodys, they have feelings just like you. So treat them how you would like to be treated.

 

Matt Corby - Made of Stone

do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself

Happy Chinese New Year!
Honestly, my family hasn't had a break from festive eating - Christmas, New Years, Chinese New Years, and I can see the repercussions of it. From permanent food baby to the ever growing muffin top over my jeans (attractive i'll say!) In the top left hand corner is Aunts homemade fried ice cream and it's seriously good (note to self: get recipe!). Along with food comes red pockets, from work a fortune cookie, something that rarely is consumed by Chinese people might I say, and finally but not least, from the haunting past, the dreaded Chinese New Years Song that confusingly is fun to sing on repeat however annoys the living daylights out of you. 

On a final note, I enjoyed snacking on a couple of fortune cookies and particularly liked the fortune above - "No need to worry! You will always have everything you need." It made me think about a particular passage in the bible, part of Jesus' sermons on the mount. 

Do Not Worry

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

 

   ²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

A good reminder that there is more to life than eating, drinking and clothes, and it's such a comfort to know that God knows what we need most which is grace (the gift of life from God that we don't deserve because we've wronged him and actually deserve death). And the best thing is, God has the gift neatly wrapped in his hand ready for us take because Jesus has died on the cross.

from: melbourne

Here are a few happy snaps from Melbourne.

There are many things I enjoy about the captial of Victoria, waiters have a genuine willingness to serve customers, compliments are given with no hidden meaning, beautiful doors and architecture, appreciation of aesthetics, ability to experiment with different materials, and the love of good food to say the least.

Thing to try at home: growing money trees in mini tins (baby food tins perhaps)

A Melbournian place worth mentioning: The Little Creatures Dining Hall on Brunswick st.

Grab the homemade chips with garlic aioli (+ an extra aioli) and an apple cider and you're pretty much set for a cruisy lunch with a friend.

Watch out for: little artistic gems found on the streets from shop front walls to doors to the light poles.

Feeling up for a cocktail: Cookies on Swanston st. 

Make sure you go to the cocktail bar where there are kids picture books around for your entertainment. Ask for the cocktail menu and take it from there!

Emma Louise - 1000 Sundowns

Clair de Lune et Soleil Levant

Moonlight

Your soul is a select landscape

Where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go

Playing the lute and dancing and almost

Sad beneath their fantastic disguises.

All sing in a minor key

Of victorious love and the opportune life,

They do not seem to believe in their happiness

And their song mingles with the moonlight,

With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful,

That sets the birds dreaming in the trees

And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy,

The tall slender fountains among marble statues.

Paul Verlaine

Debussy - Clair de Lune (played by Alexander Lubyantsev)

I was watching a television show about a pianist and the three composers he most related to: Rachmaninov, Ravel and Debussy, and found out that Clair de Lune was written inspired by a poem by Verlaine. The piece compliments it and is such a perfect translation of words into music. The main tune has such a heart ache to it and the second prominent tune with the cascading bubbling fountain in the background. Debussy was labelled an Impressionist, and I don't see why not, looking at the score and listening to the piece, it's seamless as if bar lines don't exist. And I'm going to use the analogy, that Debussy paints a picture with his music, makes a film even!



Monet - Soleil Levant



If I recall correctly from my high school art lessons, the Soleil Levant painted by Claude Monet (other famous paintings include the water lilies) was the first Impressionist painting. And it is, just an impression, not realisitic, rather capturing moreso the mood that go with the scene. I think the Arts go hand in hand together, they all serve to make an impression on the reader/viewer/listener, take you away from where you physically are at that particular moment in time. Art, music, etc, they're all intertwined. In year 5 during music, there was a particular lesson where we listened to some famous pieces and used colours and lines to describe it. I remember the Ride of the Valkyries came on, and I got my red and black pencils and just went nuts with the crazy angry lines :)

Even with food this happens, now that I'm writing about this...