Sunday 25th October, 2009 @ 8:36pm. Filed under life.
8 comments.
Hmm, today I was driving to the shops, and listening to something on the radio about how kids are losing their ability to effectively communicate with each other.
Damn, I thought. They’re right; it’s so obvious but I somehow missed it. I finish early on Wednesdays, and drive home past the local primary school I used to attend, when their lunch break is just about to end. When I went there, there’d be kids running around the oval, playing on the swing set, kicking a ball, chatting and everything. Last week, everyone was huddled in the shade, and they were all either on a phone, a Nintendo thing or another, or watching someone else on one. As the car slowly idled by I just thought how stupid it was. Fat, pasty kids. It really upsets me; I used to be borderline obese. It took and takes quite a bit of effort to change and maintain that, and looking at them it was hard to say if they’d have the motivation to do something like that themselves. Wii fit? What difference does it make to do…pushups without some electronic board anyway? Craning your neck up to stare at the animated you doing pushups on your big-ass plasma TV probably wouldn’t be too good for your neck, either.
The point is, kids are screwing themselves over pretty hard. No imagination. No activity. Fat food and candy and ‘Chippees’ . I don’t know. It just really annoys me how people can let themselves go. Especially when you’re at a red light and the dick next to you has his fat son leering at you, with some sort of bar in his hand he’s eating. Wanker. I hope he chokes. Hahaha
I went to the shops today, to buy a new drill I’ve been eyeing. I went to two hardware stores…twenty minutes apart. The first one had one with an average battery pack, for $200. Fine, I thought. I picked up some goodies I needed, then I went on my way. The second store had a similar drill, with a better battery pack for $159. Awesome, I thought. Then I looked at the top, there was an extra battery pack taped on top. Two state-of-the-art battery packs (each sells for around $40 anyway), for that price! I bought it on the spot; turns out it was leftovers from Fathers Day Sale ‘09. What a bargain.
It’s got a nice hard carrycase, two charging stations (but only one wall adapter, which I found rather counter-intuitive), and the carrycase has room for an extra battery. Hahah, and the drill itself has a little screen on the back that tells you remaining battery capacity, and a small LED under the head which illuminates whatever you’re drilling. The best thing is I don’t have to worry about flat batteries. Worse comes to worst, just slap the other one in. It’s fantastic; I was thinking of replacing the old batteries in the old drill’s cartridge, but that would have cost me $90 for far less quality than what I got today.
While I was in the great concrete yonder, I also bought some groceries and a roast chicken. The guy at the counter was seriously, no more than 14, 15 years old. Amazing; it sort of reminded me what was happening to me at my own job. On Sundays we get time and a half, and they used to give me a seven hour shift every Sunday, until they gave it to this sixteen year old. Jerkbags. Pfft. And they call me on almost every Sunday morning, going ‘Ah are you available today etc etc’ because they know he won’t get the job done. Too bad, I mean, I got stuff to do at home and for study. If they assigned me the shift I’d be there, but that’s just crazy.
Jesus that was long
Thursday 6th August, 2009 @ 10:17pm. Filed under life, recipes.
10 comments.
What I used to do was, I’d buy a coconut. Then I’d poke a hole in it, drink the water and throw it away like a dumbass. That was stupid, wasteful, hahaha. Maybe because I didn’t know anything about coconuts.
This post is about something that happened…quite a few years ago, actually.
Once my cousins and I went fishing, and we caught a pretty fine fish. My…greatuncle? found a coconut kicking around my kitchen when we went back to my house to celebrate, and he decided to show us how to push the nut to the limit. He’d learnt it off some tropical people; I guess everything’s pretty awesome where they live.
First, we did what was all I did. We bottled the water and put it in the fridge to chill nicely. Then we split the coconut with a cleaver (outdoors, stacked on a pile of phone books. It’s messier than you’ll ever think). The meat was dug out with the same cleaver, and blended until it was like a chunky paste.
Then, we poured the whole mixture into a clean cotton cloth, and squeezed out the oil from the meat, leaving us a nice desiccated coconut. The oil was used to grill the fresh fish, which was fantastic. While he grilled the fish, I made a big fluffy coconut omelette and my older cousin made some sort of fruity coconut drink with the water, because there wasn’t enough to go round. The other two went to sort out our gear, and fix the things that inevitably go out of whack when you go fishing in the wee hours. A broken Maglite. How? We had seriously ran it over with my cousin’s car, and it was still perfectly good before we got to the site. Amazing.
That was easily a big meal for four people. Four eggs, one decent sized fish, and a little old coconut. Who’d have thought, eh?
Saturday 20th June, 2009 @ 10:59pm. Filed under life.
4 comments.
My last exam is on next Tuesday. It’s mechanics; some sort of crazy fusion of physics and mathematics (the two exams I’ve already had). Those two were the easy ones. It’s when they put them together, that people go ‘Oh Shi..’ and drop out to do an Arts degree. Pfft.
The tricky thing is, there’s very little theory. Most questions can be solved with one or two formulas which are incredibly simple. The trick is using them in the right places and manipulating the information you’re given to find what you want. It’s not like the other two exams because this is something you can’t cram for, only practice. I hate that. Hehee
A friend of mine wants to make a pool table, and we spent much of the day leading to mathematics talking about it. It seemed to help us relax, and stop us going crazy from numbers and functions and other wacky things. We’re actually making a list of things to buy even as I type, shame on me. But the idea is rather exciting because it’s a fun challenge that’s different from anything I’d have undertaken in recent months.
Especially something to take my mind off anything related to university.
Having just said that, it sounds like I don’t want to be there at all. I do, because I paid good money; it’s motivating in its harsh way. The other reason being, the idea of being able to make fun things in my spare time (that actually help me in future) has always appealed to me. Either that, or things for sheer entertainment.
I was just hoping it would be less like high school this way. I had in mind an awesome, futuristic paradise where I turn up wearing whatever I please (well, at least that came true) three days of the week, drinking some sort of…drink and making robots to my heart’s content.
The disappointment bites pretty deep, I’m sort of embarrassed to admit. Most people I’ve gotten to know feel the same.
So what do I want out of my time there? Just one thing; the knowledge to make machines. Machines help me now, and definitely will in future. I picked my course based on two questions I asked a professor of engineering on an open day.
‘Which course would I take to build a remote control car?’
‘Mechanical engineering’, he said.
‘What’s a course you would recommend in order to make a system that can deploy this car on command, and make it do stuff, like transform?’ (I hate to say it, but yeah. I asked that) ‘Well, there’s mechanical and mechatronic..’ he was struggling to gauge my reaction, but I was sold. The name sounded good, I signed up for it in the end.
And, wham. Look where I am now, hehe. Better get back to study, I guess. It’ll all fall into its own place in the end (=
Friday 22nd May, 2009 @ 9:16pm. Filed under life, ramble.
8 comments.
You know, that feeling. After high school or as time goes on (it’s just easier to notice after a transition in something, such as high school graduation) that people around you that you knew seem to change completely. People you used to know become pretty much strangers, and people you never really knew become very close. Well, the latter didn’t really happen to me, but yeah. It seems like everyone just becomes somebody else to adapt to their new environment; some sort of wacky take on survival of the fittest.
Me, I wouldn’t like to think I’ve changed much. Well, not like I’d notice, myself if I did. It’s just pretty interesting to see the differences in other people, heh.
All in all, it’s been a pretty boring week. I’ve had to make some sort of electric killswitch using some sort of circuit device made to be like a puzzle board where you slot things in. It’s incredibly tricky (and harder than compared to simply soldering them). Because they are not fixed in the board and I could not finish in the allocated time, I had to take it apart to start again at home because I didn’t have a big enough box. At least I have a clue now. 
and it’s really rather fun.
On the subject of people, it reminds me of something I was told about when I was younger. My dad pushed me into some sort of basic kung fu program when I was in primary school. I thought it was pretty pointless so I stopped going, because back then I was stupid and I thought anything that didn’t involve something you’d see in Dead or Alive or Rather Comatose wasn’t worth pursuing. It took me a long time to realise why what I had quit was so brilliant. It tied back to something the teacher dude had said.
We were just doing these stretch things, where we’d have our hands by our sides. When our arms were straight we’d rotate our hands up so the fingertips pointed outwards and the palms faced the ground. When the fingertips were as high as they could go, we had to lift our arms up and down. 49 times. Then we’d drop our hands again, and make and unclench our fists 49 times. It doesn’t sound like much at all until you’ve tried it. You really feel it afterwards.
Anyway, what he said. It was after we had finished and he talks about atcual defense techniques, which he never really did (the reason I thought he was so incompetent). It was basically a lecture about emotions an bodily movewents and other stuff. I didn’t pay attention because I was stupid, but this is what I remember, split into two parts.
Well, from the start you have basic movements. Bend down, straighten up. Raise arms up, out and the like. Very rarely do you have to lift your foot above your waist in your eveyday life and so this movement is unnatural. So’s spinning around and other things. So when you try the Triple Dragon Tornado Salmon Punch you’ve spent 500 hours and 500 dollars on to learn and perfect, instinctively in a pinch your body forgets it all because it’s purely so foreign your body rejects it as useless information.
Like I forgot to get the clothes off the line yesterday because Keeks needed a wipe-down before going to bed. It’s so different in a gym (with a referee, soft mats and foot pad things) that you’ll never pull it off where it counts. You might as well swing a pool noodle.
The other part was about emotion. When there’s nasty words about, and adrenaline and other silly things you get angry. Anger is like friction to you (or something like that), slowing your body and your thoughts down when you really need a clear head. Some other metaphorical stuff like that. And the reason why he didn’t teach anything like that stupid punch name I made up there is that when properly taken care of, your body is the first weapon you look to. It knows what to do. When your head’s clear, really clear, you’d be surprised how much faster, stronger and focused you feel.
So in the end, we just learnt to feel a bit less so we could think more. We could see ourselves better that way; maybe it explains my unhealthy obsession with other people. You see things different (yeah, it sounds pretty nuts). It’s just easier to not be something you aren’t.
Unless you are, of course, a triple dragon tornado salmon. If you are, umm…that would be pretty awkward.
Tuesday 5th May, 2009 @ 10:58pm. Filed under life.
8 comments.
Today, on the way to uni, Wuggs and I passed a small compact car, and a woman was handing out cans of Red Bull energy drink. I’ve never had some before, so it was okay. It tasted a lot like every other energy drink, but hey. I felt pretty good for most of the day; Wuggs and I took in total a good 4 cans. Yay!
Today was a rather special day so we went to eat at some small Indonesian restaurant. It was really quite fancy, and we got a rather good meal for a very good meal. It was a bowl of rice, some ox tail soup, some very nice barbecue chicken and some fried fish. It was all really quite nice, and the place was great too (except the nearby window was only a few metres from an elevated monorail track, and you could clearly see some passengers drinking Red Bull). Wuggs and I shared two cans during the day, and we each took one home. I’m saving mine for next week’s Physics exam, haha.
Tomorrow is our wind powered car race day. We had a month to make a car which would travel towards a fan using only the fan’s power, and the car has to carry a payload of our own choosing. The higher ratio of the payload’s weight to the time taken to go 2 metres (around 6 ft), the higher the score. The top three get full marks for that part, and everything goes down from there. Ours is looking pretty good; we’re looking to carry a good 4-5 kilograms (around 9 pounds).
This is our car [click thumbnail for bigger image]:
Heehee! I also made a small LEGO pilot; i’ll be sticking him to the top of the weights maybe. He was sort of our mascot; he used to sit above the kitchen sink to keep me company while i washed the dishes. Now, he’s a wind car pilot. Awesome career move.
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