walk the walk

I get pretty restless when I’m stuck inside for a long time and/or when I don’t like the assignments I’m being forced to do.

Yesterday, I left the house around 5:15pm to attend a dinner at 7pm, even though I live pretty close to the destination (The Valley). I had planned on going for a bit of a walk – about halfway there, and then catch a bus for the rest of the way. I took the scenic route through parks and along a creek. Never walked down that way before, so I thought it might be interesting.

It was good to be outside. It was a good time to be out walking, too. Still had about another hour of sunlight left, it wasn’t too hot or cold, no rain, and not too much wind. It was nice being out when everyone else was out for their evening run/jog/walk/cycle. Simple things like having nice parks and walkways nearby really make me appreciate where I live.

So, anyway, I followed the walkway until it came out onto the street (techincally, it continued again after that, but sort of in the opposite direction to where I needed to go) and I figured I’d walk to a bus stop and bus the rest of the way. But, surprisingly, it was still quite early (not even 6pm), so I walked past the bus stops.

I eventually made it to the ‘Gabba, at which point I again had the option of catching a bus or continuing to walk. The only thing was, if I chose to walk, I’d definitely have to walk the rest of the way (I was planning on walking down Main Street and across the Story Bridge – a route I know by car, but have never taken a bus this way).

Well, it was still early (about 6:10pm) and I wasn’t tired yet, so of course I decided to walk. I’ve never walked across the Story Bridge before, so that was another drawcard. It was quite nice (although quite noisy because of the constant stream of traffic).

And, you know what, I still made it to dinner about 10 minutes early. According to Map My Run, I only walked a bit over 7km (the site is pretty good and user-friendly – definitely recommended for fellow walkers/runners). I want to try longer distances next time~!

ever the same

Writing about three lines for my assignment is probably not justification enough for procrastinating… but too late now!

Now and then, an old song (which I may or may not have heard in a long time) re-emerges from my brain’s musical archives and won’t go back. Last night, it was Rob Thomas’s ‘Lonely no more’, so this morning, I Youtubed it (as you do). I still remember watching the MV as a kid. I thought it was pretty cool.

And, since it’s rare to go on Youtube for just one video and then leave, I looked at the suggested videos, and one happened to be ‘Ever the same’ (also by Rob Thomas). Don’t think I’ve heard it in ages, but I remembered that it was a good song. And it is such a good song. I’ve had it on repeat for the last hour at least.

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I like the MV – with the carrier pigeons. If only someone did that here. When I was a kid, I wanted a carrier pigeon. I think I liked the idea of having a pet that could be “free” in a sense, but that would always come back.

Fall on me
Tell me everything you want me to be
Forever with you
Forever in me
Ever the same

friday night

If there’s one night of the week that should be free from work and study and all things stressful, it should be Friday night. But, to be fair, Friday night owes a lot to Saturday, when there is generally nothing urgent due. Even if you have to be somewhere important early on Saturday, it’s a good excuse to do nothing and go to sleep early on Friday night.

Thank goodness for the wonderful Friday-Saturday combination.

On a sort of different matter, I’ve noticed that FB changed it’s layout, and then WordPress also sort of changed the taskbar thing recently. Why can’t these sites just stick with one thing instead of changing it all the time? Sure, they’re trying to make things more efficient and improve the user experience, but it’s not very efficient or enjoyable to have to re-acquaint myself with the site every so often~

On another different matter: It was so unfortunate that Darren Lockyer didn’t get to play his last NRL game at the grand final. It would’ve been the perfect send-off (provided the Broncos won the GF if they made it). But, with a career like he’s had, a grand final finish would’ve just been the cherry on top of one heck of a cake.

Being honest, I haven’t followed this season very closely, but I used to be such an avid supporter. During high school, I could’ve told you the name of every player and their positions and jersey numbers. (Unfortunately, uni has since invaded a lot of my memory space and evicted a heap of other stuff.)

Well, I guess the point I’m trying to make is that it doesn’t take an avid fan to know that Lockyer’s a legend. And you don’t have to be a hardcore supporter to feel moved to make a tribute.

return of the lounge lizard

Coming home from uni today, I had this inexplicable desire to just lie in front of the TV and watch afternoon cartoons… And that’s exactly what I did!

Well, it was late afternoon / evening when I got back home, but there was still plenty of time before dinner and, more importantly, there were still cartoons on TV. I felt like I was back in school. Those were the good days – back when life was simple… It was a nice way to spend the afternoon/evening. Definitely a much-needed break.

I don’t think I’ll ever out-grow watching cartoons. And not just the cartoons for general/mature audiences (The Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, etc), but the ones that are actually intended for kids/adolescents too. Today I (half-)watched ‘Sally Bollywood’, ‘Kid vs Kat’ and ‘The Avengers’. (Only half-watched because I was too tired/distracted to pay full attention, and then ‘The Avengers’ was a repeat that I’d already seen before.)

Not. Ashamed. At. All.

I’ve also taken a liking to ‘Deltora Quest’ (also on ABC3 – thank-you ABC for this cartoon-dominated channel). It makes me want to read the books (for some reason, I never read them as a kid, even though they seem like the sort of books I would’ve liked), especially considering that I only have patches of the story because my cartoon-viewing is not very regular/fixed.

Yes, I have a life, thank-you very much.

stranger danger?

There seems to be an increase in the number of friendly strangers recently. In the last month or two, I’ve had conversations with at least four random strangers, and also witnessed several random-stranger conversations.

I guess it’s not a bad thing … if the person seems normal and sticks with small talk or something safe. But, unfortunately, that’s not the case most of the time. Sure, they tend to start off normal, and I try to be nice and polite and go along with the conversation, but there tends to be a point where I start hoping the conversation will end soon.

For example, one day when I was waiting for the train to work, a lady came onto the platform and started talking to me about her day – she just had lunch with some friends from a certain religious group. I think whenever religion is mentioned by strangers, alarm bells start going off in my head. A little bit further into the conversation, she was telling me that everyone should follow the religion she follows because every other religion is “evil” or something. And that’s when I zoned out.

I have nothing against people believing in whatever religion they believe in, but I do have a problem with people who are closed-minded and go around telling people that they’re going to experience eternal suffering because they believe in something different. Other than that, she seemed pretty normal, and I didn’t mind talking to her that much. Not sure if she realised when I zoned out and decided to go back to small talk…

Mind you, though, I have had nice conversations with religious strangers. These are the people who know that they’re not going to get a good response by going in for the kill straight away. Maybe they’ve been taught some “motivational interviewing”…

Another interesting conversation I’ve had with a stranger recently (which, incidentally, was also at a train station – different one, though) was about Comet Elenin, which is headed in Earth’s direction and will have very destructive consequences (or so the stranger told me). Actually, I consider this conversation quite normal – essentially just talking about the news and what he’s heard … even if it is a doomsday thing …and he seemed pretty serious about it (but not hysterical, at least).

NASA is denying that Elenin will have much effect on anything, but the stranger told me that they’re lying. I dunno… do I believe NASA or train station guy? Elenin is passing Earth around October 16, so if there’s anything you desperately want to do, do it before then.

staples

Was sort of hoping my time management would be good enough that I’d avoid this situation where I’m not posting much because my life is being consumed by assignments (and procrastination other than blogging), but here I am…

I think that doing an assignment about a patient who has depression and very low motivation has actually helped me to address my own low motivation to do the assignment. Pretty good, huh?

Just want to cross off more assignments from my list!

Random realisation I’ve had recently: I don’t think I’ve ever gotten sick of bread, but I can get sick of rice pretty easily. There are some disclaimers/qualifiers/whatevers for this, though:

I tend to eat wholegrain bread or bread with seeds or whatever (or raisin toast!), so bread itself has a fair bit of variety. I would probably get sick of white bread, but other types of bread (even if I stuck with the one type) would probably be ok.

I do tend to eat mostly white rice, when I do have rice, but I reckon I’d still get sick of brown rice (or would I…?).

And just to eliminate other confounding variables: I’ve grown up eating rice and bread on a fairly regular basis. People who have gone to school with me will probably know I always have bread at lunch, and I usually have rice at dinner (assuming I’m not eating out, in which case I will avoid bread and rice if possible).

Maybe bread has more of a smell/aroma component to it, and hence more appeal…?

This is such a random topic. But, you know, people can be passionate about the most random things. And there’s nothing wrong with liking bread. There are weirder things.

On a sort of related matter: No one has yet disproven my theory that anything that can go in a sandwich tastes better on toast. I’m also trying to think of a similar theory about pastry, but I’m not sure it’d work with everything.