Fizzle

Ride With Me

So like many others around me I have decided I’m going to get into Le Tour this year. While I don’t really fancy bike riding and the thought of doing it for 200kms straight literally hurts me, there is this aura about the Tour that is pretty hard to resist. I’ve been doing a bit of research and while I may not have the same knowledge of Tricky/ others, I thought I would share my thoughts.

Cadel Evans- After coming 2nd in the previous couple of years Evans will be pretty desparate to win it this year. There are a lot of favourites out there this year, as opposed to last, so he shouldn’t get bullied too much in some of those mountain stages. His team is a bit weak so that will present a challenge for him.

Alberto Contador- Great all round rider. Finished 2nd in yesterdays time trial but is such a strong climber. Is he actually the leader of Astana or is it Armstrong? Either way they have a strong team and he and Big Lance will defintely be in the mix come the end of it.

Dennis Menchov- Winner at this years Giro D’Italia, He was going to be my smokey coming into this years race. Had a great race last year and will be looking forward to improving even further. Not the best time trial yesterday, lapped by Cancellara 600m from the finish. Look forward to seeing him move up the field from stages 10-15 when the going gets tough.

Carlos Sastre- The defending champion. Not a noted time trialer as seen yesterday but the speed he gets up the mountains is pretty crazy. With the help of his team, the Spainard could easily go back to back.

I’m planning to stay up and watch every stage but we will see if that actually happens. I’ve been given a couple of Le Tour shifts at Fox so I’m even getting paid to watch the race. It should be a good month of July.

what up, whitebread?

cherry cola

For marketing at uni I’ve been researching sports drinks, and in my research i found a report on the most popular drinks bought per state. i was expecting coke to top every state, but actually, it’s only first in New South Wales and Victoria.
The most popular drink in WA, SA & Queensland?
Iced coffee.

I remember hearing something about how iced coffee was really popular in the northern territory because it’s too hot to drink regular coffee, but i was surprised that it’s the most popular in those other states too.
That being said, NSW & Victoria still consume enough coke to make it number one in Australia, and iced coffee only makes it to number 10 in the total Australian tally.

Hit That!

Recently, with all the assesments I’ve had, I’ve been discovering new and intersting ways to procrastinate. One of my favourite is this, The Space Bar Game. Sorry I’m not an internerd and hence don’t know hwo to embed the game. Anyway the game explains itself. My best scores are as follows

5 Seconds- 59
10 Seconds- 104
20 Seconds- 204

Each keyboard is different so try it out in as many places as you can. Unfortunatley it’s not the most quite game and hence you can’t really play in computer labs at uni, not that that stopped my trying. Also, after a while you get really tired.

Camera Obscura

Yesterday i was in the city trying to find a roll of film. I tried various stores, even a chemist, to no avail. Finally in a 7-11 I saw some film in a rack behind the counter.
I asked the guy for the roll of film, and he turned around and got me a pack of roll-your-own papers. I laughed and said, no, the film.
He then went and got me some filters.
Thinking maybe he couldn’t quite understand me, (he was esl) I clearly pronounced “film” and pointed it out.
He looked quite confused, so i added some buzz words. “photo!” “camera!”
Still very confused, he was basically looking at everything next to or around the film, but never got it. i was almost yelling now, pointing, trying to help him, but finally “kodak” seemed to get the point across and he picked up the roll of film.
He had to wipe the dust off it before he gave it to me.

Pick It Up, Lay It In The Cut

currently my sister is out of town, she has been for a week so far and will be for another two weeks due to her learning how to teach by pretending to be a real teacher.

i view this experience as a rad easy way to experiment with bacheloring awesomeness.

First thing i did was clean up the place and i’ve worked out that as long as i mainly stick to my room or stay out of the house, the rest of this dwelling stays clean. i’m way smart (or something).

a few people i know have expressed some concern about my eating habits (mainly females really, apparently boys don’t care). But actually, i’m doing fine, thanks to instant pasta and ikea meatballs i’ve been eating gastronomic delights. Huw knows what i’m talking about. the other night i even went to the supermarket after work and got some discount (ie old) meat for half price and there was enough meat to save half for another eat later on. that’s like quarter price value.

speaking of groceries, shopping is yesways easy. so far none of my shopping trip totals have been more than 9 bucks. all i really need is milk and bread and eggs, which also happens make up the ingredients of french toast, my most common meal. one of my mates laughed at me when i went shopping, cos bread, milk and eggs is pretty much the most stereotypical shopping list ever.

also, another fun (if slightly erd-nays) thing i’ve done is take my tv out of the living room and hook it up to my laptop so i can have dual-screen computing. apart from effectively doubling my computer productivity, now i can be one of those way cool white/indie kids who say “oh nah, i don’t watch tv“. especially cos now instead of watching tv i listen to records, drink coffee and read I.D.

whilst i’m on the topic of shunning modern technology so i can appear to be a hipster, the car’s battery is flat so now i walk/bum lifts/catch public transport to where ever i need to go.

bacheloring is way rad.

House Dynamics

I’ve got two assesments due tomorrow afternoon but its 10:53 in the pm so I thought I would share with you a heartbreaking tale, one I have witnessed first hand in the last few days. I live upstairs in my 9 bedroom apartment. Three other people live upstairs, two of them being a Chinese couple. They are quite a nice couple. Like a lot of Asians they keep to themselves but they always smile and say a hello. The first thing I noticed about this couple was their food (fat). They used to cook the most extravgent meals. There would be maybe 5 courses, with fruit at the end. Everything from soups, noodles, curries. I wondered how they could muster such effort to cook like this at least twice a day, but they did it together all the time. I once asked about their commitment levels to which i was asked how I could possibly eat Easy Mac all the time.

So this week I get back from holidays and I noticed that the guy has moved downstairs, swapped his room with a differnet guy. It occured to me that I never see these two cooking together or even doing anything together. I won’t lie to you, It made me a little sad. Tonight I was in the kitchen cooking my Spaghetti Marinara when the guy walks in, looking ever so sad. Anyway he starts getting his ingredients out of the cupboard and it turns out that he was having two minute noodles for dinner. Sure he added a couple of things but it was nothing compared to what he used to cook up. I started talking to the young man, in the hope I could cheer him up. He told me about his job at Hot Dollar and how he could give me a 70% discount. As a sidenote, that is a crazy staff discount at a discount retailer. I asked him about football and then offered him some of my marinara, as they always offered me a sample of their smorgesboards. He tried it and said it was good, I didn’t belive him though. He then said goodbye and walked away head down to his room.

i tried to call you, but you were engaged.

yo

so, to start my year of posting, i waited till summat decent happened. easter weekend was kimrad’s party so trix and i went down. this was my both first trip down sans my usual albury buddy and also the first time down in like two years, so i was hoping for some freshness.

i burnt us a mad cd, a mix some bbc dj made: 30 years of hiphop in one hour. tricky sounded excited when i told him i burnt a cd, then he was less enthusiastic about it when i explained it. but it was still a good enough listen.

the trip down was good. as i had expected, tricky never asked me if i wanted to take over the driving for a bit. often he was like “man, i’m tired” but he battled on, because goodness knows what might happen to the nova if i took over. we started counting road kill and got to about 11, including an awesome wombat that was not only massive but also lying on its back with its legs sticking up in the air like a real life caricature.

it rained, but we got down fine. once we got there it was tea time and i met two new peeps, jess and nana. at the dinner table jess was on a stool and nana was on a chair, so jess towered over her. jess joked about being so tall and nana said “oh no, i’m not cold dear, i have a cardigan on”. lawls for shawls.

saturday we went into town to get some stuff for sam’s rad bike and i had to buy a present, which worked well because both were found at the same shop.

i got to ride the postie bike around the farm again. ima get my license and get a real bike.
tricky and i checked out all the waterways damage the recent rain had done, it was heaps rad. massive rocks and tonnes of dirt were crazy moved around. we climbed up to the top of the paddock and rolled rocks down, but apparently he used to get in trouble for that kind of thing, so don’t tell his parents.

finally it was time for the party. tricky found even more hotshirts at his place so we got to wear matching awesomes. it was kinda lame how it was raining there heaps, cos i got cold and wet, but rad times were had with umbrellas and stuff. the food was heaps good, and it’s just as well i took 5 kebabs on my firsts cos they were all gone when i was finished.
tricky and i found a kid who lives on his street here in sydney, which was an amazing coincidence.

there were some good bonfires going, which kept me warm, but by the end of the night they were too hot for my “pastie white face” and i had to move the seat/bench back which annoyed the other kids also sitting on it.

we slept outside which is fun. tricky managed to get headlights shon on him as he was declothing, which made for lawls. i was woken in the morning by an easter egg landing on my sleeping bag, which is the best wake-up i’ve had probably forever.

church was good, disappointed slim didn’t turn up but i guess he had his reasons.

lots of kids came over to berkoosh for lunch, more than expected by most, but it was cool. then sam and dougal were heading off for their bike adventure, which only further cemented my desire to be a rad bikie too.

our trip home was uneventful, except that i made tristan stop at “the best coffee on the hume” and it wasn’t. that, or hume highway coffee has a low standard. not that i want to sound like one of those coffee kids, because that is embarrassing, but i expected more.

now i’ve got a week of holidays, but i’ve still got uni work to do which is terrible.

Catch My Disease

In my last post I introduced you to Karen, the pen thief. Well today, our group had to meet again. She turned up to the library with the coarsest throat I have heard in a while. Something resembling a cat with a furball. Anyway we were talking about our presentation, which was to be done later in the day. I asked her if she was right to do it, in her condition. She replied, in her dying animal voice…”Yeah I’ll be fine but what about you, you sound terrible.” Here I’m thinking, yes I do have a slightly coarse voice at times, but I put that more down to laziness. Something about this Karen, always finding ways to annoy me.

In other bad news, I may have tetanus. On the way to class I stepped on the top of a massive rusted nail. I was wearing thongs but they somehow slipped leaving my very fragile hobbit feet exposed. It bled a bit and then I started to get sweaty and cold. Is that normal? Ima see the doctor tomorrow.

Pen 15

So I have to do a group assesment. Not bad really. My group mates aren’t that most enjoyable and fun bunch, but I guess that just means they are more studious. We had a group meeting yesterday. Went fine but as we were leaving this chick took my pen. The conversation went as follows

Huw- (In a calm gentle voice)- “Excuse me I think thats my pen.”
Karen- “No I brought two of these.”
Huw- “Are you sure cause thats my pen, I can see its chewed.”
Karen- “No it’s definetley mine.”
Huw- “Well someone took my pen.”
Karen- (Laughing)- “Well it couldn’t have been me.”

So here I’m thinking…”It couldn’t be you?” There are only 3 people in our group. You stole my pen bitch! But I didn’t want to sound like a massive tightass so I let it go.

Ahh the perils of group assignments.