I burnt myself with relish today.

That’s a funny sentence.

I promise I’m not a masochist.

What actually happened was the relish I was making splashed on my finger and it was HOT! But since the relish has a fair amount of chilli in it, I guess it was only doing its job.

Why was I making relish anyway?

- make jams, preserves, chutneys and relish…

Yup, that is a bullet. It would be a neat little square box that I could tick off, but I don’t know how to make those little boxes with Microsoft Word.

Bullets mean lists and since its a new year, lists mean New Year’s resolutions.

I planned to only make one New Year’s resolution this year:

“I will not get fat, again, this winter.”

That remained my only New Year’s resolution until I spent 10 hours sitting in the office at university,

waiting,

waiting,

waiting…

and now my list 3 pages long.

Clearly I have a lot of things in my life to improve. But its not just about being a better person. This isn’t only just another ‘new years resolution’ list. Its also a list of ‘other things I want to do’. Goals (if you want to call them that), ideas, things that interest me, things I want to do more of, learn more of, skills I want to acquire, things I want to make and activities I want to participate in.

Personal achievements.

Oh, I have the usual things on my list:

- see a birth of a baby

- save up and buy a house or car or. country

- knit baby vests for babies that don’t get any pocket money

- cycle somewhere far

- eat less bread

- write

- learn better grammar

- buy a teapot

- sit up straight

- email Albi and give him ‘what for’

- learn a new language

- drink more water

- make crème brûlée

- be a better friend

- go for dancing lessons

- listen to my body

- talk s-l-o-w-e-r and more clearly

- get involved with my hobbies again

- be more healthy

- be a nicer person

- see the beach before I die….

- etc

- etc

- etc

I won’t bore you with the entirety of my list ‘cos that would be, well, boring and there are 54 items on the list so far.

Welcome, 2012

Ok. I know. Its been a while.

I got new sunnys.

Sunnys. You know, sunglasses.

Why are they called sunnys anyways? Its not like they make more sun. Or light up the room/sky/world.

They actually make LESS sun! They’re less-suns. Lessons!

I’m going to wear my new less-suns today…

Less-sun 1: “I will always regret eating that food that I know I shouldn’t eat or that is bad for me.” Always.

So I should just not!

I often regret a lot of things I eat.

I can live without oodles of bread!

I think…

Ok, I don’t always regret bread…

Less-sun 2:”Break ‘traditions’.”

For Christmas lunch last year, my sister, Olivia and I drew up a completely different Christmas menu with 3 kinds of homemade pasta, homemade right up to the pasta itself, homemade breads on the side and skewered veges as a starter.

It was good and good to do something different.

Then we all found various comfy places around the house/garden and napped/chatted/ate pudding. Which is a traditional Christmas practise around the Gordon home.

Hannah also made some cordials, ginger and a lemon and orange cordial. Which I drank out of a rosy tea cup and matching saucer. Excellent.

Less-sun 3: “Don’t walk around Joburg central naked.”

People will stare.

Or label you a nut case.

We labelled that naked man a nut case. Gave him benefit of the doubt.

Mind you, he did dance across the pedestrian crossing with his blanket cape flapping after him in the wind.

Less-sun 4: “A dropped chocolate mousse can be saved. Somewhat”. The new years eve mousse got dropped. With a few tricks and a steady hand, what could be saved was saved. And what couldn’t was quietly mourned over by the cooks.

But what’s a bit of chocolate between friends?

Less-sun 5: “Use spell check when typing up your CV.”

Just in case.

Especially before you send it to many, many people and you’ve written ‘Notional’ instead of ‘National’.

Oi vey.

Less-sun 6: “Sometimes you have to be your own knight in shining armour.”

Like last night.

Driving along the road in Pretoria and I notice that the temperature gauge is soaring. Spending some time eyeing out the long grass on my left and the trucks going past at lighting speed on my right whilst I waited for the car to cool.

(Those trucks made my car roll a little as they came flying by. Dude).

Car is cool, open the bonnet, slowly open the radiator cap, (this can sometimes be a lot less successful than you’d might think), pour in the life saving 750ml of water that happened to be rolling around the passenger side of the car for 3 weeks, cap, bonnet, nearest garage!

I saved me! As well as the car from over heating! *applause*

Did I mention that it was raining?

Less-sun 7: “You can wear the same pair of jeans and not comb your hair for 3 days and still look presentable.”

Trust me. I tried it.

This past Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and no-one crossed over the street to avoid me.

For those days when getting out of bed seems insurmountable.

Or if you’ve only packed one pair of jeans and no shampoo and you’re away from home for 3 days. That was me

I did bath, just in case you were wondering.

Less-sun 8: “It’s easy to sew/draw/make/bake something wonderfully amazing when you have homework/varsity work to do.”

True story that.

Do you want to see the shirts I made last week? They’re perfect. ;)

Ok, I’m going to stop now, else my blog post will be too long and no-one will read it for fear of boredom and starvation.

On that note I’ll end with my less-suns. Which are actually sunnys as well.

Less-suns 1 - 8, Dec 25 - present time. That’s a lot in a short time. Life can teach you much if you pay attention.

Does anyone know how to say/write ‘You rock’ in Afrikaans?

I have some sad news…

The day before my birthday celebration my camera got stolen

Right out of my car. Whoever it was took everything out of my camera bag, closed the bag, returned the bag to the car, locked my car door again and went on their merry way….

Leaving me all sad and alone without my precious, darling camera…. 

i will be honest and admit to crying about it

.

I can’t make pictures anymore :( 

i keep having to stop myself when my brain starts thinking about shoots i want to do or if i see something that will ‘make a good photograph’ because i have NO camera anymore…

and it also means i can’t put photographs on my blog anymore, which is terrible, as now i have to actually think of things to write, to tell everyone! I have to write and use no pictures… i liked to use pictures in my blogging cos it was just so much easier than drafting and publishing a well written, interesting and exciting post. 

All i have is words now. Now i have that song in my head…”It’s only words and words are all i have, to take your breath away”. I am busy saving up for a new camera, so in the meantime i will discover my ‘blog voice’ and type, type, type.

Stick around and read it :)

or…

i guess i can draw pictures instead.

I have a camera fund collection tin, which i don’t have a picture of because, well, you know why, and several people have been generous and kind enough to contribute to my tin. I am very grateful to them all, they are good people. :) With their assistance i am 1/5 of my way to having enough money to get a replacement for my camera. :) Like my mother said when i told her,”there are good people in the world” and i am glad to know a lot of them and the be considered their friend.

It was my birthday, on Wednesday last week.

I am now 24.

:)

The Sunday before that we had a little party to celebrate my birthday. Just like my sister’s birthday we had the party at home. We made a whole lot of salads and homemade bread, always bread, cos i love bread of course and its my birthday so i can eat all the bread i want… There was rosemary buns, cornbread, oat bread, cheese and onion bread and soda bread. yum!

Olivia made a giant cake, it was giant i promise! check the photos and you will see..

it was pretty amazing. I said to her that im sure she was just trying to outdo the rainbow cake i made her for her birthday in August. She denies all!

It was really nice having all my friends from all over there, Pretoria, university, Cape Town, my old college, church, family etc etc. i even had some gatecrashers!

I got some lovely gifts, the top ones being a stick blender (Thank you Carrie) :D and a picture of a bicycle (Thank you Rickus)….. Somehow they knew about my fixation with bicycles and my new current fixation with stick blenders (which is now satisfied).

anyways, that was my birthday celebration, it was good fun and im really glad i organised it and glad that everyone enjoyed themselves :)

Here are some pictures that were taken (Thanks to Geni, for lending her camera and heather and Hannah for taking the photos.)

Cutting the cake up 

University Friends

My Dad and other cool old people 

The yummy food 

My family is great, i was in Pretoria the Saturday before my party doing a photography job, so all i made was bread, they made everything else! I came home on Saturday evening and all this was mostly prepared :)

The one in the middle is Rickus, he made me a cool bike drawing 

Geni’s face says it all

Layers: 

Lemon Meringue

Milk tart

Marshmallow pudding

Apple pie

Jelly and yogurt pudding

two kinds of cremora tart

banoffee pie

and chocolate instant pudding with a bike on top 

AND Paul was here!

All in all it was a great day! :)

Remember i spoke about the Dutch boy, Bram, and the pink cake we made?

Well i got the photos from him….

Yup.

Hey! Don’t look at me, it was all Bram’s idea…

For all its weirdness, it was well liked at varsity and the next day a girl asked me if i had any more left. haha!

Then a week later Bram came over again and this time we made….green cake!

And this time he took photos of the process….

With the excess dough we made some cupcakes, with pink heart sprinkles.

 then, cos i was calling the shots, i put fig jam in between the two layers and sieved icing sugar on top.

but there is no finished cake picture.. sorry!

And this is the end of the story and i still don’t like funny coloured food. I am very glad that there are always hungry boys at varsity that don’t mind eating weird cake ;)

Last week Friday was my final presentation of my dissertation/thesis for the year

I came in in the morning, was nervous to begin with, got a grip and continued right along (and did it sweetly, this part is important).

My parents came along too. I think they wanted to see what their daughter had been up to this whole year. Late nights at varsity and weekend pit stops. 

They didn’t see much of me or my project.

As my Dad gets older he gets more emotional, (it is quite funny and strange at the same time) and he was rather proud of my presentation and the way i presented it. :-) 

So after a long year of working on my thesis, disappointments and challenges, good times and break-throughs, procrastination and all nighters at varisty with Donald, it was all over in 45 mins.

and now its too late 

too late for new ideas, too late for work to be done, too late. 

D-day has come and gone.

on Thursday we go into varsity for a meeting and we will find out then what our sentences, i mean, results are. All we can do is wait and see, no more worrying about it, thesis isn’t on my mind constantly anymore…

which is a good thing, i can now think a lot more about bicycles and stick blenders(a new popular thought now on my mind) 

On Friday evening we had a cocktail evening/exhibition for our dissertation, us, our parents and whoever else we wanted to bring along to see our work. (i invited my friend, Geni, and my sister, Olivia) 

Olivia is cool, she helped me carry all my stuff back to the car… and Geni watched my camera and my bag while i hopped about between friends, friends’ parents and lecturers and other interesting people.

Geni and Olivia were bored, i was not :-P

Part of the presentation was the giving of ‘gifts’ to the panel of judges. I wanted my gifts to be a continuation of my idea and concept behind my dissertation. 

So i made ‘surprise’ books!

They are just normal looking books

You can leave them on your coffee table

Or in your bookshelf

You’re bored… so you pick up the book and flip through it….

(Most people like to touch and fiddle anyways)

or maybe you are curious

and then…..ta da!

Surprise!

This is not a story about Robin Hood at all! 

it is a piece of art. 

It wasn’t anything like you expected it to be inside 

 Completely unexpected 

This one happens to be my favourite one

Which one do you like? 

i really enjoyed making these up until it was the night before presentation and i still had two more drawings to complete…. but it all gone done and they went down well with the panel :)

just goes to show that you can never judge a book by its cover.

in this case, literally.

haha

Lady: “Whats your name?”

Austen: “Austen. With an ‘e’.

Lady writes: A-u-s-t-i-n-e. Austine.

I get called ‘Sir’ in replies to some of my emails.

I give up. 

i forgot to include this story in my previous post

cos it counts as news

excuse the phone camera picture

anyways, so this is the story:

i am anaemic. so i have to work really hard to keep my iron levels high enough to donate blood.

Last year my iron was so bad that they told me to come donate in a years time.

A whole year! :(

so i did, i could finally donate again the beginning of this year.

cool.

then i was due to go again and they couldn’t take my blood cos my blood pressure was too low.

they said i should try eat something salty before i came the next time.

so i did

but it didn’t work  

and neither did the next attempt

(maybe cos i didn’t the salt enough time to kick in, cos i was in a hurry)

and then on Monday i ate my salty chips AND i ran up the stairs in the mall and finally my blood pressure was alright to give blood!

yay!

also it took between 5-7 mins to donate, my fastest time yet :)

i was happy 

:E