nobody girl

So I have finished uni (again)

I am still looking for work. Work, it seems, is not looking for me. I have been to two interviews so far. On paper I know I look pretty good...if only I didn't have to go and meet my potential employers. I am so awkward I do not know how I managed to get hired in all my previous jobs.

While we're at it, if only we could do our jobs at home (maybe some of you can, you lucky people)...

I also started doing some Christmas shopping. So far I have discovered that it is much easier to find presents for babies than it is for adults. Unfortunately, I am friends with more adults than babies. You do the maths...if some of you get baby booties for Christmas, well, they can warm your elbows! :D?

Apart from work (back to 2 days a week, yay!), job hunting and trying not to buy too many concert tickets (...oops), I've been out a fair bit. Saw a preview screening of Bright Star (the new Jane Campion film with Abbie Cornish) on Tuesday and it was...pretty. I read one review that called it "Twilight for lit majors" and it is. It's very very much a love story between two beautiful, besotted young people who angst a lot beautifully while circumstances keep them apart (beautifully). However, if you have to see one movie with this story this summer, please pick Bright Star over Twilight. Your brain will thank you for it.

Work dinner was last night, at Sean's Kitchen in the casino. Finally got to know some of the people at work a little more (we work different shifts so we're ships passing in the night...or at 2:30pm on a Tuesday, heh) and nommed a lot.


...I have been craving oysters recently. How many opportunities does a girl get to satisfy *that* craving in the everday? This came with a Mignonette sauce, but they were so good all on their own with a little lemon juice.


I really liked this - the lemon olive oil with the chilli was so fragrant.


Duck fat chips! Which taste just like...chips. Good, handcut, crispy chips. Loved the presentation.


I could eat the apple crumble ice-cream again and again. Cool, lightly sweet apple sorbet on the inside, crunchy streusel encrusted on the outside. Om nom nom!

More awesome things?

I'm not sure about this design as a t-shirt, it'd be too hard (and kinda awkward) to read, but it would make the most FANTASTIC poster. BRAAAAAAAAAAINS!!

The droids we're looking for :D! I am loving this Stormtroopers 365 series.

Alright, off to watch the Liberal implode on the news! (my life, so exciting...)

I wish I could motivate myself to read these dense but superimportant texts that I need for writing this essay.

I wish I could motivate myself to write this essay, instead of doing my nth round of "research" (reading movie reviews counts as research in this case, it really does!)

I wish I didn't have to think about jobs, and applying for them, and waiting on tenterhooks for someone, anyone, to get back to me.

I wish I could stop listening to the Avett Brothers (okay, I don't really. It's an awesome album. I'm just embarassed how long it took for me to get around to it.)

I wish I didn't have all these bills to pay.

**

Alright, pity party over. I just wanted to get that out of my system, and stop feeling sorry for myself.

I felt like a real grown up yesterday - I worked all day, then I came home and cooked dinner for my family. :)

smoked salmon pasta alfredo
originally from here

serves 4-6

400g pasta (I used spaghetti)
1 tbsp. butter
1 large clove garlic, pressed and diced
1 tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 cup skim milk
1 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
1/3 cup non-fat sour cream
1 tbsp. chopped fresh dill
200g smoked salmon, cut into small pieces
2 tbsp. capers

Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat. Add garlic and cook for about a minute. Add flour and stir in, then gradually stir in milk and cook until it thickens. Add cheese and sour cream, stirring until the cheese melts. Add dill, then season to taste and set aside.

Cook pasta, drain reserving a few tablespoons of liquid, then add to the sauce and mix well. To each bowl of pasta add salmon and capers, and toss well.

I had a really frustrating day at uni. You know it's not going to be a good class when someone starts a discussion about ethnicity and race by saying "I'm not a racist but..."

Anyway. I went home annoyed, but alleviated my mood by grocery shopping for dinner ingredients. Ever since I finished reading Julie and Julia I've had this craving for omelettes - of all the awesome French foods she makes in the book, I felt this was one kind I could actually do. I was wrong! I got too greedy about the amount of topping I put on, so the other half wouldn't flip over properly, and I ended up with more of a torn, tattered, eggy pillow. It was still delicious though!

I've been craving all kinds of food lately, and not being able to have them is driving me crazy. I've been hankering after a good pizza, all tomato-y and cheesy; I also really really want some really fresh sushi and sashimi. Delicious raw fish, mmmmmmm...

That's me at the moment.

Oh, and I'm serious: come along to Andrew Bird! He not only plays the violin, guitar and glockenspiel, but he sings and also whistles!

Anyone interested in coming to see a classy concert with me? :)

Andrew Bird
Jan 3 2010
Concert Hall, Opera House
$69

I saw him at Lollapalooza and it was worth being soggy and cold, but I'd like to appreciate the music this time without the impossible crowds in front of me, and the mud all around.

You can hear some of his music, a meld of classical instruments and indie pop/folk, and watch some of his performances over at his website.

Despite my best intentions to wake up bright and early for church (yes! 8:15am on the dot as my alarm clock rang!) I was foiled by one important fact: I had forgotten to move my clocks early one hour last night. D'oh!

Throughout the whole day, I kept discovering, at important moments, one clock that I had overlooked, one clock still telling time in the past.

Tonight was fun. We went bowling, and despite my general ineptitude at all things physical I did not utterly embarass myself! Sure, I have yet to ever see a three-digit score, but I even managed a few spares tonight (two in the one game even, whoo). Best of all, it was just nice to hang out with good friends and be silly and loud.

Even introverts like having friends sometimes. :)

Headed out to the farmer's market at Pyrmont Bay this morning (ugh, up before 8 on a Saturday) with Alison, Mend and friends for the Nose to Tail BBQ. Our goal? To pig out! (...sorry)

For our first sitting, we ended up on the Bistrode table, where we had a delicious pigs head terrine with a HOT mustard, bread and pickles:



The weather today was so cold and windy though, we were tempted by the pig on the spit and decided to go back for another sitting of hot food this time, after a lap of the markets where we ate samples of delicious foods on offer, and sneaked away with quite a few free dark chocolate Ferrero Rochers. :)


Om nom nom crunchy fatty crackling...

Lesser persons may have been satisfied by then, but we pressed on to Mamak (where glory be, there was practically no queue for once!) and had roti and teh halia to finish.



Then Al and I went on a browsing spree for comics, CDs and cheap books (with a stop for coffee, of course). :)

Great day, but right now the cold has seeped through and I have a headache. Plan for tonight: spicy Korean instant noodles (comfort food, no effort required), Iron Chef on TV, and mint chocolate pudding for dessert.

Chocolate Mint Pudding
originally from here with minor adaptations

2 cups milk (1/4 cup + 1 3/4 cup)
3 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1/4 cup Bailey's liqueur
1/4 cup sugar
180g dark/semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 tsp peppermint extract

Whisk 1/4 cup milk with cornstarch and cocoa powder until smooth
Mix the cocoa mixture, the remaining milk, the liqueur and sugar in a medium saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring, until it just comes to a boil.
Reduce heat to low, and add chocolate plus the vanilla and mint extracts.
Stir until chocolate is melted, and then cook for 3 minutes or until pudding easily coats the back of a spoon.
Divide into 6 (3/4 cup) cups and refrigerate for a few hours.

note: I thought I had some Bailey's left, but I had exactly 1/4 tsp only! So I made up the rest of the quantity specified with Kahlua. It still tasted delicious!

I know it looks like this journal is dead. Weirdly, I think about updating it almost every day. I even write paragraphs in my head. It's just when I open the update page, everything sounds stupid and unncessary. (Like these sentences I just typed!)

Every now and then, when I get stressed or I'm trying to cover up the fact I'm stressed, I tidy up. I re-order my desk, I clean out my wardrobe, I alphabetise my books (...yes, people have already made fun of this. Don't you start.)

I compartmentalise too, with things that I can't physically shuffle around. So it goes with the blog.

Little Flames is where all the concert write-ups will go, along with the occasional movie, theatre and book review. There's a giant Lollapallooza post up there, and write-ups of some of the other Chicago shows, even a review of the latest Harry Potter film. If you were one of maybe two people remaining who were reading for that content, keep an eye on that blog instead.

I'm over on twitter as little_flames too. I'm not sure I really have the hang of tweeting. But I enjoy using it to blurt out some of the thoughts that come to me during the day.

I'm going to keep this blog though. I'll even try to write in it more often! (Haha) I added a few old entries (from 2002, 2003) that I found saved in old word docs, and inane as they were, I was glad to re-read them. I had a voice back then. I feel like I don't know where my voice went, where my ability to say the things I thought went. I miss it.

Over the last week or so of my trip, I saw some 30 odd bands in 3 cities. :D I'll write up some of the concerts slowly, starting with:

Blink-182 / Fall Out Boy / Panic! At The Disco
4/8/09 @ Marcus Amphitheatre, Milwaukee

Milwaukee, home of Miller Lite and The Fonz. We spent the afternoon walking its quiet downtown streets, getting lost in a magnificiently neverending bookshop (with a GIANT room of comics), and eating Japanese food (eating seafood in an inland city seems kind of risky, but it wasn't bad!) Around 6 we moseyed down to Marcus Amphitheatre, which was interesting in itself - there's a tiny sliver of GA pit, then an undercover seating area of red, yellow and green seats (red closest to the stage), then finally an open-air lawn area. People were setting out blankets on the lawn! We were just right of centre, in the yellow section – good view, just not great for photography/video.

Panic! At the Disco



So the band actually split in two a month ago (you might've seen me sadfacing about it on FB), leaving behind lead singer Brendon Urie and drummer Spencer Smith to carry on the Panic! At the Disco name and their touring responsibilities. But to their credit, it would've been hard to spot that this incarnation of the band, with two temporary touring members, has only been playing together for a week or two. The arrangements are a little more muscular than before, sacrificing some of the hippie folk-rock lightness of the second album, but otherwise the songs sound pretty much the same. The set was made up of mostly first album songs too, a return to the more emo-electro sound. They were only on for about half an hour, but they made the most of it with good sound and energy. Sadly the crowd wasn't much into them, apart from pockets of fervent fans dotted around. Mark Hoppus walked through the theatre to the sound booth halfway through, which caused pandemonium as kids leapt over rows of seats to get to him.



( Panic! set list )

Fall Out Boy

The crowd was really into FOB, and they kept the audience happy with another set of hit after hit. It was my fourth time seeing them, and I would happily see them do it again, they keep improving their sound and their stage presence. Patrick now totally struts all over the stage, owning it.

Near the end of the set, Pete Wentz asked the crowd,“Do you want The Take Over or something old and fun?"

I cheered for The Take Over, but got Don't Stop Believing instead which is only, oh, one of my favourite 80s power ballads, yeah! Patrick said afterwards, "That was old and fun - like Mark Hoppus!" and Pete added, "That’s for saying "All The Small Things” was written about me!"

( FOB set list )

Blink-182



I still remember that my first mobile phone had the first few bars of 'Dammit' as the ring tone, which Mend painstakingly worked out and entered in for me. So getting to hear Blink-182 play it live was a little about reliving 16 all over again. The set didn't disappoint, packed full as it was of hits and nostalgia. The light show background was way cool, busy but not too distracting. I got to hear everything I really wanted to hear: Miss You, What’s My Age Again, Dammit (though the chances of not hearing those songs were, y'know, small; but hey, just the fact that they were back together and I was there was amazing to me).



Plenty of highlights apart from the music itself: Tom Delonge taking off one of his guitars midway through the show and just handing it away to some kid in the pit (and yeah, the pit went into a frenzy trying to get to it), the kid who got pulled up on stage to have them all sign his arm (so he could get it tattooed, wow), Mark Hoppus’ genial stage presence, Travis Barker’ drumming (oh man so good), the flying drum (no really, a flying drum kit!) – yeah, it was pretty awesome!

However, it's hard to imagine Blink-182 continuing on as if there had never been a break between the three of them. Mark and Tom’s fraught relationship was on show too, and it's hard to gauge how much of it is performance and how much of it is real animosity. Things got pretty uncomfortable towards the end of the night. Tom became more and more belligerent on stage, swearing at the audience and his band, “mock” hate directed in both directions. Mark admonished him at one point, saying something about this happening when you've been drinking all night. In the end he apologised, and Mark sand a little made-up tune "Sorry about my friend Tom!", but the two of them had some truly awkward moments on stage.

( Blink set list )

Whoo! For the time being, I am on the front page of the Columbia Missourian. :DDDDDDDDD

I know a few of you questioned if we were doing *any* work, but we actually busted our guts turning in three pieces each over the first two weeks we were at Mizzou. We're finally published: Collegetown 2009

It is a subsection of the paper that is meant for freshmen arriving at Mizzou for fall semester in a month's time. We wrote about different areas and concerns of student life, and how to cope in the tougher economic times. The pieces have all been edited, but 90% of the articles are our own work. :)

My three pieces can be found under my profile.

July 3

Another 9am start. Gotta get used to that when we start class for real next week. This morning was pretty serious because we were properly meeting up with our professor in one of the classrooms right off the newsroom, so we were all bright eyed and bushy tailed and right on time (and totally nervous - well, I was anyway). Not that we didn’t take time out to take pictures of us all looking studious and journalist-student-y. :)

We went through our “syllabus” which was really just a timetable of what we would be doing and when. I have details for the DC and NY legs of my trip! They are totally not what I thought…bah. We’ll be leaving here later, and there’s all this stuff that we still have to pay for, which is GRRRR inducing. Anyway, here's the updated itinerary:

July 1 - July 25 // Columbia (at the Uni of Missouri)
EXCEPT July 17 // Kansas City
July 26 - July 28 // Washington, D.C.
July 29 - Aug 4 // New York
Aug 4 - Aug 5 // Milwaukee
Aug 5 - Aug 10 // Chicago

It looks like DC we're going to get a tour of Capitol Hill (!!!!!), go to the Newseum, the National Press Club, and Washington Post. In New York, we have the option of going to the WTC site, Battery Park and Ellis Island. We're going to ABC studios to see a taping of Good Morning America, Paley Center, and visit some NY media outlets with alumni and students.

We had our first lesson, I suppose, a quick overview of news and newsworthiness, which I’ve done but can no longer remember technical terms for. Most of us were on Facebook at this point, since there was excellent wireless in that classroom. *G*

Coursewise, first week is theory and knowledge of news and newspaper writing, second week is practical application - we have to write three stories within the space of about a week, workshopping through drafts; we also have to do one 6-hour shift each on the breaking news or city desks at the paper (more on that later). This second week is the one I’m most scared of because it sound intense and new and there are high expectations to live up to. *wibbles* The third week is on convergence, which is the mish-mash of different media now used to convey news, so it’s hands-on work with photoshop, final cut, etc - photos and videos and multimedia work. It looks fun.

We had an early lunch, so at first we thought we’d take advantage of the campus dining hall closest to us, but after trekking across a third of the campus in the midday heat we found it closed. D’OH. By the time we got back near the Missourian we were hungry and hot and tired, so we just opted for the sandwich shop nearby (well, most of them did - I was being cheap and at the apple and biscuits I’d liberated from the breakfast buffet, hee). Everyone gave it rave reviews, and I regretted my miserliness a little.

After lunch we had this intensive 1.5 hour tutorial on AP Style - a formalised industry-accepted guide to spelling of commonly used names and terms, grammar and punctuation usage, etc. This sounded easy, but it was really really hard in practice, because there are things we take for granted as correct which are subject to arbitrary rules within AP style that our professor now expects us to be able to remember and use correctly! I have never thought so hard about where to put capital letters and full stops before in my whole life. Plus, this stuff they teach their students over TWO semesters so we were really getting the most crashing of crash courses. And at the end of all that, we had homework. HOMEWORK. >:(

It was about 3 at this time, and we’d had thoughts about swimming after class, but in the end the girls decided to power through the homework while we still had all the AP style rules fresh in our heads. Chocolate and posing for silly photos got us through the work eventually. After dinner (with ice-cream again) we were going to go for a walk but after we took a new route and ended up back at our dorm we gave up. We ran into the frat boys again with the cute puppy - they must think we’re stalking them (and uh, their frat house is visible from our window…)

I was feeling really tired so when the others decide to go downtown I beg off, hoping to get some time to myself at last. Didn’t really work since about ten minutes later, those left behind move into my room and when the others get back around 10 John, Mamta and Jillian join us to chat. It’s a good chat, but it’s probably midnight or after when they leave, and by then I’m just ready to drift off, not write.

July 4

When I finally rolled out of bed (after an unexpected wake up call since I forgot to deactivate my 7:15am alarm for class) it felt like 9:30 but it was actually 11:30! Nice sleep in. I hopped online, found an email from mum about waiting for my call…I should’ve called that morning or last night, whoops…then Charlotte and Olivia knocked on our door all ready for lunch!

People were set on making something to take to our professor’s house, since she’d invited us over for 4th July BBQ. So we made plans at lunch to call a maxi-taxi to go to Walmart after lunch. We got a cute “minivan” there (according to Charlotte, the operator on the phone was all (imagine US drawl) “Maxi-taxi? Whaaaat’s a maxi-taxi?”) and then we went crazy at the Dollar Tree (where Everything’s $1!) stocking up on useless crap like American flags to be all patriotic for the holiday. Then we went to Walmart for more random shopping. We spent aaaaaaaages arguing over which brownie mix to buy, then got sidetracked constantly by the immense candy aisle, by shoes, by water guns and game items to alleviate the constant boredom they all feel. We called a taxi, but after waiting 20 minutes in the heat, I was getting twitchy so I called back and it turned out the taxi had broken down en route. The operator man was so nice about it (okay, so his accent helped…) and they eventually got us home around 4.

We made 2 trays of brownies - plain choc fudge, and a caramel and nut (called ‘Turtle’ for some reason) and then I excused myself from the dorm hamburger BBQ to call home. I woke mum and dad up ‘cos I forgot it was combined anniversary service and they didn’t need to wake at 7:30, LOL. But it was so good to talk to them and whinge freely and get coddled and loved for a while. Went back down just in time to smell the brownies coming out of the oven (delicious!) and we frosted them with this horrible chocolate sugar heart attack in a tin.

Then we had less then ½ hour to get ready before getting picked up by unknowns for the BBQ. This turned out to be a bit of a farce. We were met by Tom, one of the editors at the Missourian, a genial man who Zhui insisted on calling Dr Karl because of his resemblance (Hawaiian shirt, round glases and all). There were also 3 students, including a girl we thought they called Daria but maybe that was a nickname cos she looked and sounded *just* like Daria. It was pretty awkward all round, but I guess I can’t blame them - none of them wanted to be there anyway, they were basically ordered by our professor to ferry and accompany us just because they happened to be here over the holiday weekend and not out on a story.

The BBQ was as brisk and efficient as she is - small talk and soda to start, a pat of her beautiful dog Tucker (a shelter dog she rescued from being put down), then dinner in quick succession. She’d made heaps of stuff though - we had proper hot dogs with the lot (mmm, ketchup, mustard, relish), baked beans in BBQ sauce, salads, pita chips; and dessert of huge slices of watermelon, our brownies, and an ice-cream cake. We dominated the conversation (being the loudmouths we are) and apart from one of the student trying (awkwardly) to interrogate us as if to make sense of why he was present, and finding out that Daria (?) was from Kazakhstan, we had little rapport with the others. They were all so intense about being journalists, so focussed at this young age with this career path.

Around 8 we headed out to the stadium. I swapped to Tom’s car which I liked better since he was much easier to talk to. On our walk from the parking lot to the stadium (he’d deliberately parked further out to show us how to walk home, which was really nice) we passed the campus hospital and saw the emergency helicopter on the helipad out front. He let us wander up and pester the paramedics for a photo with the helicopter and pilots. Awesome!

At the stadium - impressive, holds ~60,000 people, and supposedly overflows during home football games - we shivered in the dusk as the dark clouds rolled in and the rain started falling. We went from the bleachers down below to get out of the rain twice, and we were soaked top to bottom for our efforts. I was starting wonder if this was all worth it - supposedly you can pretty much see the fireworks from anywhere in Columbia (ie. nice and dry in our dorm room, right?). In the end, the skies cleared just before the fireworks were due at 9:30pm, so we braved the cold and fog to watch a small but long fireworks display. I feel like we finally found the one thing America does on a smaller scale that Sydney. :)

We walked home afterwards. The guys talked about heading back into town to celebrate in the bars, but once the girls changed into dry clothes we bunkered down in one room and didn’t feel like going out again. We ended up watching stupid/rude/offensive (or some combination of all three) YouTube videos, singing along to pop songs on demand, and chatting to each other (sometimes via Facebook while we were all in the same room, sigh). I started reading Jillian’s copy of Tim Winton’s Breath, so I stayed up past 2 to finish it, which was probably not smart since I intended to wake up early the next morning...

(I'm sure you've found the photos already, but just in case you haven't:

album #1

album #2)

yes yes, so behind...

July 2

We girls actually manage to wake up early enough to go to breakfast at the dining hall (we’re good for 14 meals a week here, it’s buffet style, I’m planning to make breakfast stretch to lunch too, nudge nudge wink wink). All the different stations took a little getting used to, so I ended up with just a bowl of berry yoghurt with frozen berries, a cup of weak coffee, and a breakfast muffin.

Our orientation started for reals today, so we trooped over to Gannett Hall at 9am for a presentation about what we’d be doing, etc. The boys just made it in time, having woken up at late and missed breakfast. We got to walk around the uni a bit more, with visits to the recreation center (gonna try and get used to the American spelling so I don’t stuff up too often in my assigned stories) - and I’m pretty sure most of my friends at home would kill to have these kind of facilities close by. The rec center is so well equipped, with massive basketball courts (and these are just for the plebs, there are two speciality arenas on the edge of the campus for the actual men and women’s basketball teams), a mezzanine level indoor walking/running track, a rock-climbing wall, squash courts, pump rooms, cardio gym, rooms for yoga/pilates/etc classes and best of all, three pools - an indoor kiddie pool, an indoor Olympic sized pool with a diving well, and an outdoor pool. We were all dying to come back and swim outdoors later, it was the perfect day for it.

We continued on through the section of campus with all the sorority houses, and we gawked some more at the crazily fancy houses (and enjoyed the snide commentary from Emily, our co-ordinator, who pledged a sorority here during her degree, but didn’t enjoy it, even though she looks like the quintessential sorority type in my mind.) There was a really quick look at the news room of ‘The Missourian’, the paper we’ll be working and studying at, where everyone looked intense and heaps professional for a student run operation, before having lunch at Shakespeare’s Pizza, which I take to be famous locally. The pizzas were massive, about 16 slices per pizza (see knife:pizza ratio in the photo below); taste-wise they were okay, a little on the greasy side, and the locals kept telling us to add more cheese and chilli flakes on top to enhance the flavour. I had 3 slices (one of each - a Hawaiian, a Supreme and a Pepperoni) but I probably shouldn’t have cos they sat in your stomach like a stone. Then we had to go to one more admin thing - a lecture in the international offices about dos and don’ts while we’re here, mostly in regards to NOT violating our visa statii - but finally, around 2, we were free for the day .



Most of us took to the pool ASAP, and it was so worth it. We discovered that no one actually swims in the outdoor pool, just sunbaked to an unhealthy brown in or around it, but that just gave us more room to muck around in. Even after I got cold, we had a good time sitting around on the rocks around the pool, just in the shade, chatting. We fit in a visit to the campus book/tech/clothes/everything store too, to get Ethernet cords since the tech dude told us we could forget about the fabulous wifi in our door rooms. Best $6.45 I spent so far. :)

Dinner was choose-your-own-adventure at the dining hall again, though this time we discovered that there was ice-cream with a gazillion toppings for dessert, so most of our meal was geared towards that course. After which we really needed to walk it off, so we set off to explore the campus on our own, and ended up at the Columns again. We did stupid things around it, from rushing out from behind them screaming and yelling for video (why? Why must we have videographic proof?) and posing for photos on top of them, etc. In the distance we could see a weird alien-looking structure, some kind of water tower, and we ended up heading towards it, passing through a cute park and all sorts of odd traffic situations on our way. It was in such a dodgy looking area, opposite the cemetery, at dusk, but it killed time. Stopped in the massive Walgreens “pharmacy” on our way back (I spit on this term in America, I really do. They’re just glorified convenience stores…I mean, this one sold a giant inflatable kiddie pool, and I couldn’t see a pharmacist around at all. Pah.)

Back at the dorm, eventually everyone ended up in our dorm room. There were fireworks intermittently that we could see outside our window, people prematurely excited for 4th July, and next door to us the heavy metal loving guitar dudes (they played from about 9-12, eurgh) switched for a while to playing their own arrangement of Star Spangled Banner on electric. Mizzou is a “dry” campus which means no alcohol allowed at all on site. But we had our own little party with the help of a bucket of ice, some Cokes, and some additives, plus a bagful of sugar in the form of KitKats, Reeses cups, Snickers, Twixes…

So the "fantastic" wifi was not working in my dorm room last night. I wrote up a blog but couldn't post it, so I'm gonna be a day behind now...I'm sorry if these are really boring, but I do want to write about everything, even the mundane little things, so I will remember them later.

July 1

Out of desperation, we ended up having a quick complimentary breakfast provided by the hotel (though, er, we were technically not entitled to it having paid an extremely low rate for our room) but hey, it was there, all the other guests were tucking in, and we were hungry. I had an extremely sweet cup of coffee (my fault because I added sweetener *and* sweetened creamer instead of milk, whoops) and a small cream cheese danish and an apple. The missing luggage turned up just as we were having brekky, and so after that things were starting to smoothly - we checked out extremely quickly, the shuttle to the airport pulled into the drive as we walked out, and when we got to the terminal we found the rest of our exchange really quickly. We all looked very very tired.

We caught a minibus from St Louis to Columbia. We spent the first 45 minutes gawking out the windows at everything, from the flat green fields (corn to the left! Corn to the right!), the lack of birds or beasts, the giant shopping sprawls, and the many many fireworks shops being advertised. My favourite was the giant billboard advertising “Buy 1, get 4 free!” The frat boy on the bus with us told us all about the tents that spring up along the side of the road around the 4th of July that sell copious amounts of fireworks legally with no limitations of age, experience or quantity. How very reassuring , that any child or drunk can set off as many explosives as they like in expression of the love they feel for America.

Ah yes, the frat boy. We have met a few of this species today. But the first was on the bus to Columbia, and he was totally not as expected at all - he was in a music fraternity, disdained sports, a classically trained pianist who gushed about Britney Spears. LOL!

When we got to Univerisity of Missouri-Columbia (Mizzou, as the locals call it, as is adorned everywhere in this college town), we got off the bus to be greeted by this view:



The university is HUGE, and really impossibly beautiful - manicured gardens, gorgeous old-tmey brick buildings with marble columns everywhere, state of the art facilities. It makes our unis look very poor and small.

We were partly driven around the main buildings for a quick overview of the campus, and then we trekked from Jesse Hall (the impressive, spire-topped building from the photo above which houses the admin offices) to the new bookstore slash tech centre which looks kinda like a JB Hi Fi. You can buy microwaves and fridges for your dorm room there, no lie. I found walking around campus a bit unnerving, the first time I’d really felt that on this trip - it was just so large and impressive and suddenly I realised how different it was from home. Anyway, we spent more than an hour on admin stuff (and we’re still only half sorted on that front, sigh) before we could get into our rooms in the mixed College Ave residence hall. We’re on the second top floor sharing doubles. I’m on the bottom bunk, with a desk next to the window (I’m pretty sure I got the better deal on both those things). The boys are in a different corridor to us. It’s nice though because two of the girl rooms (including mine) are linked by a shared bathroom so we’re constantly in and out of each other’s rooms.

Then we were ushered by our co-ordinators (who are really funny and lovely) to a humongous Walmart, one of three in just this town (possibly because the founders live here). Walmart is what I imagine it would be like if Woolworths, Big W and a pharmacy had a upsized baby. The girls and the guys separated to do our shopping. While the girls fell upon the Subway with great glee (most of us hadn’t eaten a real meal for two days), then shopped for necessities like clothes hangers and detergent and most importantly, tonnes of chocolate (really! It was so cheap…mmmm, Hersheys and Reese cups and Twixs, oh my), it turned out the boys had been busily shopping for certain items that are forbidden in our residence hall (*cough21cough*) and they somehow managed to get away with it even though they were totes stealth (not).

Back in our rooms, we unpacked and made our beds and had a small rest before the girls decided to walk downtown to find dinner. We walked down past a row of fraternities (and their ridiculously grand houses) where we just happened upon a wife-beater wearing typical frat boy type playing on the grass with the cutest Saint Bernard puppy. ;) We walked up and down the streets downtown looking for a cheapish place to eat, but a lot of places were closed for the summer. We ended up having Mexican food which had massive servings - I ate half a burrito and had a “small” soda and was totally full and satisfied. Then we walked back to the dorm slowly, taking pictures of pretty buildings along the way, gawking at a youth group that was screaming and shouting on one of the picturesque lawns, and filing two bunnies who were having a fight until we trained our cameras upon them, at which point they became totally still. (So far we’ve seen rabbits, squirrels, and fireflies, which is awesome).



That’s pretty much our first day at Mizzou. Tomorrow is a proper walking tour of the campus with our co-ordinators, then lunch with one of our professors , a little more admin, and then it’s meant to be more free time. It all sounds very relaxing now, but right after the July 4th long weekend we’re going to go into intensive study mode, and I’m a bit worried about that.

June 30th, 2009

This day has been soooooo long. I was all checked in by midday and then it was an interminable flight to LA, mostly due to the length, and the fact I was in the middle seat on a packed plane. The air stewards were cranky because people were everywhere and constantly in their way: at one point I heard over the PA, "Even when we don't have a cart we still have right of way. So YIELD!" The man directly in the seat behind me was nasty in a very passive aggressive way, throwing his weight around and threatening the girl next to him because she wouldn't give him the aisle seat that was rightfully hers and yelling at the steward for every little thing that was wrong with his food. I tried to sleep, but every time I nodded off lightly, I'd be jerked out of it by noises, or food coming around, etc. I ended up watching movie after movie. So I've been really really tired and sleepy and headache-y all day. Thank goodness for caffeine and Panadol!

LA was only mildly hot (around 20 degrees) when we arrived, but it was very humid. And extremely grey with smog, very heavy smog. Immigration was pretty quick, only took us about 10 minutes to get through, and then I found my luggage on the first round on the carousel. But I was on the same plane with two kids from the exchange, and their luggage took around 20 minutes to materialise. And after all that, we just had to take it to the next room to be dropped off to travel to our final destination anyway! But we still had time to brave the confusing LAX (though we had to consult a nice airport info desk man first) to get to our respective gates in time for our next flights. Security was...ugh. It's chaos there, a tiny space packed with confused people who have to juggle their shoes, liquids, laptops and bags while weary cranky guards yell at them to move it, and stop making mistakes. We actually had a really easy throughfare though, thank God.

From here, I travelled to Denver to meet up with another girl from exchange, and we took a tiny tiny (3 seats per row!) jet to St Louis. We flew low enough that we could see the ground all the way, and the scenery change was amazing, from the flat, brown and yellow and green geometrically shaped fields of Colorado and Kansas, to the lush greenery of St Louis by the Mississippi. St Louis is beautiful from the air. The guy in the seat next to me, who is from St Louis, was warning me about the hot buggy weather (it was okay when we got off the plane though because it was just on sunset), and trying to point out for me the famous Gateway Arch in St Louis (unsuccessfully, because the plane kept getting in the way).

Now I'm sitting in the hotel room (nice, large, clean and cool because of the air con, yay! had a hot shower already , double yay!) with two of the girls I'm sharing with. One of them is waiting for her luggage to be delivered to the hotel (hopefully) because it's gotten lost in transit, the other one just arrived after an hour's delay, and the last one (who left Sydney on the same flight as me) is stuck in Chicago (plane is either delayed or cancelled, she's waiting to hear). >.< I know I am very very blessed to have had such smooth sailing all the way through.

(I wrote this last night but the free hotel wireless dropped out when I tried to send it. The last girl got here at 1:30am, poor thing. Now we're all up an hour before our wake up call because our bodies are trying to tell us that it's 10:30 at night, and we're all starving cos none of us had a proper dinner. Off to pack up and find some food...)

Leaving on a jet plane tomorrow afternoon, flying to St Louis via LA and Denver; a total of 22 hours in transit (longest leg is the 13 hour flight from Sydney to LA).

Itinerary as far as I know:

June 30 - July 1 // St Louis
July 1 - July 24 // Columbia (at the Uni of Missouri)
July 24 - July 28 or 29 // Washington, D.C.
July 29ish - Aug 4 // New York
Aug 4 - Aug 5 // Milwaukee
Aug 5 - Aug 10 // Chicago

Flight back will be via LA, landing on Aug 12, very very early in the morning. I suspect my body clock will be incredibly out of whack by then.

I will probably have decent net access through to the 24th, so keep an eye on the blog here for updates, and over at http://twitter.com/little_flames for random observations (cost permitting). Photos will go up on Facebook, if my little notebook can handle it.

If you have Skype, can you let me know your name so I can add you as a contact? You can find me too, as alarra_c. I don't know if it'll ever work out, time-wise, but just in case... And I'd love it if you kept emailing me (alarra_c AT yahoo, or my gmail address) while I'm overseas, with news of how you are, how things are in Australia, any prayer points you want me to pray for.

Bags are 99% packed. I've checked in already. Got myself some American dollars.

And the freak out begins...NOW.

Smushed two brownie recipes to make a chewy but not gooey choc and nut brownie. V. successful if the response of the brownie connosieurs in my life are any indication. :)

90g unsalted butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 tbsp cocao
1.5 cup nuts (I used walnuts, but you can use pecans, hazelnuts, etc)
200g chocolate
2/3 cup white or caster sugar
1/3 cup (packed) brown sugar
3/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp bicarb
pinch salt
4 tbsp Kahlua (or Baileys)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius. Grease and line rectangular pan.
Chop nuts and chocolate into rough pieces.
Melt the butter, add the chocolate and stir until melted. Add sugar and mix well.
Beat eggs lightly, add vanilla and Kahlua, and fold in the chocolate mixture.
Sift in flour, cocoa, bicarb and salt.
Fold in nuts.
Pour into pan.
Bake 25 minutes or until a skewer in the centre comes out clean.

I am really in the mood for poetry at the moment. Cookies and poetry, but I can produce one with a lot less elegance and ease than the other.

The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel

Like by Frank Bidart

Elegy of Fortinbras by Zbigniew Herbert

Chicago by Carl Sandburg


Off to see what cookie-making options I have. Chocolate expresso cookies or gingersnaps?

I meant to make this post a little earlier (an hour ago?) but now it is all screwed up! LOL. So here's the adjusted text...

ONLY A MONTH (-1 day) TO GO!!!!!




So planning for this trip has been in the works for over a month, but as things finally falling into place it's finally starting to feel real and exciting. My visa has been granted, (most of) the plane tickets have been booked and paid for, I've met the other people going on exchange, hotels have been booked in NY and Chicago...just a few more things to sort out and I'll be terrified and ready.

I'm leaving 30 June for Missouri, where I'll be on campus at the University of Missouri-Columbia for 3 weeks, then we have field trips to Washington DC and New York City. The exchange program ends 31 July in NYC, but I'll stay on New York for a few more days and meet up with Alison and her brother. Then eventually we'll head to Chicago mid-week (hopefully with a detour that is TBA) for some sightseeing and oh yeah, finish with a little music festival called Lollapalooza.

:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

So I actually have stuff to write about! Like how awesome Okkervil River were, or about exciting travel plans, but here, have another successful recipe instead while I try and get my brain to process around real content.

spoon/thumb dent cookies with lemon-lime curd
originally from here, but with modifications

I had one lemon and a gazillion limes, so for the curd I actually used the juice of 2.5 limes and 0.5 a lemon. The curd recipe makes about 1.25 cups of curd, and you really only need about 1/2 cup for filling the cookies? But it's really lovely on its own spread on toast or on crackers so I'm happy that we have spare. But I'd say for the purposes of this recipe, you could halve the measurements and still have enough curd.

Lemon-lime curd:
½ cup (120ml) lime/lemon juice
zest of the juiced limes/lemons
100g unsalted butter, chopped
1 cup (200g) sugar
3 eggs, beaten

I also ran out of unsalted butter halfway through, so I used normal butter for the cookies and they still turned out fine.

Cookie dough:
180g unsalted butter, softened
1 cup (200g) sugar
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 egg
2 cups (280g) plain flour, sifted
½ teaspoon baking powder


Place a heatproof bowl over a pot of near-boiling (simmering) water. Combine the juice, zest, butter, sugar and eggs for the curd in the bowl and stir for 10-20 minutes or until the mixture becomes thick. Push through a sieve into a glass jug/bowl and cover with plastic wrap (keep it touching the surface to prevent a skin forming). Keep in the fridge.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius. Grease and line cookie sheets.

Beat sugar, butter and vanilla with an electric mixer until light and creamy. Add egg and mix well. Fold in flour and baking powder to make dough. Make balls from about 2 teaspoons worth of the dough and place on the sheet about 5cm apart. Make a dent in the middle by pressing down with your thumb or index finger (or the back of a small spoon). Fill the dents with 1/2 teaspoon of the curd and bake for 10 minutes or until golden.

makes about 48 cookies

I'll admit it - I'm just sick of all these bits and pieces of paper where I've scribbled down recipes, and I want them all in one easily searchable place.

I actually wanted to make gingerbread for my birthday (because I finally discovered that molasses = treacle! and thus is actually attainable) but I didn't read the recipe ahead of time where it said to refrigerate the dough overnight. (There's a D'oh! jokes to be made here, but I will not go there...or did I?)

Gingerbread Cake
originally from here, though with some modifications

I didn't want to feed 24, so I divided measurements roughly by three, and made it in a loaf pan. Didn't make the icing because I had no citrus fruits in the house!

1/2 cups plain flour
1/4 cup self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup light olive oil
4 tbsp treacle
1 egg lightly beaten
1/4 cup milk

Icing
3/4 cup icing sugar mixture
1/2 orange, rind finely grated, juiced
1/2 cup walnuts, roughly chopped

Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease and line a loaf pan.

Mix all dry ingredients together and stir until well combined.

Mix oil, golden syrup, egg and milk in a large jug. Add to dry ingredients. Stir until just combined.

Pour mixture into pan. Bake for 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Cool for 5 minutes in pan before turning onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Make icing: Mix icing sugar mixter with orange rind and 1/2 the orange juice. Stir until smooth, adding more juice if too thick. Spread icing over cake. Sprinkle with walnuts. Allow icing to set before slicing cake and serving.

It's quite a runny mixture, and takes a while to set in the oven. But it makes a lovely moist cake that's not too sweet. If I had time I'd probably stew some granny smith apples with cinnamon and sugar, and have that with the cake along with some custard or vanilla ice-cream.

Odd name, but good easy brownies.

8 tbsp butter (~180g)
60g unsweetened chocolate (70%+ cocoa)
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup nuts

Grease and line a brownie pan. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius

Melt butter and chocolate together and mix well.

Stir in sugar, eggs and vanilla.

Fold in flour, salt and nuts.

Pour into prepared pan, and bake for 40 mins.