makumaro.net

Colder

• Listening to: Chihiro Onitsuka - Little Beat Rifle

It’s hard getting up on cold mornings. Well maybe not so hard to get up as it is to getting out of bed. Have had times when my face was just freezing from the cold and moving an inch out of your bed covers sends an electric chill up your spine. You just don’t want to leave the warmth and coziness of your bed. Like my friend says, “Snug as a bug in a rug”.

It’s officially Autumn now (started on the 21st of March). However, I’m still mentally unprepared for it. It’s been pretty warm the last couple of days and it was just getting midly cooler. This morning it drizzled and when I got out to go to work, I was freezing inside my clothes.

Heh, everyone who came in to work complained it was cold. Heck, it was so cold I couldn’t even handle the chopsticks I use to put ginger into the sushi boxes. My fingers just refused to respond to closing themselves to grip stuff up. Had coffee but that didn’t really help much other than making me less jittery at work.

Finally had a bun just before I left work, and I guess food is the only ever cure for being cold. It wasn’t much, but it sure helped to warm everything up inside. Heh, the little things that amaze me, how something such as wheat can store up so much energy inside it.

Came out from work and it was warm and sunny outside. There was no trace of the cold morning air left. Heh, Melbourne weather will always be weird.

Good Morning!

• Listening to: Stan Bush - The Touch

Up and about, pumping caffeine and pop music into my nervous system.

Amazing how work and sleep clears your mind of unnecessary thoughts. It’s like holding the reset button on your computer long enough to clean out all rogue 1s and 0s in the memory chips. Yes, geek speaking here. Have a whole day to myself, hope to get work done.

Too early in the day to blast my 5.1 set of speakers, don’t want the immediate neighbours to wake up with a violent jolt, especially when Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture is somewhere down the playlist. Heh.

The Long Weekend

• Listening to: Take That - Back For Good

I’ve been in Melbourne for nearly 6 years now and I never realised the significance of Good Friday and Easter Sunday to the locals. Heh, to me, it was another holiday and an opportunity to go camping or have fun somewhere else. Only just recently did I find out that people eat fish on Good Friday, because of the story that Jesus fed thousands with fish and bread from a little basket (at least, that’s what I think it is).

Business was bustling at my shop today and the previous day was spent in preparation. Well, it wasn’t as frantic as Christmas was, but it was definitely much busier than it had been for the past 3 months. The staff were not seasoned now, and at least people bought stuff in manageable quantities, no more filling 2kgs of frozen prawns that prick your fingers everytime you’re not careful. Heh, after so many months at the fish shop, I’ve learnt to handle all seafood like broken glass. You just have to be careful not to exert too much strength and to always follow the flow of the fish/prawn.

Learnt that Shetland Cod (some smoked cod from Scotland I think) was a common dish served on Good Friday. It’s cause I’ve never seen it prior to today.

It was a long day, but pretty good for business. By the end of it, my boss had already filleted more than 30 fish, 2/3 of which were salmon. Heh, his hands would cramp occasionally from all the cold running water and exertion of strength cutting the fish up. Heh, it’s really very different from how the Chinese eat fish. We usually steam or fry the whole fish, and pick it clean afterwards. Westerners prefer their fish filleted, and most would prefer to have no bones in them, which makes our job a little tougher as a lot of effort is put into cleaning and filleting the fish. Not to mention a lot of meat is wasted in the process.

Heh, at least it’s a long weekend for most people. Good Friday is a holiday for obvious reasons, most people don’t work Saturdays, and since Sunday is already a weekend, Monday is declared a public holiday. There aren’t many holidays to go round in Australia, and Easter is the only long break besides Christmas, and most universities have a mid semester break around now. Unfortunately these events do not apply to me, as I still need to work on Saturday and Monday. Oh well, I need the cash anyway.