makumaro.net

Expending Energy

Just went through the kitchen like a whirlwind, clearing it up. Heh, just pent up energy, needing to be spent. It feels good doing physical labour sometimes, just washing dishes, sweeping and mopping the floor. Some days I ignore how messy it is, other times I just want to clear everything up. Although I feel with cooking, as long as you clear up while you are preparing your meal, you don’t end up having to wash very much at the end of it.

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Went for a quick run a few days ago. The chilly weather makes it enjoyable, and you just need an extra t-shirt on to keep warm, as the energy you expend will keep you warm. The run from the apartment to Princes Park and one round through it and back home used to take me an hour (more walking than running), but can finish it at an average of 45 minutes now. Getting used to it and my body doesn’t ache as much after the run. It’s a sign that I need to push it harder now and that route is just a tad over 7km. Heh, need to do 3 rounds of that to match the 21km I have to run in July.

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Just want to keep pushing and pushing until I tire from exhaustion. Haven’t had that comfort in a long while, knowing you’ve used all your energy doing stuff. At the moment it doesn’t really matter what I do, I just want to do it.

Willing Change

Vyanne was inspired to cook over the weekend. She prepared roast pork topped with a layer of smashing crackling, on top of a bed of sliced green apple and brussel sprouts, a drizzle of chacuterie sauce and mash potatoes on the side.

Enjoyed dinner with a bottle of 2008 Gembrook Hill Pinot Noir. The wine is fairly light drinking, slightly floral with some berry notes, and was pretty good with the pork.

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Heh, find I should write more. There’s a sense of deja vu mentioning this, as it feels like I’ve posted this on my blog before, but can’t seem to recall if it really happened. Sometimes thoughts just glaze through my mind but it doesn’t really occur to me what I’m thinking until I actually put word to paper (or in my case, typed out text on a giant screen).

Too caught up with the new place, looking at reviews for items to buy, organising time to do the stuff but everything is just trickling along. I like progress to be continuous but only the weekends are available and even then, I’ve been busy during those times with prior commitments, not to mention the weekly trip to the market for groceries. Things are moving along like a car in the wrong gear now. Heh, will not even start to talk about work, but with the things going on, it’s as settled as a dust cloud.

Have set aside some money for purchasing furniture, and I’ve told myself over the last 8 or so years that I’d buy it when I move out. Now that I am moving out, I’m not quite reluctant to spend, but I still want to stick to a budget. I don’t need to be lavish with house fittings, but then again, having experienced buying odds and ends over the last few years, you don’t want to skimp too much that you buy something that breaks after little use.

It’s the time of the year again when I’m questioning everything I’m doing. I’ve spent less than 2 years at my current work place, and even with all the benefits, I feel a longing to move on to find something more challenging. As you progress forward with work, you start to notice that not only do you need to be impeccable at your work, you also need to know how to manage people and their expectations. It’s good when you have senior people to refer to for guidance, but sometimes you wonder if the same experience will hold you back when you dismiss an idea because it’s been tried before and it wasn’t successful.

I’ve told myself that after moving to the new place and settling in it, I’d like to start hunting for a new job. Melbourne is a horrible place to look for work (apparently it’s one of the hardest states in Australia to land a job because it’s so competitive) but you always keep trying and something will come your way.

It’s strange that I actively want change these days as I find myself stagnating to routine. People find comfort in it while I find it absolutely terrifying that the lack of change and progress will make me become obsolete sooner rather than later. Heh, there’s that feeling of deja vu again. I really need to push that sense of problem solving, that of worry out into the open again. At least I feel that would be good for me.

Steering Off

The photo on its own is uninspiring, but I liked the placement of the objects in the frame. This was after getting off the balloon. For a few posts in a row I’ve not focused on food photos. Heh.

Ran it through Photomatix to get the HDR look. Bits of the sky have been overexposed, but the scene was challenging with the dynamic range, so this is a pretty good attempt at retrieving the colours from the background.

Reviewing some of my post editing, and have issue with the colour balance of some of the images, so I’m likely to delve into it a little more to get the exact styling I want.

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Decided to take a couple of days study leave for the exam. Suspected I was entitled to it, but never did ask until today. Heh, just need to let the brain loose for a night from studying. With the exam at the back of my mind, I can’t really think of much else. The house is settling soon and there was another flurry of documents being posted back and forth.

I just want a day when I don’t have to worry about what’s happening next.

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Need to do a little housekeeping on this blog. The Flickr plugin to display the photos at the bottom is broken. Probably something to do with how Flickr allows access to their APIs. The older posts with links to photos hosted on the previous host are also broken as I never uploaded those photos back to their original location. There’s also the issue of continuity as I don’t want to rely on Flickr forever to host my photos (might look into WordPress’s default media handling, but I was never quite impressed with it back then). I’d like something where I can just copy the entire folder from the host and transplant it without too much configuration issues. I’ll probably need more space and an idea on how I’m going to store the photos in a logical manner.

I’m also going to trim off the posts I did in the earlier years, circa 2004. It will probably be some editing, to keep the essence of the post but in something more inline with my current style of writing. I’m pretty sure that I’d react in horror at the thought had I conceived it a year or so ago.

Heh, these ideas for change always come when I have to study for an exam, although this is probably the first time I’ve resisted acting on any of my ideas. I don’t really want to get sidetracked now, with just a few more days to go, I’d like to be able to concentrate on my paper.