Trysting Fields

Random Pictures Of The Week Since I Got Back

Sunday Afternoon

Possibly The Roast I Cooked On Saturday Night

In between taking pictures of lid arrangements and doodles.

They're nice when it's cold.

Here Are Some More Pictures

That I took at Wortwut's place, with her baffling elephantine DSLR:

In related news, I got my own camera back last week finally. Here are some pictures I took with it of the San Pedro I bought my housemate for his birthday:

In unrelated news, I caught a cold on Friday but I'm better now.

What else? I had a gum excision and a filling done this morning, which was novel. The anaesthetic made the left side of my jaw completely numb.

That is all, for now.

Kitsune

This pizza is Super Special. The people who sold it to us told us this. It must be true.

We are going to watch Withnail & I now. Yiz can all get comprehensively fucked.

That is all.

Coming soon: Death In The Afternoon.

Eggy In A Basket

Cheers to ~ (via V) for the inspiration.

Zenarchist Coffee Ceremony II

(See here and here.)

What I Got For Christmas

Yemeni coffee, British cigarettes and Cuban white rum

Jellybeans & chocolate

Facial care products

Art

A scarf

A yoyo

A flipbook

Amongst other things.

Man, I Just, Like, Voted

I wasn't planning to originally, but Semi talked me into it on the grounds that the Greens will likely take some seats away from serious politicians, which is always a good cause. I hope he is having fun at Earthcore. I imagine that he is.

I just voted for the Greens whilst tripping on leftover cactus, partly in his honor. I'm sure Bob Brown (with whom I once shared a taxi, whilst dressed as a giant koala - i'm sure it wasn't just a dream) would not disapprove. I tried to imagine what John Howard would feel. I tried to imagine him feeling pain in some way. How I tried. But all I could see was him going "stupid hippies; ah well, *shrugs*, they will all self-destruct soon enough anyway", and not understanding at all. Which kind of pissed me off, but did at least make me feel like, in some obscure way, I had not done entirely the wrong thing.

Now I am trying to decide whether to watch The Dark Crystal again. I fell asleep before the end last time.

~ has suggested to me that the girl Gelfling ultimately dies; but I feel sure that this cannot be the whole truth. Henson and Oz would not do that to me. They would not dare.

I will watch their silly movie, in any case. They can bring it. Doesn't matter if the chick dies; the whole healed-crystal thing redundifies such petty concerns.

Yes, it does.

Life Is Good

nb clever peripheral utilization may or may not reveal secret hidden messages

Life is good.

We Went To The Victoria Markets On Saturday

And we bought:

A cherry-flavoured cigar!

Calamari!

Three feet of San Pedro Cactus!

Aaand - thanks to an anonymous tipoff - we also acquired from this Asian grocery...

.. Red Bull concentrate!

For $2.80 a bottle, complete with nutritional information:

Sor'ed!

Scenes From A Zenarchist Coffee Ceremony

~'s Mother Bought A Cow

So now our freezer is full of frozen cow.

She also gave us some duck eggs.

I boiled one and had it for breakfast.

It was well tasty.

Most Interesting Thing I Have Eaten This Week

Caper omelette with pomegranate syrup ala Jaye de Koan.

It was really nice!

Harira

Another culinary adventure inspired by the house of Rorsch & Semi (see also).

You will need:

• 500g of lamb


• Olive oil


• 2 chopped onions


• 4 cloves of crushed garlic


• 1.5 teaspoons of cumin & 2 teaspoons of paprika


• 1 bay leaf


• 2 tablespoons of tomato puree


• 1 cup of soup stock (Rorsch recommends VeCon if you can't be bothered making your own stock. I recommend Bovril.)


• 500g of washed, soaked and cooked chickpeas


• 2 cans of chopped tomatoes


• 3 tablespoons of fresh, chopped coriander


• 3 6 tablespoons of fresh, chopped flat-leaf parsley


• Turkish bread

1. Saute onion and garlic until soft.
   


2. Add meat, and brown.
   


3. Add cumin, paprika & bayleaf, and cook "until the fragrance makes your eyes start to water".
   
   
   


4. Add tomato paste and cook for a couple more minutes, stirring continuously.
   
   
   


5. Add stock & chopped tomatoes, stir and bring to boil ("by now you should be able to feel the spice on the back of your pharynx").
   
   
   


6. Add chickpeas coriander and parsley.
   
   
   


7. Bring to boil.
   


8. Simmer for 1 1/2-2 hours or until lamb is tender.
   


9. Serve, garnished with extra coriander and parsley, and warm turkish bread.
   

Salmon Semi-Functional (ala Teigan)

You will need:

• Roasting potatoes
• Pumpkin
• Broccoli
• Dill, rosemary & salt
• Ginger & garlic
• Salmon cutlets
• Spinach (or alternately lettuce, if perchance the spinach you thought you had looks like this:
  
  ... and smells even worse)
• Soy sauce
• Honey
• Parsley
• A lemon

1. Preheat oven to 200C whilst parboiling chopped potatoes for 5 minutes.
   


2. Put the potatoes in a pan with olive oil, dill, rosemary and salt. Roast in oven for 30 minutes.
   


3. Remove pan from oven. Turn the potatoes, and add the pumpkin. Return to the oven for a further 30 minutes. Turn once more, then return to oven again until serving time.
   


4. Commence steaming broccoli.
   


5. Meanwhile, melt butter in a frypan and saute garlic & ginger for 1 minute on medium heat.
   


6. Add salmon cutlets.
   


7. Turn heat to high for one minute and sear both sides. Return flame to medium.
   


8. Add a few of drops of soy sauce, a smidgeon of honey, and a handful of chopped coriander and a little parsley. Cook as one would a steak.
    
   


9. Five minutes before serving, remove salmon from pan (keep warm in oven), add spinach lettuce, and stir through the juices in the pan.
   


10. Serve salmon on bed of spinach lettuce, accompanied by boiled roast potatoes in their jackets and some steamed butternut pumpkin and steamed broccoli.
    


11. Lemon juice to taste.
    

It worked for this fish wuss.

(Thanks, SFHB.)

Bread

Rejected food photos. These were originally going to follow the musli.

Cactus VI

Cactus V

Cactus IV

Cactus III

Cactus II

Cactus

Lettuce

Musli

... And Here's What I Spent It On

• Milk - Milk is delicious added to a range of hot beverages, and can also be poured very effectively over almost any breakfast cereal. It is an excellent source of calcium, so essential for building strong healthy bones and teeth with which to crush and dismember your enemies.
• Corn - Corn is not only an entertaining vegetable, it also contains a winning combination of fibre and protein!
• Evil battery-Farm Eggs - God help me, they were cheap.
• Nutritionally Indifferent White Bread - Also cheap. And novel!
• Burger-In-A-Biskits - Again with the novelty value. I've had these before but never when my good friend Ganj was in the haus.
• Two Environmentally-Unfriendly Plastic Bags - Which I badly needed to put rubbish in, and stuff.

Look, I Made Scones

But I had no one to share them with.

So sad. I feel so sorry for myself right now. You should too.

I am eating them alone, watching clips of that entertaining Jon Stewart, and crying.

Hooray For Being Almost Productive

Contrary to intentions, I got nothing of any real note done today. But I did dispose of quite a lot of trivial domestic and administrative tasks which had been bugging me. And cleared my email (er, more or less), which is always good. So I will be in an excellent position to actually accomplish stuff tomorrow.

My sister and her boi have stocks of strawberry, blueberry, blackberry, apricot, and lingonberry (no, I don't know either) jams. And herrings. It's a Scandinavian thing, apparently.

But they had no raspberry jam. So I bought some.

I also got brownie mix. I thought I would make some and send them to Chris Titan. I kind of feel sorry for him.

In other news, the camera seems to be having serious exposure problems.

I am listening to "Blind" by the Sundays, but I think I'm going to have to turn it off, because it is making me very nostalgic and causing me angst. Lovely album, though.

Now I'm gonna go and cook that roast I was talking about yesterday.

If you haven't already, go and visit Jo; she needs to be encouraged to post more often.

Fish Sticks & Salad

(And cheap champagne.)

In homage to Lady J.

I would normally never eat fish sticks (actually, in Australia, we call them 'fish fingers') but my sister has about 80,000 of them in her freezer for some reason.

They must have been on sale.

Some People Find These "Weblogs" To Be A Waste Of Time

But I don't believe in time, so it's not a concern I share.

If, six months ago, you'd told me I'd one day be using this blog as an excuse procrastinate on the execution of actual proper Neurocam business, I'd have told you to get t'fuck - but that, dear readers, is the situation you find me in this evening. It feels very odd.

I've been pimping other peoples' blogs of late; now I'm gonna pimp a kebab shop, which also feels odd. Ali Baba - an institution in my native Canberra - has just opened an outlet on Fitzroy Street and I'm so glad. I've patronised it twice already this week. I instinctively feel the urge to post a pic of the screwed-up wrapper of the first-rate chicken kebab I just consumed, but alas I have no camera anymore.

(Which is really no good, incidentally. I worry about the future of the 'Fields - for the first time since I started it I have no embryonic posts in reserve, no camera so I can't just take random pics and throw 'em up.. and Neurocam have effectively all but silenced me by way of promotion. So, if anyone has any novel ideas for posts - please, let's hear 'em.)

As fate would have it, the manager of this Ali Baba is none other than the guy who used to manage their establishment in Garema Place, where I was at one time a very regular customer. He greeted me warmly and we exchanged witheringly disparaging remarks about the Can', as is customary amongst ex-residents. It was great. All I need now is billies and baby sis (mmmmmmm..... billies....), and it would be like I never left. But, you know, in a really good way - because, in fact, I have.

Another thing I'm putting off even as I type is cleaning my flat, a process which is half-finished (the place is in complete disarray - don't see pic, not attached) and needs must be completed post haste as I am shortly to be vacating for a month. I'm gonna be housesitting for boringly-grown-up-sis from next Tuesday whilst she is away meeting her fiance's folks in Sweden.

I'll have a whole house to myself - but for Sammy - and as I was saying to the two neuroblogerati luminaries (one of whom famously described Canberra as "a nice place to die") with whom I partook of a most pleasant and interesting coffee or two earlier in the evening, I'd really love to bring Tahiti to Fitzroy and throw a bitchin' Neuroparty (would Robin Hely come, I wonder?). Confoundingly, however, I just spoke to the lady of the house and she blew this idea straight out of the water point blank, supposedly on the grounds that there is too much expensive photography equipment lying around the place.

Yeah right.

That's the last time I pimp your goddamn cruddy half-finished website, bitch.

Hmph.

(long pause)

Oh well.

Dissatisfied with being a virtual recluse?

Well, get out more. So sayeth the Reani-man, pragmatically enough, and sound advice it is too.

(Actually I'm not a virtual recluse; many of my online personas are the quite social butterflies..)

I had lunch today at Lentil As Anything, a funny little vegan cafe on Blessington Street with an appealingly unpretentious boho vibe and an innovative "pay whatever the fuck you feel like" pricing policy. Here is someone else blogging about it in a manner which captures the tone quite nicely.

I had a lentil burger with satay sauce (and a lasse), and paid $15

Last night I was going to go a talk by photographer Bill Henson (not to be confused with the late Jim Henson), who is good, at the Ian Potter Centre (the NGV's secondary premises at Federation Square, housing Australian art - which, shamefully, I only discovered existed last week whilst executing Neurocam Assignment 5555/01). They are currently hosting a major Henson retrospective.

Unfortunately I missed the talk because I got on the wrong tram. Stupid wrong tram.

This weekend I'm making another flying visit to Canberra; my folks are throwing a farewell party before upping stakes to Switzerland. My previous visit - see archive - was a bit of a downer and I'm not particularly looking forward to it, but I will at least get to hang with my beloved baby sister, who is travelling all the way from the far reaches of darkest Queensland for the occasion.

"You know why the lemmings fly from high terrain.."

Urk

Sorry about that last post.

Look, I just boiled some eggs:

I like a nice boiled egg of a morning. They're full of protein you know. Mmm, protein.

And now I have to go to work. I'm gonna be late.
I wonder if I should post about work.
I could take some photos.
Or not.

Decisions, decisions..

There's Nothing Like Procrastination For Getting Things Done

I bounced out of bed at 6:30am this morning. I've done cardio at the gym, gotten myself a haircut, done a few miscellaneous errands, made and consumed a novelty cooked breakfast (pictured, above), had a driving lesson, and done a load of warsh (pictured, below). And taken some pictures and blogged them, self-evidently enough. And it's only just gone 1:30pm! Can this frenetic pace be maintained? Will the momentum of this morning's industry carry me through the dreaded but highly necessary CV-rejiggage scheduled for this afternoon? Stay tuned! (Or don't! See if I care! Screw you, hypothetical reader; hope you die!)

(nb Not really.)