Santa's best location

Efficiency:

Santa Claus should leave the North Pole and relocate to Kyrgyzstan to optimise the delivery of Christmas presents.

ok

Flushed with success

Free Rice

Procrastinate and feed someone:

My Hero

dirty water

I've now been in Vancouver for a litte over a month. It feels like 5 years. I'm still doing fuck-all.

A couple of weeks ago I was a train going to look at home furnishings, mostly thinking fight club type thoughts along the way.

Anyway, this big white guy was sitting behind me talking to an older Asian woman. I'm not sure if they knew each other before they got on the train. I would go quote by quote on their conversation, but I'm not sure if I fully remember it.

The general gist of the conversation was the white guy was telling the woman about the best heroin he had ever had being in Asia. Not surprising. However, he said that one has to be careful when they shoot up in Asia because the water is dirty, so you have to make sure to use bottled water when you fry your smack.

So here is my advice to you. Make sure that when you're in a developing country, you use bottled water (make sure the seal hasn't been broken) to add to your heroin when you fry it so you don't get sick when you shoot up.

She said she had missed her stop and got off at the next stop. So did he.

I continued on to buy home furnishings.

Notcot.org

This is a great site:

http://www.notcot.org/

Hawaii

This is me on my short vacation in Hawaii

Canada

Canada Visa
Originally uploaded by knicole7.

I am now living in Vancouver, BC. It wasn't really cancelled.

empire

Just like the British Empire.

truthism

So, in the same breath that you say, "Oh my gosh, I went to this one stupid website and the guy said that aliens rule the world," you should also say, "Oh my gosh, I believe that humans rule the world, even though I have absolutely no proof for my belief." As you can see, one cannot just posit that humans rule the world. Where's the proof???

Church

Horny
Originally uploaded by knicole7.

The best advice I've ever received from a church.

snow

Odd picnic spot
Originally uploaded by knicole7.

So I decided to explore this Aussie snow a week ago, but am only writing about it now.

Yeah, it was alright. Crunchy. There was a decent amount of it. We went cross country skiing. I remember why I don't like cross country skiing now. It's all about downhill or snowboarding.

These people in the picture are picnicing in the parking lot. They're not sitting in the mud, they have a blanket. They also have a small stove and are making noodles. I sat there watching them for about 10 minutes while the other people in my party got ready to go. I have no idea why you would eat there when there are tables pretty close by. And just, why would you eat in a parking lot with all the exhaust and stuff? Strange.

Let see, what else. Stopped my boring job last week. Now I'm doing mostly nothing. Probably moving to Canada at the end of August. Not warm. But i'll probably go via some warm stuff. Really, I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing. I've even considered going back to China for a bit - well HK or Taiwan, but we'll see.

Anyway, yeah.

sunburnt country

As most people should know, it is winter in Australia right now. Although if you were able to come here from January in the northern hemisphere, you probably wouldn't notice. I must say, Australia can't handle the cold for the life of them.

The surge in demand is largely caused by consumers using gas appliances to keep themselves warm as the temperature outside dipped close to freezing.

Close to freezing. We're not quite there yet.

Don't get me wrong, I'm the first to complain about the cold but that's mostly because central heating doesn't exist here, like in China. They just use their air conditioners as heaters. Not a good option.

I used to laugh at how the east coast in the US dealt with a little snow. If an Australian city were ever to get snow, the entire country would have to shut down (the picture above is from up in the mountains near the ski resorts, not in Melbourne.) Although I do hear that Melbourne did get snow once. It lasted for an hour.

VH1

I get a large chunk of my american news from VH1 Best Week Ever podcast. I think it's probably just as good as CNN.

over it

My new, fun work activity is rolling up a broken rubber band and then letting it go and watching the pattern it unrolls to. I'm thinking of making a movie of it.

The internet at my work is the slowest in the world. I was going to post an article like an hour ago but the flash gets all messed up, and the webpage never loads properly and then...

I can't remember what I was just writing about, someone came through with some candy and I had to pretend to be happy so I'd get a piece.

Anyway, i can't remember the article I was going to post. Something about how nobody cares about where you travel, actually, I'll try to find it since I'm not working anyway...

Why backpackers are so boring

Probably not that interesting, but I'm bored.

I might be going to East Timor (or 'Timor-Leste' as we like to call it in the 'in'), but I probably shouldn't say that because it's very iffy and if it doesn't happen, which it really might not, then people will say, 'so what happened with east timor?' and I'll have to invent a story.

It was independence day yesterday in the US of A, or today since it's still the 4th there. I celebrated by going to Chinatown for Chinese and going to see the musical Miss Saigon.

The American Dream.... (jazz hands!)

Work Space

Work Space
Originally uploaded by knicole7.

My work after three weeks. I wish the post-it notes were clearer. Maybe I'll bring a better camera in next time.

Care package

Care package
Originally uploaded by knicole7.

Because my mommy loves me...

argh

Uncyclopedia me.

my credit card number

Google Blasted Over Privacy

Google, the popular search engine, is under fire for having the worst privacy practices on the web. What do you think?

"Chinese exhibits"

Dear God, why didn't I think of this?

Artist makes 1,001 Chinese his German art show entry

sleepy

I'm tired. There's a bunch of things I should be doing right now, but I'm not doing them. Instead I'm a-bloggin.

For the first time in about 4 months I've had to wake up before 10am two days in a row. I would write about where I'm working, but if I do that then some people call me up from half way around the world and ask me why I don't have a real job and when I'm going to get with it and move back to the Western Hemisphere (you know who you are and it isn't my mother.) So anyway, maybe after I've been doing it for a while I'll clue you in. But I did sign a confidentiality agreement, so maybe I won't.

Alright, now that whoever is reading this is convinced that I'm a paranoid schizophrenic, I'll tell you a new story.

So I was at a wedding the other day. You can catch footage of it here, I'm too lazy to embed it. Anyway, there was the usual 'tossing of the bouquet deal'. I stood up because I was drunk and wanted to continue socializing with other people who had stood up to catch it (the other single girls I imagine.) Anyway, it was a trick bouquet that broke apart into five pieces and as I was sitting there chatting, one of the pieces fell into my hands. I was a bit surprised, as catching the bouquet was never my intention, so I tossed it to the girl next to me who immediately burst into tears of joy.

I really did not want that bouquet though.

So rest assured, this blogger isn't tying the knot any time soon.

saturday

I don't know why my google videos only play in the corner of the screen, but it's annoying.

Anyway, that was Saturday night. I've finished my Master's degree (well hopefully) and we went out and partied it up as most of the people in my course are leaving the country soon.

Am I?

I don't know.

It was good times. There was laughter, tears, shots, passing out, curling up, dancing and so on.

messing around

Anyway, clearly I've been messing around with the layout of my blog, since it's completely new now (yet again).

Here's another webpage I was working on for the past 4 months as part of a school project: Monash Uni Community Development.

funny drinks

After eating lunch yesterday, I was thirsty, so I went to buy a drink.

Fortunately there was an Asian food shop nearby. I'm not sure how they do it, but everything in there is somehow under a dollar and yet all imported - even with Australia's tough quarantine laws.

Anyway, I bought the Nostalgia Drink:


The Korean kids I used to teach in Shanghai drank this. I think it tasted better then. Although the picture may look like a nice rice pudding, it's more like pure sugar water with bits of old cardboard at the bottom.

Anyway, about a year ago when I was working I came across the Sars brand:


Enough said.

And of course, there was McSars:



I definitely need a job...

mao drag

a-mer-i-ca

Pretty interesting article about the ol' USA:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/the-more-you-know-a-place-the-harder-it-is-to-judge/2007/05/27/1180205073484.html


Some particularly wise person once said that if you are going to write about America, you should do so after a short stay, maybe a few weeks, before you are overwhelmed by its diversity and the sheer size of the place, with all its contradictions, excesses and complexities.

I feel like I may have said something like that about China, or at least read it somewhere and didn't share it. I read that passage out to Adam and he said, "Well isn't it true?"

"I have no idea," I said. "It's always just been there for me. I might even call it 'normal'."

iGasm

how fast do you go?

the other one

blog by association

The other one wanted me to put this up on my blog because, "Nobody will see it" on his blog. Well maybe he should start trying to blog. I am happy that someone thinks people read my blog - a fine selection of family, occassional friends and shocked onlookers. Although I don't think I've written anything exceedingly 'shocking' recently.

Anyway here's the stuff:


Article here.

I can't be bothered to proof read this entry.

Amen

We have long been in the habit of seeing in the Constitution whatever it is we want to see. Because liberals want a society that is neat and orderly, they tell themselves that this is what the Constitution “wants” as well. This is a little like a nineteenth-century country vicar arguing that the Bible stands for moderation, reform, and other such Victorian virtues when in fact, as anyone who actually reads the text can see, it is filled with murder, mayhem, and the arbitrary vengeance of a savage god. By the same token, the increasingly sophisticated scholarship surrounding the Second Amendment has led to renewed respect for the constitutional text as it is rather than as we would like it to be. The Constitution, it turns out, is not neat and orderly but messy and unruly. It is not modern but pre-modern. It is not the product of a time very much like our own but reflects the unresolved contradictions of a time very different from our own.

page of lies

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/lies

reading the palm

I was at a dinner last night and got to talking to a friend I haven't seen in 4 months. He's been travelling and living in monasteries around Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia. Anyway, he's a bit of a spiritual chap and was reading people's palms.

Apparantly I have no career line. I find this particularly disturbing as I'm in the process of looking for a career. Of course, I don't actually believe in palm reading, but you know, not such a good thing to hear. Also, my life line is shorter than most.

He went on to tell me that the palm changes every six months, but still...

still going in circles...

Get This Widget!Great Turtle Race

sad

Holocaust Survivor Killed in Va Shooting

Amazing life, only to end in a bloody American shooting. That's is probably indicative of something.

pink turtle

http://www.greatturtlerace.com/

I, for one, am going for pink, but she seems to be a bit stagnant. So yellow also works for me.

sailin

When I was living in China, I had a post about sailing.


“There are three tiers of teams in the Cup,” said Wang Chao Yong, the Chinese financier who leads China Team. “Now we are in the third tier, the bottom tier. By the next Cup, I would hope we’d be in the second tier, and then the next Cup after that, tier one.”

That is the sort of rapid progress that Chinese businessmen have come to expect in this go-go era. Like many Chinese entrepreneurs, Wang is using a joint venture to accelerate the process of becoming globally competitive.



There was an ad that used to be in the London Tube:

A black man is the best golfer,
Swiss are the best sailors,
It's time for England to make wine.

That kind of reminds me of this China America Cup deal.

If China wins the America's cup... well, quite frankly, it's all over.

panda abortion

Panda Demands Abortion

Bouncy

Classes are back in session, and I have more of a reason to procrastinate...

And so on

And so on
Originally uploaded by knicole7.

We actually bought these dumplings about a month ago and they've been sitting in our fridge. We saw the ingredients at the time, but I lied to Adam and said it didn't have MSG, which, if you remember previous posts from about 2 years ago and the lessons I taught, you should clearly be able to see that that is made clear in the Chinese ingredients.

I'm not sure how they got away with putting 'Flour, Cabbage, Sugar, Salt, and so on' on the English ingredients. Why have any label at all?

Anyway, they're good and providing me with my regular doses of MSG. Mmmmmm.

lines

I've spent the past 45 minutesish trying to change the layout of my blog, thinking that something a bit more interesting would persuade me to blog more often, and now I've decided I've just been procrastinating from actually blogging.

I think a lot of stuff is going on, but most of it is pretty boring to write about. Back in classes, finished some work experiences, agro over other work experiences, agro over my university, painfully looking for a career, etc, etc. Nothing too exciting. But I think I should tell a story, so let me try to come up with something...

Seriously, I don't think I can come up with anything. I can bitch about my university billing me for a refund they were supposed to give me, solar cars and alternative technologies, transmission lines, trams, politics of event planning, people who work in insurance, funny things on the beach or frisbees but they're all kind of boring individual stories. So I'll just pick one at random and write about it anyway since I'm procrastinating and feel like I should have something of mild substance.

I'm in a class called Community Development, I believe I'm design a webpage for it as my final project, but that's not the story I'm going to tell, just an aside.

Anyway, I had a work experience as the company who runs all the electricity transmission and distribution lines and gas distribution lines in the state of Victoria. I was helping the evaluate a way to measure their ecological footprint. It was a bit challenging, but also quite interesting. Anyway, as I had little knowledge of the transmission and distribution biz, one day I was taken on a field trip to drive out to the country and see all the transmission centers and distribution centers. It was pretty neat. I got to pass into the fence that says 'Do not enter' and even walk into the little houses. They buzz (everything in the fence), and you can feel the electricity run through you. It's quite powerful. The little house was neat. Just thousands and thousands of switches all controlling the energy grid, or would be, but it's a 20 year system that has been upgraded and changed, so now all the grids are controlled from computers in an office in the inner city. But one could feel powerful being able to switch off at random energy sources for unknown parts of the state.

Here we have our wireless connections, high speed computers, stereos, phones, lights - all this stuff depended on something most people know nothing about and give little thought to until the bill comes in or you do something like move house and have to activate it, but most of the little gadgets in our life are entirely dependent on it. And the system is totally antiquated. A significant amount of electricity is lost in the transmission and distribution before it even reaches the end user. This is like having a car with a leaking tank. If that were the case, we'd fix that pretty quickly, but like a leaking tank, the dated power lines we see in our every day life lose copious amounts of electricity as they zip around the energy. While we've managed to upgrade everything else electrical in our lives, we've given little regard to what makes them work to begin with.

Anyway, next time you see an electrical pole, just look at it for a second and think how out of place it actually is. Everything else is all sleek and new looking except this old pole that is exactly the same as when we were all kids.

There was nothing funny in that story. I apologize for that. I did get to wear a hard hat though as I was touring around.

Blessed

Finally, a sign from God. And I thought one with Chinese girls in Shanghai was good enough...

CFCs

“If it were something so bad,” Mr. Bothelo said, “they would not legally sell it.”

Well, we've all been waiting for the environmental rant on the blog, seeing as I'm an 'environmentalist', but not yet, not quite yet...

let's stereotype

Happy New Year! A little over a month late, but the Chinese New Year is coming (or may be now, I only know when it's close) so I'm not that far off.

Speaking of Chinese, and the reason why I got on to blog to begin with, I came across an article today:

Sold on a Stereotype

It's true. The Chinese do worship the Jewish people. You here the aw in their voice every time you bring it up. I may have blogged about it in 2005, I'm not sure. Anyway, I wonder if they realize that the rest of the world, when stereotyping, tend to group the Chinese along with the Jewish when it comes to business. Oh wait, maybe that's just me.

Anyway, I'm no longer temping, I'm an environmental consultant for 2 companies. This means, that when I'm not working at work, I'm losing money because I'm not being paid hourly, I'm being paid by the job. Which works out to about 20 cents/hour. Much much less than I was making temping. But much better work. And it may lead to something other than more temp opportunities.

Also, as you can tell by my flickr pictures, I was in New Zealand for two and a half weeks. Good times. Lovely country. A little under populated and isolated, but it is beautiful. Apparently I get sea sick when I kayak. Not that much fun.

Anyway, back to 'work' - clearly that's what I was doing reading the Washington Post.