Month: August 2008

How do you make yoghurt

‘Damian,’ I said, ‘Is this your milk in the fridge?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘It’ll be overdue tomorrow… If you don’t want it, I can make yoghurt out of it.’

Richard, who was also in the kitchen, perked up in interest. He asked, ‘How do you make yoghurt?’

I began to explain. ‘Well, you put yoghurt in it…’ Before I could finish, Richard and Damian were laughing hysterically.

‘What?’ I hadn’t even said anything funny.

‘You put yoghurt into it!’ they chortled. ‘How do you make yoghurt? You put yoghurt into it!’

‘Well, you have to, because…’ But they were laughing too loudly for me to justify my apparently inane statement.

‘It grows!’ I cried, trying to shout over them. ‘It’s alive! You need to grow the yoghurt!’

I don’t think they heard me.

Life explained

This looks interesting — VideoJug. The tagline is ‘Life explained. On film.’

The short films are on topics as diverse as ‘How to tie a tie – full Windsor knot‘, ‘International Waltz: Basic steps for a follower‘, ‘How to kiss someone passionately‘, and ‘How to open and clean scallops‘.

This is what I need — ‘Fashion Advice For Your Body Shape: Pear‘. Surprisingly, by trial and error, I’ve worked out the same rules that they’ve mentioned in this video.

Payslip excitement

Every month, Jane brings around our payslips. I usually ignore it for half an hour. When I take a break from work, I carefully tear away left side of the slip, then the right side, then the top. Once it is open, I immediately look at the net payment.

It’s always a bit exciting to open the payslip. I don’t know what I expect, though, because the number is always the same.

Sometimes I think I would like that number to change. For it to go up is obviously the ideal situation but, you know, I don’t think I would mind if it went up and down so that it averages out to what I get paid now. Little fluctuations like that would justify the flutter of excitement I get when I open that payslip.

Blown over

I went outside for lunch and was almost blown over by the wind. I really had to struggle through the air to get to the pedestrian crossing. I think, in fact, I leaned forward at an angle that would normally result in me falling on my face, but the wind held me up.

As only a nerd would, as I battled against the forces of nature, I thought how this could be represented as a free body diagram.


This doesn’t seem right to me. I feel like Fwind was actually horizontal and that a component of my weight force was horizontal in the other direction. Can that be right? For this diagram, I’ve drawn that the horizontal wind force is opposed by the ground reaction force (GRF). I am almost sure this is wrong because the GRF should actually be opposing the force of the foot on the ground.

I did lots of web searching to find a free body diagram of something toppling over and I couldn’t find it. Is it something to do with torque around the centre of gravity?

Sigh. I really should know how to do this. I’m an engineer.

Any help would be appreciated!

Free range chicken

I am a tender hearted person, really. I blink back tears when reading sad stories, watching advertisements designed to tug at the heartstrings, and go to great lengths to avoid maybe possibly slightly hurting someone’s feelings.

On the phone, my mum was telling me about this show she had been watching. ‘Jamie’s Fowl Dinners‘ had arrived in Australia.

I don’t like watching or hearing about animals suffering on their journeys to become food. You might say that I am wilfully ignorant. But there was no way I could ignore it this time because it was my mum telling me.

She said, ‘Did you know that chickens only grow for 42 days before they’re killed to be eaten? They grow up in cages and there’s not enough room for them to stand up. Because they don’t stand, they never grown bones properly. Their bones can’t even carry their own weight!’

‘EEEE, stop it, waaah!’ Tears were practically flowing down my face as I imagined the poor chickens, too fat and weak to stand up in the crowd.

‘Isn’t that interesting?’ mum marvelled. ‘I never knew!’

‘I wish they could grow chickens without brains,’ I lamented. ‘Just chicken bits that aren’t connected to feelings.’ Perhaps for some people, a chicken-sized brain is small enough to not worry about the chicken’s feelings.

Chicken is my favourite meat but I could no longer plead ignorance. From now on, I will only buy free range chicken. I already buy free range eggs.

Last week, I was proud of myself because to make sauteed chicken breasts with olive and caper sauce, I went straight to the fridge cabinet with the free range chickens. I didn’t even glance at the standard chickens.

I am lucky that I like leg pieces (thigh and drumstick) more than chicken breast. Chicken breast is very, very expensive. The free range variety is around £10 for two pieces. I used to buy chicken around once a month. To manage the extra cost, I will probably continue buying at the same frequency but smaller amounts.

Loitering with cheese

With Damjan back in Melbourne, I have been left to entertain myself on the weekends. There is a little Saturday farmers market near my house, which I had not yet visited during my first nine months of living here. I finally got around to it and was really pleased with all the yummy food stalls.

One of the stalls was selling goat’s cheese. They had around 10 different samples to try. I am a sucker for food samples. I first tried the black pepper goat’s cheese. Then, the chilli goat’s cheese. Then a piece of cheese that looked like chocolate, which turned out to be chocolate, planted there to occupy children while their parents tried the more sophisticated cheese samples.

‘Hmm,’ I murmured. ‘Yum!’ I nodded approvingly.

And then, without realising it, I had gone beyond the ‘acceptable time period one can loiter in front of a food stall without buying something’. So sheepishly (haha), I bought a round of garlic and herb goat’s cheese. I also ended up buying a giant slice of almond orange cake and a round of sourdough.

Although the cheese round wasn’t large, I did not think I could consume it within the two days, as recommended by the stall holder. Luckily, my favourite cook book of 101 one-pot dishes came to the rescue with ‘Chicken with Goat’s Cheese’.

I went to Sainsbury’s to buy chicken, tarragon and vine-ripened tomatoes. I was lucky. Vine-ripened tomatoes were half price.

I was less fortunate with the chicken. A few days before, I had resolved to buy free range chicken only. All my ethical friends did this, and I wanted to be ethical too! Alas, the ‘normal’ battery caged chicken meat was on sale and it was a sixth of the price of the free range meat. I could not bring myself to pay that much extra. It was a lot of money. I felt pained. So I bought the remains of the sad chickens.

(I have since gotten back on the free range chicken bandwagon but that is another story.)

Now that I’ve done ‘Chicken with Goat’s Cheese’, I am now 15% through the 101 recipes.

Giant chocolate square

Abstaining from chocolate makes me think fondly of the last block of chocolate I owned. It was a massive block from Peru, a gift from Damjan’s parents. How big was it? It was around 25 cm long, 10 cm wide and 2 cm deep. Divided into around 12 squares, each square of chocolate was five or six times bigger than an average chocolate square.

In fact, someone else had the exact same chocolate and was also struck by the size of the squares. Here is a photo from thinkaholic.


I would break off one square and nibble until I was satiated. By then, I would be halfway through the square. If I was sensible, I would stop and save the rest for later. But, no, I always kept going.

Never has a single square of chocolate yielded so much chocolate yumminess! And the best thing was I wouldn’t feel bad because I had eaten only one square!

An evening at Trafalgar Square

On Friday evening, I said goodbye to my colleagues, who were staying behind to enjoy the rest of happy hour at a wine bar. I was going to walk home. The walk takes about an hour so I left while there was still light.

My walking route takes me past Trafalgar Square. A giant screen has been set up there so that people watch the BBC coverage of the Olympics.

As I walked by the Square, people were watching the women’s football quarter final and I started thinking. What was I walking home to? At home, I would probably eat leftovers for dinner and spend the evening (alone) watching the Olympics on TV.

The night was warm and there was a Tesco grocery store near the Square. So I decided to buy my dinner and sit with the crowd of strangers to find out whether or not China could equalise with a goal against Japan.

This is the kind of spontaneous decision that in the past I have not been able to make. I find that living by myself (albeit with housemates) has made it very easy for me to do whatever occurs to me.

It was very relaxing, watching football on a giant screen. I didn’t mind the couple sitting beside me making cow eyes at each other, and didn’t mind that tourists took turns blocking my view by standing in front of me.

At 9 PM, I was surprised to find out that there would be two live performances as part of the Trafalgar Square Festival. Aqua involved circus performers rolling around in the Trafalgar Square fountains and contorting their bodies on a trapeze. To be honest, that probably sounds more interesting than it actually was.

I really enjoyed the second performance, Toolie Oolie Doolie by ZooNation Dance Company. They danced a combination of hip hop and lindy hop. The show was to reflect the last time London hosted the Olympics (1948) and the upcoming Games (2012). Hip hop and lindy hop are, of course, two of my favourite dance styles. My favourite part of the performance was a particularly funny and expressive sequence showing a boxing match.

People often ask me if I like living in London. This is a difficult question for me to answer.

Some people like living in London because they earn a lot of money. I don’t because I’m not a contractor in the finance or IT industry.

Lots of people love the fact that London is a springboard to other parts of Europe. As you know, I don’t like travelling so this aspect of London/UK is not particularly interesting to me.

Other people love clubbing, shopping, eating out, meeting people, being in the middle of it all. I’m not a party girl. I don’t buy things a lot. I think the food in Melbourne is as good food in London. I meet people no matter where I’m living. I like being with friends and friends are not specific to London.

What I do like about London are:

My unplanned community-oriented, cultural and sporting evening at Trafalgar Square made me like London a bit more than I did the day before.

Chocolate withdrawal

I am going through a difficult time now. I have given up chocolate. This is the third day of no chocolate and I am wanting chocolate. I heard from someone/somewhere that after a while of not eating chocolate, the need for chocolate goes away. I want chocolate. I have procrastinated all day about doing this bit of work, and I think chocolate could let me do it. I have drunk three cups of orange tea and eaten two oranges. Orange is no substitute for chocolate.

The bird

While waiting at a pedestrian crossing, I listened to a dance track with a pumping bass on my MP3 player.

I glanced up and jerked my head back in surprise when I saw that a pigeon sitting on the beams of the rail bridge above me was bopping in time to my music.

Bop, bop, bop, flap! Bop, bop, bop, flap!

The pigeon did this for about three bars. Then it stopped and it eyed at me.

I crossed the road.