The Sting.

 

What a classy movie! Striped shirts and suspenders, Paul Newman's moustache, long-bonneted cars, L trains, a soda stream in a pharmacy, lovely depressed Chicago city streets, Norman Rockwell style illustrated titles, Scott Joplin piano music. A very pleasant thing to watch.

Piper takeaway.

I was pleasantly surprised with John Piper. I've never been able to listen to a podcast of his, because I can't listen to his preaching style. Too passionate? Like, a bit of passion is nice for emphasis, but constant passion is numbing. Maybe he had advice on preaching to Australians, cos he was relatively low key on the weekend.

He was real, not showy. I appreciated the way he he deliberately tried to argue his paradigm. He built the picture over 3 talks. Cos I've noticed those big preachers have their big things they mostly preach through the lens of, and I get all "this thing is cool and strategic!" for a while then it wears off. I think his framework is more meta than other people's.

The talks will be available for download from kcc website. I want to listen to them again because I'm still evaluating the big paradigm. What does my satisfaction in God mean? Is my joy really a significant part of glorifying God? I mean, I'm all for my own joy and satisfaction, but I'm still not sure if it's such a factor in God's plan. I've generally thought that we're supposed to persevere in obedience and dependance in this world and get the joy and satisfaction kicks in the next, when we're not stuck in sin-prone flesh and will spend eternity praising God. I thought, though, that his theology of joy was really good. So yeah, need more time to think about the framework, although I'm trying to implement some stuff because it's good. This morning, when I was doing my Jillian, I thought "how can I do Jillian for God's glory?" because working out is just as mundane as eating and drinking. So I thanked God for my health and energy. A bit more mindfulness in that area can't hurt.

Foodness.

First, this is a photo of my family's traditional special porridge. Cook porridge, (when it's cooked I stir in some seeds or psyllium or something but not essential, just a healthy bonus), sprinkle a teaspoon or two of brown sugar on it, then shake some allbran (sticks) on top. This isn't really for the fibre, it's for the crunch. AND THEN, if you are feeling special, drizzle condensed milk on top. I usually save some condensed milk when I'm cooking, just for this breakfast. Put cold milk on to taste, but I try not to get the sticks soggy.

In a wild moment of carefree indulgence I opened a tin of condensed milk just to put a bit on my porridge this week. This is totally living on the edge, consequences can ride to heck. It is very unlike me to open a whole tin just for one spoonful of a treat, with no consideration of what to do with the rest of it. 

Anyway, here is my real cooking adventure: onde onde. You can buy it made, 6 balls for $3.50, or you can buy all the ingredients to make hundreds of balls for about $3.75, as long as you already have desiccated coconut. Mine was old and yellow so I bought fresh stuff anyway.

You have to pre-make little balls of palm sugar (which is like brown sugar but finer and sort of not as nice) and freeze them. Like frozen sugar peas. I do that in front of the TV at night. It's fiddly. Then, on the day, you make dough (glutinous rice flour, green pandan paste and water) and roll little balls and push the sugar peas into them and drop them in boiling water. When they float to the top, scoop them out and roll them in the coconut. Done! They don't refrigerate or store well at all, you only have a day or 2 to eat them. But you can roll the balls and put them in the freezer, then boil them as you need them.

Madness.

This is one example, which says everything, of why Adobe is beating Quark in the design software market. For the goodness of grief, Quark. Look at that hyphen. Utter, utter insanity. For that you deserve to die forever and Adobe and I will dance on your cremated ashes.

I've come across two interesting quotes in my reading of Agatha Christie recently. One made me giggle:

[Mrs Luxmore, a romantic widow] "How right you are. Yes, a woman knows. But I never showed him that I knew. We were Major Despard and Mrs. Luxmore to each other right up to the end. We were both determined to play the game." She was silent, lost in admiration of that noble attitude.
     "True," murmured Poirot. "One must play the cricket. As one of your poets so finely says, 'I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not cricket more.'"
     "Honour," corrected Mrs. Luxmore with a slight frown.
     "Of course—of course—honour. 'Loved I not honour more.'"

So I looked up that quote:

To Lucasta, going to the Wars
Richard Lovelace. 1618–1658

Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind,
  That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
  To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
  The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
  A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
  As thou too shalt adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
  Loved I not Honour more.

How quaint. And what a completely foreign concept is this honour.

The other quote is from a Tommy and Tuppence book, and they quote a woman called Nurse Edith Cavell, who was executed by firing squad for smuggling hundreds of soldiers out of Germany in WW1, and said something like "Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred in my heart." Kind of like a more noble and tragic Nancy Wake. Edith and Nancy are two of my favourite girl names. I don't really understand the quote but I'm pleased I looked it up and discovered such a brave woman.

Jillian:pain.

On Saturday I did my first exercise since sprain: 4 circuits of Jillian. Didn't cope very well. I'm back at square 1.5. But I'll get into it this week and recover.

I've done some interesting cooking, which I'll blog when I have my camera handy.

Painting.

This is my painting. It's going to be just very bright strips of colour. Barely creative at all, all you people who "wish you could paint or do something creative". All you need is a ruler and some sticky tape, and paint of your choice. And brushes.

I choose oil paint. Because it's a very deep paint, the colour refracts really vibrantly. It takes at least a week to dry, though, and it's the messiest thing ever. You get a bit on your sleeve and it will travel extensively wherever you move your arm and all randomly on your fingers and tools. I paint in my pyjamas wearing an apron, then I wash, put clothes on and go to work with only slight stains. In the background you can see the Christmas card design I am painting.

Ankle update.

48 hours after sprain, still significantly fatter than my healthy ankle.

4 days after sprain, settling down some but with an interesting and painless pool of blood.

Today, 6 days after sprain, doing OK. I am impatient to get back into Jillian but the internet tells me no. For future reference, sprained ankles are a stay home from work thing. You can't really elevate a foot while sitting at a desk. I'll know that next time. I always make the wrong decision when I'm sick or injured, I always push it, I need someone to tell me "you're sick/injured, your judgement is impaired and your decision to go to work is wrong, go to the doctor".

Ankle. New York.

I have a sprained ankle. It makes me a bit proud, because now I'm a little bit more like Miranda*, except although she falls over a lot she never get hurt, because she's more funny. The thing about the sprain is that you can't tell if it's a real sprain or just one of those little turns that gets better right away. Until it gets worse, not better. So you'll know in about an hour, after you've kept walking on it.

Bit of a problem without a car, but actually I can walk almost normally. It's just that it hurts at any angle and hurts afterwards. I try and elevate my foot at work, but that means sitting all slouchy and twisted, and I ended up with a headache yesterday and went home a bit early. I watched the recent Oliver Twist movie by Roman Polanski (which is a short version, sans Monks etc). Pretty traditional, which is OK, not everything is improved by fiddling with it. I always think I like the Oliver story, but then whenever I'm watching it I'm dreading the next bad thing that happens. The worst bit is Nancy. The Bill Sykes actor was a bit weak, he didn't have a very scary voice. The Bill in the musical is probably the best, although one of the BBC versions had a good Sykes.

Then I watched SBS. I'm trying to get into the habit of checking SBS regularly because they have very good documentaries. I keep luckily finding a series about New York City in the 20th century. It's really fascinating to look back at how people's lives were changed by economic stuff like the depression, the wars, the end of the industrial era, the car, suburbanisation, and grand "urban renewal" (turning slums into ghettos). Now we live in a world where New York is glamorous and exciting and expensive, a place where romantic comedies and sitcoms happen. It wasn't always so!** Once there were bread lines and tent cities, once there were migrant neighbourhoods, once there was a diverse manufacturing industry, once there were no cars and the streets were for people (which I love the sound of), once town hall was run by a corrupt vaudeville song writer (which I also love the sound of, but it didn't work out well).

The website has lots of little interview transcripts:

On The Grid Plan:
We would have been a very romantic city if we hadn't chosen the grid plan. When they laid out the plan in 1811 the assumption was that there would be almost no traffic up and down this little Manhattan Island -- 15 miles up and down and very narrow -- but that all the traffic would be water borne between the rivers, therefore have lots of side streets for the traffic going back and forth from river to river, and just have a handful of avenues going north and south since nobody would ever bother to use them.

On Growing Up:
One of the things that I miss the most was what it felt like in the subway between the hours of five and seven. Being on packed subway cars with working men on those cars. Guys stained with sweat, the smell of perspiration, the raw-knuckled hands, the toolboxes, heading home. Nobody would mess with guys like that. And they were very proud of the fact that they were working in the biggest city in the United States -- they were functioning people.

On Urban Renewal:
By the 60s, we knew that urban renewal was a failure, we knew that it had taken the heart and the gut out of cities. But New York's urban renewal had started in the 50s and was moving along like an unstoppable juggernaut, and there were, of course, deals made between the government and between the real estate people, the developers. I think it could have been stopped because it kept going before the Board of Estimate over and over again, and people protested, but the city felt it could not back down on the arrangements that had been made. So 15 acres were bulldozed for Brooklyn Bridge South. I think over 100 acres were bulldozed when the Washington Market was moved, and in each case what they were knocking down were streets and streets of beautiful historic buildings. Georgian and Greek-revival buildings of a style that really told us a great deal about what New York was like then, and what the changes have been.

* I've been watching this "best of Miranda" youtube thing all week, whenever I need a little giggle.
** Tim Keller has a short lecture called "the challenge of north american cities" which is interesting in a similar vein. It's an itunes podcast.

Uncounted.

I haven't got my census forms yet. I rang up on Monday and requested, and I know the deliverers get text messages and know what they need to do straight away, but it still didn't come. So I went online on Tuesday and requested one again, and it's apparently being posted to us. Whatever. Kristy and I are just grumpy now, we wanted to do it with the rest of Australia. It's not going to be any fun now. I actually want it NOT to come at all, and then I want the ABS to try and fine me, because I want to FIGHT THEM.

I want croissants. Not fruit.

I like them, and I haven't had one for a long time. I've even been actively resisting them. But they are very unhealthy food, so I'm going to wait until I can have a really nice croissant experience.

I've always been a big fruit eater. Easily eating 2 serves a day. I've gone off fruit this winter. I sometimes have one piece of fruit, often none. I think my sweet tooth has gone away, because I'm drinking more tea and eating dark chocolate, and not craving lollies or eating as much fruit. So I'm inclined to not force the fruit, in case it brings back the sugar cravings.

Christmas cards, still.

I'm feeling a bit full up of nativities; there is only so much imagery, and only a certain number of bible verses, from which to squeeze a handful of cards each year which are just evangelistic enough but still safe and friendly.

I like this cute tiny sketch though, so here it is.

Baked Chocolate Cheesecake.

My first cake-baking of the year.

I had a freak out. The recipe for the cheesecake said bake 45 min or until firm to touch, there were no different instructions for the chocolate version, and my cheesecake was wobbly. I should have asked Little, who is the cheesecake club president, because she now tells me it is normally wobbly. But I was worried. Then I realised that my philly cream cheese was really Philly cream for desserts. Double cream alternative. It was in a Philadelphia tub, and it was super thick like cream cheese, so was it cream cheese just pretending to be double cream? I still don't know. Probably ideally shouldn't have baked it though.

My backup plan was to freeze it, if it didn't set, and call it bavarian. I have done this before when I made a chocolate non-baked cheesecake, and got to the end and realised I couldn't whip the cream and add it because it was already in there, from right at the start. The cheesecake was chocolate soup, but it froze up deliciously.

But this morning it has set! it's a little bit cracked on top which apparently means overcooked but that's not a disaster with cheesecake, according to Little. Cheesecake is quite forgiving like that. All that fat content, it's hard to go wrong. It doesn't need to be hot and fresh from the oven, you don't need to put a skewer in it. As long as you preferably buy the right ingredients and follow the recipe, you will have delicious success and abundant cooking cred for cooking something quite easy!

The eating result was rather wet, sloppy in the centre, described by some as "mousse" and others as "chocolate custard". Didn't have that cheese edge to it, but it was chocolatey and nice. I'm interested to try it with proper cream cheese.