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and I don’t make particular plans cos they don’t matter, if you keep on foolin in bed with my sleeping patterns

I’ve been thinking lately that I’m really not that healthy or good to my body. Leaving aside all my sporting injuries and physical problems that I need to work on, I don’t think that I eat particularly well, nor are my lifestyle habits any good. You could almost say that I eat too well, meaning I love, loove meat (steak!!!) and my favourite green-type-food happens to be spinach, which is also high in protein. This is not a bad thing at all, but I’ve decided that I really need to balance things out.

Like many people my age, I sleep too late or too little altogether, drink too much, and eat too much bad food at very bad hours. So my first step towards encouraging myself to have a better breakfast regularly, was that I went out and invested in a decent blender. I got one on sale for $113.99 which was down from $189.99 — it’s one of those ones with a solid glass jug and the ability to crush ice efficiently. I then went to the supermarket and green grocer for supplies, and went home to make this smoothie:

I put in: yoghurt, almonds, frozen berries, nectarine, granny smith apple, banana and a tiny bit of ice. It’s a lot cheaper than the $5-7 that cafes charge for a smoothie and undoubtedly healthier as I didn’t add in any extra sugar or flavouring powder.

The boy has also ordered some organic goji berries, cacao powder and mesquite powder to usher towards us healthier diets. I know this all sounds a bit overboard, but I could never have the discipline to turn into one of those “clean eating” people (in fact, what exactly is “clean eating”?!). I just want to make sure that I at least eat something healthy every day to make up for my other unhealthy habits that are lot harder to kick.

I also couldn’t help but try my hand at making a soup, since I wanted to see my blender’s “puree” function in action. Considering I’ve never tried to make soup before, I think the results were pretty good for someone that literally made up the “recipe”. In case you hadn’t noticed already, I tend to make things up as I go…

I used: two large carrots, a whole bag of stalked spinach, chicken stock powder, a bit of water, five pieces of toast crumbed in, and obviously salt and pepper. I pan-fried a small amount of chicken with garlic, and towards the end I threw in a small amount of sliced salami to give the smell a bit of a kick. If I wasn’t so full from my smoothie, I would already but gulping this stuff down by the spoonful because it’s good!

This has turned into a bit of a “how lazy, unhealthy students kid themselves into thinking they’re eating healthy”-post, but hopefully I can eat like this more often. And go to the gym! The rowing machine is waiting for me again.

shaking the habitual

In a conversation with a friend the other night, we were discussing our childhood and adolescence, being bullied by girls and general bodily awareness, etc. She pointed out something that I had never considered before — that, before a certain point in time, your body was just one whole part. You were you, that’s what you looked like, and that’s just the way it was. Until one day, someone makes a comment about your body, and suddenly your awareness heightens, and you start to question your body and the form that it takes.

After thinking about this, I realised that I can remember a very distinct shift from merely acknowledging that my body looked a certain way, to realising that my actions can cause my body to look different. It’s sad that, once you cross that line, there is no going back. Life used to be, oh, swimming training, ballet classes, run the 800m heats, blah blah, and all was well. Then one day, I realised, it’s all this swimming and ballet that has given me a really lean physique with strong abdominal muscles. That switching these two for hockey then gave me a thicker build, along with hockey thighs. That my gluttony over a few meals will amount to jeans being tighter or beers equating to a gut. And as a woman, these are consequences that are too hard to ignore sometimes.

Even though I don’t really “watch what I eat” and barely try to be moderate about it all, admittedly, one big reason I love hockey season so much is that I can then consume without as much thought as when it’s off-season — because it’s almost guaranteed to burn off. Case in point: in December I bought a beautiful pair of Rag & Bone jeans in New York, and this was right after a season of winter and summer hockey, and I’d walked and walked and walked on my trip. Then I get home, Christmas and New Years happens, with no hockey… and now I can’t fit them anymore. Hopefully if my coach continues her current plan of playing me on the left wing for the first sixty minutes (of a 70 minute game, ouch!) I will definitely be reaping in rewards in the form of muscle gain and fat loss. (Disclosure: I’m weird in that I gain and lose muscle easily so my weight fluctuates not 1-2kg like most females, but more like 4-7kg) But if I were ten again, I would just think, oh yay, I feel a bit fitter and lighter. Not, I lost muscle and put on fat, boo hoo, must reverse this. This body awareness thing was much easier when I only ate what my mum put on the dinner table, and did the amount of sports prescribed.

Also, I’d forgotten about these photos until I stumbled across these scans just before. They were taking during a jazz combo rehearsal at uni last year. Funny how I can forget about these completely, yet now that I’ve found them, I can remember what it felt like at the time, framing these shots in fairly quick succession, then putting the camera away to not be a distraction.

All taken on Kodak Colour Reversal film; Nikon F3.

and the noise from the crowd increases the chance of misinterpretation

I’m pretty bummed that I haven’t got any decent photos to post because they’re all on film and I haven’t gotten any developed. So for now I’m afraid phone photos will have to suffice, even though I find it completely unacceptable!!! Just thought I’d post a couple of pictures to show how much I’ve really been living in that dress I talked about – I’ve worn it to class, fancy dinner, to do a 21st birthday speech in, and the other day I wore it to my first and most important exam. Which I feel like I botched completely because I simply lost my brain it in, but for once I really hope that my gut feeling is wrong, argh.

So this was before I felt like breaking down, before my exam:

I wore it as a top when the boy and I went out for nice dinner by the sea. I don’t usually do “outfit photos” or whatever, but I liked the outfit so much I did, for once. I have a severe thing for leather…

This is what we observed as we were leaving our exam the other day. Mum had kindly dropped us off and then picked us up from our exam (how lovely, right?), and on the side of the road we saw four Asian men – presumably tourists – taking photos of the “University of Auckland” sign. I have to say… it’s actually one bloody ugly sign at one of the least photogenic corners of the university. They really need to erect a prettier one for when I want graduation photos, haha. We’d already gone around the corner and couldn’t take a picture by then, but these men later proceeded to take photos with themselves in it. I didn’t realise that Auckland University was worthy of touristy photos. It’s not like UW or Cambridge or Harvard or basically anywhere else more famous and more beautiful?

The main thing I accomplished this past week was finishing my jazz research dissertation. I don’t know what it is about music essays that make them so painful and difficult to write. Especially essays about jazz. It’s ridiculously hard to find “academic” writing which is useable when it comes to jazz. I had nine pages of handwritten notes but it took me so long to churn out the actual essay itself. I had thought that my essay last semester on “How can we explain the Romanticising tendencies of nineteenth-century music critics?” was hard enough already. I had hated writing it because it’s awfully broad and difficult to write about “Romanticism” in general, let alone trying to attribute reasons as to why nineteenth-century music critics wrote in a “Romanticised” way… this entailed first learning that music critics did this at all, reading them, then trying to pass off reasons as to why. I’m pleased to say that essay was graded with an A. But this one… well heck, we didn’t even get given a precise “essay question”, per se. All I knew was I had to write about someone and their innovation in jazz. How broad is that? For both of these essays, I spent ages thinking offhandedly, prior to actual research and writing, and then spent a whole week staying up until dawn trying to “write something”. Ended up writing most of it on the last day of course – but unlike other essays where I have a bad habit of writing at the last minute, these essays took an entire week of intense stress and seriously questioning myself “what am I saying, is it somewhat correct and how do I say it?” I don’t know what kind of grade this will get but I have to do a 20-minute seminar about it on Tuesday, which will be worth 40% of my total grade, so I’m pretty freaked out that my entire grade is based on what I said in a handful of pages.

My phone was uploading my past week’s photos to Dropbox and I thought it was entertaining how I procrastinated with Instagram especially during the wee hours of the morning, so here is a pictorial run-down of my essay-writing week…

Decided to use the fountain pen I received for my birthday. I refilled it so much I lost count how many times (as mentioned above, nine handwritten pages of notes, urgh).

I wore my jelly shoes around my room because they make me feel so nostalgic and it’s still way too cold to wear them to the beach! Which I think is the only socially-acceptable place that a 5’7″-21-year-old can wear jelly shoes at, yes. Eating in the middle of the night…

Rediscovered my Pilot “Petit 1” fountain pens which I plan on using again. Glass bottle coke from the boy helped me stay awake.

I couldn’t believe it when I realised that morning that I had been reading Time magazine for half my life. Dinner at the boy’s house, yum.

Egg pancake mummy made.

The cutest and most affectionate cat ever that slept on my lap most nights as I wrote my essay.

Blueberry pie! Another dinner.

And these are at the boy’s house last night and today. He kindly let me use his spare monitor because my netbook’s screen just wasn’t cutting it for studying. And contrary to popular belief, studying with the boy is actually really good for me, he’s not distracting and in fact keeps me on task. Not what most people expect. He’s just so bloody hardworking that I need to keep my head down and keep working too.

she got tricks in the stash, stacking up the cash; fast when it comes to the gas, by no means average

I’m feeling a bit guilty for being a bit of a shop-a-holic lately, but after reining in my shopping habits for the past few months, my aesthetic inclinations could be tamed no longer! Although now I’ve got to stop. It’s funny how our views of money changes with age. We felt rich at primary school if we had a gold coin to go to the dairy with, and later $20 notes were a big deal. These days, who knows… I remember my first “big” sartorial purchase as if it was only yesterday – a $60 pair of Levi’s jeans that Mum bought me. At the time $60 was like ohmygod-expensive and I thanked mum endlessly and promised I would wear them until they wore out or I grew out of them – whichever came first. Unfortunately I grew out of them too quickly since I was only ten at the time, but by then the dark denim had already faded at lot, especially at the knees, and my sister got a beautifully worn in pair of jeans (that sounds really mean, but jeans are nice when worn in!). I didn’t convert to skirts and dresses until I was 18, so before then, jeans were pretty much a staple. Anyway, the main thing about buying those jeans was the motto my mum’s instilled in me – sometimes it’s worth investing a bit more money (on anything I guess, but in this instance, clothing) when you know you are buying a high-quality piece that you will treasure and wear (or use) over and over and over again. Even though this piece of advice has led me to buy some garments and shoes at outrageous prices, excluding dresses that were for special occasions, I have definitely gotten my money’s worth on everything pricey that I’ve bought. For example, I wore my Mooks jacket for almost a year and a half straight, and those aqua patent Dr Martens of mine have been worn to pieces in seven countries, if you will allow me to count Hong Kong.

This leads me to the two big things I bought last week. A Stolen Girlfriends Club dress, and a pair of beautiful Beau Coops boots. I was a bit chuffed that the size 8 dress had sold out just as I went to buy it, but the size 10 fits like a dream anyway, so all is well. My trick to justifying spending so much on a summery dress is that I had bought a voucher for SGC for a hundred dollars off the voucher value, and that it will have a decent re-sell value. Haven’t taken any photos of the boots yet, but here is the dress. SGC definitely package their products well, and I really like the ribbon that it came with. My only complaint is, does such a little dress need to come in such a hefty box?! Poor couriers’ vans must fill up pretty quickly! Needless to say, I have lived in that dress since Thursday and it is Sunday now; I’ve already worn it to a birthday barbecue, to uni and to coax my sick cat out from under the backdoor steps!

I am not a big fan of what people call “selfie” photos, but I can’t be bothered putting it back on, so these were the pics I took to show the boy the dress. It’s also gotten seals of approval from both Mum and the boy’s mother, and compliments galore, so surely I can’t really go wrong with living in it all summer.

The boots and my mixed views on wearing heels in various places will be discussed in the next post. But for now – has anyone ever joined and/or used one of those sale “groups” on facebook? I’ve been using one a fair bit recently, and it’s been a mixed experience in terms of selling and buying clothes. Here is a list of observations and thoughts that arise on a daily basis with this group:

  • I cringe every time someone says “[item of clothing] brought of [store/place/person]”. It always makes me do a double-take and I think, goodness, it’s bad enough that people don’t understand the difference between “bought” and “brought”, but how the heck do they mistake “off” for “of”?! Even “bought of” wouldn’t sound anywhere near correct… It’s really sad when the one-person-per-day who correctly says “bought” makes me happy and restores some faith in the future of female intellect in this country.
  • I’m guilty of this myself, but it is absolutely astonishing how many people sell things that have “never been worn” or have only been worn once. I’m sure most females in first-world, privileged positions have done this at least once and it begs me to question – when will women ever cease succumbing to the “impulse buy” or buying things just to wear on one occasion? How many times have we heard females we know utter words such as “I need [a dress/shoes] for [occasion]”? It’s crazy. And yet we keep doing this.
  • Some people sell really high quality, designer clothing (or shoes) at cut-throat prices, yet on the flip-side, others are trying to sell chain-store, boring and mediocre items for not-so-cheap prices. I would much rather my real suede shoes from Zara (I know not “designer” but still high quality) keep sitting in a shoebox instead of being sold for $20, sorry.
  • There are certain trends that course through this group. Namely, the SGC Acid Doll dress, the SGC garden print t-shirt dress, Karen Walker hydrangea shirt/dress and the Ksubi Baddies singlets. Each trend began when someone posted said item for sale, and ever since, several other girls have made posts that say “Looking for [aforementioned item]” with variations of “please please please” or “will pay good $$$”. This is followed by bundles of other girls posting these same items for sale, and more often than not, intense bidding wars take place, followed by other people saying “also looking for this!” – crazy, right?! I find this incredibly bizarre because all of these things have been sold in stores and online for up to a year, and I know that they are being sold at lower prices on this facebook group, but the way people behave it sounds as if they’d never heard of such things before until now. I really do not understand why people would be willing to pay over a hundred dollars for items that have (sometimes, but not always) been shrunk, faded or have peeled prints…
  • Slightly relevant to the above point, I actually own the Acid Doll dress myself. The boy’s youngest sister had told me the other night that the middle sister wondered whether I purposely frame it into the background when I post photos of things I’m selling. Aside from snorting a “no, my room is small and there is nowhere else to hang it without getting it crushed!”, it’s actually quite ironic that she pointed this out – because I’m REALLY sick of people asking whether or not I am selling it! Even if it’s just the vaguest blur of colour in the background, I have gotten handfuls of people asking if I happen to be selling it. I don’t understand why logic doesn’t prevail when I have already told one person “no, otherwise I would be listing it”, and someone else comes along and asks the same thing, in the comment immediately after. I thought the idea of threaded comments were created so that people could see the progression of discussion. Clearly this has not caught on with everyone.

Surely other people have had similar experiences too?

I know it’s been a long time, but I’m too lazy to to post a playlist right now, plus we have just acquired a very large playlist of new music I’m trying to sift through, so it would be a mess… but go and listen to Chet Faker here and click through to his Soundcloud as well. I had said to the boy a week or two before the Laneway lineup was announced that we ought to track down a gig of his when we are in Melbourne, and what do you know, turns out Laneway agreed with me.

and everyday, I am learning about you, the things that no one else sees

Today I went about my day feeling, I can’t believe it’s only the third week of semester, I am far too tired, and the feeling hasn’t shaken off since. Even when I get a full night’s sleep, I can’t seem to ditch this innate tiredness. Of course, staying up late this very instant is not helping, but I am completely hooked onto listening to an album right now and I can’t turn the computer off until I’ve sat through the whole thing. I’ve got a dissertation to write before the semester’s out, and I’m trying to listen to all that I can cram in, because I honestly have no idea what form, shape or directionmy “musical voice” is in whatsoever and I need to figure it out pronto! It’s just been a really slow couple of weeks, which is why I wanted to blog about the blissful evening that the boy and I had. We’ve been together for another “celebrate-able” length of time now, and didn’t waste any excuse to book in an evening of feasting on food, bubbly, each other, and of course, the action at the Olympics!

With help from the boy, I cooked cordon bleu, firstly on the stove, and then we threw it all in the oven with potatoes, onions and a healthy dollop of mustard seeds and tasty (read: randomly thrown together) herbs that was then sprinkled with cheese and mushrooms. For dessert we hadamazing mango sorbet, fresh fruit and berry yoghurt… I’m getting hungry just thinking about it! It was a wonderfully relaxed and lovely evening, and pretty much had all of my ideals: the boy, yummy dinner, great wine, dessert (plus spearmint dark chocolate!), live hockey, a fire going, the cat being jealously affectionate, and to top it all off it was raining outside, which is our absolute favourite. I dare not imagine life any other way, even though I am juggling so many things and exhausted all the time, at least I am healthy, loved, and happy. And I think that’s three of the most important things to strive for in life. Most of my friends tell me that they feel like we’ve been together for years and years, which it hasn’t been, just yet – but I certainly believe that we will be, without a shadow of a doubt. We make each other better people not just through the good things, but we also confront each other with our worst parts to change and improve. I’m a hectic, chaotic madhouse of a person but maybe I’m cooking just well enough for the boy to stick around? Kidding. But I’m glad that he does, despite the chaos… because I don’t think I’d quite be Amanda if I were to attain a stable personality. So thank you, to my main man, and to everybody else’s main-men for keeping us sane or at least distracted from insanity!

Also, it’s been superb to watch top notch international-level hockey every evening, and of course I’ve got my fingers crossed for our women’s Black Sticks team (sorry, the men were too much of a disgrace the other night, don’t even ask!!!) for hopefully a medal. Speaking of hockey, my team’s season’s been going fairly well so far – we’ve made the top four play offs and will hopefully do well in the next couple of games to make it through to the finals. It’s nerve-wracking stuff and I’ve kind of been playing below my standard lately, but I’m willing myself to pick things back up. I don’t know what’s been happening in my head that I’ve seemed to have lost all my sense of being “onto it” when it comes to potential-goal-time, and my fitness has vanished into thin air in the past couple of weeks, but it must return! Maybe it’s got more to do with being mentally exhausted rather than my actual physical fitness right now?

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