Accidental Innuendo

Alan: Ok that coffee comes to $28.50
Female Customer: Thanks
Alan: Will you be grinding today?
Female Customer: Sure am
Alan: Do you need help?
Female Customer: Yes please
(giggles all round as we both realise innuendo)

A-la-la-la-n

(away)

Hullo world!! I'm feeling cheery today!! Must have been a great week :)

First off, general announcements:

So I've been away on Conference this last week and a half or so which means I haven't had time to blog or be around in general. Missing me?

I can safely say Conference was a roaring success and plenty of fun. Met lots of new people and strengthened alot of friendships. Very happy I helped organise it.

I discovered during Conference that I can eat about 20 Weet-bix for brekky and still fit room for lunch and dinner. It made quite a few people sick just watching me demolish so many, but hey...I'm a hungry guy.

As for now, my days are now going to be filled with training for Chinese New Year which is making me sort of giddy as always. Training very hard to get back into peak shape. Almost there! Make sure you all come down and watch me perform during CNY.

I'm a better lion dancer then Jase.

Speaking of which, need to get to sleep because I'm going to Burswood at 5am to watch my awesome team beat his bunch of relegation ponces.

Off to sleep :)

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Milk is so important

Another one of my resolutions I forgot to write down is "to eat healthy". I already eat healthy, so resolution achieved. But I'm going to take it one step further and stay away from all fast food joints. Macca's, HJ's and KFC are the unholy trinity which won't be going near the sacred temple that my body is.

So in a bid to get myself started on my resolutions and saving for 5k, I decided to try make my own muesli breakfast which will save me some dollars on the copious amounts of Just Right I already eat.

[Quick lesson: Bang for buck people. Bulk foods saves you money because you buy amounts that you want.
Not that I pay for my own cereal though. But I paid for the ingredients of my own muesli. Hmmmm...]

The point is, I woke up at a decent hour to foray into the kitchen to mix up my own special brand of muesli. I was actually pretty excited and I'm going to try to learn to cook more complicated stuff as the summer/year wears on.

Let it be known that my most competent dish of "cooking" after a bowl of Just Right is 2 minute Mekoreng and boiling hot water/toasting bread.

I can now add "cooking oats" to my cooking arsenal.

Sort of.

[Uncooked oats expand and become quite tasty]

[Mixed dried fruit. It taste better then it looks. And colorful stuff in dishes always makes it good.]

Mum was out for her walk and sister was still asleep, so I decided to just chuck it in. They are the traditional breakfast making people in my family. Nobody told me that 700mL of oats is ALOT to eat. In my defence, I only had about a 100 odd grams in there. It didn't look like much either and I hadn't eaten for close to 10 hours. About 7 or so minutes into it, my mum came home from her walk.

Mum: What are you doing in the kitchen?
Alan: Cooking oats
Mum: You've added alot
Alan: Should be fine
Mum: Have you checked if there is any more milk?
Alan: You need milk?
Mum: Pretty important...

She was pretty impressed and watched with a bemused expression on her face.

[This picture doesn't show how DEEP the pot was. Oh god...so deeeep]

[I added water...but water isn't milk. Tasted good. But dry]

Well...luckily there WAS milk! But not much...and breakfast was sooooooooo dry. I mixed in mixed fruits with my oats and it actually tasted pretty good. Just dry. Really dry. I'm going to give myself a pass for this "dish". It wasn't my fault there wasn't milk in the house.

So my first two lessons of cooking is:

• Check for ingredients
• Don't underestimate the portion sizes

Stay tuned for more breakfast adventures!

["Want not, waste not" -Traditional Asian
I ate it ALL]

Then I had to wash up :(

A-la-la-la-n

The Alan: Resolutions

After the success of last year, I've had enough time to think long and hard about my resolutions for 2008. The format of last year of partitioning my life into various aspects has done well for me and I'll continue with that.

1. Social Life: Keep to my word/commitments. I sometimes bite off more then I can chew and dissappoint more people then if I had said "no" to begin with. So, I think if I say I'll do something, it's to be done.
1a. I liked the theme of "Don't Yak" actually. It saves me quite a bit of moo-lah, so I'm gonna try keep that going this year. Or start it back up.
1b. Start brewing my own range of beer :)

2. Kung fu/Lion Dance Life: I'm gonna put it out there and say I want my green belt now. Although the red belt is quite dashing and has an air of gallivanting buccaneer, I think the green belt will be more "old world warrior". So at least an attempt at my green belt.
2a. Since Josh isn't really a candidate for a ride to Margaret River since he got his road bike, I'm thinking I'm going to do 100km solo. I suppose in Josh's defence he is LCP (congrats) and has a lot on his dish already.
2b. Running! I like to run a lot and will definitely be doing more of this. Uni runs in the morning for sure.

3. Uni Life: as my last semester at uni, I'm gonna make it my best ever. I have found that it is impossible for me to attend lectures now. So...instead I'm going to attend ALL my tutorials. If I don't, consider this resolution failed.
3a. Since Uni is only going to be half the year, I think I'm going to also take up Beginners Chinese at Tafe. I've been dabbling a bit here and there by talking to my mum, but I want to become fluent.
3b. And I want to learn a European language as well. French of Italian? This isn't really big for me but it would be handy to have.
3c. Minimise coffee/red bull expenditure. I've thought about how much I spend on red bull/coffee and it amounts to A LOT. Don't believe me? You guys all think I'm naturally energetic? Think again.

4. Home Life: is always a tricky issue with me. But this year, I'm going to do a lot of things for the Family. Not that I don't already, but I can do a bit more I reckon.
4a. Improve the living standards of my room.

5. Money/Finance Life: Shirls wants to save 25k and Niss wants 10k? Those are impressive figures which I don't think I can match. So I'm going to shoot for a realistic approach of about 5k for myself. $417 a month? No problem!!

6. Blogging Life: Obviously, I'll do my best to keep this blog alive. Not very many people know, but more then the odd occasion I've almost come to abandon this blog but decided last minute not to. So, expect LOTS of posts this year. At least one every 3 days.
6a. I WILL revive My Project 365. I have no excuse for it's sudden death (except maybe exams). But I WILL have it up and running so soon.

And that is my resolutions for 2008.

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2007 Review

With 2007 finally dead and buried, I look back over a very long year with how I did with my resolutions for 2007. Remember this?

1. Social life: My issue of lateness is well frowned upon by many a friend so I think being punctual would be good goal. I think I did much better with this. Other then one or two incidents I reckon I was pretty punctual for most things. My watch was set 15 mins fast to ensure some sort of punctuality was achieved.
1a. Continuing on from last year is the theme of "don't yak" so gonna keep with that. Failed. Numerous times.
1b. Make some more friends as per usual. Sure did! "Son", "Library Girl" and "Block 2.0" are three that come immediately to mind.

2. Kung Fu/Lion Dance Life: Get that Red Belt!! *sigh* Me and James talked about this at Sean's bbq. Both of us are pretty shamed that we didn't do it last year. Got my red belt, became State Champion and very involved with Yaolin.
2a. A minor failure of last year was a plan to ride down south. Due to Josh and his AIESEC commitments, it will be scheduled for later on this year. But it's still on the agenda. Failed. Stupid Josh and his AIESEC commitments. His bike getting stolen and then getting a ROAD bike so that even if we DID do it, I would be left in his wake while he sped along. What a hack!!
2b. Recruit some long term prospects for Yaolin. A new partnership would be great! My cousin joined Yaolin and will be playing the drums for us this year hopefully. No new partnership so I guess I failed. But we did train up B2 and Chuck. So I guess that's two more heads.

3. Uni life: Apply myself more consistently to my units as opposed to a killer first semester and then a disappointing second semester. Hell yes I would say I achieved this! Very pleased with both of my semesters (especially first sem exams). Best academic year since my outstanding Nobel Prize for Literature in year 9.
3a. Study during the semester as opposed to camping at uni during SWOTVAC. Failed. I camped at uni a lot during SWOTVAC and learnt an entire unit in about four or five days. Applied Financial Management took an Alan headbutt straight to the cheekbone.
3b. Cut down on the coffee; anything more then once a day is too much. Failed. I not only remained addicted to coffee I also developed an unhealthy addiction to Red Bull. And I'm PROUD of it.

4. Home life: Keep the room clean and learn to cook. Failed the first part already ^_^ Hmmm...I did learn to cook some new dishes. The room is in a constant flux of semi cleanliness. I'll give myself a pass.
4a. Help Penny with her homework more. She IS gonna be in yr11 I suppose. And she is doing more of my subjects. I think I did this well. I helped her heaps with English Lit and Econs. It can be very frustrating teaching and I will ALWAYS admire my own Lit and Econs teacher who were such huge influences on my life in high school.
4b. Eat less meat and give tofu a go...BAHAHAHAHA!!! I still can't really do the tofu thing. And meat is just too hard to avoid. Failed.

5. Money/Finance life: Save up for (insert something worthwhile here). I did buy a lot of shoes this year. BUT my bank account at the moment looks so fantastic right now I'm gonna say I achieved this. And my "(insert something here)" will surprise you all. Stay tuned...
5a. Stop thrashing the phone bill!! Achieved. My phone bill shrunk marvelously when I changed to a huge cap.

6. Blogging life: Try keep this baby going. I know I've neglected it and resulting neglected to read anything else. And since I neglect everyone, they neglect theirs too. It's just I feel neglected. I'm gonna say I achieved this. I wrote 93 posts this year. That's an average of almost a post every four days. Pretty good compared to other people. And I could probably say that 90% of those 93 posts are 100% good ones.

7. Miscellaneous: This are just achievements I am proud of. More or less.
7a.I reckon leading Team Alan to a second place finish in indoor soccer was nice. I recruited marvelously and we had a tremendous year after a horrendous inaugural year.
7b. Survived a car accident
7c. Cheated UniPark

And that's my 2007.

I'll do my 2008 resolutions in a day or so. Stay tuned. New blog template is being designed (and destined to fail too...)

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