Archive for April, 2007

Training Day

April 30, 2007 at 11:06 am · Filed under Work & Social Issues

I went to a MDAA training today. And with no expectation held in my mind, I did enjoy the day and our trainer, a very energetic German origin lady, who was full of facial expression in the lecture, showing us some different perspectives to look at this world.

But to be honest, I didn’t learn a lot new knowledge or any new skills. However it didn’t bother me at all, as I had clearly realised long time ago that there were rarely new concepts, knowledge or skills nowadays could have had their impact on me as much as they did in the first 25 years of my life. I am not saying that I am losing my curiosity towards the new things; it’s just that most of new things were not impacting enough to shock me. Most of them only need no more than 2 minutes thought to be accepted, nothing really exciting and big enough to rock the world.

It’s a funny feeling. Someone must think I am weird as what was implied here is “the world is not exciting enough” or “sometimes I needed some shocking breaking news (like new technology) to stimulate myself”. But this is true. If the world going by beside you drew no attention of you, can you say it’s a nice thing to embrace?

Anyway, I might have gone too far from the topic of today’s training. The good thing was I met many people from the service provider’ side. Some of them are the people I ring everyday, but never got a chance to have a face-to-face chat. It’s good to connect their faces to a specific name. Also, something did happen on me. I had a person who worked for Multilingual Centre approaching me and asked me if I would love to work for them over the weekend. Another opportunity, eh?

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Husband’s Socks

April 29, 2007 at 6:03 am · Filed under Craft & Art

This is the first thing that I knitted for my dear husband. Poor fellow! He is not a knitwear lover, and the reason for that is simple. He can not stand any fluffy yarn, which causes a big discomfort and makes him itchy all over :-)

But I insisted to do something for him as I can’t go any further with knitting, if I had guilty in the heart because I never had done anything for him. But I was very picky to choose the project. I don’t want to start something too big that could easily end up ruining his confidence in his wife :-) But I did need something fancy yet wearable to tease his future needs for my work. Therefore, after a careful selection, I decided to go for the “Dear Boyfriend Socks” pattern offered free on the Slipped Stitch website.

It took me a long time to work on them (about 40 days or so). I had too many things to deal with in the life that often I didn’t have at least one hour a day to knit. Also the yarn is 5 ply black creep machine wash pure wool from Cleckheaton (I couldn’t get 4 ply yarn with the right colour). It’s quite thin and firmly blended. Good quality and durable for a pair of socks, and I chose black as it’s safe for a man. You could never get it wrong if you go for black :-)

My husband has very big feet. I call him giant feet. I had a couple times trying his giant shoes on with my own feet. And I looked ridiculous :-) I was like a cartoon character, a bunny wearing a dinosaur’s shoes……hehe, don’t laugh. I was serious. And sometime, when I had to move his shoes from one place to another place in the house, I felt like I was carrying a 10 kilo’s bag with rice :-) But look at the bright side. He would love a pair of socks just tailor made for him as he can’t get the right size of shoes and socks from the market that easily. If I was lucky enough, this pair of socks might go with him for the next 10 years.

Generally speaking, I am happy with the final thing, except a couple of holes in the joining seam between heal and instep. I tried to pick up extra stitches to avoid it, but it was still not done perfectly. I love the little cable pattern and it offers the variety but yet not too complicated to leave the impression of immaturity, which makes a good pattern for any occasion, formal or casual.

I also tried a new tech to do it, called toe-up, which needs to cast on with figure 8 tech from the toe and work through till cast off on the cuff. It was exciting and challenging, but I have to say I like the other way much more as it gives you a much smoother look for the heel and there would not be any holes coming up at the end.

But there is nothing more important than what my husband feels about my work. He had said he loved them and happy to let them to stay with his other socks in his wardrobe. For me, it’s good enough to hear :-)

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Hot Pot

April 28, 2007 at 1:59 pm · Filed under Food & Cusine

It’s been a while since the last time we had a hot pot at home. I even couldn’t remember when the last time was. I had a craving for it recently. And that craving got stronger and stronger after last Friday I sat my interview for the new position. I asked my husband if we could have hot pot in weekend if I was successful on my new job. He said yes….. Yeah!!!

But the success on the new job is not the necessary condition to have hot pot. Last Saturday I was watching Kelly Wong’s cooking program on ABC. She made some hot pot for a bunch of Aussie friends. It was a big temptation that I had to resist when I was watching them eat, so after the program, I became more assertive about what I wanted, having hot pot very soon.

So here we are. We did shopping in Dickson. Bought a lot of stuff and a bottle of Tequila for drink. The whole list of ingredients are as follows:

Ginger, garlic and shallot for the soup;
Baijia Hot Pot Base for soup, mild spicy;
Two trays of lamb slices;
One can of preserved pork ham (Wu Can Rou);
Tofu Fish cubics;
Octopus fish balls;
Dried Chinese mushroom and pork balls;
Taro balls;
Tofu knots;
Mo Yu (a kind of knotted vermicelli);
See weeds;
Sprout bean;
Frozen Tofu;
Tong Hao (a kind of green vegetable);
Jin Zhen Gu (a kind of skinny mushroom);
Home made pickled radish (my husband made it);
A plate of cashews;

The dinner lasted till 11:00pm. I was satisfied and finished the wash-up at 12:30am. Also I am expecting to have a diarrheal on the next day, which would not be considered as an illness, but a healthy way to react to the intake and a good chance to clean the body. Haha….that’s what a Chinese Sichuan hot pot is suppose to do~

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Colour me up

April 27, 2007 at 10:19 am · Filed under Me Time

Lately I noticed that some colours that used to look great on me no longer do the magic.

Like peachy pink, I used to look great in it when I was a little kid, now becomes a disaster.

Orange, another colour I liked before 25 years old, also had lost its spell on me. But I still keep a wide range of clothes with different shades of orange. Sometimes when I wanted to go for something warm yet bright, I would go for orange. But none of them works like what it did before.

Also green, no matter what sort of green, seems strange to me now. One of my favourite green V shape short sleeve shirt has gone worn. With what it had happened, the green also has gone silence in my wardrobe.

Hehe, the classic little black, my timeless and never-failed choice also gets unconvincing now. It still looks okay on me but I had become less likely to go for black as for now, and most of the time since 30, I kind of don’t have a mood for black. If I had to, I usually would go for the black with special design. Otherwise it just looks awful and really sucks my day, dragging my mood down and down :-(

However, beige, had never been good for me, still doesn’t work well :-( I think only people has icing pale skin colour or really nice healthy shinning dark skin can wear beige. I am out of that forever :-8

Now I am working on a new colour scheme for daily wear by trying something new even taking a bit risk like violet, plum, brown, ocean blue, burgundy or even golden, silver and something sparkling.

I found light lilac and white still works great on me, but only limited to shirt and light top wear, or for a small area like an accessory. Pink is not bad, especially the pure solid dark pink looks lifting the face up. Yellow, which is always a good company for Asian people, is still the first choice if they want to achieve a younger looking, but you need to pay attention on the details of the clothes design. Chocolate works okay, but have to control the amount of black in it, otherwise looks not good. Light soft grey, especially with cashmere texture looks great. Red can be worn, but has to be very dark and pure. Blue is always tricky to me. The blue with grey, black and green shade works perfect on me, but the blue with red and white sucks :-(

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NAATI New System

April 26, 2007 at 9:15 am · Filed under Writing & Blogging

I have filled up the NAATI invitation form for 2007/2008 new directory and sent it through this morning. I couldn’t remember if I had ever replied to the last year updating form. I don’t even remember if I had received one. I reckon I didn’t as during the same period of time in the last year, I was back in China. Probably the mail got lost or ripped off by someone else from our mail box.

The funny thing is I thought I was still on the NAATI web directory until this morning I looked up, I couldn’t find my name. Okay, so I did miss a year. Anyway I had it in 2005/2006, and I did get some phone calls from people I don’t know asking me if I can do a job for them. In 2005/2006, I earned 200 dollars for doing a UK translation job. That was my very first income for translation in AU, not mentioning that I did earn the money for doing the same thing in China in the past 5 years. So I think keep my name in NAATI directory probably is still a good way to go as this directory is considered as the “Yellow Pages” for qualified Translators and Interpreters, even it’s not a major focus in my current life.

With the invitation form, attached was the NAATI news, which stated that all I & T practitioners who got accredited and recognised after 1 January 2007 have to be revalidated every 3 years. It means those new I & T have to go through something to keep their qualification updated. Fortunately it will not affect the old people; otherwise I would be crying :-) I don’t like going through the pain once again or sitting for the exam once again. My exam hood has been long ago over. If I have to take another one, it will be in a reality where I take it in a more sophisticated way, not just on a piece of paper or write something with a pen :-) Actually I believe that I am taking it everyday, sometimes easy, sometimes hard.

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DIY Toy for Mimi

April 24, 2007 at 10:33 am · Filed under Craft & Art

The old toy came with other stuff in the package has been totally destroyed by Mimi last night. It didn’t worry me at all as I don’t like the old one anyway. It’s made of plastic and cheap artificial feather and looks really lousy.

However, Mimi does like to chase it up in the house. It’s also a good way to help me and my husband to keep fit without running on a treadmill or riding a stationary bicycle. We usually spend at least half an hour to play with him everyday. It’s a pleasant thing to tease him with a swinging thing at the other end of rope and make him jump up and down, eyes rolling from left to right. He runs like a mad horse and in order to grab his quarry, he acts like a serious soldier in World War II, which made me laugh.

Since the old toy became a crap, I decided to fill up the toy gap ASAP. I dug up a pair of old pajama pants, and drew a shape of fish at the wrong side of cotton fabric, then sew the edges by hands (I haven’t got any sewing machine yet). After having done the most of seams, I left a small opening to fill up the stuffing. Before doing that, turn the inside out and cut the old worn cotton fabric to 1-2 cm wide of strips, and inserted them into the opening until the whole fish was filled up to a plump shape. Sew the last seam to seal the stuffing and finish off the whole shape, aha!!! The most important step was done!

Then I did some creative job. I used a blue and red mark pens to draw the details on the cotton fish. As the fabric of my PJ has a design of blue dots, I made best use of the two dots as the eyes of fish. I also drew a mouth, tail, scales and the a divider between the body and the fish’s head.

It only took me about 15 minutes for all the sewing and drawing. 15 minutes later, it’s all done!!! I tried out the new toy with Mimi. At the beginning he was really scared as I guess I made this toy so vivid :-) and the red colour was really stimulating and shocked him a hell lot. His first response was running away immediately, but curiosity is cat’s nature. He couldn’t help exploring, by walking slowly around the hanging fish for at least 2 minutes, touching the thing with his little paw cautiously from time to time. Soon he found that the new toy did no harm to him and not terrifying at all. He started to make his pouncing like a brave soldier jumping on his enemy. While me, held the rod on the other side of the fish as if holding a whip like a strict coach (actually I was laughing secretly) in the military academy , creating different levels of task difficulty to train my little student.

Sometimes I wonder if Mimi can tell this is just a game or something serious. I really want to know what’s going through his little head :-)

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