Acn uyo unjmubel tihs?

Time: 7:00 pm
Day: Monday-Friday
Location: The North Shore bound train
Obsession: Anagrams.

MX has a section devoted to them on the puzzles page and I just can't get enough.

When I do them, I feel like the huge part of my brain that never gets used, is flexing its cerebral muscles. When I solve them, I feel an enormous sense of satisfaction swelling up inside my belly. Can words be any more fun? I silently declare like the nerdy nerd I am.

Then I sit back and enjoy the rest of the train ride home. Sometimes I even indulge in a banana, because man did my brain work really hard right then!

Words that scream what they mean

Miss K Kaif and I will often be talking about something when suddenly we'll hit a roadblock- a linguistic crater- an impassable trench- because for this particular story, at this particular point in the narrative, the English word just won't do. She proclaims:

Damn it! We have this word in Persian and it means like shiny, glistening and really super sparkling (insert Persian word).

And I will nod, as if I completely understand.

The truth is, I do. When you eat something funky, in Korean you say that you feel kipponuppah. A word that equates to feeling so badly gross, unhappy, like you want to cleanse your insides with Domestos, if only it wouldn't kill you. In English, you have to say at least ten different words to get the same effect.

Likewise in Persian they have an infinitely more colourful and precise vocabulary-- they even go as so far as to discriminate between silent farts and noisy farts: chosidam and goozidam respectively. Hilarious, huh? In Korean, we also have a bunch of words that mean fart: Pboong, bpahngu and podt (the last one may have been made up by my mum but I've definitely heard her say it before).

Why is English so comparatively boring? Maybe I just need to learn more words...

A week of short commutes...

Man from Mars was in Sydney for the entire week and his work shacked him up at the Crowne Plaza, Darling Harbour. Talk about living next door to your work, Man from Mars had to walk half a short block to get to his office, while I had to walk up the road to get to mine. Compared to the normal 6 am start, I luxuriated amongst the sheets until 7:30 pm, snuck mountains of pastries from the breakfast buffet and handed them out amongst my work mates like the the Baker Godmother that I'm not.

Unfortunately, the convenience of living in the city made us lazier and by night we hibernated in the hotel room, venturing only as far as the end of the street to go to a tiny Japanese restaurant that specialised in "half-size" dishes so that we didn't even have to exercise our brain muscles: noodles or teriyaki salmon? Why not both!

All this easy living caught up with us and by Friday we were pining for some home cooked food. We swung by my house, ate some genuine Korean courtesy of my mum and were mildly irritated by the screechy tones of the narrator on Escape to the Country, an informative, if not slug-paced show on 7Two about old English couples who have decided to make the seachange to the country. Did you know that in some of those countryside towns, you can get massive houses with quirky medieval features and rolling hills for your backyard-- all for 300,000 pounds? Bargainables!

On Saturday we drove to Manly (pic above), copped some fabulous Australian sunshine, a massive Canadian breakfast and then drove to Chatswood to watch Inception. What an awesome movie. Although I think it drained Man from Mars and I of a couple of hundred brain cells and buckets of sense because halfway through the drive home Man from Mars accidentally told me that:

"you tend to get too close to the left side of the lane when you drive" and me in my hyper night blinded state shouted:

No I don't! It's just because it's dark and I can't see!

Anyway, that marked the start of a pretty circular argument- me preaching about the importance of Man from Mars picking his words carefully and him telling me to stop putting words in his mouth. Who me? We pretended to ignore each other for the rest of the night and Man from Mars made us make up this morning by offering a conciliatory hug. I returned the hug grudgingly and he laughed.

This morning we trained it in to the city and he took a bus to the airport. I popped into work and was so chuffed because there on my desk was a sweet little package from Miss CalmFarm. In the past couple of weeks we've been exchanging stories about what our passion is, how we can combine our passion with work-- is it even possible? Anyway, always the thoughtful, classy one, she got me "The Element- How Finding your Passion Changes Everything" by Sir Ken Robinson.

I'm so excited to read it. You guys should too- I'm a couple of chapters in and it's riveting stuff.

One born every minute...

So I'm watching this documentary on SBS called "One Born Every Minute". It won a BAFTA for best documentary and it shows what women go through during child birth.

Anyway, one particular lady is in labour with her second child. She had complications during the birth of her first child and after being in labour for 30 hours (or something crazy long), they had to do a C-section. Now that she's having her second kid, she's scared the same thing's going to happen again.

If tv screens could open, I'd reach in and slap her boofhead husband. She's been in labour for 9 hours and he goes:

"It's going to be the same as last time, we're going to be here until tomorrow, then you're going to go from 8 cm to 1cm, then 9 cm and then to 1 cm and then we're going to have to do the c-section like last time. If you'd just been firm from day 1 and said "I want to have a c-section" then we could have booked it then and you wouldn't be going through this again. It's your own doing. Millions of people do this every day. What is it? Do you have a low pain threshold, is that it?"

Are you freaking kidding me?

So I ran around like a headless chook...

http://swwcog.org/regional_issues/chicken/new_chicken.jpg

I'm a regular "I bring my lunch from home" kind of girl (read: too cheap to spend much on food tightarse who frankly, is bored brainless by her daily sambo/yoghurt and food combo). The only times I buy my lunch is if it's someone's farewell, my birthday or when we have no bread. I'm a creature of routine, so it works well for me most of the time.

Last Tuesday, it was none of the above. But as Man from Mars was visiting Sydney for work (which meant we were staying at the Hilton (!) courtesy of his work), I decided that I may as well enjoy the day as an exception to the rule. No brought lunch it was.

So 1pm rolled around and Miss DB, Mr Funky Glasses, Miss Tiny and I forged on down the road to World Square. Miss Tiny and I were leading the pack and we discussed the most suitable option:

Me: I had Thai twice last week, I'm so not in the mood for Thai, man

Miss Tiny: Same- if I eat it again I think it'll make me feel sick

So, Thai Passion was ruled out.

Then we debated Japanese. World Square is home to two Japanese eateries and as I only really knew of one of them I nodded like a dog on a dashboard to that one.

If only I knew.

The restaurant was pretty busy and we all ordered quickly to make it back to work in time. Miss Tiny and I were so hungry we kept making moon eyes at the pictures on the menu and declaring "I am so hungry. Omg I am so hungry!". I went for the tried and tested teriyaki chicken combo which came with rice, miso soup, fruit yoghurt and some other dip that resembled tzatziki. It looked pretty damn good and given my famished state, it was only natural that I selected the biggest and juiciest piece of chicken to introduce my stomach to the marvellous meal it was to be.

Or could have been.

Blame it on Masterchef, but ever since the episode where Callum undercooked the chicken because he kept stuffing up his yoghurt, I've always been extra observant when it comes to the chicken on my plate. On Tuesday, my eagle eyes were out and I bit carefully into the thinnest part of the segment. Then I turned the piece of chicken to survey its cross-section:

Perfectly white. Nicely cooked.

Satisfied, this was swiftly followed by another bite, and then another.

Then I got to the thickest part of my juicy piece of chicken and I bit into it, throwing all caution into the wind. I examined the cross-section half-heartedly, knowing it would be white-- well cooked.

But it wasn't.

It was pink. It was raw. It was shiny.

I practically ralphed. Out came the chicken I only *just* avoided swallowing.

This isn't cooked I said to the waitress.

She was most apologetic and giggled in that impish way that Asians generally do when they're uncomfortable and don't know what more to say (I only know this because I'm Asian and I do it too. The uncomfortable giggle is almost number 1 on my reactions to the world's most awkward situations).

Needless to say, from that moment on my appetite was lost and I lamented the chances of me getting salmonella poisoning as a result of my unfortunate encounter with the raw midsection of the fat juicy chicken piece. The responses were all upbeat:

Miss DB: Nah, you'll be fine. My sister cooked chicken last night and then my mum cut into it and said "What did you do!" because it was raw in the middle, so then she went back and cooked it again and it was fine.

Me: But then no one actually bit into it!!

Miss DB: Yeah, no one bit into it, but don't worry, you'll be fine!

Bless her heart, Miss DB was only trying to help, but her story wasn't particularly analogous and I was still concerned. In the end it was my sister who gave the best "from past experience" tale:

Don't worry, I did that once before. It was cooked around the edges right? And then you spat out the raw bit, you didn't swallow it, right? I've done that before. It's fine. It just feels nasty at the time.

Then I asked her who cooked her raw chicken and she said:

Me!! AHAHAHAH!!

Well that was enough for me. I flushed my digestive tract with 3 cups of tea and tonnes of water and hoped for the best.

That night, Man from Mars and I had fun at the Hilton. The rooms are awesome. The pillows are phenomenal. Everything is automatic, sleek and minimalist, but luxurious. We fell asleep at around 11pm, and at 1:30 am, I woke up with cramping bowels. Guess who, don't sue? It was the raw chicken!

Thankfully, it only lasted an hour and I was back in amongst the pillows by 3 am.

Moral of the story (in case it wasn't obvious enough): Always check your chicken!!!

Stuck by the pocket of their pants...

http://www.duerkopp-adler.com/export/sites/duerkoppadler/commons/procedure/12A-07.jpg

It's pretty funny when you see a guy trying to get up off his seat, but he can't because the armrest has slotted into his trouser pocket. I've seen so many guys being afflicted by the rogue armrest-- And I can't help but tsk sympathetically: Will they ever learn?

Mr Russia even tore the pocket of his Hugo Boss suit pants after getting up too fast while his armrest slept in his pocket, while this morning an unassuming business man ensconced in his IPad made three attempts to get up (got whiplash each time) before realising that it was his trouser pocket holding him down.

Poor pockets, they should seriously design suit pants that zip up.

Can you believe it's August?

This weekend my sister came to visit. Last night we wanted to watch Inception, but when we got to the movies, the queue was 5 lines thick and at least 40 people long.

Can't be fecked! we declared and went to get a couple of oovie dvds instead. Admittedly, we didn't make the best selections. She chose Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince while I chose Valentines Day. We struggled through the first 20 minutes of Valentines Day while my sister "told you so!"-ed me, before submitting to Harry Potter. I "told you so!-ed her straight back because both of us were yawning and staring listlessly at the tv. Who knew it could be so hard to get some entertainment on a Saturday night?

Meanwhile, today was enormously fun. I drove us to Strathfield (driving practice, right there!) and we had a fabulous Vietnamese feast of crispy skin chicken, tomato rice, sweet and sour Vietnamese soup and rice paper wraps dipped in peanut sauce. We also scored a new jacket each from this awesome Korean shop that's always "closing down". Mine's navy while her's is orange with a bit of sparkle. Anyone with Asian proportions should go suit shopping/winter coat/work skirt shopping in Strathfield- trumps every Cue/Ojay/Review any day and the pants are made for people with short waists and short legs.

Afterwards we picked up some Korean food for the parentals and then went to Hornsby Westfields because my sister is on a mission to find a giant stuffed panda- for no other reason other than to decorate her giant bed. We went to Target and emerged panda-less, but we did score a SpiderMan pez dispenser that boxes like Mike Tyson. You push the levers down at the back and the SpiderMan gives quick jabs-- if you don't watch your back, he could take your eye out. Anyway, my sister was walking around Target with Spiderman sparring wildly, and the look on this 3 year old curly haired toddler's face when he caught sight of it was classic-- he walked past, mesmerised by Spiderman, mouth hanging open with a delighted smile on his face. We should have given it to him right there on the spot, but we were having too much fun with it. We also saw this little old lady browsing the racks with a magnifying glass- every time she had to look at the size or the price of a garment, she would peer into her giant magnifying glass, evaluate the cost, and then move on. It was incredibly funny, bless her little shopaholic heart.

So tomorrow is the start of a new week. Hope it's a good one for you!