Work

So it has been quite a while since I have been able to update the blog, work has been picking up a good bit lately (all of the first tests and papers happen around the same time). Also, ramadan has definitely tired me out, I'll get home after an afternoon of classes and just want to sleep. And unfortunately for the amount of work I have to do, that is exactly what I do.

I do have a nice picture though, there are these really cool chairs on the southern campus that i like to relax at, they're really nice for just sitting in the sun and reading.

Legitimate Cooking

This past Saturday, being the first Saturday I didn't have to go SCUBA diving in two weeks, I had a lot of time to try something I had wanted to for the longest time. Instead of immediately rushing away from morning practice, I had time to take some pictures of the boathouse/the view from the dock, and then walk over to the fishmarket, get something cheap, and cook it for real.

The boathouse here is directly on the water, with the dock extending from it onto the water. The bridge in this picture is the Anzac Bridge, which I row under every morning we go out.


This next picture is of the boathouse itself, from the very far corner of the dock. So here I'm standing with the water behind me, looking up at the boathouse. Evidently the top floor is a very very formal restaurant (actually called The Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay), which I would like to try at some point.


After practice on Saturday, I went to the fish market. The coolest part about it is that I could actually see the fish market from the boathouse, here it is in the distance, it's the blue flat building. This picture is from the dock, but to the right, as opposed to the left where the Anzac Bridge is.


Finally, when I got back to the apartment from little adventure I was ready to cook. It was still early, so I did some research and went out and picked up all of the little various ingredients for the recipe I found. The guy at the fish market recommended I get Rainbow Trout for a first time fish cooker. I took his advice, and decided on a Macademia Orange Honey Trout (with potato) recipe. If you think it sounds delicious, you should have tasted it. These are all of the ingredients before I started cooking. The orange juice in the background was just for me as I prepared/cooked.


And this is the finished product. Boiled potato with chives, and the fish with the macademia orange honey sauce poured on top (plus of course, more orange juice). From here on out, every new saturday is going to be a new fish and a new recipe. At least that's the plan.


I'd normally be much better about posting for the blog, but its been a long week, plus tomorrow is my first test of the semester, and I've been spending a lot of time making sure it goes exactly how I like. The good thing is that it's in Critical Thinking, which I think I have a pretty good grasp on, so hopefully it'll be a good confidence boost to start the wave of tests and papers coming up soon.

Busy busy busy

This past week has been quite busy, which is the big reason for not having posted here in a while. I do however, have some more good pictures.

Earlier this week (Sunday) I completed my SCUBA certification, I am now a certified open water recreational diver. I'm trained to go up to 30m deep, any more than that and they recommend taking extra courses because of the extra difficulties that come with that kind of depth.

This is the dive site where I had my final dive before being certified. It was pretty interesting jumping off the cliff (on the left) into the water, and then to get back you had to wait for a big wave to pick you up and literally drop on a protruding rock (on the right)



This is a picture of my certification card that enables me to rent equipment and book dives. Not a great picture, but it was after a day of diving and my face hurt. The card is on my very official DiveLog, where I keep track of my dives, equipment rented, etc so I always have my most current info at hand.


This is a picture of lunch I had a few days ago, something I felt looked really cool and deserved a picture for sure. Its basically a pasta with garlic chicken and tomato sauce, with some cheese and water.


As for Wednesday's picture, I thought the view from my window would work best, especially considering someone put up a Canadian flag outside their door. They may have taken down since then, it rained a bit today.


And finally, and most recently, this is a picture from when I was preparing to study for Macroeconomics. I had a lemonade, plus I found a really nice spot in the quad to sit on a mini-wall of sorts and read, while I could overlook the big tree.


I don't know if that's a picture a day, I have more on my computer though. I'll try and be better about it, tomorrow I plan to go to the Sydney Fish Market really early in the morning (straight after crew practice) to get some of the top of the catch, plus hopefully it won't be too busy.

OCEAN DIVE

The title of this post definitely deserves to be in all-caps because of how amazing it was. I went on three, 40 minutes, beautiful dives in Gordon's Bay, a bit north of Sydney. Today was our skills test, so we had to show the instructors how we could remove and return our face masks and regulators (the thing you breath out of). But it would be too easy to show them how to do it on land, we had to sit on the bottom of the bay (a good 10m deep) and remove our gear and put it back on. It was scary, but now if it ever happens on accident I feel very prepared and able to fix any problem underwater.

Yesterday, all I did was go to class, nap, eat, and go to sleep. For some reason, I was extremely tired, so I took the day off from doing anything exciting. For this reason, I figure today will have two pictures instead of one, to make up for not having one yesterday. This one is of the coast that we entered the water from. The narrow, somewhat flat area near the middle is where we walked in. It was actually pretty scary because the waves would go from small to big really quick and if you didn't kick hard (really hard), they would knock you backwards and into the rocks. Quite the exciting rush.


And of course, I can't spend all day in a SCUBA outfit and not take a picture. The gear is literally close to 30-35 kilos (close to 70 pounds), and in the picture you can't see the enormous air cylinder strapped to my back. The face mask came up a little high, we're going out diving again tomorrow, to a nicer site, maybe then I'll make sure to take a picture where you can see the foolish grin that anyone has after exhausting themselves scuba diving.


Speaking of foolish grins, a funny thing that happened in the water was that we came up to a school of long, skinny silvery fish. The entire school were just drifting together, somehow all the same distance from the fish around them. I thought it was so cool that I was seeing them up close that I started grinning, and the grin shifted my face mask and filled it with water. Luckily, they taught us a really cool method of blowing out of your nose and holding the mask at the correct angle to clear it.

Tomorrow, a new dive, more pictures. Plus, certification. So probably, more dives.

Trifecta

This post is going to make up for the last few days that I haven't been able to sit down and make a proper post. It's not going to be too long, but I've some interesting new pictures (one for every day, remember?) that I thought I should put up.

So back at Davidson, my favorite place to sit down and knock out a good 4 or 5 hours of work is the 'stacks', in the basement of the library. Basically its one floor of dense, high bookshelves that muffle out all noise and make for a great study environment. This picture (for Tuesday) is of the library. The library is the terraced building on the left, while on the right, are the stacks of Sydney Uni. You could fit the entirety of Davidson's library in just that section at least 3 times. It's also a very intimidating building up close, it is quite massive.


This next picture (from Wednesday) is of the lecture hall my International Econ and Finance class is in. You could probably fit all of the juniors at Davidson in this room. As you can tell by the pictures I've been taking and writing about, I'm still adjusting to the ridiculous size of this school.


And finally, for today, I was sitting outside waiting for my Critical Thinking class to start (I had gotten there a bit earlier than I expected), when I saw this really interesting gargoyle, right next to stained glass, framed a bit by some sunlight. Alot of the older styled buildings on campus look like this all over, basically the buildings here either look very modern (library, stacks, etc), or very old, oxford/cambridge style buildings (great hall, courtyard, etc)

Rhythm

So today wasn't terribly exciting, I had a really good row this morning at practice, classes went well (well just the one, Democratic Theory) I found a new place to eat lunch, its a really nice patch of grass hidden around the main academic building.

Other than today being a bit more low-key than usual, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Today's picture is of the inside of the Quad (the main academic complex that I was so obsessed with photographing earlier)

Fun little fact about myth and lore on campus, they say that if you haven't started studying for your finals by the time the big tree in the picture above blooms (it turns bright purple), then you will fail.

Regulate the regulator

So today, I actually got to breath underwater, which was amazing. setting aside the near 100lb system you need to wear to do it, today just blew my mind. I'm absolutely exhausted though, again it was a whole day of learning and practicing. next weekend however, we are going on ocean dives! on both saturday and sunday! luckily, I don't have too much reading before I can just get in bed and sleep smoothly and solidly.

This is all of the gear I had to put on (in very specific order and manner) before getting in the water. I only used the cylinder directly to the left of the fins, the other three cylinders were for other people, but all the rest of it was on me. Next weekend hopefully I get a picture with inside of all of the gear, unfortunately as soon as i took this picture my battery ran out.

SCUBA duba doo

Today was probably one of the most exhausting saturdays i've had in a really long time. I had morning practice, which went well, until i accidently flipped my boat (a single, so luckily i didn't involve anyone else in my mistake). And Blackwattle Bay, in Sydney Harbour, in Winter, is cold.

After that, i had my first day of SCUBA training. We did a lot of snorkeling, swimming around (in some more very, very cold water), and SCUBA theory. Now i get to sit in my room and finish my reading for classes. Tomorrow's another day of SCUBA training, it should hopefully be more fun than today was, I think we actually go into the ocean tomorrow.

As for today's picture, I really wish i had something related to practice this morning, or to messing about in SCUBA gear all day...so this is a picture of the guarantee that came with the face mask i bought...in italian. Evidently, the guarantee is only valid if you use the mask in Italy. Oh well...

Sustenance

I did some more cooking today, so that's what the picture of the day will be of, what i've cooked. Except that this is more than putting rice and water into a rice cooker and flicking the ON switch, I feel like I've actually COOKED this time.

First, I bought some chicken breasts. Then i cut them up in about 1inch cubes, and put them in a frying pan over some olive oil and fresh minced garlic. By recommendation of one of my housemates, i made sure to heat the oil and garlic before adding the chicken, so they browned quite well. and they came out amazing. just enough garlic to taste but not to overwhelm, and cooked just enough to be moist but not raw.

I had some of those, with rice (of course), for dinner. then, later in the night, with nothing to do, i figured I'd do some more cooking. A week ago, i bought some sweet potatoes because I knew I'd end up doing something with them. So i washed, cut, and peeled them. Boiled them, buttered them, cinnamoned them, and mashed them. Also, came out perfectly. (near perfectly, there's still room for improvement)

So this is the chicken in a tupperware, just as I'm beginning to boil the sweet potato cubes.

Very Merry Merewether

It is a little late here in Sydney, but I'm glad I'm able to put up today's picture in time to keep with my picture-a-day promise (two days and running so far)

I thought this view was really cool, its from the courtyard inside the Merewether building, which houses most of the economics courses. I had gotten there a little early (I have to leave my apartment a good half and hour before my classes to get there on time to get a good seat), so I took a picture.

Nice Rice and Spice

This post is going to be about food (mostly). Wonderful, awesome, home-made food. After some exploration, I came across a rice cooker. Immediately excited, I bought a 5 kilo bag of rice for 8 bucks, and cooked just 3 cups. it was maybe a fifth or sixth of the amount of rice in the bag. 3 cups of dry rice came out to a lot, a lot more rice than i expected. it has lasted me SIX dinners! I also bought pre-cooked, pre-flavored tuna from the grocers, little tiny cans for 1.50 each. just heat up a bowl of rice, mix in a small can of tuna, and voila, you can have 6 dinners for less than 12 dollars. I'm going to experiment a bit more with the rice cooker, evidently you can also cook vegetables, chicken and fish in a rice cooker, with the rice. I can only imagine how good that will make the rice taste. I've got to get through this batch first though.

I found a little local-owned lebanese restaurant down the road, where i can get a healthy tub of hummus (home-made, freakin delicious hummus) for just 10 dollars. which is 8.25 american. that, with the great pita bread i found at the local grocery store, makes for the perfect midday snack. I also have been buying hands of bananas two at a time, one decidedly less ripe than the other, so when i get through the good hand, the other one has ripened.

I started a SCUBA certification course, and they gave us a textbook (really, a thick textbook) and the first chapter basically said, if you die scuba diving, you're an idiot and deserve to. The entirety of personal safety and responsibility is put on the diver, but it was a little disconcerting. I'm really excited to get into it and breath underwater.

All of my hand and finger callouses are beginning to rebuild, now that i've been on the water at least a few times. im starting to get the hang of this sculling thing, it's a lot of fun. The only that's not so fun is how the boathouse is two miles away from where i live, so my warmup before practice is leaving the apartment early and running there.

I was relaxing under a tree the today, and figure i'd take a picture. one of my housemates suggested I take a picture every day, and post it with a caption. So I'll start today, with this one. I'm also taking a picture of myself with my webcam every day, and at the end of the semester i'll make a video out of the pictures. I think the effect'll be cool, i've seen some other people do it before.

Chilling at Darlington Campus, University of Sydney