28/08/2011 - Ice Hockey @ Medibank Icehouse, Docklands

Yesterday I finally got the chance to check out the new ice rink in Melbourne along the Docklands. I had been meaning to go check it out for a long time, but whenever people had organised to go, I was always busy, so when a few friends invited me along to a ice hockey match when I was actually free, I jumped at it, even in the face of a pile of study for a test I aced in the end anyway.

First thing I noticed was the building itself. I’m a bit of a closet architecture nerd, and I was very impressed. Definitely loved the design.

These were the lovely folk who dragged me out of my study-induced haze <3

These were the first teams to play. I think they were like the 2nds of the league. I’m not 100% sure who either team was, but we yay’ed whenever someone scored a goal. We’re such good spectators! 

The next game was the main one – Melbourne Knights vs. Canberra Knights. Before the match, they had a mini welcoming ceremony, which was headed by Ted Baillieu. It was a nice touch, actually (depending on your opinion) and he had brought along some Chinese delegates as well. Super sweet! This was the ‘toss’ to decide direction of play (I think).

Now, the thing I noticed first with ice hockey was the sheer speed of these guys, with what seemed little effort. Pure gliding along the ice. It was glorious, and jealousy inducing. I filmed a play of the match, and this was the best I could get because of how fast the game was. Following the puck with via video was ten times harder than I expected. Check it out here.

The best bit about the game was to come. The violence. The fighting and smashing into side barriers! Now, I’m like the every day common folk in that I disagree with violence and that everything should be sunshine, happiness with rainbows in-between, but this is ice hockey! The violence is what makes it. I felt a little guilty about taking these pictures for a short period until I realised that the whole crowd was after blood. 

I think my favourite player for the entire game would’ve had to have been the goalie from the Canberra Knights. He was a coolcat, chilling out with some team mates during deliberations about all the fighting.

The Melbourne Knights ended up winning 5-2 in a pretty full on match. Yay Melbourne! They all shook hands at the end of the match, which was a nice show of sportsmanship considering all the fighting that just happened.

All in all, the game was freaking incredible! Worth the $15 I paid, that’s for sure. I’ve had a soft spot for NHL ice hockey for a while, and this game just cemented it. I had very low expectations since I had never really heard of a following in Australia for ice hockey, but I think this new ice rink is going to do wonders for the sport. It’ll be interesting to see how Melbourne takes it. Two of the guys I went with have sworn they’re going to learn how to play, but we’ll see.

The game itself took a while to get used to. There didn’t seem to be much structure, but I could relate to that in that it was very similar to water polo. You can get away with pretty much anything as long as they don’t have the puck/ball and that the move isn’t highly dangerous, difference being that you normally don’t see the dodgy stuff with water polo unless it’s Olympic level. Yay for underwater antics! Even then, some full on stuff happens in both sports. There is a general attacker and defender, but everyone goes everywhere. Goalie stays in there spot and tada, you have a game! 

It helps that there were incredibly cute guys in both teams (a few pedo staches around, too), but I’ll definitely go back and check out another game in the new season.

Nothing’s going to change my world.

I didn’t know where to put this post, so I’m shoving it here.

This is going to sound like a horrible prologue to a cheesy self help book, but tonight I was playing around with my newly bought stethoscope (in cute coral pink!), and after holding it up to walls, clocks and other miscellaneous things in my apartment, I sat there in silence and listened to my heart beat for about 15 minutes. The body is an incredible thing - the heart being one of the most incredible parts (tied with the brain in my opinion). It creates it’s own electrical circuits, beats over 2.5 billion times within it’s lifetime and if you didn’t have this clump of muscle, you pretty much die. You can live if a part of your brain shuts off.

So thinking about the whole average beats in it’s lifetime, it honestly started to sound like a ticking bomb as such.  One less than the last (I told you this was going to sound like a cheesy self help book). Felt like I had no aim. Just doing. I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about. Everyone has felt this. This is why I’m writing this up - record this shit, as much as I feel uncomfortably self important by doing it and a little weary.

I’ve always aimed to do different things in my life. I like being put out of my comfort zone in most cases. Sometimes I don’t know what to do when put out of it, but as long as I’ve experienced it, I’m happy. I decided to write up a list of things I will (not want) do within a lifetime. I don’t want to consider it a bucket list, but more of a collection of ideas. I don’t like to see it as a finale. I want it be a fluid collection of ideas - ever changing.

Some of these are going to be a little bit soul bearing in my books, but hey, comfort zones and all. I’ll call it my ‘Comfort Zone’ list. This is just a start. More will be added through time.

- Learn the cello. I love the cello. 

- Finish my nursing degree.

- Study political science.

- Own a little place I’ll call home. A 2 bedroom place that screams ‘me’. It’ll be my base. Doesn’t matter where I am in the world, I’ll know where home is.

- Be 110% vulnerable to someone. Be it a boyfriend, a friend, a teacher, a relative. Just someone. Total trust. No, I haven’t experienced this yet.

- Experience a meaningful long term relationship. I have absolutely no idea how to be in one. I’m not desperate for one, and it’s not to be just anyone, but being in my mid 20s and never experienced one, I’m pretty curious to what it’s like to know someone inside out on this level. Heartbreak and all.

- Save someone’s life. I’ve experience the in-between action of saving someone’s life, but paramedics/higher qualified persons have always rocked up to take over. This is purely a selfish thing, but the rush from bringing someone back would be incredible even though the real saving gets done while in hospital.

- Live at least 6mths overseas in a country I don’t know the language. I want to experience this culture shock that I’ve study at uni. 

- Run a 10km marathon. I’ve had a few hurdles when it comes to this as I’ve injured myself, but I’m starting off slowly again. Time, only in time.

- Sky dive with my dad. Only with my dad.

- I would like to donate my eggs to someone who wishes to have a child. This goes against nearly everything I believe in, but man, to be the source of someone’s ultimate happiness would be incredible.

- Be able to code in at least one computer language. I’m sure I’ll be giving lots of advice in this area before I go ahead with it. Chances are that it’ll be a requirement when I’m in my 60s. Just like how email is nearly enough required by everyone now.

- Meet Paul McCartney/Sufjan Stevens/Aung San Suu Kyi/Tom Baker… Ok, there are WAY too many to list here. 

- Fly a plane. Preferably a Tigermoth, but hey, a plane is a damn good start!

- Be the fucking best aunty ever. I have a feeling I will be that cool aunty that the niece and nephews will run to for the weekend. Can’t wait for them to get older :3

- Write a letter to my dad telling him how thankful I am for everything, just so he knows. My whole world will be shattered when he dies.

- Be financially secure, but not rich. Enough so I can be stress free. 

- Own all The Beatles music on vinyl. I’m no vinyl snob, but it’s honestly where it belongs.

- Stop being awkward. My ultimate downfall. 

- Stop being a know-it-all. It’s also another massive downfall.

- Volunteer at a cat shelter. Allergies and all.

- Go to Antartica.

- Be confident with shooting in film. And have fun with it.

- Hug people more. Hug them a LOT more. Big hugs.

This is just the start.

31/07/2011 - The Khan Mongolian BBQ, Exhibition St.

On a small whim a bunch of us headed to Exhibition St for some goodtime Mongolian BBQ. I’ve never had Mongolian. I had no idea what I was up for, except for some meat and good company. Erm!

After being on time, which is being early in this group of friends, I sat down to a near enough empty restaurant twiddling my thumbs. A quick glance around gave me a bit of a clue of what was to come - no real menu in front of us, a bar for sauces, a massive wok like thing behind a glass window and some trays of meat, prawn crackers and other assorted goodies. 

After the posse rock up, a catch up chat was hadand we head over to the meat trays, chose our desired meats, dipped over to the vegetable bar to add the fresh goodness, then headed over to the sauce bar.

Of course, I had to add ALL the sauces, including the extra hot chili oil. Who could resist extra hot chili oil!

And tada, hello self created meal! I was pretty proud of myself after this.

Next was the best bit - cooked right in front of me! It was like a scene out of Iron Chef or something, minus the bizarre ingredients.

 This was the result. Ok, it doesn’t look the best, but it sure did taste amazing! 

To be honest, I didn’t make the most of the whole experience. I wasn’t overly hungry and it was all you can eat. I’m not a huge dinner eater, so I think I’ll revisit during a lunch time one day soon. 

Next: My 3 day trip to the Grampians with some of the coolest people around! Also, this post really highlights my need for a better camera - my camera sucks when it comes to low light shots. Another thing to add to the buy list.

27/07/2011 - Pie Face on Elizabeth St, Melbourne

I went into a Pie Face for the first time today. I hadn’t had a pie in forever and a day, I was craving steak and it was on the way to the blood bank, so it was a must! The thing is that I have a certain method of eating pies. I personally think it’s the superior way of doing it since it’s a lot less messy, you get to taste the goodness one at a time and you can sit on it for a lot longer.

My hearty steak pie was calling out to me!

Off goes the lid to show awesome steakiness.

Add a very important ingredient in pie eating, then proceed to eat the meat with a spoon/fork.

After that you have the lovely pastry to eat all by itself! 

And BAM, that’s how you eat a meat pie my friends.

Pie Face is a touch expensive for a pie, but the steak in it was incredibly delicious, so I have a feeling I’ll be spoiling myself again with Pie Face sometime in the future.

10/07/2011 - 1000 Steps & Yarra Valley: Harvest Produce Store, Tarrawarra Museum (Archibald Prize) & De Bortoli Winery.

So, the Tutankhamum exhibition wasn’t really worth while posting about. There were beautiful artifacts within the exhibition, but a lot of what I was wanting was missing. Plus the fact that there were no pictures allowed, I didn’t think it deserved the post. ANYWAY!

Sunday was a massively jam packed day. Myself and a good friend, James, decided to go on a mini road trip. No real idea of what we were going to do, and only had decided on location a day or two before hand, but it worked itself out along the day. It was a cold, typical winter Melbourne weather day, but that didn’t deter. 

Having had an early breakfast with the family, I was already a little pooped, but rocking up to James’ place to find out that we were stopping off at the 1000 steps in Dandenong kind of excited me, but even the thought of it tired me. I wasn’t prepared the slightest - jeans, fabric shoes and an old calf injury to boot, but hey, I had never done it before so I was going to give it a crack. 2/3s up the steps, I had to turn back. So much pain in those calves, but James finished it up. It was raining, so I didn’t get any pictures.

The Dandenongs is an extremely gorgeous part of the world. The trees towerinng, everything was incredibly green and even while it was raining you could hear wildlife all over the place. After the steps, we did the scenic route through the hills and headed towards our lunch location : Harvest Produce Store/Healesville Hotel. I silly enough didn’t get any pictures of the place, but the food was worth it the wait and the slight inconvenience we had trying to get a seat and dealing with rude people. The coffee was pretty decent. Personally, I had a beef burger with some amazing home made chutney and James’ had a root vegetable pie.

Having detoured to the steps, we sort of had to hurry it along and head to the Tarrawarra Museum to check out the Archibald Prize exhibition. Now, I’m no art guru, unlike James, so I purely appreciated the artwork with what I understood. There was supposedly a lot of context that I didn’t understand, but I judged purely with what I saw. There was an amazing picture of Hugo Weaving that I personally would call my favourite because of the techniques used (thick brush strokes, slightly distorted because of this but real enough to relate to - how boring!) . It’s in a similar sort of style as last year’s winner. The portrait of Cate Blanchett would have to be the second favourite out of the lot. If you get some time up your sleeve, do take the time to drive up and check it out. It’s worth it.

(Margaret Olley by Ben Quilty - Last year’s winner)

From there, we headed out to my first ever winery visit! The De Borteli winery was still opened and we got a good 45mins of wine and cheese tasting. I felt like I had stepped up a class or two in the world! Everything I had tasted amazing, but I had decided before I had walked in that I was going to buy a bottle of red. A good red is a winter winein my opinion, andI settled on a 2010 Melba Mimi for $30. Can’t wait for a good occasion to crack it open. 

So, here is a bunch of pictures of the winery!

The place was gorgeous. It’s somewhere I’d like to go during summer to see it in all it’s glory.

De Bortili’s winery. Everyone was lovely!

Partner in (wine) crime.

More pretty!

After a long hard decision, this was the winner! All I need now is some decent red wine glasses to make sure it’s drank the way it was designed to be. 

It was an amazing day and I came back home incredibly exhausted, but happy. 

24/06/2011 - Ethiopian Food @ Abesha Ethiopian Bar & Restaurant, Footscray.

You know that restaurant that you’ve driven past a million times, each time promising yourself that you’ll drag you and a few friends along to one night? This is that place for me. Since I used to live a 5 minute walk from this place, I was really struggling with excuses to the reason why I hadn’t done it yet (forgetting was the most convenient one). As it happened, it wasn’t me that actually organised the outing, but just gave the venue, so I even failed the organising part of it. The reviews were more than glowing, so I was actually pretty excited for the week leading up to the foodfest and company that was ahead.

The place was pretty dead, sadly enough, but that didn’t dampen the spirits, especially after seeing the food come out. It was incredibly warm and cosy, so none of us seemed to mind. First thing we had was a couple of servings of a beef filled pastry that was deep fried, which didn’t last long at all as it was pretty damn tasty. Good start!

Our mains started to come out. First thing I need to highlight is that you eat this food with your hands. No cutlery. You felt like you were doing a bad thing and you could hear one of those older relatives barking ‘USE YOUR KNIFE AND FORK’ in the back of your mind.

Ok ok, I lie, there were spoons to scoop the platters onto your own plate. This was the first thing to come out. It was the four combo vegetarian special. 

To the left was one part of the four combo meat special. It was potato, some form of meat (I think lamb) and another orange vegetable of some sorts. The one in the middle is what I ordered, which was grounded beef with hot sauce, ginger, garlic and some other ‘special spices’. I wish I took a picture of the menu so I could remember the actual name of these meals. 

This is the bread we lovingly called ‘pancakes’ since they surely felt like em’! The taste was nothing like pancake, though, instead it had a real underling sour taste to it. So fluffy!

This was part of the four combo meat special. I’m not entirely sure what it was either, but it tasted pretty awesome. I think we came to the conclusion that it was some form of cabbage with other various vegetables running through it.

This bean plate was one that I didn’t get much of a go at, but it was pretty much a green bean and (looks like) spinach plate with some sort of sauce across it. 

In the end, I’m so glad that I FINALLY got around to going to this place and there are no regrets. The food was incredibly tasty, the price was pretty amazing for the quality and the staff were pretty decent as well. I think we were wanting a little bit of guidance at the start with what to order, but eh, diving right in did the job as well. Big thanks to Tu, Dani, Mitch and Bianca who dragged me along finally <3

As a side note, I think my aim to do this whole blog with mostly an iPhone camera has changed, especially in the dark. Ripping out the dSLR like a wanker from now onwards.

Next: I’m heading into the Tutankhamun exhibition @ Melbourne Museum this Tuesday, so hopefully I’ll be able to take a few pictures and do an update.

The introduction : Scuba Diving @ Portsea

Hello! Welcome! 

This blog is designed to be a bit of a memory bank for my poor feeble mind that can’t seem to remember all the cool stuff that happens to it. I’ve come to the realisation that I’ve done some mighty awesome things with myself, but I’m horrible at remembering it all. The aim is to be able to flick through, remember those details that I’ve forgotten and recall that I’ve done some pretty awesome things in life. 

I also hope that it could become a good resource for people if they’re looking for a good place to eat or go somewhere different. 

Scuba diving in Portsea, Victoria.

I’m starting off with something on the smaller scale of things as I haven’t been away anywhere big recently. Over the weekend just gone (19th of June, 2011), I got a free ticket to a basic scuba diving lesson from a lovely anon on the internet who couldn’t use it anymore. It was with a company called ICD Scuba. It was pretty much an introduction to the basics - signaling, breathing, getting to know equipment. Had a lovely instructor named Nath and 3 other people who were part of the group. 

Above is where we went to do our basic training. It was a lovely little spot just down the road at the Blairgowrie marina, but fuck, it was freezing. My feet and hands were actually in pain from the cold once in the water. Thank god for numbing!

I also got to say that the gear was incredibly heavy! I swear I’ve lifted lighter people than this tank of O2. I thought the stairs down to the shore was incredibly hard, but I was yet to discover the harder part - going back up while all the gear was wet. 

When we got into the water, we were in pairs. My partner struggled with the skills a bit, which delayed us, but it meant I got to play around a little more. The feeling of being able to breath underwater was incredibly surreal. We had to demonstrate that we could find our breathing apparatus if we lost it, that we could get rid of water from the apparatus and that we could get rid of water from our goggles. I hated the last part as we had to let our goggles fill right up with water. Not the nicest of feelings. 

The cool part was after all that! Once we started to swim around the cove area, we got to see some cool sea life. Little plants that retracted when touched. Little creatures walking inbetween the barnicles. Another little world, really. All around the pier’s pillars there was all sorts of fauna and flora, but all too soon we had to head back.

It was a pretty good day, and the drive there and back was relaxing. Heading back it was one of those sunsets where it was black rain clouds with this little spot letting in streams of the sunset sunlight. Amazing. 

Next: I’m trying Ethiopian food for the first time this Friday.