ragingyoghurt

Category Archives: misc

my aunt’s best friend died on sunday. she lived a couple of streets away from my aunt, and we saw her every now and again when we went up that way. she wasn’t ill, and she wasn’t that old. 56, according to the news report.

a 56-year old cherrybrook woman died after losing control of her blue toyota tarago van on the golden highway at dunedoo about 2.30pm.

at that time, we were in chatswood, just finishing up a lunch of shanghainese dumplings and garlicky eggplant, and trading tales with my cousins about our assorted ailments (me: a hurty sternum; my cousins: a current cold and a recent kidney infection). my aunt was reaching into her handbag for a small foil packet of hard candy made up with mysterious chinese herbs. she gave then to me, and said they would be good for my cough; it had made hers much better.

meanwhile, the van had come off the road, and had flipped and rolled, several times, and had come to rest on its roof. the five passengers managed to free themselves, but my aunt’s friend in the driver’s seat was trapped in the wreckage.

the news report mentioned the other passengers: a female with broken bones, two men aged 58 and 27, a 24-year-old woman, another woman whose age was unknown…

you couldn’t assume that the men were her husband and her son, and the first woman her sister, and younger woman her daughter. the third woman was her other sister, who had only last month been in an induced coma overseas, from a lung infection, and who had miraculously recovered, and come to australia for a recuperative holiday.

you wouldn’t know that the woman trapped in the car had been a nurse, and an artist, a painter with a studio in her backyard. she could whip up a batch of pumpkin scones just like that, and once, when she somehow coaxed the kid away for an afternoon, she whipped up a tray of pink cupcakes, from a packet mix, but still. that afternoon, the kid returned with take-home cupcakes, a case of lovely waxy crayons, a sketchbook, and a pair of enormous sparkly fairy wings. on her fridge door, this woman displayed a picture of a mermaid that the kid had drawn. the last time i saw her, almost six months ago, was across a grimy laminate table, over bowls of mediocre phở delivered by suitably surly waiters.

she didn’t make it out of the van. she died while the emergency crew tried to save her. it’s strange: i didn’t really know her that well, but i feel the break in my periphery.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 2 March 2010 at 11:03 pm

permalink | filed under misc

it’s beginning to look a lot like xmas! there’s a dark cherry mocha frappucino awaiting me a starbucks, but now that starbuckss are few and far-between, i made do yesterday with the festive cookies ‘n’ christmas beverage at gloria jeans.

[ it pained me to order it -- i had to stop speaking halfway through and check the signboard to see that it really was called "cookies. and. christmas". ]

but it didn’t hurt to drink it. it was mildly chocolatey, and not overly minty, and if that doesn’t seem too exciting (it wasn’t), well! the self-serve sprinkles at the condiment bar will surely do you in.

here are some other exciting things i’ve found lately:

sweet william not nuts chocolate bar
i remember being told about dairy-free sweet william chocolate a few years ago by this vegan girl i knew. because i’m not vegan, or lactose intolerant, i did not think to venture down that route.

but! a new variety i stumbled upon at banana joes last week compelled me to put one in my basket. “not nuts!” it proclaims on the wrapper, for those allergic to peanuts as well as dairy. or for those, like me, who do not care for peanuts in their chocolate. instead, it is packed full of whole roasted soy beans. hurrah! the crunchy, beany little nuggets are a treat indeed, and surprisingly, so is the chocolate: smooth and creamy (though a little too sweet), and devoid of any of that weird soy flavour you get in regular non-asian soy milk products.

how do they do it? amazing!

also…

coca cola lip balm
i really do like coca cola, but i really have to be in the mood to drink it. i have to crave it, actually, and i give in to that craving two, maybe three times a year. oh, to feel that caustic fizz work its way down my throat is a wonderful thing.

voila — coca cola lip smackers!

the bumper pack i bought had regular coke lip balm, vanilla coke lip balm, and a liquid lip gloss that rolls on via an enormous silver ball bearing. it tastes and smells just like the real thing! and i don’t have to actually drink any of that crap! i am extremely happy about this great development in lip balm – junk food cross promotion. do not think i have not considered applying it over my regular cherry lip balm for a walk down cherry coke lane.

i resisted — so far — the fanta pack, which included a stick each of orange, strawberry and grape. perhaps i could just buy a grape one; grape fanta is so hard to come by these days.

- – -

bet you didn’t know i felt so strongly about coke!

what better time to finally address that meme i got tagged with the other day. ok, fine, two weeks ago. i am very bad with memes. but two people tagged me for this one, so it must be important.

so. the rules of the game:
• link to the person who tagged you
• post the rules on the blog
• write six random things about yourself
• tag six people at the end of your post
• let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog
• let the tagger know when your entry is up

that is a lot of rules, so i’m only following half of them. the first half. told you i was bad with memes! also, i think you get quite a lot of random things about me in the day-to-day running of this blog — i really like broccoli, for example, and “america’s next top model” — so i’m really scraping the barrel here.

1. i really like coca cola

2. i eat floor food
sure, it depends on the food, and the floor; i won’t eat food off a wet or grimy floor, even if it’s picked up quickly. but the five-second rule is fairly elastic around here. once, at the national art gallery cafe, a fat artichoke shot out of my sandwich when i took a bite out of the other end. i waited until i had finished the whole sandwich, and then i retrieved the artichoke from under my chair where it had rolled, on carpet, and i ate it, after checking for hairs.

3. i eat expired food
i am right now eating a bag of japanese milk-tea-flavoured corn snacks, best before date: 07.02.23. they have a pleasant, sweet, milky-tea flavour, and are only slightly stale… a bit like those flushable corn-based packing peanuts (it’s true, i nibbled one the other day to see if they were the disintegratable flushable kind).

4. i remove the pegs from the clothes line while bringing in the washing
i caught the tail end of this debate in the herald’s column 8 section earlier in the week. apparently such people are deemed to have some sort of obsessive-compulsive affliction. but really, how can you put out new laundry when the lines are littered with randomly placed pegs? you’d have to hold the damp piece of clothing bunched up in one hand while you claw at the pegs to release them before clipping them back on. you’d be unable to flick out the twisted wet bundles to rid them of their wrinkles. you’d… ahem. wait ’til you find out i’ve also been known to match the colours of the pegs to the colour of the clothes. and hangers, let’s not forget hangers.

5. that guy known as “the boy” moved back in
it’s neither an overly good nor bad thing — maybe it’s both, and maybe they cancel each other out — but i thought it might be useful to note, in the interest of narrative.

6. i am horribly shy and retiring
but i’ve met some great people through this blog. come say hello if you see me in the street… unless, um, you’re a scary stalker type. then yes, just walk on by.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 29 November 2008 at 9:46 pm

permalink | filed under chocolate, drink, misc, shoping, something new

i was alarmed when, at the very beginning of october, i went into a department store, and discovered that the halls had already been decked in boughs of holly, tinsel, feathers and a heavenly host of other shiny baubles. the beginning! of october! it’s madness!

but now that it is the beginning of november, i feel barely a qualm about plugging this crafty little tome that i designed for kids craft weekly.

“christmas craft” is full of ideas for such xmassy essentials as cards, ornaments, decorations, and advent calenders. you don’t even need a kid to partake of all this festive fun! after all, you can’t be on the internet all the time, can you?

well… i can. either that or it’s super mario 64.

but you: you can download this bounty of handmade goodness for 5 bucks (7.50 in australian money, pending the plummeting dollar) and relive the glory days when your fingers could do more than double-click.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 4 November 2008 at 10:39 pm

permalink | filed under misc

i’d been thinking about painting my bedroom green for several years now. many, many years actually. behold this fine mosaic of paint chips i have amassed: one of these is for ralph lauren paint in a lovely shade of dogwood, and another is from crayola (“green thumb”, it’s called; i also have a little square of warm, sunny yellow called “macaroni and cheese”). both these tchotchkes i procured on my last trip to new york, which would make this quest at least… um… six years old.

it wasn’t so much a fear of commitment that stood in my way. ok, so it was a little. but it was more that i was afraid my room would end up looking like a hospital recovery ward. calm, soothing, healing green and all. and yet, this impulse kept rearing its head, year after year.

a few weeks ago, i finally gave in to it. there was a lot of masking tape involved, and scuffmarks on the ceiling from the ladder i bought when i used to live somewhere with high ceilings. there was a surprise appraisal from the team of actual, professional painters who, coincidentally, were repainting the outside of my building. there was a chocolate croissant for sustenance, and an early-to-mid-’90s australian rock playlist (cue: tumbleweed, you am i, spiderbait), and then…

green.

i like it in the morning, mossy in the natural light. not so much at night, with the energy-saving lightbulb casting a disturbing radioactive hue. i think i might have to revert to a good old-fashioned tungsten wire.

last week, i finally, finally put the cake on the wall. if i wake up on my left side, it’s the first thing i see. because of course, it’s never too early for cake!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 14 June 2008 at 9:48 am

permalink | filed under cake, misc

um, so, i don’t get to vote, because i’m not a citizen, and i’m not a citizen because the last time i tried to become one a couple years ago, the beryl on the phone said that since i didn’t have the very passport stamped when i first landed on these fair shores over twenty years ago, my application would be incomplete. and if i want to become a citizen now, i’d have to take the goddamned citizenship test. it’s not enough i pay taxes? huh?? turns out beryl was talking out her old, shrivelled-up ass anyway. perhaps she’s even drafted some of the questions on the test!

krispy kreme does not fly such an exclusionary flag. happy to take votes from anyone, they are offering free doughnuts for australia the day after election day, if you register to vote on their site. free doughnuts, folks!

[ or, as free as it gets with an "invitation" to make a "donation" for every doughnut... proceeds help out the salvos, but golly, they sure got that hidden-worm-behind-the-election-promise thing worked out ]

posted by ragingyoghurt on 6 November 2007 at 3:23 pm

permalink | filed under grumble, misc

my first bite of adriano zumbo’s blackcurrant macaron was whispery quiet. it was definitely fruity, though mild, and there was a barely discernable tinge of saltiness. i was sufficiently surprised to look down into the cross-section, where i discovered a chocolate filling.

now that it had my full attention, i took another bite. this time an immense wave of blackcurrantness hit me. i tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to pry the biscuit apart to see if there was a hidden jammy layer, but no. it was mixed into the chocolate. so very, very genius.

so yes, the macaron was like ribena, as i had hoped, but chocolate ribena, which was even better.

in the late 70s, when i was five, some talent scouts came round to tiny tots kindergarten, looking for kids to appear in a ribena tv ad. they chose me! i was paired up with a boy in my class, and i remember traipsing round a park in the hot, hot tropical sun one day, doing test shots. and then a week or so before the actual shoot was scheduled, my father decided that we all had to go away on family vacation. my mother tells this story to this day: “and you know, the producers were sooo angry with me…”

a couple of months later, the ad was on tv, with the boy and another girl in my class, swinging on the swings, reciting their lines, running off to get a glass of nutritious ribena… i wonder if my life would have been different today, if i had done that ad.

the only other thing i remember from kindergarten is that one day after school, as i stood at the chainlink fence by the driveway, waiting to be picked up by my grandmother, my nose bled. oh, the horror.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 22 August 2007 at 10:35 pm

permalink | filed under cake, misc

my desk is a mess again, and i haven’t even arrived at the busy time. i am circling the periphery, looking in, pacing myself. just pacing.

at my elbow i have sheets of paper, covered in scribbled lists: lists of amendments to layouts; lists of drawings to make; lists of invoices to send; lists of where to go in queensland.

i have passes to a film on the weekend: “an epic tale of mothers and sons, mothers and daughters, unrequited love, betrayal and secrets… the true story of a glamorous shanghai nightclub singer, who struggles to survive in seventies australia with two young children“. phew!

i have tea: muji jasmin tea ball in a muji glass teapot, good gifts from my good mother.

i have chocolate: a monsieur truffe bar with cocoa solids of 64%. there is some guff on the back of the package about fresh fruity notes and bouquets of dried fruits, but i am simply impressed by how a dark chocolate bar — french, no less (by way of melbourne) — can be so goshdarned creamy.

i have an urgent calling to watch that hideous show, “age of love“.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 August 2007 at 10:30 pm

permalink | filed under chocolate, misc, tv, werk

welcome to the dollhouse.

or the new tax year, or something, which is significant only because i have to lodge not only another BAS, crap, but also my tax return. crap crap.

but that can wait. i’m off to melbourne tomorrow, chasing down some eating adventures of my own.

yesterday, charlie zumbo asked “do you like chocolate?”, and deborah snorted somewhere to the left of me. “chocolate is, like, my favourite thing ever,” i said, and suddenly, silently, a nut-dusted, chocolate-covered, pointy macaroony thing was whisked into a bag and slid across the counter towards me. i’m saving it for breakfast on the plane, along with the pale pink rose macaron, only slightly squished from falling into the bottom of my tote.

this afternoon, after a slightly fraught morning of wallpapering a dollhouse (the non-wrinkle glue i’d bought for the purpose wrinkled!) i walked up the street and met sonya, popping into zumbo just long enough to procure a passionfruit macaron for an impromptu picnic in the (chilly, oh so chilly) park. she brought me my very own matchbox, which means i don’t have to go skulking about searching for the hidden ones. magical, they are, i tells ya.

she made me not open it in her presence, and now that i am home, i have discovered a small bounty of dark chocolate chips and a recipe for chocolate chip pancakes. the weird thing about it, is that when she placed it in my hand the moment we met, i was surprised by how heavy it was, and the question i asked in my head was, “is it chocolate?”. ok, so maybe not so weird after all.

internet friends who give me chocolate, i thank you.

other internet friends, i hope to bring you wide-eyed gushy tales of good eats in that cold southern city. until then, may i recommend the archives? the last three months were pretty good, i think. ZUMBO!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 July 2007 at 5:09 pm

permalink | filed under chocolate, misc

good morning.

[ make your own simpsons avatar ]
[ via cloudberryterrier ]

posted by ragingyoghurt on 28 June 2007 at 8:52 am

permalink | filed under kid, misc

now that i have cleaned the random stuff off my office shelving, my little collection of… other stuff finally has a new home. now i can see it when i sit at my desk. well, how else will i force myself to take eye-breaks?

chinese kids and watermelon pincushion, assorted unazukin, and two froggy tape dispensers with frogstyle printed sticky tape. hey! stop rolling your eyes and uncurl your lip. this stuff is gold!

sonya’s matchbox project is pretty cool too. (and pretty!)

posted by ragingyoghurt on 9 April 2007 at 8:35 pm

permalink | filed under misc

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