blog.olya

its been a good day! more full of exciting events than the average day, at least if we discount the re no vation period.

today i:
got 2 good marks back!
saw the miracle of birth for the first time! (i managed to shut my eyes in all previous occurrences - this time it was a video about cognitive development and they just THREW IT OUT THERE before i could do anything!)
realized that i am addicted beyond belief to renovating. and decorating. and looking at renovating and decorating. and that doing this makes me feel SO HAPPY.
realized that i love coffee!
had the cat jump onto my lamp voluntarily and then purring. i’m not a big fan of cats, and that was still pretty awesome. (i like this cat - but i love my dog!)

recently i:
have improved my cooking skills through osmosis of living with tim (i made roasted chicken! and then roasted potatoes! and then very decent roasted vegetables from a frozen batch, which was the best surprise!)
dressed pretty on the few warmish days that weather threw in (I. LOVE. SKIRTS.)
completed an insanely large renovation of many parts of the apartment (see links above).

in negative news:
i keep missing appointments, assignments, deadlines in my head
my sleep schedule is all messed up and i hate it
addicted to coffee! NOOOO i’m up to 2 cups a day regularly now. argh!
am almost always cold
haven’t shot enough (outside of pretty apartment pictures)

BUT I STILL GOT SOLID Bs ON TWO TESTS THAT I DIDN’T EXPECT TO GET THEM ON. in other words, it was nice.
(one of the tests had 4 questions. i knew after i walked out that i must have gotten a 0 on one of those questions because i completely had no clue what experiment to write about, and so wrote about the absolutely, completely, totally, absurdly (!!) different unrelated and incorrect experiment. i got the other 3 questions perfect. YAY! the other was was chinese philosophy, which is lets just say wasn’t the best idea of a class to take as easy.)

who knew i’d ever enjoy the company of a cat that much!

i made poached pears today. i keep forgetting to buy an orange to experiment with this, but essentially its 3 simple steps:

1. peel and core the pears while…
2. half a cup of sugar, 2 cups red wine, 1 cup water (more wine?), 3-5 cloves are coming to a simmer
3. simmer pears in liquid until desired consistency and color reached with lid on
(4 optional: to get a thick sauce to pour over the pears, simmer half the time with the lid off. or something like that. i just wing it, and it works.)

tasty, easy, and little effort, other than the peeling and coring, but i can live with that for the high class style of eating a poached pear off a tiny white plate.

Lawrence is doing well. cuddling on the couch is normal, he is sleeping ON the couch now, has a favorite chair (director’s chair), and rubs up against our legs regularly. he still bites and scratches in play, which makes me look like i climbed over chicken wire. but its a small sacrifice to waking up to a cat nuzzling at your chest!

also, i got an ear infection day before my first exam. i’m not really considering it luck as its (a) hassle (b) an extra exam to write at the end of the year, ruining my brilliant plan of having 3 exams per semester and graduating with 8 half credits (due to a full year movie course).

(get a flickr account and let me add you as family to see above photos)
it is week 12 here in unsw there are 3 weeks left of studying, and then 2 exams, and then tim and i are off to drive up the australian coast.

hesi is arriving tomorrow! and so i will finally drag her and tim to see various sights around sydney and in sydney.

last night smita, lesley ann, tim, roshan and moi went out to sushi to some local place. it was the first japanese experience for lesley ann and smita - i was promising lesley ann to take her to sushi for a while and this was it. they both seemed to enjoy it quite a bit, liking the small rolls and nigiri sushi the most. (they did have problems figuring out how to eat the larger rolls - i’m still unconvinced, are you supposed to eat it in parts or just stuff it in?)

i realized i haven’t been writing much about my so called “australian experience”. to be honest, looking back at the past 3 months since tim has left it doesn’t feel like there was much of an experience, at least towards the beginning. the last month and a half were better in terms of fun as i have gotten closer with my flatmates, and thus ended up going out and doing interesting things far more.

the brighter experiences up until this moment was the day of the “races”, which i still failed to blog about. let me make a short attempt at it here.

the races

racing seems to be a huge australian phenonenon. apparently, there is this melbourne cup when the entire country shuts down to watch that race. of course, there is a huge race track just north of the university. and on one particular weekend in april, there was a large race occuring there, or rather a number of important races, to which barker apartment number 9 (that is the apartment in which i live) decided to head out to see. it was actually me, lesley ann, kevin (all of us from 9) and a bunch of other people who they have met from their earlier residence here in sydney.

in case you are not aware of the general things that happen at races, here is the approximate list of interesting and notable moments:

after returning home, we have ate, relaxed, and went out dancing! and as the tale goes, we danced the night away, and it was good.

st patrick’s day
while it was not any different from many parties i’ve been to, it was awesome because:

kevin’s party
one of the most notable things about kevin’s birthday party was that it was 4 days before tim’s arrival here. (and i think that sentence summarizes how i felt the entire 3 months he wasn’t here). of course the dinner, the drinking and the dancing was also notable - and a load of fun!

there were many other moments. i tried curry (made by smita) - she made some specially for me without the spicy part. and she used all authentic indian ingridients. tonight, she’s making curry again - and this time tim has a chance to try it too!

each monday night lesley ann and i (and lately smita too) watch desperate housewives while eating a shared dinner, and having dessert afterwards.

before i got really sick at the end of the vacation week (end of april), i went to the gym, loads, together with LA again. unfortunately it stopped because there were 2 bad weeks which i spent mostly entirely in bed. after a few doctor trips, everything is now confirmed as being fine, which makes me very, very, happy.

baking - bread, cookies, carrot cake, my mom’s apple pie.

i got everyone here hooked on “oladushki” - thin slices of apple dipped in batter made from my grandma’s recipe.

i guess food was a major part of this experience. i really love food and cooking now, and bubble over with excitement of trying new recipes. in the last 2 days i learned how to make a kick ass goatcheese salad (add small cubes of peeled apple), and fettucine carbonara.

and of course, today tim has been here for more than a week. while sharing a tiny room as opposed to a whole apartment is interesting, thankfully he doesn’t have much clothes (although now the whole closet is taken up, and not just half ;) ), and we’re compatible people.

i’m very happy. life is falling back in place again; the next 3 months look to be full of fantastic fun again (how’s that for alliteration). almost a month of study and party and fun in sydney; then almost a month of travelling around australia and 10 days in japan, and then a month back in toronto, together with my friends and family who i miss oh so much.

i’m having a week break and am too lazy to blog.

i have one important thing to write about: going to the races.

instead i will tell you how i made some rosemary and thyme bread with hummus. and it was good.

and then we went dancing. and it was awesome.

(i promise i’ll write when i finish my philosophy paper. im 300/2000 there!)

she-crab soup made from this recipe (its awesome)

today was definitely a good day. first off, last night after making triply sure that the assignment works (thank you, dad!), it was handed in with no problems, and i went out to have some drinks - for the first time evah! (the drinking out that is). that was fantabulous fun, and i came home and crashed to sleep.

the morning of thursday was excellent. first off, dad confirmed everything is fine. thus this huge, terrible weight of that unbearable assignment fell off my shoulders. the linguistics assignment was almost done, so i spent my morning cleaning it up. (i also made scrambled eggs. yum!)

the constant question of where to print if you’re not really in possession of a printer can drive a student to do odd things, especially if they have to hand in the assignment by 2pm and its 1:50. i tried printing at the library (which smelled like smoke, and later i found out that it was evacuated!), but ended up crashing their computers. so, on kinda vagueish instructions from LA and Kevin i found the place where all the american students get their sponsored labs - its a gleaming, white, clean room, with lots of big macs with flat screens and pretty mice and fast computers and fast printers. i printed and was outta there under 1 minute. yay!

next problem was finding the drop off box. i got confused between two buildings, both of which intials begin with MB, so i ended up being at the hand in place at 2:10 or so. but they still took it on time!

i also spoke the prof, and wished him a good holiday. yay!

random memories on the walk home, when the world suddenly became bright and assignment free:

a bearded, white, curly haired professor at his desk going “hmmm” in a serious tone to a young naive first year student cowering in front of him.

“but i did everything i could!” “well my grandad was in the navy you know!” (as part of one conversation, very loud argument)

a guy eating a watermelon (like 1/4 of it) on the run.

the feeling joy surrounding the campus despite the rain as this was the last day of classes before the break (actually i felt the joy but didn’t know that second bit).

upon arrival home i found out i have no classes tomorrow, and that elin will be going to the gym 2 hours later, so i snacked, chatted, relaxed, and then went to the gym for a hard core workout!

this was my 4th time. i biked for 20 mins @ lv 5, elliptical for 20 mins @ lv 5, and for the first time, ran all 20 mins at 7kph (before i was 14 mins run and 6 walk, and then 16 mins run and 4 walk). then elin showed me some weights training, so i did about 40 sit ups on the big ball, some leg excersizes with the ball, some back excersizes with the ball, weight training for back and arms and legs, and stretched. it was good!

came home, made the she crab soup, and that’s where the day ended, basically.

i wont count the evening because i washed all of the dishes in the kitchen again for the 2nd time (not a single. clean. cup. 2nd. time. in. the. day. i washed almost all of them before the gym.) (so before sleep i went in and did a major clean up - washed majority of dishes that were “anonymos” - like not from LA’s baking - and finally cleaned off counters. yay!), and watched wolf creek which was scary. but that’s okay. it doesn’t count.

i want to be a food photographer! so much fun!