Smash it babe

In the last season of My Kitchen Rules, one of the teams was a pair of young ladies who were themed as that season's headline villains. Ashlee and Sophia were interesting for their distinct confidence and trash talking, but the thing that stuck with me the most were their favourite phrases:

"Smash it"
"Babe"

These words, and their delivery, amused me so much that I started trying to work it into my daily conversations, however my wife told me it is a "guy thing" and to "stop it".

MKR has just started up again, and I think the editors of the show are getting better at working out the psychological buttons to push on general populace to hook people in. Its now a well worked mixture of oddballs, narcissism, as well as regular conflict between extreme personalities. It does kind of work too. I find myself wanting to watch to find out about whether the girls from WA really have travelled as much as what they claim. One of the things that they didn't show in the MKR adverts, was that one of the pair, Kelly, had worked in London for 4 years, which does open up the chance to travel more easily around Europe. It still takes money though, hence I am itching to know how extensive the travel was. But honestly, I think it is some sort of jealous hope that it is more of a case of embellishment, rather than 4 years of extensive and in-depth travel.

Realising that about myself is disappointing. I think I'll just steer clear of MKR from now on. Roll on World Cup.

I'd rather have quantity

I love ice cream. When I used to work on short expatriate assignments in the USA, the range of flavours and brands of ice cream were like a dream come true. There were even the oddball seasonal flavours that would come up, like pumpkin pie flavour during the thanksgiving season.

Not all suited my taste, but I'd discovered the cookie & cream flavour there, and after that, wasn't so interested in anything else. The other thing I liked, was that American supermarkets often did the "2 for the price of 1" sale, including on ice cream. So, at probably my worst peak, I was buying 2 half-gallon tubs of ice cream each week.

Started looking a little chubby for a while there.

Since getting married and having some wisdom and restraint provided by my better half, I definitely am in better shape and my face isn't like a moon anymore. However I just found out that the Cash and Carry stores (bulk purchase outlet) do 10 litre tubs for $15.

Dude... that is value that just can't be passed up.

The flavours on offer are a little less complicated, but if I learnt anything from Cold Rock Ice Creamery, you just need to apply a little creativity to dress up vanilla. Now these wholesalers don't just let in any Joe Public in to buy. You have to have a membership, but my road-side assistance membership includes access to Cash and Carry as a member perk.

Whee!! Found a cure for the summertime blues.

Offline for a bit

Its Australia Day weekend this weekend. I'll be without internet for most of it as I'll be off running some leadership training.

No posts for a couple of days.

Picking this post title reminded me of the movie "The Internship" where Billy keeps referring to things on the internet as being "On the line". Heh heh, makes me smile everytime.

Who? Lil' ol' me?

We have a small IT team in the company I work for, with a few IT guys on the east coast and a couple on the west. One of them has the same first name as me.

Now this isn't a big deal, but when it comes to email most people don't know, or just can't remember the email address of all their friends let alone all their work colleagues, so people end up relying on address books to do auto-completes and provide the email address they're after.

You can already see where this is going. Every now and then I get included on a systems administration email by accident when the sender meant to get the other guy, but didn't check the full name before hitting send.

Its always confusing for me, not because of the subject matter of the email, but some stupid part of me feels flattered that the sender thought I'd have some meaningful contribution to their request for help, even though I know they meant to include the other guy.

I can't workout why that part of me gets a buzz from it. Guess I'm just starved for direct positive reinforcement in my workplace...

I'll take those odds

I was checking the weather today (not sure why I bother, as its summer and I'd just spent an hour commuting through the stuff - it's hot), but I noticed this for the first time today in terms of the "chance of any rain".

 

5% chance of rain. It isn't really cloudy, not like this:

But actually more like this:

 

If that's 5% chance on a 38 degree day, and people in this country are willing to collectively throw several million dollars each week into lottery for a 0.0001% chance...

Then why didn't I see a single umbrella being carried on the train today?

Whoa, watch out.

Another odd thing I see people do comes out from when they walk, and I haven't quite got my head around why they walk this way. I tried to find some videos or pictures online to help illustrate this, but no luck, so does this mean I'm the only person who's noticed it?

I'll try to explain it here, and see whether you notice it in people as well. It's more common with ladies than men, but its still only a minority of ladies who do it.

When people walk, their arms move by their sides and generally there is just a small swing, with your arms keeping to a certain space around your body. But I've encountered a few people now, whose arms swing a moderate distance away from their hips. Some of them seem to completely have their elbows relaxed, so the forearm flicks out on the backwards stroke. This is compounded if they've relaxed their wrists as well so now the hand flicks out too. So at the point where their arm has mostly straightened and finished the backwards stroke, it is also extended sideways some distance from their body.

Now the post is not about how it looks, but what it means for me as a fellow pedestrian, particularly in a growing city with more crowded walkways and congested malls. It means its harder for me to walk past them. The space they occupy is almost double what it should, but it often catches me out as I don't notice the flicking arm thing until they've almost caught me in the leg (or worse).

And it gets more exciting when we're climbing the stairs, and I'm tearing up alongside trying to catch a train, as now their hand is at a height to catch me in the face.

This post really has no point, other than highlighting something else that irks me when I commute. I need something to balance it out.

So I found this; apparently if you swing your arms in sync with your legs (i.e. swing right arm forward when your right leg steps forward, etc), you use 26% more energy while walking, as well as also messing with your mind. (See indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/swing-arms-walking/).

I'm going to try this out next time I go walking in the evening. Just for laughs, try it too.

Don't. Stop. There.

When I catch the trains in the morning, I've noticed that by the time they reach the station where I get on, the trains come in pairs. There is the express train, and about 4 minutes after, there will be the local train. After that, its generally a 10 minute wait for the next pair.

Now the express is always full. It always starts from the furthest station, and because there is a considerable time gap between it and its preceding train, then more people have accumulated on platforms waiting for it. Now by the time it reaches the station I'm at, its generally full, so most of the time I end up having to wait for the local.

So far, this is all good. Now stuff gets interesting when the bus drops us all at the station, and we all realise that the local has just arrived. Naturally, we don't want to miss that one, as it means almost a 15min wait doing nothing; 10min for the express we can't get on, then another 4 min for the next local.

So we rush for that train.

I've noticed on a few occassions that there are people who rush down the stairs/escalator, sprint across the platform, dive through the open doors into the carriage, and then stop.

Not just stop at their seat.

Not just move down the carriage and then stop.

Not even take a couple of steps in and then stop at the centre support bar.

But actually stop in the open doorway. They do it while they decide to go left or right for an open seat.

So I'm right behind them, and now I can't get on, even though there's room in the carriage. I'll make my presence known, a tap on the shoulder, a subtle cough, a muttered "excuse me".

But I know one day I won't be able to pull up in time and I'm going to end up ploughing through one of these jokers.