Hello, my name is Sandy. I'm an artist in Perth, Western Australia.

Let me tell you about my lovely day. Cousin Joshua is in town, so I’ve taken a couple days off work to hang out with him. On Tuesday, we traipsed around Northbridge because it’s delicious and there’s lots of stuff to do there.

The best part of the day was getting to sleep in. ON A WORK DAY. :D The second best part was seeing this splendid tree frog that’s at the top of this post. That was at the WA Museum, the rest of which was pretty rad too, but I’ll get into that later. Before the museum came breakfast…

Read the rest of this post…

Permalink. Posted 30 July, 2011. Tagged: food, hobbies, museums, perth.

Went paintballing on Sunday. Got an awesome welt on my shoulder. It’s my badge of awesome that I got for being awesome. And let me tell you that I can be pretty awesome.

(It hurts. Owie ow.)

My cousin Joshua is in town for a couple weeks and I have a bit of time off work. I foresee a fortnight of food and cultural things, and some gentle hobby time. Ahhh… ^___^

Permalink. Posted 26 July, 2011. Tagged: bruise, hobbies.

Success! The san choy bao turned out OK. Recipe…

Chicken mince, duck fat (2tsp), chopped carrot, handful of rice for starch, oyster sauce, soy sauce, red wine vinegar. Cook chicken mince then add carrot and sauces. When carrots start to soften, toss in the rice and add small amounts of water until cooked. End result should be moist but not drippy, rice palatable, carrots easy to chew.

Would have been better with mushroom, a bit of dark soy and some garlic. Next time!

Permalink. Posted 20 July, 2011. Tagged: cooking, food.

I’m making san choy bao tonight – some pidgin variation, anyway.

San choy bao is bitty meat & veggie mix in a lettuce leaf. It’s the typical third dish in a peking duck banquet. I thought that might be why it starts with “san” (Chinese for ‘three’), but the Google is really letting me down for information tonight. This is my least favourite dish at a banquet, because it’s messy, the lettuce is always drippy and I get very unhungry very fast when I make a mess. Nonetheless, it’s always delicious and it’s only my mess-aversion that puts me off.

I have no idea where to find duck meat at this hour, so we’re using chicken mince and substituting cooking oil for duck fat if Coles have it. I’m quite excited about dinner. We’ve been having a lot of pasta and sandwiches lately, because it’s so easy to prepare and eat between LoL matches.

The house is also a mess, even though rent inspection was just a few days ago. Is this why ‘gamers’ have a reputation for being stinky slobs?

Ending this post here. Best go tidy up a bit.

Permalink. Posted 19 July, 2011. Tagged: cooking, food, games.

This is my arm after my first attempt at donating blood.

Room too cold, veins too small, needle enormous argargargg…

It’s pretty gross, the needle going in, but I had to look. Didn’t hurt, it was just stressful and uncomfortable. They didn’t end up taking much so won’t be able to use it. :( I’m to come back in summer when my veins are bigger.

At the Red Cross center, I learned that:

* The healthy haemoglobin level for an adult female is between 120 and 165.
* Stout beers like Guiness are rich in iron, so if you’re going to be an iron-conscious beer drinker, have stout.
* Pint and a steak is a good meal after donating blood; just make sure to have water as well.

Permalink. Posted 13 July, 2011. Tagged: beer, blood, health.

This is a test post from the android WordPress app.

Permalink. Posted 9 July, 2011. Tagged: mobile, technology.

It’s been awhile since my last post (don’t all tardy posts start this way). A few times, I’ve sat down to write, but so many tiny maybe-a-little noteworthy things have happened that there’s not been time enough to write about them properly.

Many updates in the woodworking project. Went to Carba-Tec a few weeks ago and walked out with a Japanese water stone and a block of jelutong wood. Jelutong is a hardwood, which I think just means it’s from an evergreen tree. It’s a good carving wood because it’s light (not dense), has a straight grain (doesn’t have heaps of twists and knots) and has a fine texture (not sure what this bit means; maybe just that it’s not like firewood).

I imagined carving it would be like carving soap or butter (with a warm knife), but it’s not. It feels more like scraping the wood of a pencil, but less pokey and splintery. So far, so good. I’ve whittled out the shallow contours of a face and haven’t grievously injured myself yet.

Yet.

Permalink. Posted 7 July, 2011. Tagged: hobbies, woodwork.