Step 34 - Vinegar!

Okay, as promised, an update.

What's been new? First week back at Uni has passed. My attendance has not been, shall we say, great. There's a combination of factors at work here. General ambivilence carrying over from last semester, poor sleeping habits from the break (for a period I was generally going to bed around 3-4am), and the increased travel time to class (from <= 5 minutes, to >=15 minutes). On the flipside, I've been doing more study at home. I'm not feeling worried about things because I'm much happier with the situation than I was last semester, and in general, still feeling more productive. A happy Liam is a productive Liam, perhaps.

In line with that, I've given my number to a nearby English teaching school. They aren't looking to hire, but said that they might call if they need a substitute teacher. Not the best result, but I'm happy that I've at least got that much going on so far. The next step is using my Chinese housemate to line up some 1 on 1 tutoring that isn't a Chinese - English swap. See, that's a thing here. They're very eager to not spend money (as am I), so they're very keen on the 'language swap'. Given money has become an issue for me, I'm more interested in a mix of language swap with a few people, and then recieving money from a few other people. We'll see what eventuates.

I've bought a whiteboard. It's been nice because I've used it to put out a few reminders for me to look at every day. I've made an exercise schedule (all body weight activities etc, as I haven't gotten myself back to the gym), an eating/dietary plan (reminds to drink heaps of water, 2 fruit + 5 veg, no sugar/minimal processed foods, etc), and a rough day plan. I haven't subscribed to any of these things perfectly yet, but I do like having them there, and they have been useful. I also bought a lamp. This is great, because for about a week I didn't have a ceiling light in my room. Why didn't I just buy a new bulb? Because the landlord wanted to replace the entire fixture. I'm actually glad they did, because now they're using nice incandescent bulbs instead of fluro. But yeah, the lamp now means I have a reading light for in bed. Great success.

Slowly but surely, this room is becoming my space. I still haven't put up posters due to lack of decent stickytape/blutack (hurrr D:) but whatever, I'm getting there. The other day I put white vinegar all over the mouldy spots on the wall, and gave it a good chance to soak in a bit. Hopefully I don't see that mould returning any time soon. I'm finding the air-conditioner actually makes the room a whole lot more humid - I should look to see if there's another setting I can use that leaves things a bit... drier. One set back I only realised last night was that my ginger-chili sweets that I bought in Yunnan had, despite being what I thought was pretty well sealed inside two plastic bags, gotten humid/soggy, so I now have a bag of concealed sticky ginger chili sweets. God damn. They were delicious. A friend has suggested I put them in the freezer, which actually seems like good advice - Just the other day on Lifehacker I was reading that if you spill water on a book, best place to put it is in a bag (not sealed) in the freezer. Supposed to pull the water right out of that sucker. Seems kind of obvious but Not something I'd ever thought of/realised before.

I'm getting more active with my guitar practice/learning, but struggling with my fat fingers. I'm getting better I think, but certainly frustrating at times. It's like doing anything else really (cough, damn you Mandarin, cough).

Oh, and I've said this to everyone I think, but the soundtrack for some PSP game called Shatter? Really awesome. Seriously, I love this album.

Finally, I've been pretty lazy more recently with adding photos and formatting the text on this blog. Can readers please get back to me on how much it matters to them? If everyone's in agreement that it looks better and makes for a more pleasurable reading experience, then I'll start doing it again.