Workxcursion

Aaaand it's about time we have an update. I realized that for a while now, every time someone logs on to my blog, first thing they would see was my lament about my ringworm infection - with a picture to boot.

First off, a quick plug to my friend Mark (known in some circles as Quin's hubby-to-be) who's finally put together his long-overdue food blog. He's still brimming with the keenness and enthusiasm of a virgin blogger (4 entries in like less than 2 days); so head over and show some love - esp if you fancy an off-the-wall recipe that one may or may not afford to make.

...

I've been busy with work myself, which explains my absence lately. And after back-to-back 6-day (often double) shifts, we finally have the weekend off! (/^ ^)/ A long weekend at that, cos Monday's job was canceled ahohoho.

But I won't bore you with the details. Instead, let me walk you through a series of photos summarizing my last couple of weeks; featuring 2 travel jobs, several fooding hunts, and one epicly drunken night. Or maybe not that last bit.

First off, CEXP Northern Run! (babelfish says: Coles Express gas stations across Kimberly region of WA i.e. Fitzroy Crossing, Halls Creek and Kunnunura in that order). As most of these are already up on Facebook, I'm just going to select a few worthy for a re-post.


:: Such as this! ::

They say the third time's the charm, and it can't ring any truer for this trip. I may have complained about it to some of you prior to departure, but much to my relief there were NO IRRADIATED MAN-EATING BUGS WAITING TO BITE MY FACE OFF T____T Then we had a good troop ensuring much fun and food flexibility (that means being able to split 50/50 booze-chow fund); and I supposed more importantly, we had relevant biggies from the client's side to make sure there's no mucking about on the store manager's side. So the jobs went relatively smoothly.


:: The vast expanse of flat, empty plains and bright skies ::


:: As we had long hours of drive from one town to another, usually with little to no towns in between, public toilets were sparse and often unimpressive - such as the above ::


:: ... WHICH HOUSES THIS! A BLOODY HOLE IN THE GROUND! Mind you, it's a disabled-friendly hole in the ground::


:: And small, cramped, dodgy looking rooms where we had to share in twos. I'd imagine Mitch and Paul got a bit cozy that night, since the bed was just about right for Felicia and myself ::


:: But we weren't short on good, hearty food though. :) Pictured here, falling-off-bone tender lamb shank, on a bed of creamy mash from Fitzroy River Lodge ::

And then in Kununnura, we had the pleasure of revisiting the Pumphouse Restaurant & Bar
which was quite literally a foodie oasis in the middle of a dry, relic nowhere. It is situated along the Ord River, and has one of the most spectacular sunset views I've seen.

Unfortunately, we missed it this time around. Partly because it's still winter I supposed, so the sun set a lot earlier; and we were feeling lazy from the drive.

Also last time we were there, it was Woodfire Pizza Tuesday* which was kinda what we were going for this visit (because it amounted to quite a cheap bill). But we were there on a Friday, and there were no specials apart from their perpetually $5 Crown Lager wooooaaaahhhh I'd forgotten about that up till then.

But it was a blessing in disguise, as we soon discovered.


:: Which all 3 of them ordered cos they're unadventurous like that. I didn't try the pork as I was busy scoffing down my dinner, but they raved about how spectacular it was, grilled to absolute perfection. I stole a mushroom however; and it (mushroom + sauce) was divine ::


:: But I much prefer my perfectly grilled, succulent, tender-in-the-middle tuna steak. And it was paired superbly with ratatouille and a delicate white port reduction. And the potato gnocchi made up for good starch since it wasn't the biggest meal. But never have I had Such. Perfectly. Cooked. Fish. I would go back to Kununnura just for another piece of this ::


:: And really, that's just too cute ::

For the rest of the night, I think the pictures speak for themselves.


:: Because it was on special. And also cos it wasn't half bad ::


:: Shang Tsung watches you ::








:: Whilst stumbling our way to the BP across the road to get midnight munchies. Thank goodness for 24-hour servos serving hot chicken chips that were wicked yum ::


:: A tribute to our boss man, whom we're always thinking of no matter where we are. Loved, much? ::




:: Goodnight, folks. ::

...

Part 2: CEXP Albany

Which really was just an overnight job for Mitch and myself. The drive took 5 hours plus each way, so we had little time for anything else apart from a decent dinner and of course, work in the morning.

Nothing out of the ordinary occurred throughout the 2 days, except maybe for the lady at the reception who appeared to not know what a debit card is wtf. She asked us to show the credit card that the room was booked under, which we couldn't because our boss did the booking online and usually (i.e. every other time), they never ask for it. So then she said, any credit cards, just for security deposit purposes; and Mitch asked her if his debit card was okay, and she asked, "Does it have credit on it?"

Wtf? Did she mean whether he had money in his account? Cos really it just sounded like she had no idea that a debit Mastercard, as the ads claim, does everything a Mastercard can do, but with one's own money.

Meh. So in the end, we had to fork out a $250 cash deposit up front, which of course, had to be withdrawn from a petrol station across the road cos they didn't bloody have an ATM on the premise. Bodohs. -_- Got charged $4 bank fees sommore, wth. Shame on you, Banksia Gardens. Call yourself a fancy schmancy place.

...

But at least their food was decent, although Mitch's prawns from his Surf n Turf were suspected of being the cause of a bit of tummy rumble over the night.

And mine was just stupidly small.


:: Even though I had an entree, which I had to admit was pretty damn good. Could have done with more cheese though, it looked like it was just dotted with mozzarella. And perhaps a bit more seasoning as well to fully bring out the flavour of the Portobello ::


:: On the other hand, well-seasoned baby squid, perhaps could have done with a few extra seconds on the grill, and tossed over a crisp Greek salad. But goddammit this doesn't pass off as a main! ::

I left that night, feeling half-empty and half-disappointed. Fortunately the possibly-undercooked squid didn't backfire on me. I was bracing for stomach bug at best, salmonella at worst, but really I was just ... hungry, for the rest of the night.

Then again, when am I ever not hungry, eh? As we speak I'm sipping on Frozen Coke Float, which I reckon is one of the most ingenious McD's "Pairing of Two Things to become a New Item!" since Orange McFizz. Shame they took that off the menu back home. :(


xx
Hsin

Just shoot me

Holy shit, ringworm is infectious!



You are looking at what I initially thought was a scab from a bump; but as all early diagnoses of bruise-spawned-scabs go, I am once again incorrect. And proven wrong by none other than the ringworm fungus once more, which seems to have taken up permanent residence in our home.

Where the fuck do ringworm fungi come from anyway? The cat was fine until we brought her home; we were fine until after we got the cat. Maybe it's some chemical reaction between cat, human and dust that somehow equates to infectious spores?

Ughhhhhh and as we speak another one appears to be developing on my knee:



Is it the cat's fault? Absolutely. She probably picked it up from licking the shower drain, the ferrel little thing. Why would such an obsessive-compulsively clean animal be attracted to the dark moldy depths of the shower drain is beyond me; but it's the only explanation that I've come up with so far and I'm sticking with it.

Need To Bleach Shower Cubicle.

Also, there's this little factoid:

Conditions such as heat, moisture and dirty, crowded living conditions increase the risk of fungi spreading.

Given that I'll be flying up north for jobs (again) next week (despite swearing never ever to return, again), where the climate is significantly hotter and where the level of hygiene leaves plenty to be desired, I am almost certain that I will have a flare-up of epic proportions, and be left scratching myself to death. All that while busy swatting away crickets, grasshoppers, spiders and other bugs the size of my face. I am not exaggerating, and this time I will take photos to prove it.

Because guess who's got a new caaamerraaah! :D :D :D



Yeh it's an IXUS. Only an IXUS, one might add. But guess what, this IXUS set my finances back about $500 and that's like over half of my fortnightly pay. -.- Although I'm looking at it as 10% of my tax returns, which sounds a lot more comforting. Because tax returns is everybody's pat-on-the-back for a year of hard work, and we all deserve to splurge a little! :)

The remains will be carefully distributed between savings and "Jill & Hsin & Shaun's Epic Adventures 2011". The latter warrants a whole entry to itself because a) I'm crazy excited about it; and b) it is THE trip we've been promising ourselves since our high school years. And you know what, it has been 8 years. And we've all been friends for over 10. It's worth at least two weeks of wicked debauchery, eh? ;)

Just kidding Yang, I promise I'll be good.

But I'll save that for another day. Because for now, my background movie is finishing and I'm actually half interested now even though I know what's gonna happen next. Plus, the next movie is a horror so wahey, cue for me to go to bed.

Till next entry, with better pictures. :)


xx
Hsin

Sympathy pain

Just a quick update.

The cat scab has been diagnosed as a mere ringworm lesion! Which sounds a lot worse than what it actually is: a fungal infection that requires little to no treatment. In fact the vet said we could just leave it and allow it to run its course over time, but we opted for anti-fungal tablets instead to speed up the process. Well, depending on whether she's willing to take them or not.


Pictured here after she dived nose first into the shower while Mitch was showering -.-

So yay, one less thing (that I shouldn't have) to worry about. :) Now we're just gonna need to clean up the house to rid of "fungal spores", and any other bacterias and plankton that could be lurking around the bathroom. They must have heard my anti-bacterial soap comment from the last entry. -.-

Death to evil microorganisms!


Damn straight that's an eye infection.


xx
Lazy-eyed Hsin

Crank up the Cranium

**Disclaimer: Long and wordy post up ahead.

I have a lot on my plate at the moment. Mostly little things, some even negligible, but all crammed up in a tiny corner at the back of my head. I think that's the Stress/Anxiety side of the brain, lodged in between the Rational Left and Creative Right. Or was it the other way round?

First off, my cat is ill. Well not exactly ill, but she has this scabby patch above her eye which appears to be getting worse by the day. Initially we just thought that she bumped her head and had a bruise (that was what it looked like at the start). But the scabbing got worse, either because she's been scratching, or it's something a lot more serious that warrants treatment. We've been waiting for our appointment with the vet this coming Monday (she has a sterilization due), but over the last few days the scab seems to be deteriorating rapidly. And so are my wits.


:: Ashamed of her scarred face :(

Mitch said not to worry since the cat doesn't appear to be too concerned about it, apart from her occasional scratching and pawing at it. But given that this is my first ever cat friend, and my tendency to leap into borderline-schizo paranoia, I am imploding with anxiety and worry.

What if it's serious? What if it's untreatable? What if she needs surgery? How am I gonna afford any vet services?? Well I can, but it's just so damn expensive holy shietz.

But see what I mean though, the excessive worrying. Probably explains why I'm the only person I know of my age who got hospitalized for anxiety attacks. -.-

Sigh, what does this say about me. I have every making of becoming a painfully over-protective mother in the future, and that's the last thing I want to be. Having grown up in what I deem to be a 'too-sheltered' household, and watching the younger generation in my family being subjected to even more protectiveness, I made a promise to myself to allow my kids grow by their own terms, and to live and play and learn at the expense of scraped knees, dirty clothes and perhaps even a fractured bone.

That's not to say that my family did a bad job raising me. If anything, my mother has always been and still is 100% supportive of my actions and decisions the past 25 years. I think that everyone just got too caught up with the bad things that are happening around them - disease outbreaks, natural disasters, the global obsession with germs (I stand by my belief that anti-bacterial soap will kill us all in the end), the neighbourhood crime, terrorism and warfare, 2012. A culmination of all these events eventually leads to a paranoid society, which trickles down to communities and family units, and inevitably, to individuals like myself.

I'm trying to move away from all that, and I honestly think there's progress. I mean first step in solving any problem is recognizing it, right? Hopefully in a few years' time I'll get a lot better, and I won't end up as a mother who sterilize her children every morning and send them to school in a kid-size bubble wrap.


:: Haha although apparently, someone's already beaten me to it.


Ok I digress. Moving on to bigger, more current things.

A possible job prospect. In the Eastern states. I know nothing about it to date, except that the CEO/owner is a friend of my dad's, and I'm given a name and a number to call in a couple of weeks' time (that's when he returns to Melbourne). I hope I'm not jinxing it by talking about it so soon, but I need to pen out my thoughts to make sense of them.

So what's not to consider about my treasured first, proper employment opportunity? Relocation, for one - since my lease for this place in Perth doesn't end till next February. I guess that can be sorted out if I'm employed full-time, although paying two rents a month will still be quite painful. -.- But I'll be leaving behind a boyfriend and a cat, and that will be a lot more difficult.

Second of all, and perhaps a bit more complicated for me, is the fact that this person is my father's contact. As you maybe know, my relationship with my dad is kinda... strained over the years. And ever since I could, I've stopped accepting any favours or help from him - simply because I don't want to owe him anything, and so I'll feel less horrible and ungrateful as a person. It's an issue that's taken up permanent residence in Anxiety Hind Side of Brain, but that's a story for another day.

So, if things do work out with this prospect, I'll be going against everything I've worked so hard to avoid. =/ It'll be silly to give up such a good opportunity over principles though - but I most likely won't, because I'm not the strongest of principle-keepers, and because I really really want a full-time job in my industry. And I have a deadline hanging over my head.

Maybe I'm just making excuses for myself. I'm afraid of being disappointed yet again, and this time it will be a major blow since it's the big connection/recommendation that's supposed to be an employment guarantee. Although truth be told, it will not be the first time that he broke my heart. =/ However if this doesn't work, I would have come close to exhausting my resources plus I'll have to deal with the shame of breaking principle. -.-

So how now, brown brown cow? How to impress a potential employer if I'm clouded with all these personal conflicts and doubts? How to convince him that I am, in fact, a worthy addition to his company while secretly bracing for disappointment? That while I may be a little messed up and throw lady tantrums in my head sometimes, I am pretty smart and have all the skills that meet the job description and more?

I think all these explain the throbbing headaches I've been having. I'm never one to get bad headaches, not even when I'm massively hungover. I think Hind Brain must be overworked overtime, and only getting paid $19 an hour. ;)


xx
Hsin

Cat Lady

Everyone, meet the latest addition to our family:


Hello I am Basil. My owner gave me a boy's name because she's silly like that sometimes.

Okay she looks a bit fierce in that photo, but I assure you that she's all hugs and cuddles most of the time. That is, when she's not busy being a cat in every other ways.

I have long since established my impression of the feline: needy, lazy, disloyal, think they are superior to men, temperamental, and harbouring a secret desire of killing me in my sleep.

And my few encounters with them so far haven't exactly done much to prove me wrong either; the strays back home enjoys pissing on my shoes, my neighbour's cat always turned away whenever I try to pat him, and Diana's cat used to hiss at me whenever I even try looking at it. -.- Although to be fair, Diana's cat used to hate people in general.

But look, I finally found a cat which actually likes me!


Forces her way into a cuddle usually when I'm on the laptop. As we speak, I've had to already put my comp away twice. -.-

We picked her up from Cat Haven, this cat shelter in Shenton Park which is only about 5 minutes away from our place. Initially we wanted to get a smaller kitten, something between 8-12 weeks old perhaps.

But as soon as we walked into the place, our kitten pretty well decided that she wanted us to take her home, and she was rather vocal about it too. Out of the 20 odd cats present, she was the only one meowing out to us with all her might, even falling over a couple of times in her desperate plea to get our attention.

Then, almost as fate would have it, the other smaller kittens were unavailable due to this rule they have about 'taking the last kitten together with its sibling/mother', and yeah we don't have the space for two cats. Sides, they didn't like us as much as Basil does. :)

She still displays all the usual cat-racteristics: scratching the furniture, perching on window sills, spending the bulk of her days sleeping and her nights keeping her owners awake. She eats moderately, but poos a heck lot for such a small kitteh. -.-

She also has her little quirks which may or may not be common in most cats (I wouldn't know better, and I'm only basing them on what Mitch tells me). For one, she does the "turns around on the spot before sitting down" thing like a pup. ^^ And most times she's pretty happy to be patted and cuddled, which is a nice change from cats who run away from me. T.T


I also like bags.

I've never had a pet my whole life. I've always wanted one, especially a puppy, but my mum had always said no. Which I thought was a little unfair since she had a dog previously, whom sadly passed away when I was still very little. :( I think the family wanted to spare me the misery of a dying pup; and spare themselves the misery at the same time probably.

And I don't resent them for that. I would have loved to grow up with a dog, but I don't think I had the best environment to raise one.

Things are different now though. Living where I am, with someone who's had dogs his whole life, in a city where I don't have to fear walking my pup in the park by myself when I eventually get one. Only after we've bought our own house though, considering pets are not allowed on most rented properties (shhhh..).

But for now, Basil's perfect for us. :)


xx
Hsin