That’s What Your Mum Said

My Mum used to get up quite early in the morning and often she would spend her time making pikelets. I would wake to the smell of them cooking in the warm house and it piqued my hunger – enough to want to get out of bed!

I would stumble into the kitchen anticipating the deliciousness coming my way.

Then Mum would say ‘DON’T TOUCH THEM! THEY ARE FOR MY WORKMATES! DON’T_TOUCH_THE_FOOD!

I think I get my nasty streak from her.

Her recipe makes about 10 small yet very fulfilling pikelets. I have them with lemon and sugar on top, but they are just as nice with any topping you can think of – honey, butter or jam are usually the best (add some cream with the jam version for hella goodness)! Apparently some people can afford fresh berries and are just a little bit fancy. If this is you, you might like to make something that looks like this:

If you are like me, you will produce something that looks like this:

You know what – they still taste DAMN good!

1 cup self raising flour

1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate soda

1/2 cup of milk with 1 teaspoon of vinegar in it

2 tablespoons of caster sugar

1 egg

1 dessert spoon of melted butter

1. Heat a frying pan over medium-high heat and add a little butter

2. Mix dry ingredients together. Add the milk, egg and butter. Mix until smooth.

3. Spoon small amounts into pan – you want the pikelets to be about 10cm wide. Cook until small bubbles rise in the batter and the face-down side is brown. Flip, and cook until brown.

4. Eat as many as your heart desires

…you probably won’t like this article!

Burkas and Birkins

I really loved this article

I am turning 27 this year. Although I completed an undergraduate degree immediately after school, it did not involve any exams – all of my assessments were essay, website (clearly I didn’t learn a great deal) or feature writing based.

What I am getting at here is that I haven’t done an exam since my final year of high school.

I was 17 turning 18.

That was 9 years ago.

There are a few words running through my discombobulated brain – they would all potentially have me arrested for offensive conduct if an officer of the law (or a conscientious member of the public undertaking a citizens arrest) heard me mutter them.

Hey, I have soaked in and understood some information! Here’s hoping the Criminal law exam asks about offensive conduct, and only about offensive conduct…I am not sure I can remember anything else!

Any ideas for making this less than razor-sharp painful? I certainly plan on eating well and giving the noggin’ something decent to work with nutrient wise. However stress busters are a requirement…and I am not so good at the stress busters. HELP!

After a wonderful day in Sydney catching up with friends, family, and watching Christopher Hitchens be generally stupendous, the partner and I caught a very late train home to Newcastle. This train ride takes between 2 1/2 and 3 hours and after a long day in the city can be uncomfortable and sometimes a little concerning – a lot of people enjoy drinking on the train or using it as a place to sleep off their day/night of drinking.

When we were about 20 minutes from home, a man with a large bottle of alcohol covered in a brown paper bag in one hand, and an iPhone in the other, came over to us. He asked in a drunken and slow voice if he could borrow a phone as the battery had died on his. He was very polite however there was something quite unnerving about him. A few weeks ago, I allowed a drunken lady at the train station (at 8 in the morning, mind you) to borrow my mobile, even though I am a poor student and credit is like gold. She chatted with her friend for around five minutes with burps in between and a complete disregard for the credit she was wasting. Needless to say, I was burned. As a result I was immediately wary of this man and my partner looked quite uncomfortable too. This led to me lying and saying that I didn’t have my phone on me, and that my partner and I are students and don’t have much credit on his phone. I apologised profusely and felt really quite bad but at the same time, not bad enough to lend a phone. I must admit I was expecting him to be quite angry however he stayed calm. His eyes betrayed him and I could sense that he was angry and was judging us quite harshly.

He started asking what we are studying and where we lived. We told the truth about the degrees but not where we lived. He told us that his wife studied law like I am currently. He asked about our day and why we were in Sydney, and in order to be polite we asked him what he had been doing. It was a darned scary conversation as he appeared to be working up to something; yet, he wished us well in our studies and said he was sorry for making us feel uncomfortable.

As he left the train he gave us a flyer for the art show he had been to during the day where one of his friends had shown and sold some paintings. He told us that he will be showing his work in a gallery one day. He then hopped off a few stations before ours.

The more I think over this the worse I feel. After all of the fear we felt he appeared to be a genuine man who was just drunk. I immediately judged him as train-folk and assumed would get upset and angry and swear at us. However there is a good chance the discomfort we experienced was useless and led to us being unfriendly and uncharitable.

I am having trouble discerning whether we were unreasonable, or whether this is something a lot of people would have done.

Would you have lent him your phone?

I am lucky in that I have a boyfriend who is currently ‘keeping’ me. It allows me to study without the stress of putting the food on the table or paying the water bill. He claims that he will become a kept man and do his PHD when I graduate, but the joke is on him. I will get a lowly paid social justice job that fulfills me but only pays for half of the rent. HA! Sucker.

Anyway, my point is that my last pay from my once a month shift at an optometrist wasn’t required to make ends meet, so it instead went toward tickets to see Christopher Hitchens speak in Sydney this weekend. I like him. A lot. In a wrong way. Kind of. Sometimes I look at him and I think ‘middle aged paunch’. Other times I glance and I think ‘well hello sailor’. Usually when I don’t look at all and just read what he has written I think that latter. Even when he wrote that women aren’t funny, I liked his style. I love someone that can be a real dick with their tongue in cheek and cop the flack from humourless politically correct wankers. Dude, he visits war zones and rags on Mother Teresa! He has some steel balls right there.

I am hoping that he comes onto the stage with a bottle of scotch in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and it all just spirals into him singing show tunes in a mumbly Patsy-esque voice. That would be rad.

How can you not love him?

Well, straight up, I am a jerk/gerk (I am in two-minds about the spelling of this baby). I haven’t posted in forever and let us all be honest: not good enough. Can I list some excuses?

1. I have been thrown into the world of the law. It is fascinating and terrifying and all consuming. I go to bed thinking about Contracts. I wake up thinking about the Criminal law. Sometimes in the middle I sneak a little ‘Gilmore Girls’. I am getting decent marks and now have exams to look forward to in about three weeks time. Woot?
2. I have been lame-ass sick. The doc’s tell me it is a hyper-active thyroid, however they don’t actually know what it causing it. I have had at least 3 diagnoses so far but I guess I will wait until I see the endocrinologist in about a month. This thyroid thing (I call him Clive) is a crazy mofo. Makes me eat like a horse whilst still losing weight. Makes me have panic attacks even when I’m not stressed or anxious – just feels like pumping that adrenalin through whenever and wherever. Makes my mind a bit hazy. Makes me avoid coffee because it sets him off and makes me shake like a drug addict. If he continues, he will lead to bad things like malnutrition and osteoporosis. I want him fixed dammit!
3. I am lazy. When I have time to blog (which actually happens quite a lot) I tend to do Sudoku puzzles or make cakes or just sit and contemplate my navel.

I will try harder. I am reading all of your delightful blogs, I swear! They keep me happy and alive. What more could I want?

Tonight I am doing a placement at the Legal Centre that my university runs. I get to watch a fourth year law student talk to a real client and interview them regarding their legal issue. I am excited about this because legal-aid style law is where I want to head. None of this corporate swill for me (unless they offer me cake and iced coffee all the time….). Hopefully I don’t get a crazy who has just stabbed someone and wants to know their rights. I guess it is about a fair trial and all that….

ipso facto. Grievous Bodily Harm. Vicarious liability. prima facie. Estoppel. Parol Evidence rule. Wounding. mens rea. Defamation. obiter dictum. Affray.

Is it sick that I love this?