5am this morning I said good bye to my best friend at the airport for 7 weeks! Gosh I am going to miss that boy – 7 weeks is the longest we have gone being apart from each other!!! Marley and I decided that the best way to cure our sad little hearts was to climb back into bed with a cup of tea, smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel (fresh bagels = plus side of an early Sunday start) and heater. Amazing.
Today I am meant to discuss my favourite quote and why it is my favourite. This is a pretty difficult task as there are so many amazing writers. What I would consider a favourite, isn’t really a one-liner or anything. It is a poem. Invictus by William Ernest Henley. I first heard it in the movie Invictus and now have it printed out in a frame. Why do I love it? I am not sure. It is quite a depressing poem in a sense but it is about conquering your demons and choosing your own path. I am a big believer in that we make our own destiny (another one I use all the time is “creature of our own demise”) and that our life can go anywhere we want it to.
Invictus by William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
What is your favourite quote?
Sorry for my absence again. The week kinda of ran away… Today’s post is ‘what makes you uncomfortable’ and as I do not tend to photograph uncomfortable moments (with one exception) I will keep this brief.
1. Making small talk – it is a requirement of my job (meeting candidates/contractors etc) but I hate it.
2. The little bit of water that occasionally collects in the section where your drink bottle sits on the treadmill. I will change treadmills because of this.
3. T.M.I moments – how do you move on in a conversation from these???
4. Walking into a function a realising you are completely under/over dressed. And then the ensuing uncomfortability that lingers for as long as you stay at said function.
5. When my boyfriend comes in, takes his shirt off and says “look I went and got cupping today” whilst proudly displaying back to me. Learn about cupping here. Apparently his back does feel good now, but I think it looks like he got kinky with a Giant Octopus and that makes me uncomfortable…
Woot day 2. I came back again. This could be successful.
Today I am meant to teach/educate you about something. There are several things I could discuss but I have one that is close to my heart:
Coffee, more specifically burnt coffee and how to avoid it.
A good coffee should not require sugar. An amazing coffee should not even require milk. Now this may be controversial but this is coming from a person who was forced to carry three plates of Oysters Kilpatrick out to a table of very fancy business men after said oysters had been on ice, under a heater. Needless to say, given my inexperienced tri-plate carrying skills and melted ice, a hefty dry cleaning bill followed. Anyway, I learnt to make coffee for fancy rich people when I worked in a very laady-da restaurant in South Perth. So, how to make could coffee.
The coffee should be freshly ground. A clean machine. The water should be hot and clean – the more chemicals (fluoride, chlorine etc) in the water, the worse it is going to taste. If you ever want amazing coffee, get it from a place that uses rain water – heaven! Anyway, good quality milk (organic & full cream) and last, and most importantly, a clean Portafilter (that’s the thing that they fill with the freshly ground coffee and then lock into the machine which the water drains through and gives you the coffee goodness). One of the biggest mistakes made when “professionals” make coffee is that yes, that whack the used coffee grounds out into the bin but they very rarely actually clean the coffee grounds out of the Portafilter with hot water. It doesn’t matter if you plunge the Portafilter into a bucket of hot water or just rinse it with hot water from the machine, just clean the darn thing. If you don’t, you get that unpleasant burnt after taste from your coffee which you get with the majority of coffee’s from mass produced places.
So that is my lecture for the day. It may be controversial. But cleanliness and good quality will give you a coffee to write home about. I know, I served the people who would send them back.
To taste what real coffee tastes like (this place is yet to fail me), go try the coffee (or hot chocolate which is also amazing) from the Green House on St George’s Terrace in Perth CBD. Now that sh*t is good! Below is a video on showing how the created the Green House – a recycling dream in the middle of the city.
Let me know your thoughts about coffee and your favourite place to purchase liquid energy from.
xx
Photo source: Join Me, Ruthie (from my birthday) Video Source: The Green House
I went and had a reading the other day with a psychic. Not normally something that I am into but I felt I needed a little bit of clarity and thought why not give it a go. Blake and I went and saw a Palm Reader when we were in Hong Kong last year and he told us we weren’t sleeping properly because our bed was on the wrong wall. Came back, moved bed to opposite wall and presto! we have had pretty great sleeps since. So I thought, clarity, lets give the psychic ago. Anyway, long story short, she told me I need get creative again (so true) and I need to start writing again. So as a commitment to both getting creative and writing again, I am going to do one month of blogging. This was actually a blogging thing that started Wednesday two weeks ago but hey! better late than never. Day 1: My life story, in 250 words. If you want to link up, follow the button on the right. Here goes…
My life story, in 250 words.
1990 is the year I was born. In George. A town along the Garden Route, one of the most beautiful parts of South Africa. We lived in Mossil Bay (think that is how it is spelt) and my Dad was a Marine Engineer on ships. In about 1991 (Mum, please correct me if I am wrong), we moved back to our house in Port Elizabeth where I grew up in that house until I was 9. I adored that house. It had wooden flooring, high ceilings, french doors and a MASSIVE bathtub. To this day, those are the criteria for my dream house. At this stage in my life, I am happy to settle with floating floors and a massive bathtub.
2000 came and went. We moved to Australia that year. Everything change and everything was different. My dream house was gone and replaced by a 3×2 plaster board house with low ceilings and a bath you couldn’t lie down in. Whilst everything changed, moving to Australia was the best decision my parent’s every made (aside from marrying each other and have me of course – the decision to have my brother is still up for debate 😛 – jokes, love you brother x). We lived in QLD for 5 years and then packed up and moved to the Pilbara aka. Mars! Not fun but an amazing adventure. I am more resilient after living there than I could ever have been.
2008 – 2012. 2008 saw me move to Perth to start university. I had my first heartbreak at the beginning of that year. 2009 I worked for Cirque du Soleil and travelled around Europe. 2010 – I met my best friend and soul mate. 2012 – I finished five years of university. Finished & graduated with pretty good results. 2013. I graduate and started working a proper job. So far, I have learnt more about myself in the past 12 months than I ever could have imagined.
That’s is more than 250 words but it gives you the picture. My life is full of change and discovery and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Tell me about you? What is the most important thing in your life that you tell people about yourself?
***Edit: Received a message from my mum this morning. Apparently I was incorrect about a number of things. “Read your blog!! It’s fun. Sept 1990 moved from Mossel Bay house and Noosa is 4 bedrooms brick veneer!!!! Sounds sad with 3 bedroom fibro lol”. Corrections are underlined.
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lily&grace 
