Level UP!

OK so I'm now 21. Yay!
The party was excellent and I thank everyone who came and partied down with me :). I also have a detailed list of everything that people drank... Dear my friends, you're a bunch of alcoholics :P nah I jest. but the most popular item, besides the vodka mixers and the rum mixers, was was gin, which surprised the bar staff.
In any case 21!
Oh in other news. Went down to Melbourne to play the Twin Hat - Melbourne Hat 2010. My team (C4+1) made 7th out of 24 teams which was damn impressive.
Oh and Today I fixed my door. To explain, the door to my bedroom has never really latched properly when you close it. so much so that a gentle push from the wind or even my kitten was enough to force it open. The culprit of this mystery was the positioning of the hole that the latching mechanism is supposed to go into. It was too high and thus the latch would not fit into the hole properly, leading me to believe that my kitten was super powerful for a few days.
So today I got fed up with it. Well actually to be more precise I got fed up with my kitten, now almost a cat, busting into my currently very messy room and then messing it up more or biting holes in the cardboard boxes that I've placed strategically to hold shit.
So in the process of fixing my door I have learnt some minor carpentry skills. Woo!

anyway thats all for today

Merry Christmas and Happy Festivus
See you for New Years

-Charles

and we're Live in Five, Four, 3, 2, 1...

GOOD MORROW ALL!

Hello and welcome. Its been a while hasn't it. Yes, yes, I know you've missed me, and I've missed you. Oh you look wonderful, AH somebody's been letting themselves go whilst I've been away ;) AHAHAHA ahhh, its good to be me.
In any case today I bring you another exciting edition of 

Spontaneous Banter 

of 

Everyday Lives

On today's agenda:

                                                                                                                       

Remember remember it is now Movember

A young man will attempt to defy his genetics and grow a Mo. Should he? Could he? Will he? and will you sponsor him in his foolish quest?

                                                                                                                       

                                                                                    

Closing words from a Director

Some closing comments from one of this year's Directors of the Science Revue

                                                                                    

                                                                                                                

In the Kitchen with Cheswick

The Cooking Adventures of a Cullinary Genius in the making - today we look at Lemon Chicken!

                                                                                                                

                                                                                                                 

The Week's Birthday Bashes!

WHO OLD? Well lets find out

                                                                                                                 

                   OK LETS GO!                  

                                                   

Remember remember it is now Movember

It is that time of year again... oh spring. The weather turns warmer, the days are longer, Nature seems to brim with potential and men are sporting moustaches. Yes ladies and gentlemen, Movember is here and this young man is going to attempt to grow a Mo. Now the odds are stacked against him, what with his genetic predisposition to less hair growth on the facial region and with the possibility of having to be on clinical placement with a seedy seedy mo. A poll was released on doodle.com as to whether or not our brave young hero should proceed with the venture and the results came in with a huge 55 voting yes, in one way or another, taking down the nay sayers, with only 11 votes. Thus, Charles will attempt for the first time to grow a mo in a month, despite all genetic predisposition and social disapproval. Find his mo-space here and please donate to the very worthy cause of Movember. For more information on Movember please visit www.movember.com.au
                                                   


                                                   
Memoirs of a Science Revue Director

As some of you may have known, this year I directed the Science Revue and I just wanted to say a few words about my entire experience.

There was a mountain, which can only be described as my aspiration to direct. I don't know when it was born but I do know that I was aware of its existence at the end of 2008. This awareness came after the Science Revue AGM, which lead to my election as publicity officer for the year, when one of the 2008 directors expressed disappointment at the prospect of me being publicity officer because they thought I should direct. At that one point in time, on top of the mountain, snow began to fall. From that point I've known that I wanted to direct in 2010. I was asked in 2009 if I would like to direct but at that stage I believed I wasn't ready for it and I had made up my mind that after spending some time in the production team and the executive that I would direct the year after.

Another year had passed and the mountain that is my aspiration to direct had been collecting snow throughout it. In December, the sun had risen and begun to thaw the expanse of snow lying in wait. I had told the 2010 Producer, Rona, that I was interested in directing and so the first trickle of water made its descent from the mountain.

Later that month Chloe and I had a conversation over msn about the possibility of directing this years show together. From there a tiny trickle, of what would eventually become the show, merged with another trickle of water and made its way down the proverbial mountain. 9 months from this point the trickle of water would eventually reach the sea but between the two points in time were countless obstacles and detours along the way, and many other trickles of water would meet with the two that made its way down the mountain towards the sea. James our head writer, Jarred our MD, Giles the Band Director, Alex and Chris the Vocal Directors, Steph the Choreographer were among the first as well as returning members of the society who began the task of writing for the show. O-week came about and we had so many members  After about 9 months of work, the Science Revue had finally reached the sea and come to a close and I finally have my life back.

I guess I wanted to say a few words about this year and this year's show.

It's been an incredible journey so far and I've learnt so much from the experience of being a director. It's a tough job and you pick up a great deal of experience in human resources and diplomacy, what with having to schedule rehearsals left, right and centre, and time management. I don't think I quite managed to become much better at time management in general, but it was good experience none the less.

As for the show. OMG was it a fantastic show, and I don't say that because I had a hand in putting it together. No, it was AMAZING and I want to let everyone know exactly how proud I am of the cast, the crew, the production team and the exec for being part of the process of making such a fantastic show. 

To Chloe, my Co-director,

 I couldn't have done any of this without you and your enthusiasm, dedication and talent. To my production team, you are all incredibly talented and amazing people and this year would not have come together as well as it did with out you. To Rona, our producer extraordinaire, you have worked tirelessly for the well being of this show and made things happen, thank you for all your work and sacrifice (on the part of your thesis) and best of luck with everything that comes your way in the future. To the executive who helped Rona and made things possible for us to make a show, thank you for your dedication and thank you for putting up with us crazy production types. I hope you all enjoyed the year and that you learned some valuable skills as I had learnt in my year as publicity officer. To the amazing amazing cast. Thank you so much for being a part of my life, and lets face it, Science Revue was my life for this year, and for having so much fun along the way. I know we pushed you all very hard in the lead up to the show, and we may have almost broken a few of you, to that I apologise. But what a pay off it was to see you all on stage having the time of your life. Also thank you to anyone who came and saw the show. Your patronage is what made this so great, because while we had fun making the show and putting it on, the real reward was sharing that fun with all of you.

To close, I would just like to say that I hope that you all try and live by the motto that we lived by this year which was "have fun, make awesome"

-Charles Tian

                                                   


                                                   
In the Kitchen with Cheswick
Ah lemon chicken. Its one of those classic recipes that westerners love. But when you get it at restaurants its always gluggy and covered in a overly cornstarched lemon sauce... perhaps thats what people like, but not me. Today I'll show you how to make authentic lemon chicken from scratch.
For this recipe you'll need:

• 500g of boneless, skinless chicken (I suggest breast, but you can use thigh if you like)
• 1 tablespoon of Light soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon of Shaoxing rice wine
• 1 spring onion (or scallion) finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon of finely chopped ginger
• 1 garlic clove finely chopped
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 90g of cornflour or corn starch (in my recipe, I didn't have cornflour so i used potato starch, but you can use any sort of light flour)
• oil for deep frying
• Lemon Sauce
• 2 tablespoons of Lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons of sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of roasted sesame oil
• 3 tablespoons of chicken stock or water
• 1/2 teaspoon of cornflour (cornstarch)

This recipe should serve 6.

1. Cut your chicken into slices and place in a bowl
2. Add to the bowl your soy sauce, shaoxing, spring onion, ginger, garlic and mix well
3. marinate in fridge for an hour at least or overnight
4. take your marinated chicken and add the beaten egg to the mixture. Toss well to coat and then drain off any excess egg.
5. Now you need to coat your marinated egg soaked chicken with cornflour. The easiest way to do this is to put your chicken in a bag and then throw in the cornflour and shake. I like to put in a bit of sichuan or regular pepper to my cornflour just to give it a bit of extra flavour but that is totally optional.
6. once you've finished doing the boy from oz, or once the chicken is well coated, you can put it aside and get ready to start frying
7. Fill a wok (or if you don't have a wok, any sort of pot that you can deep fry in) one quarter full of oil. Heat the oil to 190C or until a piece of bread fries golden brown in 10 seconds.
8. Add a portion of the chicken, no more than half, one piece at a time to your oil. Fry for 3 1/2 - 4 minutes whilst stirring constantly. You want your chicken to be golden brown.
9. Remove cooked chicken with a slotted spoon or sieve and drain on some paper towel
10. repeat step 8 and 9 with the rest of your chicken.
11. Reheat your oil to 190C and add all of your cooked chicken and fry until crisp and golden brown.
12. Drain chicken, pour off oil (I like to filter it and save it for cooking other dishes or deep frying again later), and wipe out your wok (if you were using a pot, just shove it in the sink and get a frying pan)
13. To make your sauce, combine the lemon juice, sugar, salt, sesame oil, stock and corn flour.
14. Reheat your wok over medium heat until hot and add the lemon sauce, stirring constantly until thickened.
15. Throw in the chicken and toss lightly in sauce
16. Serve with rice.

Tada! that's it! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below :)

-Cheswick

                                                   


                                                   
This Weeks Birthday Bashes!
So here's where we get to acknowledge the people who x number of years ago were pushed out into this big bad world. This week we have Kristy, Bailey, Jason, Sophie, Trevor and James. Congrats guys! Your combined age is 143 and this week's Famous birthday is Nelly (like the rapper and not the Furtado). Woo!
Ok now for a question. How can you turn the digits 1, 4 and 3 into 10 in any mathematical way you like, but only using each number once. You may take a number to its own power or root freely but all other mathematical operations require another number. Find out the answer next week!
                                                   


Well that's all for this week


-Cheswick

I read something once... long ago

When I was a child, I came across, indirectly (via play school I believe) a book. The story of the book was that a little girl didn't want to eat her vegetables or something like that. But her figure of the parental/grandparental/guardian...al variety told her that if she didn't eat her food quick enough it would keep growing and growing. And lo and behold it did. so the next time she had dinner, she ate her food as quickly as she could so it would not have the opportunity to grow.

The moral of that story was that you should deal with things right away otherwise they blow up into things much larger than you can handle.

Clearly I did not learn much from this story until I think about it in hindsight because I have many essays to write which I did not start early or I did not do the work for something which caused me to have to write another essay.

In short I had over 6000 words of essays to write plus 4 exams to study for in the space of 2 weeks, which then became 6000 words and 4 exams in 1 week.

Now it is 3500 words and less than 3 days until my first exam...

It's times like this I wish I could duplicate myself to get more work done, even at the risk of falling into a coma once i'd finished it and reunited my duplicates, or time travel so I could whip my past self into doing the work... which would technically create a time paradox because the current me should not be with past me if I had done the work in the first place... oh god... why did i start that train of thought...

URGH, ESSAYS MAKE ME WANT TO CRAWL INTO A DITCH AND TIME TRAVEL

I hate essays with a fiery passion that burns brighter than a super nova. Whatever divine power is out there, please lend me the strength and focus to finish these 6000 words so that I can start studying for my exams, wooo.... :(

Essays Pt 3

YAY I BROKE 2000! I'm on the home stretch and its only 6 days late.

NURS5001 Letter

NURS5002 Essay

This one is not so great... its due today at 5pm and I don't have an extension for it, and rarg. :o