My Saturday - belly dance, shopping and cooking

This morning I had a sleep in and then headed out to belly dancing class. I love belly dancing class - it is a lot of fun, and a genuinely worthwhile exercise that brings results. Since I've been doing that and body balance, my torso, arms and legs have toned up really well. I love to shimmy - that is a move where you move your knees quickly so your bum wobbles. I especially love it when I can hear the jingle jangle of my hip scarf.

We always laugh a lot in class - I have two other friends that come with me, and we spend a lot of the time being silly with each other - doing raunchy moves, ribbing each other about our ability and laughing with the rest of the girls in the class. Today I managed to do the whole hour long class without needing a rest! This is a big accomplishment for me. I commented on this, my friend joked with me that I must be feeling better or being less lazy than usual! I think my rock hard abs are developing from equal parts laughing and dancing. I know my lovely teacher reads this blog too, so a shout out to her and her funny analogies.

Here are some photos of me in my gym gear. I know - leggings as pants. It's ok though - my leggings make it easier to see the moves.



This is my coin hip scarf. Isn't it beautiful? So opulent. I love the purples and golds and all the other colours it makes when it catches the light. I have two others - a pink one and an el-cheapo yellow one I bought from eBay for $1.99, but this one truly makes me happy (and maybe a better dancer!).


After dancing my friend went to the local massive shopping centre and had a laksa to counteract all the exercise we just did. It was delicious.

While my friend bought earrings, I tried on my first diamond ring that was worth about $4000. The sales assistant told me that I shouldn't have to wait for someone else to buy it when I can buy it for myself. I told her 'Oh yes I will have to have someone else buy it at $4000'! It was beautiful. So shimmery, so sparkly - I could definitely see it on my finger. One day.

I bought two things.

With my free $30 Witchery voucher I bought a beautiful wool cardi. I put money towards it and it actually only cost me $15.45 - it was once $90! For once it's not a grey cardi (I have four!). It's like a greyish blue.


I also bought the new Angus and Julia Stone album - Down the Way.

It is gorgeously packaged - a little bound book that ties at the side. I can't wait to listen to it later as I do my uni readings.

I've also cooked two things tonight.

Some stewed apples and strawberries for a yoghurt cake that Faux Fuschia, the glamourous, domestic goddess of the blogosphere has inspired me to make. The apples are from my parents' tree. I love home made stewed apples, and in the winter, I love them with rhubarb and strawberries. This time I didn't put cinnamon and vanilla in, but I usually do. I did dust them with vanilla sugar though. Stewed fruit allows you to use the fruits that look a bit sad. My strawberries looked sad tonight.



For dinner I made lamb chops in the pan with fried potatoes - I love how the potato takes on the flavour of the lamb chops. I also had broccolini, sweet potato, carrot and purple cabbage. The vibrant purple cabbage and green broccolini went so well together - I've always loved a purple and green colour combimation. It was a delightfully colourful meal. A variety of colour also means I ate a variety of nutrients.





Here are some things I like in my little kitchen. I enjoy that everything here reminds me of loved ones or a great experience I had.

I really like plates and here are some of them. They all kind of match too. I think they look good standing up against the black tiles.

This green one is handmade pottery from Beechworth. I have a large bowl of the same design that I keep on the table. It reminds me of a James Gleeson painting. The purple one you can kind of see is just an el-cheapo from Target - I liked the purple pansy design.

This one with butterflies is from a friend one Christmas.

This one has a scarecrow on it. A family friend painted it for me when I was about eight, and she passed away soon after. I always think of her when I use it as a spoon rest. She lived next door to us when I was a baby and she would look after me a lot to give my parents some time out.


This is my seasoning tray.


The design on the tray is not visible, but it is another present from my dad - it has a droopy looking dog on it - a Weimaraner I think - it looks like a John Brack painting, but it's not. On the tray is salt, a pepper mill I bought from the Salamanca market in Hobart, and an oil decanter I bought in Beechworth at Christmas in 2008 - it has been handpainted in Australia and supports an organisation creating awareness about factory farmed animals. I love the green birds on the decanter.

Finally, here is my utensil rack - my Dad made this for me out of a small wire baking tray and fish hooks. It holds all the small utensils I need for cooking - it is very handy and I think every kitchen should have one. It's like a mini galley.

Hanging from it is a pickled onion catcher, mini grater, cheese knife, bottle stopper, kitchen scissors, regular scissors, egg separator, lemon zester, lemon juicer, whisks and lots of other goodies.

So that was my day. It was nice. Soon I will either make the yoghurt cake or do some reading for uni. I bet it's going to be making the yoghurt cake...

Tomorrow I will clean my floodrobe and sort clothes (because the cleaner comes on Monday) and start my first assignment of the semester.

This is a nice weekend.

Perfection versus excellence

I received my course details for the second last subject of my Masters of Communication today. The subject before the thesis.

There is one month tomorrow until uni starts back. I am excited, but apprehensive at the same time. All the subjects except for one in the Masters course have been ones I've known how to do, or had some skills or knowledge to apply to the subject throughout the semester.

- Writing journalistic pieces and essays.
- Researching for journalistic pieces.
- Researching for essays.
- Editing.
- Experience in organisational communication and marketing.
- Analysing media.
- Blogging.

The subject I've struggled the most with to date is graphic design - bookmaking. I really enjoyed the subject, and have made some beautiful books, but I just couldn't grasp the actual design part of the subject. It probably would have been better for me to have studied some graphic design at TAFE or at the undergraduate level before taking it on at masters level. This isn't to say I did a bad job in the subject. I did pretty well, but I push myself very hard, and wanted to do better.

I've done well in all subjects which I am very proud of. I love this course. This is different to my undergraduate degree where I disliked all but about two subjects - I found the subjects I disliked boring and difficult, and wasn't sure how to apply them, but the ones I like I can apply to real life situations and found interesting.

The upcoming subject next semester is research strategies. The many many pages of reading that I haven't yet read through indicates that we'll be learning about various research methodologies, probably statistics and also attending multiple classes including weekend classes. Wow.

I'm a bit scared. Because these are the things I'm not very good at.

I know that in life, we need to do things that we're not good at. I have enjoyed this course so much that I don't want to let myself down by not enjoying it or not doing well (ie - not achieving a distinction).

It's strange how the things we are not good at we are scared of.

Sometimes I leave things until the last minute, scared to start, in case I don't do it perfectly. These are usually essays or other written pieces. That seems silly because I know writing is my strength. But I worry I may miss the point of the question, or not relate the concepts to references, or that my writing won't make sense because I am not really clear on the content.

Writing an essay is much different to writing something in plain English for a company audience, which is what I do on a daily basis at work. Usually at work, the information is presented to me already, and I just 'translate' it or edit it. And writing a blog is really colloquial and I usually write how I speak.

Conclusions of essays are my weakness, and I'm actually trying to refine my skills on this by writing this blog. I really hope come next subject, and then my thesis, I have refined my skills enough to write really good, concise and memorable conclusions.

I am genuinely nervous about my research strategies subject and the thesis. I have an idea, but I don't know whether I have enough skills to research it. And I also know I shouldn't worry because worry makes stress and stress means soreness and soreness means hospital and hospital means a long recovery time. I will try to be calm.

I guess the thing with striving for perfection is worrying that the final product won't be perfect and so we don't give ourselves enough time to make it perfect because we are too busy putting it off.

I wrote a blog post in 2008, on my Myspace blog about a conversation I had with my manager about perfection versus excellence. Here it is:

My very wise and intelligent manager set me some homework over the weekend.

I was telling her how I was disappointed with my assignment result - even though I got a credit, I aimed higher.

She asked me to have a think about the difference between excellence and perfection.

So I did, and this is what I came up with.

Perfection is when you are completely satisfied with the end product and you don't think it needs refining.

And excellence is when your audience is satisfied with your end product.

That means, my audience was a newspaper readership, I wrote it well enough for them, therefore it had to be excellent. Well, in my eyes, it was good.

So when I discussed this with her and my other manager today, she agreed.

She told me not to beat myself up over not producing perfect work, and to have a think about who my audience is.

Most of the work I do is for other people, and in the academic world, my audience is a readership. Thus, it only has to be excellent, not perfect.

And when I am producing something for myself, that's when I put in the hard yards to ensure it's perfect. That's when I slave.

I love these little words of wisdom we exchange.

Whenever I embark on a new uni assignment or project at work, I try to think of this conversation about perfection versus excellence.

I hope I pluck up some confidence with these next two subjects and just do an excellent job, instead of worrying unnecessarily to achieve perfection.