22 - What I did last summer
Hello again friends! Welcome back to a new year, a new decade, a new start for us all :) In the classic vein of 'going back to school', here's "What I Did Last Summer":
- Cooking - I've been out here working on a bunch of really basic recipes in anticipation of moving out sometime...so that I can actually survive? Also I have all these cookbooks now so why not :D Recipes included: roast chicken, drunken chicken, cookies, pavlova, red sauce pasta from scratch, vegies (in a variety of ways), chocolate cake, scallops - this list goes...well that's most of it actually but I did them enough times to make sure I can do them more often!
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I GOT A PLANT - which I was wholly unprepared for as a Sneaky Santa gift. I sat there blank for like 10 minutes after receiving it with my mind racing about how the hell I was going to look after this LIVING THING. After the requisite amount of freaking out, I now plan to keep it alive for as long as possible (it can't be that hard...right?). Please see end of post for a new segment called 'The Calathea Corner' where I'm going to document the (most likely) slow death (or new life!) of this plant.
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Reading - I didn't read as much as I thought I would over the break - there was always something else to do! I picked up "Alchemy" by Rory Sutherland - he's the guy who did this TED talk, arguing that solutions don't always need to be done through reason and efficiency, but sometimes, that reframing the solution can provide just as much value. My favourite example of his: instead of spending $30m upgrading a train ride by 10 minutes, use the same amount of money to hire models to walk up and down the train handing out free champagne; passengers will ask the trains to go slower!
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Exercising - I went on a few runs over the break - this year is about making sure I get more active and put away more time to doing it. I stopped actively going to the gym last year but replaced it with futsal - hoping to look into adding even more interesting ways to stay active in the year to come!
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A winery tour...where I nearly passed out due to heat exhaustion but still made it to the end :D Wine is real good, guys. Also got this pic of the extraordinarily flamboyant yet amazing summer suits that we wore on the trip. #mixtape dropping soon.
- Watching
1. TV: finally finished Mr Robot, an absolutely fantastic series both in cinematography, as well as the performances and most importantly the story. A really satisfying and beautiful last season. I also finished the most recent season of The Expanse, a wonderful sci-fi series that gives its world enough time to build, but keeps the tension going throughout. Having read some of the books, this was a wonderful breath of fresh air - they fixed a lot of the boring parts of the books, and tightened up the story.
2. Movies: was able to get to Ip Man 4, Frozen 2, Knives Out and Jojo Rabbit. Knives Out was the standout for me - an intriguing Agatha Christie-like story but told with the right amount of unknown information and gradual unfolding of the story. With some extraordinary performances from Daniel Craig and Chris Evans :D Also Scarlett Johanssen in Jojo Rabbit was one of my favourite performances in all of these movies! Looking forward to watching Little Women and potentially CATS but only for the memes.
And as always, the summer cleaning, the spending too much time on Reddit and whiling away the hours with family and friends either with food, or games (or both!).
Hope you had a restful break, and are ready for the year to come!
Chat soon :)
✔️ Real Life Recommendations
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T'Gallant - a great winery down in the Mornington Peninsula that does a mean funghi with blue cheese pizza. It was an extremely delicious pizza! The wine didn't hurt either :D White moscato was so creamy and light - perfect for a hot summer.
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Zomato Gold - I don't get any sponsorships for this but this is essentially like the Entertainment Book, except it's just for food and drink (buy 1 get 1 free, buy 2 drinks get 2 drinks free etc.), and it covers a lot of really nice places around Melbourne (Shimbashi Soba, Maccaroni Trattoria, Serotonin Eatery etc.). I got it for around $24 and have definitely made back the savings - I think I would have paid around the $40ish mark for it - it's quite easy to take advantage of if you eat out even just once a month. I'll blast out a recommend code if there's a 50% off sale :D
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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AI Dungeon - using the GPT-2 AI system built by OpenAI, an old-school text adventure game was produced by a PhD student that takes in your inputs and expounds on them to create a dungeon adventure game. It looks INCREDIBLE. In the past these sorts of games had to have their inputs, rooms, loot, enemies etc. all painstakingly built. Here though, it's created dynamically. AMAZING! You can only access this game through Patreon at the moment, and I'll post if I do end up getting it - it seems fun!
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The Man Who Solved the Market - this review made me want to pick up this book - it seems like an immensely riveting read about a former codebreaker and professor of mathematics who built a hedge fund that returned 66% per annum. Exploitation of the financial markets isn't great, but it's always extremely interesting to read about genius.
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Why taxpayers pay McKinsey $3m per year - a sobering look into the McKinsey-ification of the American government. What value is actually being created?!
Does McKinsey do a good job? The answer is that it’s probably no better or worse than anyone else. I’m sure there are times when McKinsey is quite helpful, but it’s in all probability vastly overpriced for what it is, which is basically a group of smart people who know how to use powerpoint presentations and speak in soothing tones.
Ouch.
🌱 The Calathea Corner
Welcome to the CALATHEA corner where I'm going to keep updating you on the health of my new plant (which is a Calathea in case that wasn't obvious)! It is very likely going to die, so I'm trying not to get too attached. But if it survives til February I will name it. It's similar to the tradition of the 'one-month' celebration in traditional Chinese times - where a baby would only be named if it survived a month. In times of high mortality, they didn't want to get too attached 'til then.
So really, I'm keeping a tradition going - here it is:
