New word.

Jess K (the inventor of the word "short-scooping") coined another amazing word last week, "procrastibaking". Get it out there, even if you don't normally bake, you should, so that you can use this word.

It looks worse than it is.

This is only a normal amount of sliced colby. I call this proof that melted cheese looks much unhealthier than cold sliced cheese. Delicious cheese lava.

Getting real about flowers.

There were two photos from young women on Facebook this morning, of spontaneous flowers from their young husbands. CUTE! But I think I can do better.

Rejoice, eaters!

The announcement you have been waiting for!

The new jelssie Eat Street Challenge will commence this Friday night, 25 May. We have decided to eat the cheap half of Dixon Street, i.e. the north side, so it's outside of the really Chinatown bit. There is quite a diverse range of cuisine there, and it is mostly in a Person of Slender Means price range. We shall keep the same time and see how it works, 6.30pm. The first challenge will be at 1 Dixon Street, Arisun, which is Korean food. They seem to do fried chicken pretty famously.

Special invitation to anyone who has never been to Kingsford KESC, to join us in the central CBD location, handy to all and local to none of us. Here is a map. Hope to see you on Friday!

Don't "Ni Hao" me

It's a pet peeve of mine when strangers greet me with "Ni Hao", the Mandarin greeting for hello. Yes, I am Chinese, but no, I am not Mandarin Chinese, so your greeting doesn't win me over. I detest it when strangers do it to get attention. Yeah, I'm really impressed that you can say hello in Mandarin (<- detect the sarcasm), but actually, Cantonese is my Chinese tongue, so try again.

Ok, to be fair, I can speak some Mandarin, but seriously, just because you're Chinese doesn't mean you speak Mandarin. There's bazillion different types of Chinese out there.

That is all.

Winter mornings: difficult.

My morning functionality has dropped to about 15% since I got back from holidays. I'm TRYING to make it as easy as possible for myself: I am choosing my clothes the night before, putting them on the end of my bed before I get in at night, so that when I wake up in the morning I can pull them under the doona and warm them up before I get dressed. Sometimes I get dressed under the doona too, camp dorm style, to minimise exposure to the shock of the cold.

I also have a fridge stocked with salad ingredients in it, to make a sandwich or a salad for lunch. Today I looked in the fridge at my chickpeas and baby spinach and thought "I might buy lunch, just this once" but then overcame temptation, because how pathetic, I'm going to waste money on a salad sandwich in the city when I have the ingredients and the time but I just can't cope with putting stuff in a container.

And last night I resolved to scoot to work this morning, got my shoes and backpack and everything ready, but in the morning I was paralysed with indecision and stayed in bed wondering if I was fit enough, until it was too late to scoot, and I had to catch a nice, warm bus instead.

I used to think I was a winter person, a cold weather person, but I think that was just because I like the clothes, how everyone looks better dressed with long pants and a scarf, or stockings or whatever. I like the appearance of winter, but not, I have now realised, the cold. I do not like the cold.

Being new

Being new at church is hard, even for an extrovert like me, who loves meeting people. It's hard rocking up to a new church on your own and potentially not knowing anyone, especially if you thought church started at 9:30am, not 9:45am, and you sit there like a nigel while people are running after kids or running like headless chooks in order to get ready for church, and it's 20 minutes before someone talks to you. You start to feel strong pangs in your heart as you miss the people and the familiarity of your old church. I can see how people might lapse from being part of a church family if they had to change churches.

Forming new relationships is a two way street. The people there have to be willing to welcome you and talk to you, but you have to be willing to get involved, introduce yourself and make an effort. If you can put up with the initial discomfort of being new, get involved and just hang in there, your new church family will soon be familiar and start to feel like family. That's my strategy anyway.

Multiple punctuation marks

I used to be a person who would use punctuation marks sparingly. One's enough, thank you very much. Then I met someone who would punctuate his emails with multiple exclamation marks!!! And question marks, too??? And then I was converted to using multiple punctuation marks if they were exclamation or question marks!!! I think it just conveys the excitement I would have if I were normally talking to you!!! Don't you think so, too??? Sometimes, I stick to two!!

Of course, I could never do that professionally, but personally, multiple punctuation marks are zany?!?!!

And what's with the dot dot dots...why can't I just stick to one sometimes...

Armed force.

A First Lady

While on holidays a thing that irked me was that my brother walked 3 to 5 steps in front of me. He just couldn't see a reason to slow down and match my pace when I was tired, although neither did he hare off into the distance. He kept pace, just a few meters in front of me. Unless I physically grabbed his arm Austen-style, which actually worked very well. Slowed him down and took some weight off my feet. Those old-fashioned ladies had a clue.

Living in the single moment.

A rare singleness post. Not that there is anything wrong with talking or blogging about singleness, it's just another thing, like sickness or having babies or going grey or being a cyclist. But personally I find that the less I worry about it, the less I worry about it, so I enjoy worrying about other things instead, like culling my facebook friends. (I was overwhelmed by the relief in fb comments of the unculled!) Anyway...

I was looking through the layout for the upcoming Briefing, and skimmed Valerie Ting's article on The 'S' Word. I think this statement near the end sums up how I try to approach life:

"God gives us grace and faith enough for each step—he gives us each day our daily bread, not bread for the rest of our lives. I am not called to envision a lifetime of singleness and force myself to look forward to that, but rather to rejoice in this season of singleness, however long it lasts, and trust God to provide for all my needs."

I know I have a very rich life and I have a lot I can thank God for today, and that's all I need to know. It's a relief to know that I don't have to have ALL my contentment sorted out now, whenever I ponder the rest of my life. Yay, back to not worrying about it!

Simplifying.

I've come back from holidays with the realisation that there is a lot going on in my life in Sydney that I don't need. Too many clothes, too many TV shows, that sort of thing. I did not hear any news from Australia while away, and I seem to have missed nothing, for example. Therefore, I am going to black out the news from now on.

Today I culled my Facebook friends. I got rid of a hundred people who were either inactive, had nothing to do with me, or I don't really like them, etc. I know I could just hide them and keep them all without being annoyed or reminded, but why do I need a fake high number of friends I completely ignore? Just get rid of them and have a true number of people I want to be friends with or remember in any kind of active online way.

I also had a big inbox when I got back, but basically none of it was actually work. That was an hour of deleting. So I unsubscribed from all the stuff I like but don't really need to get news about several times a week.

This is like decluttering but of time and mental space, not mess and physical space!

Tender and tough

I've moved away from the east and I'm keen to make connections locally, so I've started going along to my local church. They run a course for newbies to get to the know the pastor and understand what the church is on about, in order for you to work out whether this church is for you.

One thing the pastor talked about, regarding what they wanted to achieve at church, was tender love in encouragement and tough love in confrontation*.

In my experience, when you receive tender love in encouragement at the right time, it is such a balm to the soul. When you receive tough love in confrontation, but at the wrong time, it is crushing to the spirit and you feel so misunderstood and unsupported. When you receive it at the right time, yes, it's a little painful, but you know that person has your best interests at heart, you would do well to heed their words and it is spoken out of love.

It takes wisdom and discernment to know which to use: spending time in the other person's shoes, understanding their lives and the situation they're in, and then making the call. Knowing which love to give at what time is one of the most helpful things you can ever give to a person.

*John Piper uses the same language in The Meaning of Membership and Church Accountability.