Good morning dear readers and welcome back to the home stretch. Yes, with only 6 days left before move out and my last ever exam of my undergrad happening tomorrow, reality is sinking in (well not as much as I expected it to). While I'm stressing out about work, school and having to pack up my entire life in 6 days, my mind wants me to procrastinate while my body just wants my mind to shut up for a second. Could you believe it if I told you that I over think things? Yeah, no one could ever guess THAT one! Anyways, so the title of this entry is in relation to what I decide to do when everything just seems too much... sift through books.
Now I know that that sounds like procrastination (and it probably is) but it was doing me some good and I managed to study afterwards so it wasn't all bad. I manage to look through boxes of old books I was going to donate, and figured that I should only really keep those that are in pristine condition (or that would at least hold up in travel). As I was looking through them, I came across a box of children's French books and couldn't help but think of Katie for when she has her own kids. I know that most people think that I should be thinking of when I'm going to have my own kids (and I do plan ahead sometimes) but she's the one who's getting married and I'm still the single hermit who likes to read and go off on adventures by herself.
What's really great about Katie and her future plans is that she wants her kids to learn French and English right from the get go since that is something she wished she had had. So while I was riffling through, I found a few good ones, as well as translation of popular books so that her fiancé could read one in English to the kids, and Katie could read the other to them in French.
It's little things like that that we like to look forward to because we both know that we're both stressed and excited to start the next step. The tough part will not be seeing each other every single day, and not coming back to each other in the fall. Riles has already moved on to his new apartment, so we don't see him much but he's making a little effort now (so that I don't get too emotional over time). So with that, I discovered (or rediscovered I should say since I already technically knew) that books are some of the best books you can give someone. It is the one thing that you can continuously learn and grow from. It can be passed down from one person to the next, and it carries meaning beyond the pages of the book. That is why my dear readers, never through away a book, but rather donate or re-gift if you don't want it anymore, because you never know who is out there waiting for that exact story to change their life.
K.P.H.
Sunday 24 April 2016
Monday 18 April 2016
Love: Creative Cooking
Good evening my dear readers! I promised I have not forgotten about you all, but I think it'll be a little easier for us all if I post once every second week (at least until exams are done), or else I'm just going to run out of days. Believe it or not, we've reached the 12 days lefts mark and my apartment is beginning to look empty. With all of my belongings going into boxes, I've had to plan ahead for what I'm going to wear, what I need to finish studying, but also, with what I'm going to eat.
Having been raised in a house where my mother loved to cook and try new recipes (so much so that we weren't allowed to eat the same thing until the duration of 4 months elapsed), I've learned to make a good meal with whatever is lying around. I've got so many random pieces of protein lying about in the freezer that I've got a base at least for everything. I've got veggies in the fridge and a pantry full of miscellaneous items. Though my meals may not always be conventional, they are always quite entertaining. I tend to "wing it" as I go, but once in a while, I'll consult the great cookbook of my mother's recipes and see if I might substitute one ingredient for another. My roommate Katie is loving my creative experiments as she gets to wine (but mostly) dine with me. We've only got 12 days to empty out the cupboards so if we have to have pancakes at odd times, of some sort of pasta concoction, we will be adventurous and push our taste buds to the limit.
It's in moments of creative exploration that you can find one of your favorite recipes, or learn to make a basic meal with a little more pop to it. They may not always pan out the way you hope, but then you get to know what doesn't go with that certain ingredient. There really isn't anything to lose and everything to gain. And like Julia Child once said: "People who love to eat, are always the best people."
K.P.H.
Having been raised in a house where my mother loved to cook and try new recipes (so much so that we weren't allowed to eat the same thing until the duration of 4 months elapsed), I've learned to make a good meal with whatever is lying around. I've got so many random pieces of protein lying about in the freezer that I've got a base at least for everything. I've got veggies in the fridge and a pantry full of miscellaneous items. Though my meals may not always be conventional, they are always quite entertaining. I tend to "wing it" as I go, but once in a while, I'll consult the great cookbook of my mother's recipes and see if I might substitute one ingredient for another. My roommate Katie is loving my creative experiments as she gets to wine (but mostly) dine with me. We've only got 12 days to empty out the cupboards so if we have to have pancakes at odd times, of some sort of pasta concoction, we will be adventurous and push our taste buds to the limit.
It's in moments of creative exploration that you can find one of your favorite recipes, or learn to make a basic meal with a little more pop to it. They may not always pan out the way you hope, but then you get to know what doesn't go with that certain ingredient. There really isn't anything to lose and everything to gain. And like Julia Child once said: "People who love to eat, are always the best people."
K.P.H.
Sunday 3 April 2016
Laughter: Faceswap...Enough Said
Good evening my dear readers, I hope all is well. I know that I did not write a post like week but I figured that with all the excitement of Easter weekend, both myself and you, were all too busy to read the blog. However, I made sure to post an entry worth while to make up for the time lapse. Believe it or not, since the last post, I currently have 27 days until I have to move out, and 22 days until I'm done my undergrad. Time seriously needs to stop passing by so quickly because I don't think there's enough coffee in our apartment to fuel those extra hours I have to undertake. Despite that, I thought it might be a nice change to focus on something a little funny that a lot of people are trying out lately.
Now I'm not a person to follow a lot of trends, but I do on occasion take a dip into the mainstream. And the trend I have been testing out is a concept called Faceswap that is created and facilitated by an app called SnapChat. To start off, the only reason I have this app is because my friends from work got me to add it to my phone so that we can stay connected with funny pictures. For those of you not familiar with the app, it is one that allows you to connect with your friends by sending pictures and videos that can only be seen for a total of 30 seconds at a time. It's a brief way of communicating which really forces you to capture just the right moment. Now SnapChat has added certain filters that enables you to make funnier faces and add special effects to what would be normal pictures and videos. One of which allows you to swap faces with another person next to you.
This Faceswap can be quite ingenious and can on occasion prove to offer plausible faceswaps, but on other occasion (which happens more often than not with me), they produce horrible (yet hilarious) pictures. Below, you'll see the app attempting to swap my face with my roommate Katie's. We were slightly further from one another, and apparently the app cannot register slight flaws in the pictures. The second is a faceswap that I did with my brother which resulted in utter horror. For some reason, my face in the faceswap filter tends to breed some kind of alien race. If you haven't tried the app, it's guaranteed to grant a good laugh (one that will make you feel like you've got abs by the end of it) or at least a great story to tell after. So I invite you my dear readers to test it out and see what the results will be!
K.P.H.
Now I'm not a person to follow a lot of trends, but I do on occasion take a dip into the mainstream. And the trend I have been testing out is a concept called Faceswap that is created and facilitated by an app called SnapChat. To start off, the only reason I have this app is because my friends from work got me to add it to my phone so that we can stay connected with funny pictures. For those of you not familiar with the app, it is one that allows you to connect with your friends by sending pictures and videos that can only be seen for a total of 30 seconds at a time. It's a brief way of communicating which really forces you to capture just the right moment. Now SnapChat has added certain filters that enables you to make funnier faces and add special effects to what would be normal pictures and videos. One of which allows you to swap faces with another person next to you.
This Faceswap can be quite ingenious and can on occasion prove to offer plausible faceswaps, but on other occasion (which happens more often than not with me), they produce horrible (yet hilarious) pictures. Below, you'll see the app attempting to swap my face with my roommate Katie's. We were slightly further from one another, and apparently the app cannot register slight flaws in the pictures. The second is a faceswap that I did with my brother which resulted in utter horror. For some reason, my face in the faceswap filter tends to breed some kind of alien race. If you haven't tried the app, it's guaranteed to grant a good laugh (one that will make you feel like you've got abs by the end of it) or at least a great story to tell after. So I invite you my dear readers to test it out and see what the results will be!
K.P.H.
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