huagl – Page 6 – Crafts, Cats, and Occasionally Cursing

Earworms – G Dragon, “Who You?”

Sometimes songs just worm their way into your brain and torment you until it seem that the song is all you can thing about. Earworms are a nuisance and so far there is no known cure. It’s a terrible affliction and all I can do when affected by one is to listen to the song on repeat until my brain is so oversaturated with the song that it grabs onto any other song just to hear something different. It’s not the most eloquent of actions, but it is kinda the only one I’ve got at the moment.

Lately a song has wormed in and been bugging me,so I figured maybe writing about it would help get it out of my system. I guess you can stop reading now if you don’t like KPop, because the song is G Dragon’s latest song (single? release? it just had a music video, but I have no idea how the Korean music industry works), ‘Who You’.

Now, G Dragon is the ‘Leader’ of Big Bang, but they’ve all been doing individual side projects lately so there has been a bunch of things coming out of YG from the Big Bang side of things. The music video for ‘Who You’ that I linked above came out earlier in the week and that was the first time I listened to the song and I was caught by it straight away. G Dragon’s stuff can be a bit hit or miss for me, and some of his other recent songs have not been my cup of tea at all, so this was a nice surprise.

The song starts off with some nice strong chords on the piano to break up the lines of the lyrics and these chords continue through the song to tie it all in together, so the little rappy bits aren’t as jarring as some of his other songs. The only time piano isn’t there is in the refrain, and that makes it stand out compared to the rest of the song.

His voice is clear and simple, and the lines in the lyrics are clearly defined by the rhythm of the song. There is more singing than rapping, which makes it easier to, uh, understand the words. Korean raps can kinda end up as a mess up sounds and it’s hard to distinguish the words in there, even if I can’t actually understand what the words are.

Looking at the English translation of the lyrics ‘Who You’ is actually a sad break up song about how he misses his ex-girlfriend and how upset and frustrated he’s gotten about the situation. It’s kinda obvious that is what it’s about from the English in the song, but the Korean parts go into it in more detail, and it’s a strange juxtaposition between the sweeter, happier sound of the song and the more serious lyrics. I guess I’m used to more dramatic sounding love songs from KPop artists, rather than the opposite. I feel a bit bad that this song makes me want to dance along to the du-du-du-du-du-du chorus when it’s actually a sad song.

$10 Challenge Day 3

Since I got away without spending any money for lunch yesterday I spent a little over $10 today, seeing I had some money ‘spare’. It is a lovely mild day, sunny and not too hot, so of course I came back and at my lunch at my desk, instead of sitting in a park like someone normally would in this situation. I did appreciate the nice weather while walking too and from the office, though.

Today, seeing it was a nice day and all, I bought fruit salad and bubble tea for lunch. There were a bunch of fruit salads of different prices at the fruit shop, so I could have made the $10 limit, but the slightly more expensive ones had peach in them and I haven’t had peaches in so long that I had to get it. It took a fair amount of self restraint not to get sushi for lunch like I normally do on sunny days, but Ben and I are getting sushi for dinner so having it twice in one day feels like a bit overkill. Fruit salad was a good alternative choice.

My problem with fruit salad, however, is that it always seems to have a bunch of fruits I don’t like in it so I end up leaving half the salad. The main offender seems to always be rockmelon. Goddamn rockmelon with your gross taste that gets on any other fruit that you come in contact with, why must you ruin my fruit salad? In face there always seeems to be an abundancce of melon in fruit salads; rockmelon, honeydew melon, watermelon, they fill half the container so there’s only a small amount of room to squish the rest of the fruits in. I’d rather eat the other fruits over melons any day.

Other than the melon overload, the fruit salad wasn’t too bad. The peach (maybe it was actually a nectarine?) was pretty sour, but it’s still really early in the season for stone fruits so that’s understandable. There was even some blood orange in there! The bubble tea isn’t particularly healthy, seeing it’s got a bunch of syrup in it, but it was coconut tea so it complemented the fruits well. I’d say it was a B lunch, would be a higher grade if the fruit salad was more balanced.

Fruit Salad: $6.50 Bubble Tea: $5

Total Money left at the end of Day 3: $31

$10 Challenge Day 2

Today was very easy to spend less than $10 for lunch, because today is Melbourne Cup Day! Woo horse racing! Gambling! (slightly) Boozy lunch! Our office did a thing, where we watched the race and ate and drank champagne or beer, went in the office sweeps, and ate food. Now I don’t like horse racing or beer or champagne, but I still had a glass of bubbly and helped out with the office sweeps. Plus I ate the food of course.

But anyway, the main attraction for me was the food! Dips! Cheeses! Cabanossi! Crackers! Chips! I didn’t have to buy lunch at all, so I spent a grand total of $0 today! That means I can spend a bit extra and get bubble tea tomorrow, right?

No one in the office really seemed to care about the Melbourne Cup, really; most of us were too busy talking to even notice that the race had started! It was a nice break in the middle of the day, but I would have liked it better if we were doing it to socialise like when we had free lunch on the last Wednesday before we got paid. But costs were being cut and those lunches aren’t around any more, so we all avoid each other and stick to our own work groups for lunch. Oh, that’s a bit depressing now that I think about it.

Money remaining at the end of Day 2: $42.50

Lunch At My Desk: the $10 Challenge

I got into the habit of eating my lunch at my desk when I started working here because I had a lot of work to do so I would end up working while eating. Now there’s nowhere near as much work to do, but I end up just bringing my food back to my desk anyway. I think it’s partly because I hate food courts and all the noise and people, but probably also because I can check the internet while I eat.

Working in the city means that a lot of my options for lunch can end up being quite expensive; I’ve seen banh mi that costs around $9! I refuse to pay almost $10 for a Vietnamese pork roll, when I used to get them for $4 at Marrickville. It’s the principle of the thing.

But at the same time there are still a heap of cheaper options available that aren’t McDonalds or other fast food chains, so I’ve decided to make a challenge to myself to spend $10 or less on lunches for this week. I might even try and keep it up for longer! So to start this off I went to the bank and got five $10 notes to use solely for lunches; I’ll use a separate coin purse to keep the money in so I don’t spend it on something else, and then I’ll be able to see how much I have left over at the end of the week.

Day 1: Turkey wrap, from the Metcentre – $7.50

This is a pretty standard lunch for me. It’s simple, easy, cheap and I love turkey and cranberry sauce and brie. It’s not necessarily awe-inspiring, but it does the job. Normally I buy a drink as well, but today I’m being a responsible adult and drinking water. Plain, boring water (I’ll probably end up making cups of tea to drink instead). I still find $7.50 for a wrap like that a bit ridiculous, but that seems to be the standard price around here.

So, money remaining at the end of Day 1: $42.50

Photo Spot

Public holidays always throw my schedule out of whack. We had the Queen’s Birthday long weekend and so it feels like a Monday (and also kinda like a Friday, but I think that’s just because I want to go back to relaxing) and I meant to post these photos on the weekend but that just didn’t seem to happen. I cleaned the house instead, which I guess is more important really. I’m trying to get back into the habit of taking a photo a day so I can post them on here as a more regular thing. I already failed over the weekend, but that’s because I didn’t really do anything photo-worthy, so it’s a work in progress. Either way here are my photos I took during the week last week:

Pretending I'm on an island holiday, rather than at work.

I bought myself a present! I love presents!

Thank God it's the weekend. I thought home time would never come.

I had a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday, and Neddy seemed confused by me sleeping in, but he also took advantage of the situation and snuggled up with me until I finally got out of bed. He’s growing up so quickly! Both the cats have gotten snugglier since the weather’s gotten cooler, which is cute, but also annoying in the middle of the night when I try and rearrange myself and encounter cats in every direction. They probably get just as annoyed at me accidentally kicking them as I am with them getting in my way.

Ben and I are going to Melbourne next week for my birthday, so I probably won’t make a post on Monday because I’ll be on a plane. But that means there should be another big Melbourne post when we get back. I’ll put it up eventually, I promise! We’re going for a whole week this time so I’m really looking forward to it.