Alison Young

This entry could begin with a heartfelt apology for neglecting this blog and a promise to update more often. But it won’t. Instead I just wish to say that updating here has taken a lesser priority over the last few months in favour of updating my private, locked journal elsewhere among other projects, people and events. If you have been hanging out for new entries because you don’t communicate with me any other way then I do apologise and invite you to engage on a medium I do frequently use; trust me there are plenty.

Something I have been doing a lot more of lately is writing. About 4 years ago I wrote quite a lot, mostly by hand. When going through my belongings prior to moving into my own place I found dozens of loose pages of writing. The picture here shows some of my collection of travel diarys, dream diarys, exercise books and letter writing sets.

Over time I’ve done a lot more writing while on my laptop. I can more closely get my thoughts out as quickly as I have them with my fingers flying across the keys and not caring straight away whether I’ve spelt things correctly or words are in the order that makes for the best sentences.

For as long as I can remember I’ve written, or wanted to write. Stories, thought excerpts, braindumps and sometimes just pages that would make little sense even to myself when I reread them. Being particularly fond of writing out observations from people-watching, snippets of an interesting parts of my day, something that I dreamt and am still tossing around in my mind a day later.

While talking with a friend the other day we were discussing some of the stories I’ve acquired over the years from my various adventures and misadventures through life. I’ve become newly inspired to start trying to document them for a book idea I had earlier this year incorporating some of my own experiences with those that I’ve observed around me. At present it’s tempting to start by going into my head and just writing about my own stuff. Majority of the pieces I’ve written that weren’t specifically for blogs, emails etc have only been by myself and 1-2 others. Their feedback has been nothing but positive. Once I’ve got more pieces in electronic format I’ll decide what to do with them. Have already decided to anonymously post 3yrs of writing from all those years ago somewhere that I’m not planning to reveal to anybody.

Go to http://www.bighugelabs.com/flickr and create a mosaic using the answers from these questions. Take your answer to Flickr and search for it.. Pick an image from the first page of search results, put it into the mosaic maker and post your results!

NB: For simplicity’s sake I’m linking and attributing after each answer and licensed under the  Creative Commons.

1. What is your first name? Alison
2. What is your favorite food? Rib Eye Steak
3. What high school did you go to? Pioneer
4. What is your favorite color? Purple
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Clive Owen
6. Favorite drink? mojito
7. Dream vacation? Santorini
8. Favorite dessert? vanilla bean gelati
9. What you want to be when you grow up? a writer
10. What do you love most in life? discovery
11. One Word to describe you? dedicated
12. Look up my flickr name and found something someone dedicated to me – Alegrya not dedicated to me in particular but then again none are… so this is for each of the fine chicks in the photo who are now all scattered across the country.

Thanks to Fifikins and Monnie who inspird me to have a go at this myself.

Plurk-friend Rori sent me this recipe via email after I commented about having come down with yet another pesky throat infection. This makes my second this year, I usually average about 2.5/pa. After some quick searching I found a version on a website too but the original came in an email. Find it here under the Staying Healthy this winter sub-heading.

It sounded rather dangerous and I excitedly gathered all in the ingredients today after work. Skipped the onion as they don’t like me a terrible lot and despite my initial reservations did include 2 chillis. I’m something of a wimp when it comes to facing down with anything chilli.

As the whole idea of making soup came from my Plurk community I decided to post pictures to BrightKite of the process and crosspost the same pictures back to Plurk. It was a bit of fun for me and I got to combine two things which I find a lot of fun, being a geek and cooking. The results were spectacular, all the garlic was either softened to the ‘melt in your mouth’ point or had been absorbed into the broth, chilli was flavoursome but only very minor burn inducing. Anticipating it burning a lot more I made toast which wasn’t needed at all.

For all you people who are too busy to get sick, I can highly recommend spending 1.5hrs making this up. It’s delicious, potent, and will make 4-6 meals depending on portion size. I’m not sure who Becky-Lee Reed is but I’m thankful for her recipe and Rori for sending it to me.

Maybe Schnubbs can give it a try next time one of his housemates is unwell or starting to feel that way.

Update (June 2009): as I mentioned pictures I should probably add some or at least links. So here are the BrightKite links to my photos I took and posted as I prepared. I haz a flava; It’s got chicken legs; Stocking up and Soup-erficial success story.

For the June long weekend I’d planned with my Mum to pay a surprise visit to her parents who live in Trundle NSW. Where you ask? Here is Trundle, home to only a couple of hundred people and my grandparents. It took approximately 6 hours to drive there from Sydney even though it’s only around 430km. There is no mobile signal for my Optus phone once and there is no internet at my grandparents place. I volunteered to deprive myself of my technological addictions for the weekend, mostly. I also thought I’d go one step further and not drink coffee until I get back to Sydney.

Just south of Trundle is another town called Bogan Gate. Australian readers may be amused by a town named after a somewhat derogatory named social class. To my great surprise and delight Mum told me there was actually a gate which the town was named after. She elaborated that it was in the middle of a field nowhere significant. None the less I insisted that I had to get a photo on the Bogan Gate else nobody would believe it. So here it is:

Saturday evening, we’d had dinner at 6pm and by 7.15p I was yawning and musing about going to bed. Feeling very isolated I had to repeatedly tell myself that checking my phone was a pointless endeavour and to stop thinking about what conversations may be happening on Twitter, Plurk, IRC and IM. It was odd once everybody had gone to bed and I was sitting up alone at 10pm drinking tea and reading a book I’d been meaning to start for a number of weeks.

It’s very dark and quiet out there. A stark contrast to the ‘not quite night’ darkness and noise that is part of living in Newtown. The air is cold outside but the house was centrally heated, so despite bemused friends commenting about how I’d freeze on my trip west, it wasn’t the case at all.

On a Sunday daytrip I did have signal for a couple of hours and checked my email, Twitter replies and managed to catch up with a few people who were around at the time. It amazed me quite a bit how much I depend on the feeling of connectedness with people who are located both locally and all over the world. I don’t need to be talking to these people all the time, but I do feel most at ease knowing that I can. Instead I found other ways of passing the time, listening to my Mum talk to her Mum about the people who grew up and currently reside around the area. It seems that people out here are getting married and having children but doing little else. Perhaps its the rural setting, with little else to do. But it isn’t a technological black hole. The exchange in Trundle ADSL2 capable, people out there probably have a better internet connection than I do. There is no reason why somebody out there couldn’t be as active online as anybody in a capital city.

Admittedly there isn’t the same opportunity to network face to face but that shouldn’t stop you. My friend Fiona is based in Cairns and is a very active member of a number of online communities. She’s travelled to cities and met with several other people. While I’ve never actually met Fi face to face, we regularly communicate through social networks, have text conversations, call each other on mobile or Skype and send each other sms’. In other words, we’re not different to any other people who are friends and living 1600km apart.

I’ve taken some photos around Trundle, I think fondly of this place after spending a great deal of my childhood visiting here. There are a couple of heritage listed locations and Trundle also boasts the widest street in the west. The reason its so wide is that ‘back in the old days’ there needed to be sufficient room to turn the bullock-drawn wool wagons. It’s a saying here that you can tell the difference between locals and visitors by who walks and who drives from one side of the street to the other. You can see some of the larger photos from around here on my Flickr account starting from here.

Today I decided to officially close my old Wordpress blog and announce this site everywhere. Mostly that means pimping it on Twitter where most people who read my blog will find it. Adjust your readers and bookmarks accordingly. I’m still fine-tuning a few things but in general we’re ready to roll.

All the posts from my old blog with comments have been imported across but all new updates will go here. Welcome aboard and I will be writing more regularly I promise!

If you’d like to be added to my blogroll then just let me know. Alternatively if you’d like me to remove or update your information then same goes. Enjoy new layout, I’ve put a lot of work into transforming the generic Kubrick WP Theme into the theme I’d been wanting for my site. If something breaks or doesn’t do what it should please let me know.