Anyone who's spoken to me recently (or has me on their IM list) is probably aware that on most nights I'm up slaving away to the wee hours of the morning on my AIESEC project (I still haven't really explained that, have I?).
I've come to the realisation that between the hours of 10pm and 2am (when the bulk of the "work" is done at night), I achieve very little. There's a couple of reasons for this:
- FaceBook
- I'm chatting to people on MSN/Google Talk/AIM/ICQ/whatever
- FaceBook
- I'm constantly switching to GMail and Mail.app to see if I have new mail (I'm tempted to remove the "Get Mail" button from the toolbar to stop this behaviour!)
- My body is screaming "Go to sleep you freakin' idiot!!!"
- Did I mention FaceBook?
I'm also sick of constantly feeling tired, sleeping in and not being able to think clearly until after 10am.
At the suggestion of a friend, I woke up early (yes, 6am is early for me) yesterday and managed to get a huge chunk of good, clear work done. Plenty of writing and brainstorming, and by the time my housemates had woken up, I was pretty happy with what I had achieved. I repeated it today, and while not so effective, it's something I'm going to try to continue. (That, and staying off IM and FaceBook, and shutting down email unless I need to actually check it.)
Let's hope I can be far more effective this way!
Our new house was officially broken in (but not into!) last Saturday night:
Thanks to all of our friends that came - we hope you had a blast!
(Photos)
There's something about sunrise and sunsets that I just love. It might be the vivid colours streaked across the sky, mingling with the clouds, or just the serenity of the moment. I can't seem to get enough photos of them!
My housemates and I braved the dark and the cold to watch the sunrise at The Gap in Watson's Bay on Monday morning… boy was it worth it! There were patches of clouds across the sky, which turned pink, yellow and orange as the sun rose across the ocean. A wonderful way to start the week!
(More photos here)
As part of my ongoing process of Bharat-ification, Sheryl and I went to the Holi Mahostav (or, the festival of colour) at Darling Harbour today (organised by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Australia). The main attraction was the powder-throwing, which left Sheryl and I looking like this:
(More crummy mobile phone pictures here)
It was a funny experience to be able to go up to a stranger, shout "Happy Holi!" and smear the powder all over their face. I guess that's the point of the festival - to promote harmony and equality between people!
The walk to the station and train ride home was interesting. Lots of weird looks. I found people fit into three categories:
- Those that looked and smiled at the fact I was covered from head to toe in different coloured powder
- Those that looked and quickly turned away, afraid I might see them
- Those that didn't look at all and pretended like there was nothing out of the ordinary
I tried to get a few smiles out of the last two groups, but no luck. There's always next year!
I gave my housemate, Sveta, a big hug when I arrived home. It's pretty safe to say she was none too pleased about it.
My new housemates and I went to IKEA yesterday to do some furniture and nick-nack shopping (oh… yeah, I moved last Saturday, and don't have internet access yet, which explains why I've been slack in replying to emails!). I quickly noticed on each lamp a tag promoting the use of energy-efficient fluorescent light-bulbs:
There's an entire area in the "market" section devoted to the bulbs and their various incarnations, along with information on why they're better than incandescent light bulbs (in both environmental and economic terms):
It's great to see IKEA being progressive in this area. It'd be nice to see some hints and tips about saving energy (and the environment) by turning off lights. They could even go a step further and provide the customer with information on the environmental impact of each product ("x amount of energy went into making this shelf and its components, y kilograms of CO2″, etc). Efforts like that may encourage increasingly environmentally-aware consumers about the consequences of their purchasing habits!
