Friday, February 11, 2011
Lesson list.
Since recently being inculcated into the "real world" that school teachers and college professors keep crowing about, I have come upon a few startling discoveries.
1. All those nice-sounding sentences about how an education is preparation for a career - bull. At least in the field I'm working in. Everything I'm doing requires unlearning tonnes of stuff I learnt at school. Including how to learn itself.
2. Murphy wasn't trying to be funny. He was dead serious.
3. There are no right answers. There are only wrong answers that have been coaxed, wheedled and convinced into thinking that they are right.
4. Clothes do not automatically disappear from the laundry basket and appear clean and folded in closets in the real world.
5. Coming home after a long day at work and having to make dinner does make you tired and cranky. Whodathunkit.
6. Pay-days are the awesomest things about being an adult.
8. You must think very carefully about all the ingredients you need before you begin cooking with gusto. For example, I made the mistake of assuming that I could make myself a fried egg, considering I had an egg, oil, salt and a pan. The moment I cracked the egg open onto the pan, I realized I had nothing to flip it with. I shall not go into the details of how the humbling experience ended.
9. Adults don't really work 9-5. It's more like a four hour day after you've subtracted coffee breaks, lunch, discussions about whose kids are worse and who's put on weight, checking for score updates on the latest games and happy hours.
10. Shopping is excruciatingly heartbreaking when the money you are spending is actually yours. It is the most special kind of torture. I went to a store last weekend to buy a hat. Obviously the one I fell in love with was the most expensive one there. After wrenching myself away from it, I looked sternly at myself in the mirror and told myself that I was never going to be the kind of girl that would spend that obscene an amount of money on a single hat. I bought a pleasant, cheaper one. But I left a piece of my heart in that hat on shelf seven at C n' A. And while we're on the subject, I think there are pieces of my heart in a few wraps, a muffler or two and about half a dozen dresses at the same store. I haven't had the strength to walk into C n' A since, and don't think I will for a while.
1. All those nice-sounding sentences about how an education is preparation for a career - bull. At least in the field I'm working in. Everything I'm doing requires unlearning tonnes of stuff I learnt at school. Including how to learn itself.
2. Murphy wasn't trying to be funny. He was dead serious.
3. There are no right answers. There are only wrong answers that have been coaxed, wheedled and convinced into thinking that they are right.
4. Clothes do not automatically disappear from the laundry basket and appear clean and folded in closets in the real world.
5. Coming home after a long day at work and having to make dinner does make you tired and cranky. Whodathunkit.
6. Pay-days are the awesomest things about being an adult.
8. You must think very carefully about all the ingredients you need before you begin cooking with gusto. For example, I made the mistake of assuming that I could make myself a fried egg, considering I had an egg, oil, salt and a pan. The moment I cracked the egg open onto the pan, I realized I had nothing to flip it with. I shall not go into the details of how the humbling experience ended.
9. Adults don't really work 9-5. It's more like a four hour day after you've subtracted coffee breaks, lunch, discussions about whose kids are worse and who's put on weight, checking for score updates on the latest games and happy hours.
10. Shopping is excruciatingly heartbreaking when the money you are spending is actually yours. It is the most special kind of torture. I went to a store last weekend to buy a hat. Obviously the one I fell in love with was the most expensive one there. After wrenching myself away from it, I looked sternly at myself in the mirror and told myself that I was never going to be the kind of girl that would spend that obscene an amount of money on a single hat. I bought a pleasant, cheaper one. But I left a piece of my heart in that hat on shelf seven at C n' A.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Of wanderlust and coffee
 |
Dresden: The home of the first coffee filter, tea
bag, toothpaste and bra. It's true. Look it up.
|
–noun
a strong, innate desire to rove or travel about
Origin:
from German Wanderlust , lit. "desire for wandering"
1850-55; First recorded usage 1902
Everyday I find new things I love about this country I live in.
Take for example, one particularly frustrating afternoon at the lab last week. I was carefully researching how to make the perfect cup of Nescafe Gold. For those of you who are scoffing, there's a thin line between bitter and perfect, marked by a precise quantity of water. It requires some expertise to determine where that line is and so I, like the scientist that I am, decided to enlist the help of Google.
In the course of data collection to answer my question, I stumbled upon an article that completely made my day. I read about a housewife from Dresden, who in the late 1800's was also wondering how to make the perfect cup of coffee, without the bitter taste of over-brewing. Mellita Bentz decided to take matters into her own hands; and using a metal cup and some blotting paper, invented the world's first coffee filter. With clearly no help from Google.
On June 20th, 1908 the coffee filter and filter paper were patented and six months later, the Melitta Bentz company was born. Just a few kilometers from where I live today, with my coffee maker and a Melitta Bentz filter in it.
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