Yeah, It happened

http://twitter.com/onlyonestepaway

Let us see how long it lasts.

Oh, word.

Yeah so, I'm living in studying in Chengdu now. Probably should have mentioned that earlier. Oh well.

News

I finished doing my chinese shortcourse at tafe - it wasn't bad. Met some good people but didn't get contact details to hang out afterwards. I keep feeling I should have, but it doesn't upset me.

I'm definitely going to China it seems - still waiting on my visa application to arrive in the mail though. At least my application has been accepted and now I'm looking at flights. I really need to lock something in soon there - the later I leave it, the more it costs.

I'm going to Sichuan University in Chengdu, to study Chinese/Mandarin. Not sure if I had mentioned that..

I'm looking at leaving around the 20th of August.

Seeing when I'll finish up here at the private school. Looking like 2nd week of the next term. I'm going to miss it here. Good roommate, comfortable apartment, comfortable lifestyle, great services/features (free gym heeelllooooo?)

House warmed

So had a bit of a BBQ and drinks around last night. It was good :)

I've been hitting the school gym a fair bit lately. It's been good :)

A fair few good game releases in the not too distant future - NS2, SC2, so on. They'll be good :)

Sol

You're a douche.

Delays

They occur. Be pleased it hasn't been longer. Or disappointed, whichever suits.

I'm gassy and have a girl coming over, great :\

Plans to move to China have swung into gear, over the past few days I've been having tests done with the Doctorb. Wewt for physicals? They had to shave some of my chest hair to connect me up to ECG. Nurse was nice. Blood tests, x-rays. Got my right ear syringed/irrigated too. Damn ears always full of wax...

Yeah life continues. Tafe chinese has been okay.

Been playing a few games - GTA4, Peggle, And so it moves. All are alright yeah.

Night out

Fuche - much tapas was consumed. Some wine. Good times.

Belgian Beer Cafe - alittle drink, not as great.

Weights

I did them. Am now Fucked. Uzh.

Egg

Yeah, been cooking lots of boiled eggs lately. A tasty treat to be sure.

I Need

To Lift My Game.

Feeling Down

But this is good.

DELETED!

So yeah, I'm no longer on facebook... We'll see how that works out.


It's dead now.

Eh...

So it's been alittle while. I've been busy. Ish. Kinda.

Had a week in Coffs Harbour visiting relatives. There was a lot of rain. I didn't mind. It was nice. I've been taught some basic knitting skills.

A girl I had been pretty keen on... I'm realising is probably not worth my interest. I could go on, but why bother? No offense to you, innocent reader (which is likely just me? and/or Teneal? Hey Teneal, sup you dedicated person you)

I do seem to have a habit of liking people that treat me badly. But then, I've done the same to others. Not very often, but it has happened.

It's 4am. I should go.

Makes Me Happy

My Mood

THIS!

made my day...

Early Morning Madness

It's 2am. I went to bed around 12 or 1, I forget. Regardless, I got bored of laying awake in bed and came back online. Not heaps is new. Currently I'm enjoying lists, and the motivation they provide. Using my housemate's mini-whiteboard, I've organised/done several things that I've meant to do for a long time, but never actually did. Once they were on the list though, bang. Bang bang. BANG. (Bang). Done. So yeah, whiteboard are be awesome.

In other news, Cuban Jazz/Salsa? is really quite enjoyable at 2am.

I haven't done much cross-stitching lately. Keep on meaning to take some to a... sewing? store and ask them what they think I could/should use as backing. I'm thinking maybe felt or something could work as a simple backing, and then applying magnets or badge like hooks or something? Vocabulary is lacking at 2am after trying to sleep for an hour (I actually wrote vocabularity in my first attempt).

Lol

Grow Big

Whipped this up this morning, hence bed-hair. It's Mushroom from Super Mario - which one, I'm not sure. It's a gift for a friend, and so far I've only done it 1/2 stitched. Not sure if it's worth going back over it or if 1/2 is good enough.

Ah well.

Feel free to ignore these pictures below - old cross-stitches that I didn't have uploaded.

Heart-felt Moments

So I've finished the Heart cross-stitch, and done another. Tomorrow or the day after I will look more closely at fusing these pieces together, and then look at how I might make a keychain piece out of them. I've cheated in these by not filling the white sections and just leaving the blank white aida cloth underneath, and by trying out half stitching the red-fill on the heart. Although lazy, I think it does still look kinda cool. Also saves time! 2nd Heart was done in about an hour.

Red used is 349.

Keeping Busy

Seeing friends, doing work, drinking tea. Not enough cross-stitching as far as I'm concerned :(

In A Nutshell

A fragile egg,
ready to crack.

Something new

Work has started on Dry Bones, but not to a level yet where it's worth showing anything.

Tonight is my graduation from UWA - goodbye Arts (Communication Studies) with a major in Chinese Mandarin. Still having vague concerns that my ordering of the clothing/costume for tonight has been messed up.

Beep beep.

So I now have a watch. I haven't worn a watch in several years, possibly 6-8, I can't really remember. It was a cheap LED watch from DealExtreme. I'm yet to decide if I like it. I'm never really certain the the strap is a good length or not. I think I'd prefer it tighter, but maybe that would be too tight... ramble ramble...

I haven't done any stitching in a little while. Have heard that washing the aida cloth is good once the stitch is complete. Will be testing that out..

Have decided my next stitch will be Dry Bones.


PS, wow - I look so happy...

Repeat

Another day, another cross-stitch. Today I did Boo, of Mario lore. It's not easy being colourblind - I was made aware later that my grey wasn't actually grey. Cmon, grey? Pull it together eyes! Again, some pictures, but this time it's a little more difficult to see the progress. Shirt change is due to putting on new shirt for dinner (other was 2 days old... mmm, old shirt).

(Colours used - 778 and 349).

I probably should have gone...

Rockman!

Aka Megaman. I stitched him in an evening. This evening, as it was. Or most of yesterday evening and a small part of the early morning hours of today. There's a few mistakes, but I can live with that. Here's a bit of a stage by stage with photos...


All smiles by the end folks. Now I'm not entirely sure what I'll do with this guy. It's my first time using Aida material as the canvas/backing, and I'm not sure that I like it more or less than the plastic stuff I was using before. I can get it for free though, so that's good enough. In future I'll use 3 threads instead of 2, as on the Aida it looks a bit sparse, though you may not be able to tell that in the pictures. For those with sharp eyes, yes it's a shirt from Diesel Sweeties!

(In part for my own future reference, colours used were 806, 964 and 834. DMC floss I think...)

Now I go sleep...

Approaching

It's nearly the end of the long weekend and the kids should be arriving back anytime now. I'm working tonight - hopefully they're all worn out from the effort of getting back to school. I suspect they'll actually be buzzed up and hypo. Time will tell.

I'm doing well. Eating lots of celery and carrots due to an accidental double up when my housemate and I went food shopping separately.

Still trying to get more sport - squash specifically - into my life. Played on Friday and Today. Today was against my 50+ year old mother so it was a little one sided, but she could still get some good shots off.

Rewatching some Evangelion, same old hate/love with it.

Looking at doing more cross-stitching/crafting. Would like to learn how to stitch wool/yarn etc, but I don't know anyone to teach me. But then, there's always the faithful internet :)

Growl

Mirror's Edge is a really frustrating game I am finding!

In other news, this blog is updated about as often as VG Cats! Ba-dum-tish!

Okay so I'm full of curry and beer. Way too full T_T What a hard life I lead.

Contains 25% Truth!

*Sips Orange-C* Mmm, sugary sugary orange juice, with 25% real orange! It's vaguely annoying that something like that is a selling point. I want my juices to be 100% *insert fruit here* juice! But I suppose that's a premium I have to pay for and as I get Orange-C for free, I can't bitch too much.

Yesterday I was thinking it would be a good time to stop eating so much, eat smaller portions at meals etc etc, not diet but just reduce consumption where excessive. Then a friend invited me to get curry take away (from Chutney Marie's). We then proceeded to gorge ourselves on 3 different curries, plain and garlic naan bread, yoghurt dip and basmati rice. So much for the 'eat less' strategy.

Been playing a-plenty of Zero Hour, but that's about it. Went through the pain/epic mission to update Battlefield 2, to then have the game tell me that my local files differ from my friends, and thus we cannot lan. Despite the games both being fresh installs and of the same version. Sigh.

Work has been okay. I've booked myself in for a first aid course next month. The kids are making a good effort of annoying the crap out of each other, which is a bit disappointing. The school is still blocking to shit out of my network connection which makes me a saaaaaaaaaaaad panda.

Liam, out~

Scooby do wah-wah

Yeah so I haven't gotten around to pictures yet, but life will go on.

Life has been pretty good. As my flatmate put it, "this lifestyle isn't the most adventurous but fuck, it's good".

I've been getting used to the kids @ school, everything's pretty good.

..just a short post today.

About a month later..

So it looks like the private school has unblocked some websites for me - yay. This is related to why it has been a month since my last post, or around about anyway.

I've got a job at private school working as an after-hours supervisor for year 8 boarders.. I also live on campus in what effectively is an apartment. A fairly nice one I think, and 'rent' is good and you get access to good facilities. Most of which is great. Except for the internet :\ But I'll learn to live with that. Or harass the IT staff to unblock key websites (facebook/msn plz gais). Hopefully that's something they're willing to do!

So yeah, that's what i've been up to. Moving all my crap into the apartment, getting the place up to speed in missing appliances that the previous occupant took with him. Sharing with an old friend named Dean, so far things are all pretty sweet. This is good as just watched the friendship of two friends take a pretty tough beating as the positions of housemate vs friend conflicted. Most observers decided that it was actually the work of their girlfriends that actually stirred the problems from small into big issues. Oh well, women.

The boarders seem an okay bunch, but Oh-Em-Gee, trying to get them to sleep was a chore and a half. Only once the threat of chores had been made, did they start calming down. Alittle bit. Not much. Jerks. They're all new though, nearly anyway, so most of them are still excitable/about to break down. I've had one guy break down in tears twice now, triggered by what I thought was nothing. Like I asked him if he knew where he was meeting the nurse, he said no, paused, cringed and tears started. It was like woaaaah chill little buddy, it's not a problem. She'll be around here somewhere, just chillaxes. So yeah, I feel sorry for the guys feeling rough.

I'll probably put pictures up of my new room arrangment/apartment in the next post. Dean bought a nice new 32" lcd tv, and my logitech z5500's make a fine sound system.

Watched Judge Dredd last night, ahhh good times.

Got a guitar back from Red Octane/Activision. They didn't take too long replacing my broken one, and it appears they have sent a brand new one back. Either that or the old one is much cleaner/shinier/less scuffed than it was before.

Oh and I bought a kettle. Yay for having easy boiling water again.

Hip-Hap-Hooray

Okay so what's new... Parents have been away over xmas, but they're back now. But they're off down south to stay at a friends holiday house till friday or saturday. Oh you crazy old party people!

I've converted my old desktop PC into a HTPC for the living room. This has been a right mission and a half - attempting to install vista I discovered that my DVD drive was actually dead. So that was another trip to shops to buy a new dvd drive (original trip was to get leadtek dtv1000s tuner card and a 1TB hd). Installing vista I discovered that even though it could see my raid array (2x200gb), it couldn't install onto them without the latest drivers. Happily, you can use a usb thumbdrive to transfer drivers - no more floppy disks! yay! Okay then what... Just the epic mission of setting everything up. I spent an entire evening looking for drivers for a no-name/generic cheap wireless dongle I'm using on it, though Vista won't remember network connections :\ I spent about a day trying to get hibernate to work (which it now does! yay! Mainly thanks to this!). I think that's about where I'm up to... still working on perfection. Boot/resume times are a bit long :\

Finished World of Goo, quite good.

Went to a 'tribal' themed party dressed up as Indiana Jones, it went down fairly well and I think looked pretty good for 15 minutes preparation.

New Year

2009 eh, we'll see what happens.

Last night ended up being a cocktail party, in retrospect drinking beer and then several dodgy (dodgy as in here-liam-drink-this-one-it's-great,-tequila-and-coke!) cocktails was never going to have a good outcome. That said, it was a fairly tame hangover. I thank Marsha for her donation of migoreng.

Bought World of Goo the day before the Steam Xmas sales began T_T It's a fairly nice little game though.

Been playing Red Alert 3 - I think I actually prefer CnC-Generals.