Christkindlmarkt

Santa Claus is coming. Less than a month until Christmas, which is weird, because I feel like the Christmas decorations are usually in full swing by now, but it hasn't been so bad this year. Maybe it's because Halloween is becoming bigger and bigger in Australia, so the Christmas decorations don't start until after Halloween is over, whereas they used to start going up at the start of October.

There was a German Christmas market held at the Town Hall today. I don't spend very much time at the Town Hall. It always reminds me of Age of Empires, and I imagine people dropping off food, wood, stone and gold there. That's not what happens at all. I've been to a Melbourne Comedy Festival event there, and I saw a pianist there once. So there is quite a large hall. Which is why I was expecting quite a large event.

This is what happens when you let your expectations get ahead of you.

It was a fairly cosy event. I'm not just saying that to be kind. It was run by the Australian-German Welfare Society, which seems more like a community group than something like Alliance Française (which does a lot of the French events in Melbourne). There were a lot of older people at the event today, though that's understandable, as it was held during business hours on a Wednesday. I was only able to go because I happen to work in the CBD.

There were a lot of Christmassy things for sale.

I was pretty tempted to buy one of those laser-carved puddings ($35, IIRC), but I don't even know what I'd do with it. The Christmas cards were also amazing (all hand-made), but I haven't sent any Christmas cards for a while. :(

The last one I sent was to someone who was here from Canada. Funnily enough, it was a Christmas card with snow on it, and she gets a lot more snow that I do. But it didn't arrive until March, mostly because I attached a bunch of other stuff to it.

It was more of a "Come back to Australia!" gift than a Christmas card, but it doesn't seem to have worked, because she seems very content freezing her ass off in Canada. I was also thinking that some of her Canadian friends might not believe some of the things she said she ate while she was here, and it might help her show them that Vegemite is real.

I was tempted to buy some stollen at the market, but I asked the woman what it was like, and she said it's like a cake. I asked if it was sweet, and she said it tasted like cake. That didn't really answer my question. I was curious to know what it tasted like, in case I ever wanted to make my own, but maybe I'll just wait until we return to Germany (if we ever do).

I was expecting more food at the event, as I had planned to get lunch there. They had a menu with bratwurst on it, but all I could see was cake.

Not that cake is bad, who doesn't like cake?! But it probably doesn't make a very good lunch. It was too hot to eat lunch anyway, and I ended up just having a smoothie for lunch. A vegan, gluten-free smoothie. Pharmacist would be proud. Not really. Nobody tell him.

Oh, and before anyone points out that I haven't made ice-cream this month, it is churning as we speak! It won't be ready until tomorrow, but I technically made it today.

I have decided that I'm going to call it quits on the monthly ice-cream challenge at the end of the year. I have really been struggling with my weight lately, and I don't think all that fat and sugar is really helping. Once I've removed the shackles of all these obligations, I feel like I'll have more time for the gym, and more time to cook healthier food. Well... that's what I'm claiming now.

Thunder Comes

A while ago, I was telling some of my co-workers how I invited MrBrioche to dinner and he rejected me. Not long afterwards, one of them mentioned how he hadn't seen some movie because his girlfriend didn't want to watch it. I told him that I also wanted to see it, and suggested we see it together. His silence said volumes. I quickly backed out of the statement, and changed the topic. To me, seeing movies is just something you do with friends, but maybe to him, it's a date thing.

So when Commissioner Gordon mentioned how he hadn't seen Thor: Ragnarok yet, the words, "Me, neither, let's go and see it together" were coming out of my mouth at the same time my mind was saying, "Noooooooooooooo, don't do it again!" They say light travels faster than sound, but sound travels faster than brainwaves (although that doesn't make sense, since it takes brain power to make the sounds for talking...). I tried to rack my brain for a way to gracefully take back my words, but to my pleasant surprise, CG said, "That would be nice."

We decided to go on cheap-ass Tuesday, as...well, we're cheap-asses. The movie has been out for a while now, but the cinema was still packed.

I had pretty low expectations for this movie. As I mentioned earlier, I didn't enjoy the first Thor movie, didn't bother with the second, and the only reason I went to see this one was because of Taika Waititi. MrMoustache said:

I hope you like it. But it has lots of critical acclaim so if you don't it's cos of you :P

I found the start of the movie a bit cringe-worthy. Some of the humour felt a bit forced, and dumbed down, and I was already starting to compose my message to MrMoustache saying how I tried to like the movie, but here is a long list of reasons why I couldn't like it. But I also wanted to like it because Commissioner Gordon loves comic books, and I felt like he would feel disappointed if I didn't enjoy myself, and maybe he would be less inclined to do this again. I enjoy spending time with him, as I think he's a lovely person, and he's one of the nerdiest people I've ever met. I'm not sure who would win a Star Wars knowledge battle out of him and MrMoustache.

The movie started to turn around for me once Korg entered the picture. I really love the humour that he has - and it turns out he was voiced by the director himself. Also, according to IMDB, 80% of the dialogue in the film was improvised. It really picked up the pace after that, and by the end of the movie, the long list of complaints I had drafted were sitting somewhere on the cinema floor, and nobody wants to touch the cinema floor - who knows what kind of gross stuff you'll find under the seats?!

There was a part of the movie that seemed to be an homage to Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The parodied scene used to completely freak me out as a kid, and Gene Wilder still gives me nightmares to this day. The Stargate SG-1 Asgard theme is also used, probably as a reference to the fact that they share a name with the people from Thor's homeworld of Asgard.

I also really enjoyed the way the movie had what I felt was a good amount of foreshadowing, while still managing to subvert a lot of your typical hero tropes. It was still pretty predictable, but I think that's par for the course for superhero movies these days. The humour is really what made it stand out for me. It was ridiculously funny for an action movie, and if I didn't like Captain America so much, might be in the running for my favourite Marvel movie so far.

Northgard - First Impressions

I've been looking for a game like Banished for a long time. Banished is a game where you control a band of villagers who have been exiled and need to build a new town. You need to gather resources and survive against the harsh environment. You need to manage the production of food, wool coats, tools, firewood, stone, coal, among other things. I loved that the game was unbelievably harsh. One mistake could cost you years down the line. I remember my villagers dying off in droves, and it was because I had an ageing population. Or I hadn't planned ahead enough to survive through Winter where crops didn't grow, and then took in too many refuges, so a few years later, I had a giant shortage of food and people were starving. I traded as much firewood as I could in exchange for food. Which meant that later, my people were freezing to death when I had a shortage.

Well, from the description, Northgard sounded like Banished as an RTS.

Note: At the time of writing, this game is still in EARLY ACCESS. If you're reading this months after, things might have changed by then.

At the start of the game, you have a few villagers who start gathering food (the default action). There are also only a few buildings you can build: house, scout camp, woodcutters lodge.

You can see the green zone which indicates the area controlled by my clan. I can only build 5 buildings in this zone, and I've already got two (my town hall, and the woodcutter's lodge that's currently being built). You can upgrade the zone once, which allows you to build an extra building. If you want to build more than that, then you need to colonise new areas. You do that by building a scout camp, and having a villager turn into a scout. Once they've changed jobs, they will automatically go around the map uncovering new areas. Scouts are considered civilians, so they don't take up a slot in your warband, and they are generally ignored by enemy military units (though they can get attacked while exploring new areas).

The scout has discovered a new defended area that I can colonise. It has two slots for fertile land (to build farms), it has a runestone (for extra lore resource gathering), and you it has 3 building slots. It costs 20 food, but because of my clan bonus, I can also use krowns if I want.

At the top right of the first screenshot, you can see all the resources you need to manage: food, wood, krowns ("gold"), stone and iron. There's also another thing you need to keep in mind: happiness, which is the overall happiness of your citizens.

The other resources are pretty straightforward, but happiness controls how often you get new villagers. The higher the happiness, the faster new people join your clan - which makes sense, if you think about it. If your happiness drops below zero, then new villagers stop joining.

The other interesting mechanic is the seasonal cycle.

The game starts in Summer, and progresses through the seasons as the year goes by. Summer allows for extra food to be gained from farming, but Winter needs to be planned around. In Winter, your army is 10% weaker in your own territories, and 30% weaker in other territories. Your villagers consume extra firewood, and food production is reduced. Winter is where bad stuff happens.

Unlike most RTS games, where the idea is to mass a large army as soon as you can, having too big a population can be a drawback in this game. Because people eat food, and you gather less food in the Winter, having too big a population can mean you'll starve if you haven't gathered enough food to prepare. Starving isn't as bad, except starving citizens produce less produce than normal, which can exacerbate the problem if those were the citizens that gather food. Same if you run out of firewood, resulting in freezing citizens.

Also unlike most RTS games, your military units are made up of your non-combat units. If you want a warrior, you need to take one of your civilians, pay some krowns, and turn them into a warrior. So you really need to balance maintaining an army vs having enough people around to gather resources. I've gotten tripped up a couple of times, with my army on a rampage throughout the area, spending food to colonise new areas. Then Winter hits, and my people are starving. I need to send my army back home, and turn them back into villagers so they can start gathering food. I try to build a silo to increase the food gathering rate. But now I'm out of wood! And they're freezing as well as starving. Somehow, I make it through Winter only losing a few people, but all those areas I just colonised are lost. Including that one that gives a bonus to happiness. My beer brewers are dead, and everyone is unhappy. So I'm not getting any new villagers to replace the ones that died. I remove the people gathering extra lore, and running the trade routes to get krowns, and set them all to gather food and wood. All because of a blizzard in Winter.

The first time I played, I thought the game was really slow. I think it's because I hadn't grasped all the intricacies of the game just yet, and I was just focused on winning. Now that I've played a couple more games, I don't think it's as slow as I initially thought, but I still feel like it's lacking something, thought I'm not quite sure what it is. redbeanpork, Pharmacist and I played a 3v3 game together, and that was kinda fun, but even after that, we were deciding whether to keep the game or get a refund while it was still within the 2-hour refund period. We decided to keep it in the end. My reason was because I think it shows promise, though maybe not as a multiplayer game. It definitely fills that niche that Banished left behind. But I've been looking for a game like those Wilderness survival custom maps in Warcraft 3. A bit like Don't Starve Together, except without all the weird stuff, I guess.

Anyway, there are some things about the game that annoy me. If you want to change class back to villager, you have to send your unit back to a house, which can be quite far away. Only villagers can repair buildings, so if you have a building burning in one district, and no villagers around, you need to send someone back, turn them into a villager, then have them go back to where the burning building is to repair it. Only villagers can build buildings. But they'll ignore buildings under constructions in other districts. So if you have a villager, you need to tell them to move to where you want the building built, then place the building up for construction. If you select a villager, and then put a building down, it doesn't seem to automatically send that villager to build it like it would in other RTS games. I've gotten caught by that quite a lot.

I do like that combat is almost a side thing in this game. There are a bunch of other victory conditions. Of course, there's the domination condition, where you crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their women. Then there's the fame victory, where you gain enough fame, build an alter of the kings and conquer 15 territories. There's the lore victory, where you acquire enough lore to gain the blessing of the gods. There's a victory for controlling a certain portal for a year. And a trade victory for having produced a certain amount of krowns, have a certain amount in stock, and have 4 active merchants.

I will continue playing this game for a bit, and I really love the idea of it. It's not quite scratching that wilderness survival itch, but it's pretty damn close. I do like the visuals, and the interface is pretty good (minus a few niggly things). It can be a bit frustrating a times, wondering why your people are unhappy. It seems that they become unhappy if you have too many wounded units, so again, it's another thing that discourages long bouts of combat. But you do have healers who can heal your units from anywhere as long as they're in territory controlled by you or an ally. There is a bit of micromanagement in combat, to avoid losing units (as that means you effectively lose a potential worker), but it's not Starcraft levels of micro.

Affogadon't

(Yes, I realise they're called affogato and not affogado.)

I won a bet earlier in the year - two affogato (affogati?). Not being a coffee drinker, and since I've had enough dairy for a while, I decided to get them for someone else.

As typically happens during an office coffee break, the gossip starts. I think being a water-drinker, this is one of the things I miss out on the most. I think it's a good thing, as I'd rather steer clear of the office gossip, but it does mean that you learn a lot about the machinations behind all the decisions that happen at work.

I'm kinda making up for it, as I've discovered some hot chocolate drinkers on the team, and now we're on the quest to find the best hot chocolate around. One of them said he'd take me to his favourite place, which is gânache on Collins St. Since hot chocolate doesn't take nearly as long to drink as coffee, the breaks are a lot shorter, so I don't learn as much, but I'm enjoying the chance to get to know a couple of other people on my team who I otherwise have nothing in common with.

Speaking of commonalities, my new team seems to be more into EPL than AFL, so I'm trying to pick an EPL team. I did a personality quiz a while ago that said my team should be Watford. I like them because they have a moose on their logo, and moose are well-loved in Sweden, but also because when we went to the Harry Potter Studio while we were in London, we had to catch the bus from Watford Junction. One person said he doesn't care which team I pick as long as it's Manchester United, and another person said he doesn't care which team I pick as long as it's not Everton. All I know about Man U is this scene from Eurotrip:

Vinnie Jones is great. But that hooligan life isn't for me.

I wonder if coffee has become the new golf. Rather than people discussing things on the back 9, people discuss things during their coffee breaks. I feel like some people have one face while in the office, and one face while at the café. I found the affogato journey today pretty fascinating, but this is going to be another one of those vague-blogs, because I think this was another one of those Fight Club conversations. Maybe I'll try drinking decaf. Although, MrFodder seems to find it hilarious when I do drink coffee, as he says I'm really hyper and jump off the walls.

Skipping Girl Take Away Burgers Shakes and Chips

A and I headed down to skipping girl take away (the title on the page is all in lower case, so I'm guessing that's how they like it written) in Abbotsford for lunch today.

It was likely named after the famous sign that was made for the famous Skipping Girl vinegar that used to be produced nearby. Unfortunately, the skipping rope used to light up and make it look like she was skipping, but it wasn't on today (and I'm not sure if it has been working, or maybe it's only on at night time).

If you look at the video on their website, I think heart attack is probably the first thing that springs to mind. Everything is fully loaded with fat, or sugar. But that wasn't even what caught my attention at this place. The part that made me excited was their giant shelf of hot sauces.

If you're getting take away, they provide little plastic containers for you to fill before you go, but if you're eating in, there are small glass cups to hold the sauce.

A and I decided to go with their regular beef burger (minus the cheese for me). Unfortunately, they have brioche buns, and I crossed the dairy line recently at Meat and Wine Co., but I didn't want to ruin the day, so I guess I'll live with the consequences for a little longer. At least the weather is a bit cooler now, so it's not as bad. To continue our search for the best potato cake, we also order a side of potato cakes, and A wanted to try their chicken nuggets.

The nuggets were nice, but they felt a bit more like a large piece of popcorn chicken than a chicken nugget. A had them with BBQ sauce, but I thought they were good on their own. The meat was really tender and juicy, and it was lightly seasoned with something.

Next up was the potato cake.

They make them in-house. The batter was nice, and it was nicely salted. I found the bits that were mostly batter a bit too oily for my liking, but when I got to a chunk that was filled with potato, oh my gosh. Unexpected heaven. The salty, crunchy batter, with the lovely fluffy potato. It was probably a lot nicer because it was surprisingly good compared to the rest of the potato cake. So far, Easey's has the best overall potato cake, but the fluffy part of the potato cake from skipping girl definitely win out. If only all of it could be that fluffy consistency, I'd rate it above Easey's. They're a bit smaller than your average potato cake, but you get 6 or 7 depending on the size of the ones that you get.

Oh, I should mention that because we arrived when they opened, 11:30am on Sunday, we were the only ones in the store, so we were able to ask them a lot of questions. We learned that their chips are triple cooked, and not frozen, and their home-made milkshake jars (because serving milkshakes in a cup is so old-school) are coated in chocolate and other lollies (which I didn't take a photo of, but it definitely looked like a sugar-fiend's dream).

Next up was the chips, but they were basically a vessel for the hot sauce / spices. The chips were lightly salted on their own, and had a slight taste of canola oil(?).

I was pretty hesitant about the spices. The last time I tried something spicy just for the challenge of it was Crazy Wings, and my sense of taste has never been the same since. I think I may have permanently killed off some taste buds, and since food is one of my favourite things in the world, it's like chopping off the fingers of a concert pianist.

First up was the "Slap ya mama" seasoning.

It had a slight bit of spice, but nothing powerful.

Then we tried the Old Bay Seasoning, which I don't think is meant to be for chips, and it tasted more herb-y to me than spicy.

The last of the seasonings we found was called Spontaneous Combustion.

A was a bit too liberal with this, and put on a lot more than he wanted.

This one definitely had a bit of a kick after a few seconds, but wasn't that high on the spice-meter. A did pretty well, he hadn't even broken out in a sweat yet.

We moved on to some of the sauces. A had already cracked open some of the Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue Sauce for the nuggets, and I tried some on the chips. It is definitely sweet!

I couldn't read what this bottle said "o-something-mi sauce", but we tried it. It seemed like the sauce they put on katsu. Not spicy at all.

On to the spicy sauces next! We tried Bone Doctors' Brazen Heat first, just because we both thought the picture on the bottle was hilarious.

Slightly spicy, but just barely. It tasted like the BBQ sauce you can get at McDonald's / Red Rooster.

A suggested we try different sauces from around the world, so next up was Australia, with the Byron Bay Chilli Co's Heavenly Habanero chilli sauce.

Extra hot seems like a mislabel, it wasn't hot - though at this point, it was the spiciest of the sauces we had so far (but less spicy than the spontaneous combustion seasoning).

Next stop was the Mexican La Costeña red jalapeño sauce.

Definitely had some heat, but not that strong. A was being a really good sport, trying out all the sauces even though he starts sweating when he orders the mild sauce at Nando's. I think he did well.

After that, it was Jamaica, with the Walkerswood Plenty Hot Jamaican Fire Stick Pepper Sauce.

I wasn't really sure what I was so worried about, none of these sauces came close to Crazy Wings.

We eventually tried what looked like some of their hotter sauces, going for Crowley's Hot Sauce Cajed Heat and Seeded Lava.

I actually liked the Cajed Heat sauce, it was a spicy version of the Brazen Heat one we had earlier. The Seeded Lava wasn't that strong.

I forgot to mention this, but at the Meat and Wine Co dinner, redbeanpork told us about how he ate a carolina reaper with Voltzy. A whole ghost pepper, raw. He said it was painful in his mouth for about 5 minutes, then he could feel it eating through the lining of his stomach, and that was the worst pain. Then there's the morning after....

Well, at skipping girl, they have another Crowley sauce behind the counter called the "Hallucinator".

One of the guys said he'd dip a toothpick in the jar and let me taste it. He dipped just the tip (about 3mm) in. For reference, the carolina reaper that redbeanpork ate currently holds the Guinness world record for the hottest chilli (though the dragon's breath chilli claims to have scored higher and is awaiting confirmation for whether it is decided to be the new hottest). The Trinidad scorpion, which features in the Hallucinator, was the chilli that the carolina reaper knocked off the leaderboard. So it's pretty high up there.

I put the toothpick in my mouth and thought, pfft, this is nothing. Then this huge ball of fire exploded in my mouth. A found a website listing a bunch of warnings for this sauce:

 !!! PLEASE READ BEFORE PURCHASING THIS PRODUCT !!!
This contains capsaicin and is an irritant. Use with caution.
Do not ingest this without adding it to another product.
It contains 20% extracts and these are listed as an irritant to the human body. 

If you do choose to consume this directly, be aware of the following reactions (not limited to):

• Increased heart rate
• Increased blood flow to extremities and around the body
• Possible blurred vision
• Possible numbness to extremities, face, arms, hands
• Possible pain within the ear canal / Eustachian tube
• Ringing in the ears
• Mucous membrane reaction resulting in uncontrollable salivation
• Uncontrollable and involuntary tear production
• A pain level that you may never have experienced before
• A feeling of a "natural high" that may come with the release of pain killing endorphins

Well..... I didn't know that before I tried it. I sat down and shoved a potato cake in my mouth to try and numb the burning. It didn't help. Even though I knew drinking water was a bad idea, I did it anyway, because the brief relief from having the water wash over my tongue was worth the pain of feeling like I was drinking lava. There were tears coming out of my eyes, my vision was starting to blur. Breathing was painful, because every breath of air was stoking the fire.

I think the guy took pity on me, because he said, "Nooo, don't drink water, it's the worst thing you can do! You're supposed to drink milk!" When I ordered and said I didn't want cheese on my burger, he asked if it was an allergy, and I said yes. I reminded him that milk wasn't really an option. He kindly poured me a glass of soy milk instead.

If I thought love was the feeling of seeing the cheung fun trolley at yum cha, I think true love is the feeling of seeing someone offer you a glass of soy milk while your mouth is on fire. I knew from the crazy wings experience that soy milk really doesn't help with the burning sensation, I think because it lacks the fat that regular cow's milk has. But I think another part of my brain was trying to suppress the logical side of my brain, in order to let the placebo effect take place. It must have worked, because drinking that milk felt amazing.

Then the stomach burn started, and now I have a better idea of why redbeanpork said that if he tried the carolina reaper again, he'd drink some milk beforehand to line his stomach.

I got so caught up in the memory of the chilli sauce that I nearly forgot to report on the burger.

To be honest, I thought the burger was the weakest part of today's lunch. I'm not a huge fan of rare / medium meat, but I didn't even notice that over the brioche bun. Don't get me wrong, the brioche was amazing, you could really taste the buttery goodness. But personally, I found it too overwhelming. I think the bun shouldn't detract from the overall flavour of the burger. I saw a box saying Phillippa's, which I'm guessing is where they get their buns from (which are branded with the skipping girl logo on top - something I thought was really cool). I don't doubt that they're an amazing bakery (though I've never been, but they're incredibly popular around Melbourne), but to me, brioche should be a light bread. This one felt very heavy, like there was far too much flour in the dough. Just my personal preference.

I have to say, the staff were amazingly friendly. They gave us an extra metal box thingy to make it easier for us to try the difference sauces and seasonings. They were really helpful in suggesting things. I really want to go back and try their wings, since the chicken nuggets were so delicious.

I'm also super sad that it wasn't until after the hallucinator that I noticed their salt shelf.

With what looks like a bunch of different salts for their chips. There's an Asian curry salt at the back, that I really want to try, and I love chicken salt. Even though the burgers weren't my cup of tea, I'd definitely go back for the chips and to try the wings. No more hallucinator though, I didn't even get the endorphin rush. I came home and had some lactose-free cookies and cream ice-cream, and I couldn't even taste it.

A ordered their Snickers milkshake (which wasn't on the menu, but it was suggested to him), and he said it was incredible. He's pretty keen to go back, too.

In the Clear

I got my tax return, and out of curiosity, decided to check out my university debt. I was pretty chuffed to find out that I'm in the clear! After many years of slaving away, I've finally paid of my debt.

There are so many horror stories on reddit about graduates in the US who are crippled by college debt. I think it's crazy that their debt can be $300,000 or more. That's a decent chunk of a house, even with house prices being what they are. I'm immensely grateful that we have HECS / HELP in Australia, and your debt is slowly paid off as you work, with the interest rate being very reasonable.

I met someone at work who was an international student, and she said that she had to pay $10,000 per semester while studying, which is why she had to work so many shifts. She was from the Philippines, and she said that unlike a lot of international students, her parents aren't super rich, so she was pretty much on her own. I haven't seen her since I quit, but I hope she managed to find a job in her field. She said she was hoping to save up enough money to bring her family over - another reason why I felt bad, as I'm fortunate not to have that kind of pressure on me from my family.

With it becoming harder and harder for university graduates to find work, people are starting to question whether studying at university is even worth it. I have to say, I'm not sure those extra years studying psychology and Japanese were worth it. Well, on one hand, if I hadn't, I would have spent less time at university, and probably would have met MrFodder. And you have to wonder whether it was those things that made my resume stand out above others when it came to deciding who to interview for my current job. A lot of large companies are starting to look for more well-rounded people, as they figure if you have the baseline skills required to do the job, it's more important to find someone who has soft skills and can work with others than someone who is the super bestest programmer in the whole wide world.

Plus, studying Japanese made me more confident about going to Japan, which in turn made me more confident about going to Western Europe. I don't think I'd be the person that I am today if I hadn't done that, as I feel like being somewhere that's not-Australia is really fascinating, and made me question a lot of the things that I take for granted (e.g. it's really not normal for the public transport system to run behind schedule all the time).

As far as things I learned at university go, I don't think I use most of it. The best skill I learned at university was how to think, and how to find information when there's something I don't know. With the prevalence of things like Wikipedia, I think it's less important to be able to memorise a heap of dates, and exactly how Knuth's Algorithm works. I mean, I vaguely know a lot of stuff off the top of my head, which makes it easier for me to know what I'm looking for when I'm searching, but those exam-ready responses I had memorised have long left the confines of my brain. Plus, I've found that the world of programming moves so quickly that a lot of the stuff I did learn at university is now out-dated. I remember using Java 4 at uni, and Java 8 is out now, with Java 9 well on its way. One of my former co-workers brought out his massive Windows 3.1 study guide and we all had a bit of a laugh at it.

The biggest thing that I got out of university is probably all the people that I met.

Sappy moment: I don't think he even knows, but Pharmacist gave that keyring to me in my first year of uni when I joined the chess club. Now he knows!

Ordinary Girl in an Ordinary World

I heard about an event by girledworld from a former co-worker, who suggested I drop by. The topic was about diversity in the workforce, and one of the speakers was from Google, who spoke about a tool that they have called re:Work, which includes some tools to help address unconscious bias. From their page:

Unconscious biases are the automatic, mental shortcuts used to process information and make decisions quickly. At any given moment individuals are flooded with millions of bits of information, but can only consciously process about 40. Cognitive filters and heuristics allow the mind to unconsciously prioritize, generalize, and dismiss large volumes of input. These shortcuts can be useful when making decisions with limited information, focus, or time, but can sometimes lead individuals astray and have unintended consequences in the workplace.

One of the examples given was when video uploading was added to the YouTube app. They found that a heap of videos were being uploaded upside-down, which is a pretty huge bug to break through to production. I'll see if you can work out what kind of unconscious bias led to that bug, and I'll write the answer at the end of this post.

Another one that IP told me about was that for a long time, HealthKit, the in-built iOS app that lets you track things like body measurements, nutrition, workouts, sleep, but for a long time, lacked the ability to track the menstrual cycle - something that you'd expect a large chunk of the userbase would like to do. Apple was criticised for missing something important like that (which they added in iOS 9), with people saying the lack of diversity in the team resulted in them overlooking such an important feature of the tool that claims to let you "see your whole health picture".

The talk then moved on to ways in which people can build a gender diverse workforce. Technology has a particularly bad rap, and one of the things girledworld wants to address is the leaky pipe problem - that the reason why there are so few women in STEM is because at each step along the way (high school, uni, work), women find themselves dropping out for various reasons. Without things like strong role models in the industry, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking, "Well, women aren't really meant to be doing this anyway, so I should just try something else." If girls are shown at a young age that it's possible for them to work in science, technology, engineering or maths, then they're more likely to follow through with it later in life.

The first step in the journey for a workplace, is to acknowledge where you are. Google released a heap of stats on their workplace diversity. Stats are things you can't argue with. If 5% of your workforce are female, you can't argue that it's balanced. Find the hard numbers. Find out how many women apply for a role compared to how many get interviewed. It's one thing to have a rough idea of how diverse you think your organisation is, and it's another to actually know.

This is another reason why I want to do my Dota experiment. There are so many posts from girl gamers who say they get harassed in games - I finally made one, too (although I wasn't personally harassed for being female in my story). But I've played 3,231 games, and only felt annoyed enough about one of them to post about it. That's not that bad. Not that I'm excusing the behaviour, and saying that it's OK to be a dick in games. But I wonder if every bad experience is so magnified that you forget that you've played thousands of games and been perfectly fine. What if it's just the vocal minority that's ruining it for everyone else? That being said, I'm not sure how many of my games were with friends compared to solo queue.

Back to workplace diversity: the speaker mentioned that changes like this need to come from strong leaders, but there's a misconception about what a leader is. You don't need to be a manager to be a leader. Someone else pointed out that it's possible that a senior leader does want to make a change, but they don't know how. It's not until people start talking about it, and ideas start flowing that people can begin the journey for change. Or they just need to be able to say to other senior managers that there's a critical mass of people who want to change - similar to how we had the gay marriage survey.

It's interesting, I've met the boss of my former co-worker, and he told me how things changed when she was hired. For starters, his formerly all-male team were much more well-behaved when she was around, which meant the meetings were more productive overall. More importantly, she'd often say things that nobody else thought of, and come up with solutions that seemed so simple in hindsight that you wondered why nobody else thought of it. He said hiring her was one of the best things he's ever done. I mentioned this to her after we left, and she was shocked, "Whaaat? He never said anything like that to me." I find it sad that the feedback never made it back to her.

It was a thought-provoking event. I always joke with Special K that we have it so good in the office because we practically have our own cubicles in the toilets, there are so few women around. I do find it a little annoying that people assume that because I'm female, I must have nice handwriting (my handwriting is horrendous). But on the whole, I have to say that for the most part, I often forget about my gender at work. I feel like I'm treated like everyone else (though there's the holding the door thing, and people chastising others for their bad language: "There are ladies present"). I even get roped into the group term "guys".

It's actually more in gaming that I get the "Hey guys.... and Fodder" thing. Which I just want to add: in Italian and French (and possibly other Latin-based languages), when referring to a group of boys, you'd use the plural for boys, i.e. ragazzi. When referring to a group of girls, you use the plural for girls, i.e. ragazze. If you're talking to a mixed group, even if it's 99 girls and one boy, you use ragazzi. By that logic, I'm happy to be included as part of "guys".

Edit: I forgot to answer the question about why the videos were upside-down! It's because they were being uploaded by left-handed people. All the developers and testers who worked on the feature were right-handed, and so it never occurred to them that left-handed people record videos "upside-down".

Giving Thanks

Not really much of a tradition yet, as it hasn't been happening for many years, but I felt pretty grateful to get a bonus at work a few years ago, and I wanted to pay it forward by thanking some of the people who I felt helped me through the year. I ended up taking my parents and MrFodder's mum out to lunch at a lobster restaurant.

Seeing as I'm exploring the cultures of other countries this year, I thought about this year's bonus lunch being a Thanksgiving dinner instead, but unlike our counterparts in the United States, we don't get the day off today, and I didn't think anyone would want to eat a big dinner on a Thursday night knowing that they had to go to work the next day. Second best thing would be to have dinner with a couple of people that helped me get through this year. I figured, why not do it on Thanksgiving Day (the United States version, at least)? I invited redbeanpork and Pharmacist to join me and MrFodder at Meat and Wine Co. in Southbank.

The food was good, the company was good, but the best part was that our waiter was also called Anna. Pharmacist suggested that I constantly say her name when thanking her or talking to her in some other way, but I kept forgetting. He managed to pull it off, and I didn't even notice, despite the fact that he was saying my name, and the cocktail party effect is supposed to occur! I wanted to try again before we left, but unfortunately, Anna wasn't the one to take our payment. :(

I don't think I'm a criminal at heart, but I find the exercise of coming up with scams really fun. It was one of the things we talked about at dinner. I think the fun aspect of it is trying to stretch the boundaries of the law without going outside it. It's not a very ethical exercise though.

I know I complain a lot, and my last post in particular wasn't too happy, but I actually have a lot to be grateful for. I'm not dead, or in jail. There was a health scare in the family, but things are on the mend now. I'm happier at work than I have been for a long time. My boss is awesome.

I'm still trying to think of ways to thank some of the other people in my life who have made the year great. I thought about buying some flowers for one of my former co-workers, but there was a time someone left a note on her desk and she got really confused trying to work out who it was. Anonymous flowers are out of the question. If I left my name on the flowers, would it be weird? I tried to suss out her feelings on the subject by asking if it would be weird if I sent someone else  flowers, and she said yes. I don't want to keep giving people food, because then they'll feel obligated to eat it, and they might not want to eat sweets.

Though my last pre-Christmas food gift is going to be waffles for someone on my team, who has grown on me, and I've come to respect quite a lot over the past few months. I'm tossing up whether or not to bake gingerbread cookies, but I'm leaning towards not doing it, as I don't want to build up an expectation.

I'm really hankering to make another video though, even though I constantly say that I've folded away my tripod for good. I don't know whether my new team would be as willing to star in a movie as my old team was. They weren't even really up for it when I made the James Bond parody, but after they saw how it turned out, they were more willing to take part. My new team doesn't have that history, and I don't think I can make anything as good as that, especially since I love James Bond movies, and the person I was making the video for meant a lot to me. Making videos is incredibly time consuming, and I didn't like the pressure I was getting from others to make one. I felt like the videos I made when I felt the inspiration to make them (the James Bond parody, and the Taylor Swift parody) were far higher quality than the ones I was pressured to make (the AFL mockumentary, the Mean Girls parody, and the So You Think You Can Dance? parody).

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot left in my repertoire after that - it's just food and movies.

Sidenote: my phone went into a bootloop (RIP. Fortunately, A lent me his old Samsung Galaxy S6), so it's been a while since I've listened to the Frozen soundtrack. I found out someone on my team speaks Japanese, and I asked him whether he'd sing  とびら開けて with me, and he said only if he was really drunk. Then I found out someone on my team speaks a bit of French (Canadian French, but close enough), and now I'm working up the courage to ask if he wants to sing L'amour est un cadeau with me.

Back to the topic, I'm grateful for all the people who have pushed me to grow this year. Of course, it all starts with Intern Peter, who prompted me to start the 365 day photo challenge. Nev and Jal, who seem to find the creative ways I manage to break everything amusing, and have been incredibly patient with me learning a whole heap of new stuff, and changing the way that I work. In a new experience for me, I've interacted with a lot of different people this year - some who I probably never would have looked at twice in the past.

Urgh, so many things I want to do, so little time. And now I'm too full of food to do anything. Mmmm... ribs.

Grill'd

It finally happened to me - the reason I was inspired to start my Dota 2 experiment in the first place. I got grouped with someone who thinks girls are bad players.

Dotabuff: https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/3574096046
OpenDota: https://www.opendota.com/matches/3574096046

Unfortunately, I wanted to get both of my accounts to roughly 4000 MMR before starting my experiment, so I hadn't started recording yet, and I wish I had, because a lot of the stuff was said over voice chat.

As you can see from the post-match screen, the enemy team's Huskar player was called: ♥DotaPrincess♥. Just before 5 minutes into the game, our Spectre asks Huskar if he's a girl.

Overall all chat log (open dota can't access teamchat, only all chat):

Pudge asks how Spectre knows that Huskar is a girl. Spectre replies, "Because girls are bad. Do you know any girls who are good at the game?" Pudge replies that he doesn't know any girls, but adds that he doesn't know any girls who are good either. Clockwerk, Mirana and I don't say anything.

Admittedly, I didn't play my best, and missed an easy gank, and later, Spectre asks if I'm a girl. I thought about whether to reply. I'd already messed up a couple of fights. Chances are, I was going to make more mistakes in the future, and I think I was the lowest rated person in the game (the game only tells you the highest rated person, and there was a decent gap between my MMR (3.9k) and Spectre's, which was I think 4.3k).

I could have told the truth. Any mistake I made would be magnified, and possibly even make it to all chat so the other team would also know how much my teammates had to suffer by having a girl on their team. But if I played well, maybe it'd show them that not all girls are bad at the game.

I could have lied. Nobody would have any evidence to counter my claim, the game would move on, nothing would change.

Instead, I chose to say nothing. Well, I didn't really choose, as such. I felt myself getting angry, because he was obviously insinuating that I was bad by asking if I was a girl, which was stupid, because we just won a teamfight, 4v5, losing only Pudge, and taking out everyone on their team except Sniper. I wasn't playing that well to begin with, and if they started flaming me, I didn't think I would be able to keep a positive focus. I spent too long trying to think of a response, so the moment passed.

Their attention shifted to Mirana instead, though it didn't stop this:

(I had Aether Lens and Glimmer Cape.)

Anyway, I've been making lots of excuses not to start the experiment in earnest, because I was starting to feel like I wasn't going to find a result. Maybe I play too many games in a party.

It was this last stupid comment in the post-game chat that made me feel fired up about doing my experiment again.

This should actually make me feel more fired up about getting better at the game. Maybe that's a more productive use of my time.

Normally I'd try and blur out people's names to protect their privacy, but you can find it in Dotabuff / OpenDota anyway.

Un Petit Pain

Today I hit a milestone in my new team - 1 year since I joined! To celebrate, I made little pain au chocolat. The joke being that my team suffered through the pain of having me on their team. Yeah.... this is why puns are bad. I decided to make mini ones because Lenny seemed really reluctant to eat one, saying they're not very healthy, so I figured people wouldn't feel as bad if they were small.

I made enough to share with the whole team, though some didn't have egg wash because there are some no-egg vegetarians on my team. And some where plain croissants which I made out of the uneven bits of dough on the side. I have discovered that I find tiny pastries incredibly cute.

I left one on Emily's desk as she's amazing, and she asked if this was a continuation of the mo-cake. I didn't realise that the crescent-shaped croissants look like moustaches!

Speaking of moustaches, I had another awkward encounter with NiceMoustacheGuy again today. Ever since the compliment, all of our encounters have been incredibly awkward. Whenever we end up in the kitchen at the same time, I become incredibly engrossed in my mug (which was a gift from Commissioner Gordon, and has my name on it!), or make desperate conversation with whoever else is in the kitchen at the time. On the occasions where we have to talk to each other for work reasons, I take the first parachute out of the conversation that I can find. I complimented a friend's beard, and I think he must have thought I was talking to him because he turned around as well. Both men were looking at me wondering which one of them I was talking to, and they both have nice beards. I just mumbled something, took my empty mug and bailed. Urgh.

After I sent out the email about the pains au chocolat, and thanked everyone on the team for being so kind and welcoming, we had the following conversation:

NMG: Thanks for the croissant.
Me: You're welcome.

I must have given him a strange look, as I noticed he hadn't eaten any (not that I was watching him, only one person had taken one at that point, and it wasn't him), as he followed with:

NMG: I haven't had one yet. But I will. So thanks in advance.

I didn't really know what to say to that, so I just repeated, "You're welcome." Then we stared at each other awkwardly for a few moments, until I turned around and went back to debugging.

A part of me feels like the compliment was a mistake. I don't know whether or not the entire thing is just in my head, or maybe our conversations have always been this awkward and I just never thought about it, but I feel really nervous talking to him now. I needed his help recently for something I was working on, as he is the expert, and the whole thing felt normal, but I was on edge. It's just whenever we end up talking, and there isn't a specific goal to achieve, it feels like we're both trying to talk to each other, but neither of us can work out what to say. Which means my brain was running at full speed trying to come up with something to fill the silence.

There are too many other problems for me to solve at the moment, so this one is going on the back-burner. I just wish I wasn't so awkward with conversations. Now he probably thinks I like his moustache and his beard.

Yummy Yum Cha

The thing I like most about going to yum cha is cheung fun (rice noodle rolls).

In fact, I'm sure that for a long time, I confused the feeling of seeing the cart with the silver lids with the feeling of true love.

The second thing I like most about yum cha is that there isn't as much pressure to order something great, because you get to sample many dishes. For those who haven't had the pleasure, yum cha is normally around brunch / lunch (usually sessions are at 11 / 12:30 / 1:30), and you get to sit at a table while people wheel carts of food around for you to order from.

Each of the dishes (dim sum - not to be confused with dim sim!) are quite small, roughly dumpling-sized (and many of the dishes are dumplings), and the idea is that you order many dishes and share them. If you have a large enough table, you will usually get a lazy susan (the round spinny thing in the middle), to make it easier to pass dishes around. As you order, the staff keep track by circling a sheet of paper, with each dish being in a certain category depending on how much it costs.

At the end, they add up all the circles and you get your bill. Quite cleverly, they don't list how much each dish costs, so you don't really think about how much you're really spending. Also, as is tradition when dining out with family, there's usually a fight to be the one who gets to pay the bill. Sometimes this happens with friends, but in my experience, the trend is just to split the bill evenly (with people paying for their own drinks).

Speaking of drinks, as yum cha literally means "drink tea", you usually get tea, and there will be a flat charge per person for the tea, which gets refilled by the waiters. To indicate that your teapot needs refilling, you normally turn the lid of the teapot on its side or upside down. If there are lots of teapots, there will usually be one teapot that just has hot water in it, so you can water down the tea if you think it's too strong.

The tables are round, with the person / people who will be ordering food seated closest to where the carts are going to be. Though I have noticed more and more English-speaking staff, as a general rule, most of the waiters will speak broken English at best, usually being fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin. There are waiters who don't push carts around, and instead carry trays to collect empty dishes. They will also usually take special orders to the kitchen, in case you missed out on something, or there is something you want that is less popular, so they don't bother bringing it out on the carts and only make it to-order.

I've never had it myself, but one of the things that you can get at yum cha that you normally can't get anywhere else is chicken feet (top left - sorry for the grainy photo, it accidentally got deleted, and this was the recovered version).

There isn't that much meat, as you would expect, as chicken feet aren't all that meaty, and there are a lot of bones. But some people seem to love it. It's a pretty divisive thing - and there's almost always one left, with the table split between those who have eaten one egging on those who haven't had one to try it, and those who haven't had one trying there best to convince those who do like them to eat the last one.

I still haven't worked out what the ideal group size for yum cha is. Most of the dishes come with three serves, but some are only two. So you would think six is best, but in my experience, not everyone tends to eat everything, so you always end up with a dish that has one thing left, going around and around and around, until someone takes pity on it and eats it. Two people definitely isn't enough, as you end up filling up too early and not getting the variety of dishes that makes yum cha fun.

Speaking of filling up, another yum cha tradition is not to eat breakfast beforehand, something else which is divisive. Some people are in the "if you don't eat breakfast, your stomach will shrink" camp, and some people are in the "if you don't eat breakfast, you save space for more food" camp. Personally, I'm in the latter, but I love my breakfast, so I usually eat breakfast before yum cha.

And on the topic of filling up, they usually serve bao (buns), and I've noticed (and this is going to be racist) that when I eat with Asian people, they tend to avoid bao, as it takes up more space. When I eat with non-Asian people, they love going for bao. Here's the racist part, I'm trying to figure out why, and a simple explanation is that they know they can get it elsewhere, so they prefer to eat the things that are yum cha-only things (like chicken feet). The racist explanation is that it's worse value for money. If the bill is split evenly amongst everyone, and eating a bao takes the space of three other foods, then you're getting less food per dollar. And Asians are supposedly notorious for being stingy.

Except, as I mentioned earlier, there's usually a fight to pay the bill - so how can you want to pay the bill, and be stingy at the same time? Well, part of the mentality of wanting to pay the bill is that you want to show that you are doing well in your life, but you also want to take care of your own. It's MrFodder who explained this to me: the stingy Chinese stereotype has a lot of basis in the fact that there's a strong in-group / out-group mindset in China. Since there's a huge problem with overpopulation, and limited resources, people will fight for what they can get, and will usually do whatever they can to get stuff for themselves, their family and their friends. This can look like selfishness, as they will take far more than they need, but that's because they plan to distribute it to others. And they'd rather the stuff went to their family and friends, and not some stranger's family and friends.

It's probably a hard mindset to break out if, even when you're in a country like Australia where it's not as much of an issue. In general, I don't think Chinese people purposely go out of their way to be stingy or rude, some of it is just a cultural misunderstanding. Though there are always exceptions...

Anyway, yum cha is great.