Couch to Melbourne Marathon

I've been thinking about doing this for a while now. To be honest, I find it a bit stupid to pay someone else money for me to put myself through pain, but MrFodder reminded me of the $400 challenge. A told me that it's a mostly flat run, and it's a different experience running in a proper race, compared to running by yourself, so it's something I should experience.

I bumped into someone at the office, who was one of the first people I met when I joined the bank. He can get over 13 on the beep test, and is incredibly fit. Despite my constant insistence that I'd rather play computer games, and I'm not the kind of person who does sports, he would keep telling me that anyone can be active if they work for it. He has always been really friendly and encouraging. He never pushed me to do anything that I wasn't comfortable doing, but would always gently prod me to move out of my comfort zone, telling me that he wanted to see me grow stronger.

A and I were chatting about the Melbourne Marathon when he came up to say hi. When he realised that I was considering it, he put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eyes and said, "I'm so proud of you, Fodder." And that was when I decided that I was going to sign up.

Need to push myself to be more disciplined and start getting up early again.

I've signed up for the 10km over 60 minute run. I don't even really care what my time is, just getting to the finish line will be enough of an achievement for me.

It's Your Birthday

A birthday gift for A.

I can finally talk about this, I've been keeping it a secret for three months now. He has been feeling a bit blue lately, so I wanted to do something to cheer him up. It started out small, with a few of his former co-workers, and suddenly blew up to something quite large. It was originally going to be a 5-minute video, but turned into a 23-minute one, and I had to leave quite a lot on the virtual cutting room floor.

I asked the same questions to everyone, and in case other people want to do something similar here are the questions that I used:

If A were an ice-cream flavour, what would he be?
I don't know why I picked this one, but I thought it would be interesting to see what kind of replies that I would get.

What do you think his best subject was in high school?
I admit, I picked this one because A and I have an on-going joke that we do things to try and prove people are racist. Sure enough, quite a few responses thought he'd be good at maths.

If he were stuck on a deserted island, what three things would he have with him?
I just stole this from /r/askReddit. Some of the responses were funny, but overall, a bit lacklustre.

If he were a supervillain, what superpower would he have?
This question was quite bad, and I considered leaving it out completely. There were a few funny responses, but most people skipped the question.

If you could get A to try something new, what would it be?
I asked this because I genuinely wanted to know what kind of responses I'd get, and it'd be something nice for him to hear. Hopefully he'll take up some of the suggestions. The funniest answer was pop 'n' lock dancing.

If he were put on a spaceship and sent to help colonise a new planet, what would be his contributing role?
This one I picked because I thought it was a creative way to try and tease out what people think his good traits are.

What do you think A's go-to pick-up line is?
This one was just there for comedy value, to try and break up some of the heavy emotion.

What is something you think he does well?
Another one to help him see that other people value him.

What advice would you give him?
This one I thought would be a good question to end the video on, as it would be something to help him move forward.

The tone of the video was a nice mix of humour and emotion, with some people opting to give joke answers, and some people giving sincere answers. When it came to the last question, all of the answers were sincere.

It was actually quite enjoyable to work on, and see how amazing some of the people in his life are. This required a lot less editting time than my other videos, as there were no special effects, and it was just a matter of pacing the answers, and putting in some video transitions.

I really hope he'll like his present, and I hope he realises how much he means to the people around him.

The Little Things - American Doughnuts

One of the great things to do in Melbourne is visit the American Doughnut Kitchen van at the Queen Victoria Market. Despite the fact that it's housed in a van, I don't think they ever go anywhere, as they've always been there, as far as I can tell, and even after operating hours, the van itself is still there.

I remember when I first saw the van, I hated strawberry jam. I was an incredibly picky eater, and would only eat plain things. Believe it or not, but I didn't even like tomato sauce back then! So I would ask for plain doughnuts. I don't know if they still do them, but I'm all for jam doughnuts now. Mmmm, even thinking about the warm doughnuts with gooey jam inside is making me drool.

They're currently 5 for $6, and they have a sign saying that unfortunately they had to raise their prices recently, even though they've held off for a long time. These doughnuts aren't perfectly round like ones you can find at other stores, but I think that's part of the charm.

It's a bit hard to see from my photos, but they start with a giant ball of dough, that was probably made the night before and left in the fridge. It's kneaded a bit, then cut into smaller pieces. They move a wooden board with the pieces over to the other side where someone spreads them out on a wire rack which is lowered into the oil.

Once it's done (roughly 2 minutes and 45 seconds), it's pulled out and dropped into the window by the corner.

If jam is required, someone puts it on the jam machine, which has a small pipe that you can slot a doughnut into. The handle is cranked down, and jam is inserted. I didn't notice this, but A did: there's an adjustable notch that helps control how much jam goes into the doughnut. The guy jamming the doughnuts was really quick.

Behind him, there's a bowl with sugar in it where the doughnuts are coated. Then they're put into paper bags and sold.

A pointed out that it's actually quite clever that they sell them in packs of 5 - so they can come pre-bagged which speeds up the process of selling them. If someone only wants one, the jam guy can just coat one with sugar and hand it to the person at the window.

It actually looks like a pretty streamlined process. A and I were trying to work out when someone could take a break to go to the toilet, and what would happen to the line. It's possible one of the two people who are doing the kneading would move over to replace someone else in the line.

Then we were trying to think who had the easiest and who had the hardest job. The hardest was probably the person who had to spread the balls of dough onto the wire rack and drop them onto the fryer. The easiest was probably the person taking the money, as it's probably the least RSI prone position of them all.

A did raise a concern about the doughnuts in the window, as they just keep dropping new ones on top. Depending on how quickly they get jammed, and how quickly new ones come in, there might be some that sit at the bottom and never get picked up. I noticed that every now and again, he tends to shift them around with his hand, so there is some rotation, but that doesn't guarantee that the old ones are next in line to be jammed before the fresh ones are picked up.

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As delicious as these are, I feel like they aren't as good as they used to be. Not enough jam! :(

Still, it's something to experience if you are ever in Melbourne. :)

The Little Things - Twistto

After the Bastille Day Festival, A and I made the short walk to the Queen Victoria Market. I don't know if this is just something that people who work in technology do (as MrFodder does it, too), but one of the things we did as we were walking around was looking at how all the various stalls operate.

If you haven't heard of it, Twistto are these Korean twisted, fried, battered potatoes on a giant skewer, which they often coat in a flavoured salt. They're incredibly delicious, although it can get quite difficult to eat in the middle. It's $7 for one potato skewer. I think they seem to have a permanent store at the Queen Vic Market, and they tend to pop up at various festivals, too, especially Asian themed ones.

So there's one guy who puts a peeled potato into a machine and turns a handle which creates that twisted shape. Then a woman picks up the cut potato and spreads it out on a skewer. A man grabs that and coats it in a batter in one pan, and allows the excess to drip off into another pan. Then he drops it into a vat of frying oil, where a guy allows it to fry for a bit, then puts it into a different vat, before removing it. A woman coats it in whatever salt is required and hands it out.

First of all, the guy doing the potato cutting has to reach across the potato spreading woman to reach the peeled potatoes, then she reaches across him to grab the cut potatoes. They could just swap the position of both boxes so neither has to reach across the other.

The same thing with the man doing the batter - he pulls it out and batters it in the box to his right, then allows it to drip in the box on his left, then raises it over the box on his right and puts it into the vat. It would be more efficient to swap those two boxes, too!

It's not a huge difference, but sometimes it's about the little things you can change - a few minutes saved every day can add up.

Stay tuned for the day after tomorrow's post... about doughnuts!