Book fair is my friend

Yesterday I went to our uni's massive biannual book fair (also including audiobooks, records, cds, random crap..but mostly books). Apparently they have over a million items!

It's quite an amazing sight. The Great Hall is more full than I bet you've ever seen it - packed out with long rows of trestle tables piled with books, boxes and boxes of books under the tables, people milling about carrying piles or boxes of books and bumping into each other. There's people pawing through the books, some systematic, some turning a page here, another there.. digging through boxes, flicking through rows.. there's a whole row of dear old volunteers adding up the purchases, a guy with a microphone up the front interjecting now and then regarding some exciting book or other on offer.

There are children's books, art books, languages, literature, fiction, crime, collectibles, religion, poetry, cooking, gardening, history, philosophy, psychology, health, and more. Even an "Interesting" section - for all the books they couldn't think where else to put. I found an assessment of London's loos there. Up to date as of the 1920s I think.

And what did I find, on my brief sojourn there?

I was hoping you'd ask!

GK Chesterton: The Everlasting Man

Manalive

The Club of Queer Trades

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Hillaire Belloc: The Green Overcoat

George MacDonald: Fairytales and Stories for the Childlike (donated by J)

The Marquis' Secret

Prayers of St Francis

Diana Wynne Jones: The Magicians of Caprona

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Paulo Coelho: Veronika Decides to Die

Longfellow:Poetical Works

A book on Impressionism

Rudyard Kipling: Kim

T.S. Eliot: Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (x2)

Four Quartets (love this!)

Arundhati Roy: The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire

Myth, Magic and Meaning in Tolkien's World (Randel Helms)

Jean Vanier: The Broken Body

Ralph Morton: The Iona Community Story

E.L. Allen: a Guide to the Thought of Karl Barth

a Guide to the Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr (I dunno, sounded interesting!)

the 10 laws of leadership

a couple of cute Joan Walsh Anglund books

a couple of the Number One Ladies' Detective Agency books

Anne Rice: Christ the Lord - the Road to Cana

Barclay's commentary on John

..and I didn't even get to all the tables!

All those for a total of $21.90. Bargain!!

It's on all week, so if you like books you should defo check it out :)

What's not to laugh..

Today I went to a laughter yoga class run by a friend of mine. It was pretty damn funny. Everyone's fake laughs were so ridiculous that we'd keep bursting into real laughter! Plus we did lots of random things like pretending to be starting lawnmowers and being dragged away by them, or mad scientists, or posh tea-drinking chucklers.. all of which were very amusing.

We had to tell a story at the start about what made us laugh. The first thing that came to mind was myself. I thought of a couple of instances from two days ago which were small but entertaining:

I and a bunch of social work girls were driving up and down a road trying to find a particular service that just didn't seem to exist. Finally, as we were on our 4th lap, we spotted the name of the place in smallish print on some sliding doors. We all (especially me) screamed and pointed with joy..only to realise we appeared to be screaming and pointing at the two young guys walking by our window!! d'oh.

Later in the day I was walking home. Trotting up the hill in my fairly low heels, I somehow managed a major stumble, only just saving myself from face-planting. On the way back to vertical I glance at the car parked beside me and what do you know? There's two guys sitting in it, staring.

oh the gracefulness of me! haha

prayer of the day

Lord,
Make me an instrument of your peace,
where there is hatred let me sow love,
where there is injury...pardon,
where there is discord...unity,where there is doubt...faith,
where there is error...truth,
where there is despair...hope,
where there is sadness...joy,
where there is darkness...light.

Divine Master,
grant that I might not so much seek
to be consoled, as to console,
to be understood, as to understand,to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

(attributed to St Francis of Assisi - the one that loved animals

and got caught preaching to the birds :))

Hungry.

I was thinking about how much I post about food. And how I really don't have any conception of what it would be like to actually not have enough to eat. Not just not enough for one meal, or missing one meal, but consistently just not having enough.

Yesterday I went without food until sunset. And I was sooo hungry, but I could still look forward to dinner that night, which would be delicious and nutritious. I knew when I'd next be able to eat, and that after that I could eat again when I got hungry. Imagine what life would be like if I couldn't. I can't.

So of course now I'm thinking of those starving kids in Africa, in countries torn apart by wars and crap governments for years, land cracked and dried to its very bones in drought. Especially Somalia. Imagine being a parent watching your kids cry themselves to sleep from hunger pangs. Imagine being a kid displaced by conflict, with no one.

UNICEF

http://www.unicef.org.au/Donate/One-off-Donation/east-africa-drought-emergency-appeal-famine.aspx

TEAR Australia

http://www.tear.org.au/emergencies/east-africa-food-crisis/

Doing what Malaysians do best...

Tonight Mandie, Koiter & I went to dinner with some lovely Malaysian friends. They call the meal 'buka puasa' (that may or may not be how it's spelled) which means 'break fast'. It's the Islamic month of Ramadan in which they fast every day between sunrise and sunset, so this meal is breaking that daily fast. It's a time to celebrate God, friends, family & share together - even with people of other faiths (like us!) or no faith.

Lana invited us around to her place, so we whipped up a bit of food and took it to share. There were yummy soups and noodles.. couscous.. idli.. raya cookies.. Devina even made beautiful masala chai.

Great night hanging out together!

I don't have any pics from it to share, sadly, but I have just been flicking back through shots of fun food times when I was in Malaysia earlier in the year - mmmmmmmmm...

murtabak!

blue rice

bbq pork, noodles, seafoody soups I think.. and coconut water!

durian feast - such a weird, rich fruit

look at those great mugs of teh tarik

*sigh*

Just a short post, as I'm on a borrowed computer cos mine decided to not turn on - plus it's bedtime!

Today I and my co-conspirators scored a free lunch from the Presbyterian church opposite the Con in town - so good. It's on every tuesday, for students (and whoever rocks up, really). There was lasagne and soup and pasta and sausages and pies and everything! You should go.

Then we went and had coffee at the Bank Corner cafe near Spotlight. Cool little place, I hadn't been there before.

There were other fun bits (like cute babies!) but the main thing I had in mind to say was that my preferences for placement ended up being put in yesterday by the kind lady in charge of the database - yay! We should hear back this week about where we're getting sent, hopefully.

winter babies

Look at that wacky radish!!

Other seedlings:

I need to do some weeding.. I'll save that for my next phone conversation (I like to call it phoneweeding. Tonight I practised phonecooking - vietnamese ricepaper rolls, yummo!)