Leaving America: Part I

My last stint in Portland was filled with trying to fit in all the things on my Portland to-do list. I didn't get all of them done, and I also found that with every one thing I crossed off the list, I added two more. You have to look at it on the bright side - these things give me even more reason to come back and visit. 
Some of the things on my Portland list might seem ridicuolous to Americans, but to me they were quite fun. I was lucky to have an American who thought they were fun, too. These things included going to Costco and IKEA just because I had never been before. Being from a small island country, things on a big scale just generally overwhelm me and make me feel funny. Mostly, it's the good kind of funny.

IKEA

People had told me that the food at IKEA is amaaaaaazing. I should have known better, because when Americans say things are 'amazing' or 'awesome', you gotta take it with a handfull of salt. The food there was decidely average, but cheap as chips. That's why people think it's so good. When you can get meat balls AND fro-yo AND cinnamon buns for $5 and some change, then how can it be bad? Guys, it can be. Bad food is bad food, regardless of what you pay for it. I had the fro-yo, which was average to bad, and half a cinnamon bun, which was average, and some of those Sweedish meatballs which everyone RAVES about. I think if you add a nationality so a food (e.g. 'Spanish Moroccan Fish') people will automatically believe it tastes better because it sounds exotic. OMG IT'S SPANISH AND MOROCCAN AND IT'S FISH!  Same rule applies with adding 'Mum's' or 'Grandma's' to recipes. Would you trust a recipe for 'Older Brother's Minstrone Soup'? Probably not. Well, not in ma fam, anyway. Sorry Michael and Ben.
Back to the SWEDISH meatballs. 
So I stole one from my flatmate. I am a vegetarian, but sometimes I'm not very good at it. I like to try new things, and I like meat, so I find myself in sticky situations. I had a meatball. It was okay.
IKEA was actually quite weird. I got a weird feeling in there, I hadn't really processed it until now. Probably because I'm not very intouch with my feelings. I reckon so I have a 3 month feeling delay. It's a thing. I wonder if psychologists have coined it yet. 
Let's talk about feeelings now. 
I don't think I've ever felt so empty in a furniture store. I think it was the size, the colours, and all the fake rooms that they have set up. It's like you're in a living room or a bedroom, so you should feel homely and warm, but you're in the middle of a massive store. The shop attendants seemed soulless, and there were heaps of generic shoppers who were overweight and pissed off because they had to spend money. They probably weren't there by choice. I forget this is a thing, because I try to make most activities in life either fun, or into some kind of adventure. Most people don't do this. We were there for fun AND adventure! When I proudly announced this to a staff member (middle-aged woman; she seemed boring), she looked at me like I was insane. 
I thoroughly enjoy jumping on all the beds at furniture shops, so this had to happen. I found the most comfortable one and lied on it for ages and contemplated what it would be like to be a real person.
Sometimes I would go into one of the fake rooms and pick up a book. I just wanted to go through the book shelves and close the door and be alone or in at a friend's house. It's a very confusing place for me. I had fun though. Some of my matezzz and I decided it would be a great place to play hide-and-seek in, and we really wanted to organise an play day so this could happen.
Something to go back for. 
Maybe, when we finished hide-and-seek, we can build a fort in one of the rooms. 

Costco

Costco also happened. I recruited more people this time! For me, everything was just really big and cheap. I ended up buying four GIANT grapefruit. The sample tables are pretty gross. Don't get me wrong, I'll eat free samples with the best of 'em, but I hate the way that people crowd around and look angry as they wait and don't even make conversation with the sample ladies/men, who in my experience, were all lovely. Sometimes I'm not a big fan of small talk, but there's a think called courtesy, yes? Yah know? Like saying 'hello'?Apparently the food at Costo (the fast food stuff) is actaully yummers, in a way that the food at IKEA isn't. But I don't know because I didn't try any. Spent a good amount of time there and I was constantly talking about how big everything was. Maybe even to the point of it being annoying. There was some people watching involved. It was a Saturday. There were a lot of families with children and pickup trucks. I was tempted to buy bulk amounts of string cheese and some Fun Cereal for Fun Cereal Friday, but I didn't let myself because I knew I wouldn't have the time to eat it all.
There's Costco in Korea, too. I might just have to go on a field trip there some day.

Other thoughts from me this week:

• I miss Portland quite a bit. It's definitely my favourite city that I've lived in and it's filled with great people. 
• I was wanting to try all the new foods again, so I brought this thing called acorn jelly from the supermarket here in Korea. It sounds like it was gross, and guess what‽ It WAS gross!
• For the first time in my life I am working Monday to Friday. It's weird. The weeks go fast and the weekends even faster. I have learnt that Tuesdays are way worse than Mondays. Think about it.  NOTHING GOOD HAPPENS TO ANYONE EVER. ANYWHERE. 
• Today I had an argument with a child about wether iguanas have two legs or four legs. Naturally, I was right. The only thing that's worse than being wrong is being right but not really being allowed to brag about it.

This guy. Still love him.

BRB GTG

Liz Tritops

xoxo

Day Hacks

Sometimes life can be a bit shit. I know we aren't starving orphans where having no socks is the least of our problems. Let's be realistic. But there are times when daily life can be a little mundane. We wake up. We shower. We commute to work. We work. We commute back home. Blah blah blah. Repeat. Maybe we get to throw in a cheeky impromptu pun, or some tequila, or a game of Twister. Suddenly life becomes a little more fun. Could it be better? Yes. This is where my day hacks come in. 

To break the humdrum of the day-to-day drag, I made a few day hacks which I get maybe a little too excited about. 

Martini Monday
A martini must be taken on any given Monday. The preference is that you dress smart. If I were a man, the ideal outfit would be a pinstripe suit and a fancy hat. I'm not a man, and I don't own a pinstripe suit. I also don't know how I feel about pant suits, but one day I might give it a go. 
One of my friends has a philosophy which goes like this: Dress well, test well. He would dress nicely in hope of this influencing how well he does in his exam. My new philosophy is this: Dress well, martini well. Yeah I just made 'martini' into a verb. DEAL. I haven't actually done Martini Monday yet, and to be fair, I've only had one martini in my life. I don't even think it was a proper martini. My friend and I ordered them at our lodgings in Samoa. I'm pretty sure they didn't know how to make a martini and it was quite rank. 
Martini Monday WILL happen the next Monday, and I'll let you know how it goes for me.  


Whiquila Wednesday 
Whiquila is a drink which I made up. It's a shot of whisky and tequila together! It has all the benefits of both, being that it makes you fun and more fun. The bonus is that it doesn't make you horny or angry or sleepy! It tastes okay, and everyone thinks it's gonna be gross but then I make them take a shot with me and they love it! 


Fun Cereal Friday
I got this idea when I was still in high school. One of my friends Eli and I used to have Pie Day Friday. We would each take turns to buy us both pies from the school canteen. This stopped when we got into a fight about whose turn it was to buy the pies. To this day I swear Eli still owes me three pies. I mean, I'm over it though. Like, I don't even care anymore.
I don't even eat pies so of corse it doesn't even matter. It was eight years ago. 
Also, the pies were making me a little round.
Point is, I decided to do another fun thing on Friday to replace Pie Day Friday which had ended most abruptly. For this I did Fun Cereal Friday which is where I had cocoa pops on Friday because they were more fun than the healthier breakfast I had on the other days.
Now that I am in the States, there is whole new world of cereals available for me to sample every week. Rules: The cereal must look fun (it probably has a puzzle on the back of the package or some kind of cereal mascot like Cap'n Crunch), and it must be quite unhealthy. I'm not supposed to feel wholesome when I'm eating it, I'm supposed to feel slightly rebellious. 
Some of us went through this phase when we left home where we are all like "Screw you, Mum. I can eat whatever I want for breakfast!" So we did. Then we probably stopped. Now I'm starting again. But just on a Friday. Hopefully all the little balls of sugary-coated delight wont all cut my mouth open so much. We all know the cereal rule: The better it tastes, the more it cuts your mouth up.  

Icecream Sunday - See what I did there? Eh? Eeeehh? If you know my points system, you know I get a point when I eat icecream. As a family, we used to have icecream for pudding on Sunday. My brother thought it was kind of dumb. He's all: "Why the fuck can't we have icecream whenever we want?" And then Mum's all: "BECAUSE I SAID SO NAGNAGNAG!" Kidding. She doesn't really sound like that. Whenever Mum wasn't home, we would make Dad give us icecream even on a Wednesday or something CRAZY like that. 
I'm a big fan of the icecream on a Sunday rule. It means that I don't eat it every day, since I know Sunday must be only six or fewer days away.  The great thing about Portland is that there are all kinds of icecream shops where you can get all kinds of different icecream like honey lavender and maple bacon and chevre with bourbon pecan caramel if you're a food snob, and eggnog custard imuststopthisbeforeihaveanicecreamgasm!!!!

I still have three more days of the week to make up day hacks for. I need them to sound snappy. I need it to be fun but easy. Thoughts: Yours please. 

Other thoughts from me this week:

• What's up with the patterns on bus seats? Seriously. What are they? 
• Maybe I should just have Angry Thursday. Thursday is my Monday, therefore I don't like it. Nothing good can happen!
• Microwave minute > washing machine minute > normal minute. 
• Watch this please thank you. 

Thanks for reading

Liz Tritops

xoxo

Dreams are Free, Bitchez!

I wrote this when I was drunk. It could be the worst thing you will ever read. I hope not!


Here are some things I wish for:

• I wish I could draw. I don't think I would ever want to be a serious artist because they usually have fucked-up childhoods and are all dark and twisty on the inside. I just wish I were better than I was when I was six. Here's a fun Lizfact: Sometimes I didn't even draw pictures. I would just draw rows of coloured dots. Maybe I lacked imagination, maybe I have OCD. 
• I wish peanut butter didn't stick to the top of my mouth.
• I wish my flatmate knew where Montana was and that New Hampshire was a state. 
• I wish I could fold fitted sheets. And non-fitted sheets. I don't even understand how people can fold things which are three-times their size. 
• I wish I didn't have the hangovers of a 40 year-old.
• I wish I had more dreams. Apparently we all have around five dreams per night or some shit but I never remember mine, and if I do they're always in black and white.  This makes me a little sad. I'm gonna try and eat heaps and heaps of cheese before I go to bed and then maybe I will dream more. Then I can make a graph of cheese-eating relative to dream clarity. It will be a cute science experiment and I'm a nerd. 
• I wish more people used the interrobang. It was created to fill a gap in our punctuation system. Let's fill that gap, dammit!
• I wish I were as brilliant as Jon Favreau.
• I wish the yummy cereals with all the sugar didn't try to rip your mouth apart. 
• I wish there were more traffic circles here. Or roundabouts. Whatever you call 'em. 
• I wish my eggs and toast were always ready at the same time.
• I wish I didn't find cigarettes so enjoyable.
• I wish everyone knew that Batman was better than all the other superheroes. 
• I wish...you know when it's snowed for real and it's night-time but it's not super dark but all bluey and weird outside because the darkness is reflecting on the snow. Or something. And the air  smells crisp and clean and everything is more quiet. Yeah. I wish for that. 
• I wish more people had a favourite dinosaur.
• I wish I could have a dog. Right now.
• I wish it were more common to wear nice hats and gloves. Especially for men.
• I wish I didn't fuck around waiting for my tea to be cold enough to drink then BAM it's really cold so I have to make another one.
• I like yoga. I really do. I wish they didn't say things which verge on being ridiculous and which make me wanna giggle, like 'take a moment to thank yourself for honoring your commitment this space and your body today.' Seriously. You two in the corner: You saw each other yesterday, so why are you doing the whole-body hug with eyes closed thing? It's as if you just survived being eaten by a bear in the woods and you ran separate ways, but you made it to yoga just in time and you're seeing each other again for the first time. Alive.                                                                                   I just want to stretch and maybe feel a little fuzzy on the inside, and be a little less fat. 
• I wish I knew the difference between port, starboard, bow, and stern. You know the game Captain's Coming? I was such a little sheep.
• I wish they didn't make a Mighty Ducks 3. 
• I wish for cheesecake. Right now.
• I wish Pluto wasn't kicked out of the planet club. I feel bad for that little guy.
• I wish roller blades were perpetually cool. Kinda like skateboards. Because I think they deserve it.
• I wish more people knew that tofu tastes good. 
• I wish nuts were never added to chocolate.
• I wish we could pretend that aeroplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars. LOL JK. 
• I wish girls could wear ties and not look like lesbians or like they're tryna be punk rockers. I LIKE TIES, DAMMIT.
• I wish I could bump into the guy who writes Books of Adam. He lives in Portland and I think his name might be Adam. We could talk about fun things.
• I wish I had the time and constant supply of baking things to bake something perfect everyday and share it with YOU. 
• I wish that the cheese in America didn't just taste like texture. 

Other thoughts from me this week:

• I like how the homeless people here have dogs; the dogs look happy and not super hungry.
• All the men here are 30-ish or gay. I'm outa luck. You can shake an apple tree as much as you want, but you're never gonna get bananas to fall. I just made that up. You like it? Wisdom from Liz is called Lizdom. 
• Have you ever said 'I'm not hungry' to Grandma? Didn't think so. 
• This will either be the best part of your day or something else. Let's face it, you're not busy and important enough to say no to 1:42 of awesome. Watch it! 

I have to go to work now.

Have a good day!!! 

Liz Tritops

xoxo