routine

When I wrote Wednesday's pancake post, I actually meant to mention my weekly routine too, but it became one of those super-huge posts, so I thought I'd chop it in two and post the rest today.

Pancake Tuesday obviously represented a dietary divergence (given the chicken curry wasn't a disaster I'm also hoping the extra pancakes don't pox me up this week), but it also represented a break from a routine I've been trying to stick to these last few weeks.

I talked the other week about how I was cracking on with the scanning, and part of this has been achieved by doing scanning in the evenings during the week. I mean, I do most of the scanning at the weekend, but I've been boosting it with scanning during the week in the evenings too.

Essentially, the routine breaks down like this:

Monday, Wednesday and Friday are telly watching days and Tuesday and Thursday are scanning days.

On Monday I try to watch live telly. Generally speaking, the gadget show is on on Mondays, so I often watch that, but otherwise there's usually some telly that's on I want to watch, but if not I can watch something I recorded. I also bake bread on Monday, to have for lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tuesday is a scanning day, but it's also the day I prep my washing to take to the laundrette on Wednesday lunch. I also tend to do the washing up that I've got (the diet means that I actually generate very little washing up during the week). Nowadays I watch anime on crunchyroll, but I used to watch fansubs and will have to start on them again as I'm getting quite a backlog of fansubs.

Wednesday is a telly day and I watch stuff I've recorded. A big advantage to doing this on Wednesday is I don't have the random bits and pieces I mentioned above, so I can watch a good three hours of stuff. I might put away the washing up I've picked up at the laundrette, but usually I save that sort of stuff for Friday.

Thursday is another scanning day and again I'll also do any washing up. Again, I watch anime on crunchyroll while I scan.

Friday is a telly watching day, but it's also a day when I do a bunch of chores, so I won't necessarily watch that much telly. Typical things I'll do include putting away my washing, cleaning my work shoes, prepping stuff for the weekend and the next week. All pretty boring, but y doing them Friday evening, I don't have to worry about them come the weekend. I'll also sometimes do my food shop on Friday - this kinda depends on what mood I'm in, how busy the weekend will be and how much I need to buy.

It's quite an efficient routine. I'm quite the fan of imposing routine as I find it helps me achieve things. I mean, I've been getting so much scanning/animu watching done I'm actually generating backlogs of scans to process and reviews to write, as mentioned last week.

vanilla sky

Vanilla Sky is a remake of a Spanish film called "Abres los Ojos" or "Open your Eyes".

Well, actually, in the commentary, the director, Cameron Crow, keeps calling it a cover version. This I think is partly because he's big into music (he used to be a Music Journalist), but also because, from what I've heard, it's almost identical to the original.

I have to confess I wasn't quite as impressed with Vanilla Sky as I think it wanted me to be. Now whether this is due to the original story or something they did (or didn't do) in this cover, I don't know and I wouldn't say I actively disliked the film, but I did find it to be a bit lacking.

I think my big problem with it really was that it lacked ambiguity.

I know that's a bit of an odd thing to say, because if you do some searching around there appear to be quite a lot of theories as to what's happening, and I can see most of them, although I think it's actually fairly clear what the intended truth is, no my problem comes at the end.

I'm going to have to get into spoiler territory here, because the central crux of the film is existentialism - what is reality and how do we know what's real? In this case, the reality is being contrasted with dreams, or more specifically a lucid dream, which is where you can control your own dream.

Anyway, the point seems to be that the main character David ends up in a Lucid Dream and quite where that happens in the narrative of the film seems to be the source of the debate as to what's going on. But to me, what would have been (and is always) a more interesting take on this sort of existentialism is the possibility of whether things are real or not.

So was he really dreaming or not?

The film leaves little doubt that yes, he was dreaming and it's only really mysterious as to when that happens and also whether he wants to stay in that situation. I therefore found it unsatisfying.

But also, I was a bit troubled by the central theme of the film. The "message" (if you will) of the film seems to revolve so squarely around looks it seemed a little distasteful to me. I think it was meant to be about accepting who you are and that looks don't matter, yet it also seems to undermine these as well. Similarly, is it about someone who's narcissistic, yet also hates himself for being narcissistic? If so, why, in the end, does it seem to validate the narcissism?

Oh and for a sci-fi nerd kicker - if you're in cryogenic suspension (that is, deep frozen), how can you dream? And even if that were possible, if you're in cryogenic suspension for a very long time does that dream keep repeating on a loop? And how would they know there was a problem?

pancake day

I think, technically, pancake day is called Shrove Tuesday and precedes Ash Wednesday and the beginning of lent.

Lent, I believe, is meant to be the period of fasting Christians go though before Easter. I think it's something to do with Jebus wandering the desert. I believe the idea was that pancakes were a way of eating up stuff like eggs and milk before lent.

These may or may not be right - I don't do religion, so I could well have mixed up some stuff.

Anyway, the real point is it's an opportunity to eat pancakes (or really what most people tend to have are the thin crepes, rather than the thicker pancakes or some recipes). I love pancakes, and have them almost without fail for my Sunday (treat day) breakfast.

My pancake recipe is a bit divergent from the normal recipe. There are plenty of recipes for pancakes, all of which involve eggs, flour and milk, but the difference with what I do is decrease the amount of egg and milk (which I also thin with water). This reduces the fat content, but also means the resultant pancakes are a little thicker than usual, which I prefer. Essentially, my batter ends up being like double cream, rather than single cream as is the norm.

In recent months I've tended to have the pancakes with fruit. When I do my main food shopping, which is usually Friday evening or Saturday morning, I try to buy berries. One of the things I found when researching my diet was that, on the whole, berries have very few calories.

So strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries - I can eat loads of them without much fear of ruining my diet. Well, so long as I tear clear of any sort of accompaniment, like cream or ice cream or sugar. But then I love berries on there own, so I don't mind that.

Actually, one thing I can and do like to do is chuck a load of berries in with a sliced up apple and poor on a low-fat yoghurt. Sort of like a very simple fruit salad. Obviously, this does make the calorie count noticeably higher, but then it's also pretty much a meal.

Anyway, point is I've tended to team my Sunday pancakes with fresh fruit. However, back when I first started this tradition I actually used to generally have lime juice. I know the normal accompaniment most people think of is lemon juice and I would have that too, but I prefer limes to lemons, so I would normally have that (you can buy bottles of the juice).

So last night I reverted to having lime juice, as obviously I didn't have any berries. But what it did dredge up in me was memories of when we were kids and my mum would cook up a batch of pancakes for pancake day. What we used to have then was orange juice, freshly squeezed from actual oranges. I remember it was a really nice combination, so this weekend I might buy an orange or two (and a juicer!) and have that for Sunday.

curry and chips

The weigh in this last Sunday revealed I had lost one more pound.

Not a huge amount again, but I was actually somewhat pleased by this, as last week I ate several rather bad things.

The first bad thing I ate was a curry, which I had on Thursday as I went out for dinner. Curtailing my eating out activities has been a part of the diet, as generally most eating out involves quite a lot of calories.

I could probably have limited the calories if I'd had a vegetable curry and avoided having a naan and those poppadoms where you dip them into the sauces and a sorbet for dessert. But I didn't do any of those things - I had a Chicken Rogan Josh, one of those naans that has the coconut in it, several poppadoms liberally dipped and a lemon sorbet.

It was, to be frank, an enormous feast that I'd probably have struggled to eat even pre-diet . I guess on the upside it was so big I was rather full for and so ate less around it, but that was somewhat hampered by the fact that Friday involved a pub lunch at work to celebrate someone's birthday. And I had gammon, egg and chips.

So yeah, quite a bit of pigging out last week, unfortunately, so I was rather pleased that I'd still managed to loose a pound.

I do wonder when I have these slips what would have happened if I hadn't slipped. I mean, it seems fairly certain I would have lost more weight, but how much? Are we talking not enough to show up or several extra pounds?

I dunno - I guess what I'm saying is that I ended up with a weird mix of feeling - pleased I'd still lost weight, despite going off-plan, guilty that I could have lost more, puzzled as to whether I could eat a curry every week and still loose weight, but then worried about how long the diet would last if I did that and only lost 1 pound a week from now on.

f1 pause

So this next weekend should have seen the start of the 2011 F1 Grand Prix season with the opener in Bahrain.

That, of course, is not happening, what with all these foreigners demanding stuff like freedom or expression and free and fair elections - I mean, the cheek of it! It's all very well trying to throw off your oppressors and all, but interfering with the F! season is quite beyond the pail.

I'm joking, obviously, but it does somewhat highlight one of the other problems with Bernie's rush to get to different places around the world. Part of the reason is clearly a desire to expand the sport's fan-base and to give manufactures, sponsors and brands access to new and developing markets.

I've no real problem with these ideas, as they make some sense, but it has created a few issues. One of my main one is that most of the new circuits are poor, not least of all because Hermann Tilk designs them all and while I wouldn't want to say he was entirely the reason for them being rubbish, it can't be a good thing that exactly the same person designs them all.

But the problem highlighted by the Bahrain GP is Bernie's apparently eager willingness to go for dodgy regimes. I mean, if you look at a list of the newer circuits, a good chunk of them are happening in countries that lack freedom for their population and/or have appalling records on human rights. What seems to distinguish quite a few of them is the willingness by the person or people in charge to blow huge wodges of what you could argue should be the people's money on having their own GP.

Now don't get me wrong, F1 is an expensive game, especially nowadays when safety has to be so good and their are demands for high-end facilities. In a sense, F1 has become a victim of its own success in this regard. My main point is that it's a real shame that this therefore means that all the dodgiest parts of the world are the only ones who seem to be able (or should that be willing) to spend this sort of money.