I thought March was a very long month, April is even longer but maybe it's also because it is our Autumn(Fall) and our days are getting shorter and our night's are getting longer. It still isn't cold yet although it has been overcast. No rain yet though - there may be later in the week.
Firstly I would like to thank the few people around the world who are still reading my blog ( and any new ones as I have noticed there are also some) although it is nowhere as interesting as my previous blogs BCV ( that's my abbreviation for BEFORE CORONA VIRUS - could not name it BC as BEFORE CHRIST has already been taken. Technically I could have named it BCV19 but we are in 2020 and it sounds too much like the COVID-19 virus nomenclature). Actually BC should be BCE and not BC for those who are non Christians , BCE meaning BEFORE COMMON ERA. This does not explain AD though which is IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD for the non Christians where there is no alternative. So what would I call it after the CORONA virus pandemic ends? My suggestions ASI ( AFTER SOCIAL ISOLATION) or ASD (AFTER SOCIAL DISTANCING) as these were and are part of the norm and everyone is familiar with these universal rules and regulations during the pandemic. Maybe not ASD as it sounds too much like AD or STD ( that's "sexually transmitted disease(s)"and not the very old telecommunication call term "subscriber trunk dialling" - "what's that?" you ask - don't ask me it's a bit before my time! I suspect it's some type of manual long distance calling by phone via an operator to connect you through. Google it - it eill give you something to do to relieve your boredom during the Corona virus pandemic.
Any suggestions anyone???
I love to read write and think as you can see from reading my blogs. Often the things I have done or written about don't happen until at a later time often decades later. I have noticed this from just reading and watching all different types of social media platforms.
I was watching a Tiktok video with thousands of likes the other day and someone had made an outfit out of plastic bags, it was some sort of top and bottom - very basic but I had sewn an entire formal dress back in 1992/1992 out of plastic shopping bags I had accumulated over time way before there was any option to return and recycle. I wore the dress one more then 1 occasion and it won a prize in a university art competition, I even submitted it years later as my project at fashion school where my teacher's only comment was " I can't believe you hemmed it!" - of course I did , I fully lined it as well - it was all machine stitched and not just glued and sticky tapped together ( I broke so many needles sewing it!). I dtill have that dress somewhere in my offsite storage facility right down the back at the bottom however unsure where and what condition it may be in. Hopefully it has just faded and not completely disintegrated as plastic was indestructible back then - non of this compostable or biodegradable stuff we have today!
This was another interesting article I read and it is not about Donald Trumps recent suggestion of injecting disinfectant to kill off the CORONA virus in the system - WARNING NEVER TRY TO INGEST, INHALE OR INJECT DISINFECTANT IT WILL KILL YOU!! If you remember a while back I wrote on one of my blogs about the shortage of tonic water and my somewhat humorous reasons as to why there may be a shortage of tonic water, well I was reading a random article a day or so ago and in it was the suggestion of drinking, you guessed it, tonic water due to the small safer amounts of quinine in it to prevent or even treat the Corona virus. I also said that drinking it won't prevent you from getting the CORONA virus nor will it cure you of it. I am probably correct since there is still no firm scientific proof that this old antimalarial treatment actually works in preventing or curing the Corona virus and that you would probably get more side effects or even risk death from drinking too much of it. So my tonic water theory was actually being considered seriously by some authorities out there as a potential preventative or cure against the Corona virus. No mentioned of just drinking straight Gin - does the same thing as the alcohol concentration will probably kill off the CORONA virus if it doesn't kill you first as a side effect ! - I hope that injecting ingesting or inhaling Gin isn't the next cure or preventive suggested by Donald Trump - he might as well suggest to people to inject ingest or inhale hand sanitizer! Can you imagine Trump announcing to Americans "Good news - we've found a cure for the Corona virus - bad news you have to die for it to work"
Above are just 2 examples , I am sure there are many more but I would like to write about however I want to write about what else I have been doing.
Besides watching YouTube, Tiktok, checking Facebook for humorous posts, watching TV mainly the SBS Food Channel, Masterchef Back To Win and the news , not much except pay bills cleaning updating my blog and cooking and also trying to learn a few more IT skills online although they won't get me a job they challenge my brain to keep it active whilst I'm out of work. Technically I still have a little less then 2 months more of my LSL ( long service leave ) which I was forced to take when stood down or was I made redundant? - results were the same thing. Who knows if the company I worked for is closing down or planning to reopen and rehire and when - this is why I haven't asked my employer if they have applied for the government's JobKeeper subsidy in all this time as I am also unsure if the company would be eligible to register for it. I think I did the right thing registering for the JobSeeker payment as soon as I could (although due to a delay by my employer of redundancy notification it could have been done 2 days earlier) . I am assuming no JobKeeper and I won't be rehired by the company I had been working for after 10 years and almost 4 months with them.
OK I am going to talk about my blog now and the significance of writing it. I found another interesting story on the internet about a person who kept a diary during the Spanish Flu pandemic. I think if I had the time I would have read it in more detail. The history of why I write my blog goes right back to when I was in primary school. I had no idea that I had a flair for creative writing. I do have a passion for writing although my spelling has always been my weakness ( thank goodness for spell check but not predictive text) since the beginning of my schooling, my grammar sometimes horrendous and my typing well - what can I say?. English was not my first language and I went to school in transition without understanding a single word of English - I could not speak read write English at all for at least the first year of school. I was in a special class with about 6 - 10 classmates , I think we were selected because we were "gifted" in some way? I wouldn't say a child prodigy as I don't think that was a used term back then. Amongst my classmates, one of them had broken her leg and was on crutches and these were hung on a coat hook during classes. One day she asked me to pass them to her and because I had no understanding of English I just assumed she wanted her crutches passed to her, I did so and she had no idea of me not actually understanding a single word of English. She assumed I had some command of English. I have no idea how I got through the first few years of school. I was very good at Maths though which is no surprise being Asian. I was having trouble with spelling and hated reading ( still do hate reading books of fiction although I like non fantasy science fiction and biographies) and therefore was struggling with my English kanguage skills yet my creative writing skills were great . I remember one year my name was called out and I had won a book prize for a book review piece I had written in, I think, in the 2nd grade. To this date I still have no idea what I wrote, when I wrote it and how it came to be entered into a writing competition - was it a an actual book review I wrote or just some random made up story? - after all I hated reading! By the 6th grade not only was I good at Maths, I won another prize for my creative writing but still hated reading I did enjoy reading a rather mature Science book titled "The Displaced Person" though.
At school I always had a diary/schedule but it was a school requirement particularly through high school as our daily school schedule was very different to most other schools and was quite complex including alternating schedules from week to week therefore if you didn't keep a diary you were screwed!
It was only after school when I went to college and started working and having to start paying tax that I really took keeping a diary to the extreme. I was known for my huge financial year diaries I carried around up until a few years ago where my diary is now mostly on my phone however I still keep a hardcopy diary for receipts and extra notes. I became known for my extreme diary keeping and Dulcinea's Diary was created.
Unfortunately ( and I have bought this issue up previously) someone already owned the domain name Dulcinea's Diary although it had not been used since the early 2000's so I had to come up with an alternative name hence this blog Dulcineasdiarycontinued was created ( as I had a previous blog before starting this one).
Like the person who kept a diary of life during the Spanish flu, I hope by writing this blog it will serve as a diary of life before, during the Corona virus pandemic as well as a life after it for future generations to be used as an educational tool. I have always believed that preserving history is very important hence my interest in visiting historical places of interest, reading biographies and my interest in collecting old objects and colonial gastronomy. Imagine opening my time capsule(s) - yes I do have some. One of these is somewhere buried in a time capsule at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver BC Canada where there is a message or image I created back in 1999 ( amongst thousands probably of other people's messages and images) in it's time capsule. That is now 22 years ago! Therefore there is a chance that there are people that placed a message or image in this time capsule that are no longer alive.
Wednesday 29th April 2020
Today I made Asian style marinated chicken wings again and ate them for breakfast with baby Roma tomato and baby cucumbers - a quick and tasty meal. Absolutely yummy. I have kept the excess marinade to use in another udon dish later.
I also completed week 2 of my 2nd Future Learn online IT related course which means I can now concentrate on completing week 2 of my 3rd Future Learn online IT related course "Learn To Code For The Web."
Currently watching Masterchef then it will be a shower and off to bed. It's now been a week since I last ventured out so I have to try and do some grocery shopping as I am running low on groceries again tomorrow.
breakfast - yummy Marinated Asian Chicken Wings With baby cucumbers and baby roma tomatos ( taken with my good phone's camera this time)
Thursday 30th April 2020
Finally the last day of April ! It has been a very long month! Last night I was feeling very itchy on my hands and it became worse during the night although I still slept quite well. I had forcast that it might rain but it held off until I woke up this morning and looked outside my window - yep it was raining. My itchy hands were telling me that rain was coming and when it gets bad it means it is raining. This morning my hands were very itchy so I put some antihistamine cream on them. I still plan to go shopping today but will have to cover my hands to protect them from coming into contact with Corona virus.
I am watching the news and making my udon dish with my marinade leftover from yesterdays chicken wings for breakfast - wasting nothing . I added cauliflower broccoli shallots corriander and some fish pieces to it and mixed everything up in the marinade with the parcooked udon noodles and placed them in the oven for a final cook before eating. Should be a yummy filling breakfast. Oh a little over baked - oops that's what happens when you get addicted to watching Tiktok videos!!! I ate it and had some left for tomorrow's breakfast.
After having a shower washing up , I get ready to venture outside for the first time in a whole week again! It takes me forever to leave the apartment as I am always ensuring I have my mask with a new filter, this time gloves to cover my hands, a rain coat as it is raining enough cloths on in case it becomes cold ( still not quite cold but I am starting to fill it at night sometimes) keys card shopping list marker or pen phone opal card water enough resusable cloth shopping bags etc etc
Finally after lunch out the door I go. I decide to catch the bus out to Chatswood and walk down to the Aldi and Coles at the other end of Chatswood again. I had a huge shopping list and had my wheelie bag and 2 shopping bags with me thinking I'll need all of them but I didn't in the end as there was still a third of the things I needed unavailable at any of the supermarkets some with no alternatives.
First stop was Aldi where I grabbed anything on my shopping list that I thought was available quality quantity and would be cheaper then the other supermarkets. Still no panty liners or much femininne hygiene products available - I am running very low and it's been 5 weeks that I haven't been able to get liners - still pads tampons pull ups left but no liners. Same at Coles although I didn't check Woolworths or the IGA as they are quite small stores but a good supply of paper towels, tissues and toilet paper GALORE!!!! although still no single rolls without plastic wrappers around them. Coles had only 1 option of a 4 packet recycled toilet paper and I purchased that because there was noway i needed a 12 packet of toilet paper nor could I carry them home with me today or on any other shopping trip I make! Just the 4 pack took up almost half of one of my shopping bags filled with other groceries. Finally after 5 weeks of not being able to purchase any toilet paper I am able to purchase some - I didn't even ask how much it was. I was down to my 2nd last roll of toilet paper and would have been down to my last one this week if I had not used a box of my tissues which had been easier to get earlier. How's that for toilet paper budgeting!!!!See that's how you can you your accounting skills when you're not using them for work.
Enough a out toilet paper now that it's back in stock and restrictions on their purchase have just been lifted. Onto what else I purchased . My typical shopping list may include odd things but there are certain products and brands I love and products I won't touch.
Here are examples of grocery items I love
1. Coconut milk powder - I always have a box of this in my pantry as it is long life or shelf stable. It is very versatile as you can make it up with water to a milk or cream consistency. It is great for camping or just travelling as it is much more light weight then the smallest can of coconut milk or cream. It comes in a box of 3 sealed foiled packets or sachets just larger then a single packet or sachets of instant cupa soup. There is only one thing about this product that makes it unsuitable for people who are vegan or lactose intolerant - it contains dairy eventhough it is coconut milk powder. Is this a cost cutting measure or does it have to do with making it resemble coconut milk more when reconstituted?
2. YEOS sesame oil. I like this particular brand because it is made in Singapore and not China. I purchase another brand once in what looked like a similar bottle however when I unscrewed the plastic top off it , it revealed a metal cap much like a cider bottle or beer bottle cap which required a bottle top opener to pull it off - I used one but could not get the cap off. With the YEOS brand you pop up the plastic top and find a little plastic pull ring which you just remove with your fingers and the bottle is open , then you just put the top back on over it.
3. Fruit " leathers" , these come in many different brands and I have been a fan of these since they were invented many years ago. There are so many different variations on the fruit leather which are not 100% Australian made nor are they 100 % fruit and contain loads of sugar that is not naturally occurring from fruit. An example of these would be roll ups or variations on the apricot rolls which are mixed with coconut usually. Fruit leathers contain nothing but compressed pure fruit pulp and the original idea was from the minimization of all the pulp from Apple's and other fruits after they were juiced. The leftover apple pulp was found to be an ideal base for the fruit leathers which was later mixed with other fruit pulp or pureed to create different flavours of fruit leathers. The result is a thin stop of chewy gummy gelatinous concentrated fruit strip which is shelf stable for a very long period of time as most of the moisture has been extracted from it and there is no need to add any sugars as there is a natural sweetness from the fruit concentration itself. I know there is an equivalent product in North America which I purchase as well. Just be aware not to eat too many of these strips - they may taste good and are somewhat addictive as an alternative to lollies but they are full of fibre and you may find yourself running to the bathroom if you consume too many of them!
4. Everyone loves chocolate as a treat or for making desserts and I love dark chocolate over milk chocolate and hazelnuts over almonds in chocolate. Everyone loves Aldi chocolate and yes their dark chocolate blocks and dark hazelnut chocolate blocks ( folied wrapped in cardboard box not the foiled wapped one) are pretty good and quite a good price however I have discovered a better Coles brand Belgian chocolate block - The dark chocolate block is the best and although there is no dark chocolate hazelnut block in the Coles brand, I purchased the Coles milk chocolate hazelnut block and loved it almost as much as the Coles dark chocolate block! Aldi chocolate is good but Coles chocolate is the best imported chocolate of the two. Price is also on par with the Aldi brand chocolate blocks ( at times cheaper when on sale) - only drawback you have to look on the very top unreachable shelf for the Coles brand chocolate bars, there is only a small quantity of them and the range is very limited as well as being in short supply or out of stock especially during the grocery hoarding periods.
I'll stop here as there are many more great grocery products that stick with. There is one thing I have been doing especially since all this social isolation started and that is to spend more time reading everything on product labels especially product's origin and product's ingredients. I don't like eating anything which has preservatives or a lot of additives in them whether they are long life or fresh. More importantly anything that is made in China I will not touch. It is very important to me to buy locally made and locally owned products. I have been a big believe in this to support local companies and to be less reliant on Chinese products. If I have to purchase overseas products ( as one country can't be 100% self sufficient) I ensure I buy products from all over the world not just from a few countries around the world. I also try to buy seasonal local produce. To do this I use an Australian month by month seasonal fruit and vegetable list and I used to subscribe to AusBuy a book which listed all Australian made and owned companies ( there are probably not many left these days). By doing this I hope to be helping farmers, keeping the local economy running and hopefully creating jobs so that I might benefit in gaining a job again one day. I believe everyone should be doing this then when local economies are doing well then countries can start negotiating balanced trade agreements with one another.
I had no idea what time it was whilst I was shopping and I looked at my phone and it was already after 6 pm - time to leave to get home in time to watch Masterchef 2020.
I walk outside and it is really dark and miserable - wet. I walk instead of wait for a bus back to the station with all my shopping - just as well I didn't buy anymore stuff from my stop off at Kmart!
Final stop was to Woolworths to see if anything I could not get that was on my shopping list from Aldi or Coles. Basil and some coins for the laundry - Done! Time to head home by bus.
Just in time - I unpack my groceries have a snack of crackers and cheese while watching Masterchef before going to sleep.
Friday 1st May 2020
Thanks again to everyone out there still reading my blog. I woke to continue blogging again and surprised to find that the number of my readers has increased today after a month of slumps.
Other news - I check my facebook account and I think someone I don't know has made a comment on one of my public posts - I probably won't be able to track who and what and whether it is malicious so I have changed my posts to friends only. I haven't actually posted much for a while on Facebook only commenting or liking humorous posts or messaging friends and family privately. Most of my posting is done on this blog.
Also on Facebook I find out publicly that the company I was made redundant from is opening up again as of today - it looked as if it was planned. I haven't been contacted to return to work so assume I have not been rehired. I still have some stuff that belongs to me there and I still have their stuff too.
Not a good start however my cousin texted me and asked if I was ok so that was nice of her although she did begin if an " Oh shit I forgot to ask you ......"
Today I actually slept in and am not going out again - the sun is out and it is a beautiful day but I have to complete week 2 of the 3rd IT related Future Learn course by this Sunday. I also have to pay any bills due today.
I am busy not watching tv YouTube or Tiktok at the moment but catching up on my blogging.
One issue that has come to light recently (speaking in my previous blog about trade agreements), is Australia has been criticised by China for putting pressure on them to tell the truth basically about the origins of the Corona virus when Europe for example have kept quiet.
When a few ex prime ministers and ex politicians were interviewed, they were very diplomatic about how the current Australian government was handling the situation - yes they need to find out the truth behind the Corona virus from China but they don't want to sour the relationship with China as to destroy trade relationships with them as China is a major trading partner with Australia ( you all know how I feel about this - if you don't here's a clue I don't believe Australia needs China as much as China needs Australia and the rest of the world - caution!!!) . These ex politicians also had another point ie we're all in this together so everyone has to work together for a solution to this worldewide problem that has been created and not to blame anyone or withold (hide) information.
I know there has been a lot of conspiracy theories that The Corona virus did not originate from the wet markets in Wuhan but escaped from a nearby testing laboratory into the community via the wet markets. I sort of believe that from comments I previously made but I also believe it has to do with illegal trading of wildlife bats and poor hygiene. There are 2 top visiting or resident scientists from China in Australia at the moment being investigated for their roles working in a laboratory involving viral research in animals. They have not been charged but are "under investigation" - Pandora's box - let's not open it yet. At least the Australian government have not taken the Trump ( I don't think it was all his idea though) extreme of trying to sue the Chinese government for billions (or was that trillions) of dollars for their economic downturn as a result of the Corona virus pandemic - good luck with that one America!
Just baking some curry turkey pies at the moment. One of these will be for dinner. I used the leftover dough from the Knishes I made previously. I had some olive oil turkey mince in my freezer and frozen peas as well as some shallots in the fridge. I mixed some curry powder some ground cumin star anise cinnamon cloves salt pepper 2 vegetable stock cubes celery fresh coriander leaves a dash of cream water flour oh no I forget the chilli!!!!! and a dash of sesame oil!!! And the corn and carrot and potato!!!!! Oh well it is still a curry pie.
Probably looks better then it tastes!!! Yep they did look better then they tasted but edible with a bit of bbq sauce.
It was quite late go I fell asleep.
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