Another annoying thing

What is sometimes annoying is that I can't complain about some people in my blog because there's always a possibility that they'll see it. It's not just complaining about them that I can't do; it's also just talking about them. Well, I can talk about them, but they might over-analyse it because it's about them and think that I think of them as x not b and then get upset or something that I wasn't even writing about. Or that I hadn't even thought of. I have blogged about people in the past, but lately not as much. Of course I can always change their name, but it's still a bit too obvious.

I know that the possibility that they'll see my blog is very slim, especially when I won't see a lot of those people again, and since many people don't even know that I have a blog. And I'm guessing they'll never find out. But there is always a chance that this blog might one day go viral :-). Or just that one day I'll tell lots of people about it - or maybe just that I'll tell that person about it.

I've considered that it might actually be a good idea to complain about people on my blog, in hope that they'll see it, so that they won't annoy me (As much) in the future, or just so that they'll know that they annoyed me enough for me to put it on my blog - or just so that they get embarrassed cuz I've blogged about it. But usually people don't irritate me enough for me to do that - usually. And normally, the people who annoy me are nice most of the time.

Today so far 17th Sept 13

Right now I am not feeling great. I am not feeling great at all. This morning I was awakened by the doorbell, and I immediately felt like I had a cold. That is because I did have a cold. Yesterday it wasn't so bad, just the beginning of a sore throat, but now I have a blocked nose, and, until recently, despite wearing a jumper, I felt cold all over. Now I am leaning against the radiator, and I've just had a cuppa, so I don't feel cold anymore. It is 13:31 and all I have done is style my hair, eat breakfast and do a to do list; I stayed in bed for ages even though I woke up at 08:30. 

All the things on my to-do list are stuff to do on the computer; I don't feel like doing anything else. My sister has been asking me to take her for a walk so she can use her new skates but there is no way I am doing that when I don't feel well. Besides, it is raining outside and when the rain stops it will be wet and freezing, so I don't think she'll want to go out either.

Here are the things I'm going to do today:

1. Code academy
2. Khan academy maths
3. Online sociology

I just found this sociology website a few days ago, and signed up to it. I am going to watch a few videos from it today.

Code academy is a website for learning programming. My mum told me to join it and so far I've only done a few lessons.

Khan academy is quite a well known website with tons of tutorials and lessons.

After that I don't know what I'll do. I'll probably finish really late and just brush my teeth and go to bed when I'm finished, because when I don't feel well I tend to work slowly. But I hope I don't finish late.

I forgot to say that today a package came from Malaysia, with tons of cornflake cookie balls. My uncle makes them. I have eaten about five so far. I will probably have had ten  by the end of today.

So here I am, realising that the radiator is getting a bit too hot, wondering what to do after I've done my work, feeling ill, and being glad I don't have school today.

Or tomorrow.

My homeschool work for today

Here is a list I have written for what I must do today (I am writing using a keyboard on my new nook. It is really weird typing on here!) :

10/ 9/ 13

1. Maths from some maths books we have at home.
2. 4 lessons of Spanish on Duolingo
3. Learn some Spanish past tense conjugations.
4. Eat lunch
5. Do four lessons of French on Duolingo
6. Learn French verb conjugations
7. Make bubble tea

I wrote the list for myself this morning. I don't know yet if I'm going to do everything on it; in fact, I probably won't. It just serves as a guideline to follow. I can veer off course and go on an outing or something, and then carry on doing stuff on the list. I don't always do a list. Also, notice how it isn't a timetable; I don't know what other stuff I will be doing so I have to be flexible. Sometimes I do do a timetable, but when it's late and I want to start soon, I don't bother with that. I usually go to my mum or dad (Normally my dad as he's more into lists) and check with them about the list. I might change or add something. Then I can start. The list is different everyday. It is easy to get bored of doing the same things all the time. On this list most of the things are academic because lately I have mostly been doing crafty things.

Okay, I have to start doing the things on my list now.

Bye!

My breakfast

This morning for breakfast I had bread. Sound unusual? Well, the bread part wasn't. In fact, the whole sandwich wasn't unusual, but it was very yummy. It was inspired by yesterday's lunch that I made for myself, which was inspired by Subway

, the most scrumptious sandwich shop in the world! So, getting on with the ACTUAL sandwich filling, this is how I did it: I toasted two slices of bread, and spread margarine on them. Next, I sliced cheese and put that on the toast, and then put the toast in the oven on a tray. I remembered to turn the oven on, so the cheese melted. Yay!! Okay, then I cut up some tomatoes, lettuce and (If I was Italian I'd pronounce lettuce, "Le-tu-ch-eh") cucumber. When I took the toast out of the oven, I put the salad on it, and squeezed on the magic ingredient: Mayonnaise!! Then I put the slices together, and I had an awesome sandwich!!


Usually for breakfast I have toast with jam; sometimes I have cereal. My dad recently bought me some, "Krave" cereal, and I've been having that lately. Sometimes for breakfast I have leftovers from another day, but that's very rare; I don't like having heavy meals in the morning. But whatever I eat - and I mean WHATEVER - I always have tea. I love tea. 95 percent of the time I have Rooibos. Rooibos is a South African tea, most commonly known in England as, "Redbush." It doesn't contain any caffeine. I don't just have Rooibos tea for breakfast, I usually have about four times a day but lately I've just been having it twice a day.

Making bubble tea - and how we drank it without thick straws

I recently made bubble tea for this party my mum decided to host. It wasn't the kind of party where people get drunk and party party      (But it was still fun :) .) It was just a get-together of a couple of families in London. 

A few days before the party we were in this Asian shop (I LOVE, love, love Asian shops) and I saw these dried tapioca pearls for making bubble tea. I decided I HAD to get them (Or rather, I had to get my mum to get them) so I asked my mum to buy them, and she said, "Yes," and, "Why not make the tea for the party?" Actually, at that time it wasn't going to be a party, just a Korean family; only later did we decide to invite other people. So I decided to make it for the guests.

STRAWS:

That's what I remembered as we got in the car after one of our big supermarket trips. How can you make bubble tea without straws?! So I told my mum, who told my dad. He offered to run me into the supermarket to find some, so we did a last minute dash into the shop to find them. Guess what? There were no wide straws. And you need wide straws for bubble tea. We bought the thin ones and prayed for god to forgive us.

When we got home I did something really clever, and checked the packet of tapioca pearls to see if it said to soak them overnight. The party was the next day, so if I woz gonna soak da boba I woz gonna have ta soak it NOW. Checking the packet involved peeling off a really well stuck sticker that said the instructions in Chinese or something, to reveal the English printed beneath. After about seven minutes of scratching off the label, it turned out you didn't need to soak them after all, but it was still a clever idea to check :)

BTW, boba is another word for tapioca pearls.

The next day I boiled the tapioca pearls, and tasted them. They weren't like the ones in the shop that I had bubble tea at once; they were chewy all through, whereas the shop ones were filled with flavoured syrup and weren't as thick. Mine totally lacked sweetness. I had to do this emergency google search to look for ways to sweeten them. I found out that you could make your own syrup by boiling a cup of white sugar, a cup of brown sugar, and two cups of water. Then you had to soak the boba in that and put it in the fridge. I did that. The bubbles still tasted completely different from the shop ones, but they now had some flavour.  I was saved!! 

Next step was the tea. I decided on green tea with normal cow's milk and condensed milk. I would have used soya but I couldn't find an open one, and didn't have time to look. And couldn't be bothered to look.

The tea was AMAZINGLY, SUPER DUPER fun to make. There was a can of chrysanthemum jelly on the counter (From a previous trip to an Asian shop) and some coconut. The coconut juice was mostly finished, but there was still that yummy flesh on the inside. I scooped it out and cut it up. I did the same with the jelly, and put them aside to go in the tea. I also put aside at ton of other stuff, like pandan flavouring and vanilla essence and colouring. To be honest, they didn't add much, but the point of making bubble tea is to experiment, invent and enjoy doing it.

I served the tea in old jam jars with straws (Too small!!) and put some teaspoons on the table. 

The tea was quite yummy, nice, not out of this world, but tasty and interesting. I'd make it again for sure. We still have dried boba in the cupboard. I'm thinking of making some tonight.

Interesting fact: Bubble tea isn't called bubble tea because of the boba; it is named after the froth that develops on top after shaking it.

Daily Activities (That aren't daily anymore)

Ok, I meant to post this ages ago. I'm not sure if I posted it or not in the end, but I just found it saved on Textedit, so I'm posting it in case I haven't already. An important thing: I wrote this a while ago, before the Summer holidays, and after the holidays, A LOT OF MY CLASSES ARE GOING TO CHANGE. So very soon this will be out of date.

Before drumkit class (On the same day) I volunteer at a charity shop shop for about three hours. I mainly tidy up but occasionally I do other things, like pricing books and operating the cash machine.

On Wednesdays I have drawing class. There are lots of other kids at drawing class, and two teachers. It's definitely the biggest of the classes I go to.

Later on that day I have dunnun class. There are only two people counting me who go there. It's only an hour long because it's meant as training for Friday and Saturday drums.

My Friday drum class is run by the same guy who does the Wednesday one. Both adults and children go to the class. And the kind of drum we do is djembe, as I'm sure you know from earlier posts. Djembe is a kind of drum originally from West Africa (Guinea, Ivory coast, Senegal etc.) but now people play it in most parts of the world. Unlike Drumkit and Dunnun, Djembe is a kind of drum you hit with your hands. It is made out of hollowed out wood with an animal skin stretched over it, and shaped a little like an hourglass.

On Fridays I also have a Capoeira class (Before drumming.) I only started about six weeks ago. It's a very small group but more people have been joining lately.

On Saturday I have a dunnun and djembe class with a few other kids. It, too is run by the guy who does the Wednesday classes.

My only free days are Tuesday and Thursday - and Sunday - but it doesn't really feel like I have that many classes. Probably because the classes don't last the whole day - 1 1/2 hours on average. And I don't get tired of the classes because I don't have school on top of them.

What I've been doing lately - and why I don't like buying books

Lately I haven't been doing many academic things. Drawing and seeing friends mainly. In the last five days I've seen the same friends every day! That might not sound so strange to you, as most people see the same friends every day at school, but because I'm home-schooled, I usually see lots of different people. Anyway, I hadn't seen these friends in about three months, and then I saw them, and then we did sleepovers at each other's houses every day. It's been fun because I finally got to see them, and because it's a change from what I usually do.

The drawing's mostly been happening before I did the sleepovers, and I've already done a post about that: DRAWIIIIIIING lately

I've also been reading. My mum took me to FOYLES to see my friends, and we sat there together and read books. That sounds really boring, but it isn't actually. I started reading a really good book but I've forgotten the name of it. Luckily I asked my mum to take a picture of the cover with her phone, so I can look for the book in the library later. I don't get, "Buying books." Fine, I get it if I'm buying books as presents for people, or if the books aren't available in the library. But why crowd your house and spend a ton of money if you can just borrow the books? Our house has a ton of books that are ours, and they get everywhere and end up cluttering the place, because certain people don't put books back on our book shelves. If you go to the library, you can totally avoid that and return books when your house starts to get messy. 

After we went to the bookshop, we went to China town and my mum bought me this delicious Asian drink with lemongrass and basil seeds. The seeds were little and black and had jelly around them, so they looked like frog eggs. The drink they were in was green, so it looked like pond water. However, the drink did not taste like pond water with frog eggs in it (Not that I've tasted either of those) ; it tasted really sweet and refreshing.

What I really need to be doing is drumming and replying to emails. My drumming starts again on Friday the 13th (Spooky! Maybe Dracula will come for a djembe workshop...) so I should ideally practice before then (I haven't drummed at all this week!!) About the emails, I am tired of writing emails. I didn't check my mail for a few days, then I checked it and I had a ton of unread emails. I read them and then quickly closed my laptop and tried not to think about replying; on email replying days I usually sit in front of the computer for an hour and a half typing, and then the days is nearly gone and I have a stiff back and a sore neck. Then, about a week later I checked my mail again and there were some more emails (Which I didn't reply to) so I will try to reply soon.

So that's what I've been doing lately!

DRAWIIIIIING LATELY

For most of these last five months I've been quite negligent about my drawing. These past few weeks I've managed to pick it up again, though, so that's good and I feel quite relieved. But before it was really annoying because whenever I thought, "I should be drawing now," I couldn't find my sketchbook. And then when I found it, I wouldn't feel like drawing or I'd have something else to do, and then it would get lost again. And a lot of the time the wrong book would turn up at the wrong time, like I'd be looking for my general sketchbook and I'd find my mixed media book or fashion one and it would be so AnNoYiNg!! What's worse is that it wasn't just that I was bored because I couldn't find my sketchbook, but I got really out of practice, and I wasn't finishing my book; I've had this one drawing book for about three years and it still isn't finished!! It isn't even a big book!

Then I went camping, and I HAD to find my book because I knew I'd be bored while camping. When we got back, I was into drawing again because I'd done two pictures while camping, and because I'd found my book and hadn't lost it again. So now I am drawing more again. Yay!!