News updates

Yeah, stuff has been happening. I feel like I need to do a decent post, but I can't think of anything to write so here is some filler until then.

- I went home for a week (I was advised to have 3 months off by the postgrad coordinator... I'm struggling to find time to take a week off)

- I tried (and failed) to share Christ with my family. It didn't help that every serious conversation I had with my Mum revolved around how skinny/sick I am and how I need to fix this (she was preoccupied with my health). I will keep praying for them.

- I feel homesick. I really didn't want to come back to Melbourne.

- We are moving soon. Something to do with demolition people and us being poor. Yay! Hopefully I can start saving some money again.

- I eat like a horse. This is a good thing. I really cannot lose any more weight without ending up in hospital.

- Daniel's diet looks awesome compared to what I'm now living on. No lactose (goodbye precious cheese), no onion or spring onion, reduced spices, reduced garlic, no high fructose (including apples, mangoes and other fruits), reduced sugar, no food containing yeast or fungus (bread, vegemite and friends and mushrooms), no fermented food (this includes alcohol, vinegar etc), no soy or products containing soy (including chocolate), reduced refined carbs, no peanuts, etc etc IT IS SO SAD! WHAT IS THERE LEFT FOR ME TO EAT EXCEPT LETTUCE?

- 20 scarves!?!!? Why was I so ambitious? Argh.

- Oh and err... more happily this happened:



... hee =D

Only I'm too shy to tell people. Almost makes me wish I had facebook.

Anyway, yay I posted.

Au revoir

My newest entertainment

There's this cool little button, at the top of the blog, that says, "Next blog". So you click it and it takes you to someone else's blog. It's really fun! I'm serious. And it seems to pick the next blog based on common tags with the blog you're currently on. Here are some cool things I have noticed:

a. Clicking "Next blog" from my blog or Sam's usually leads to a mass of Christian family blogs (this makes sense coming from Sam's blog... but mine?). Eventually the Christian family blogs peter out into just family blogs, then to crafty blogs and then to some seemingly random blog theme (like outdoor adventures).

b. Once, the theme went from Christian family blogs (x lots), to family blogs (x many), to Spanish blogs (x 3ish) to Spanish football blogs (x 1 million... I got bored and quit long before the theme changed).

c. Both Christian and non-Christian families alike tend to have a son called Cooper.

d. Cooper usually has a brother called Jack.

e. If I have kids I will not be calling them Cooper or Jack. I'm not sure if I'll even start a blog for them (kids should make their own blogs, I say! Slackers).

f. A lot of family blogs have a countdown for when the next baby is due. This freaks me out, because the countdown looks like some alien floating in the vacuum of space. I think it's meant to be the baby. But it's not cute. Embryos are cute.

Cute embryo.


Aliens floating in the vacuum of space are... how to put this delicately... freaky (sorry Sam, I know you want one of these).


People should make a baby countdown with something cute in it, like embryos, or puppies, or maybe your husband... you know. Cute stuff. Not the Alien.

ANYWAY, it's fun to look at people's blogs. It's kind of relaxing, and it's a good substitute for actually updating your own blog. I'm off to click that favourite little button... hee!

Check it out!

The Bureau of Meteorology warns that, at 1:55 pm, very dangerous thunderstorms were detected on weather radar near Gisborne and Melton. These thunderstorms are moving towards the southeast. Very dangerous thunderstorms are forecast to affect Footscray, St Albans, Sunbury and Werribee by 2:25 pm and Caulfield, Craigieburn, Glen Waverley, Greensborough, Melbourne City and Preston by 2:55 pm.





YAY!

I love the storms.

Hero Version 4

Sam is my Hero Version 4. If you read one of her past blog posts you will see the descriptions of Hero Version 1 (the Original Prototype), Hero Version 2 (the smaller, faster, technologically advanced model) and Hero Version 3 (the robust model for heavy duty work).

Sam is Hero Version 4, the robust but small, fast-acting, self-sacrificial model that acts with no hesitations, no fears and very little self-regard. Also she can open jars.

Here is what happened. A giant ugly hideous cockroach of doom came into my bedroom to ruin my life and complete my demise. I freaked. I tried to kill it. I failed. It ran UNDER MY BED! Whimpering like some puppy that has been beaten and nearly destroyed, I called out, "Sam, a cockroach is in my room."

Sam heard the call for a hero. With confident steps she strode into my room, lifted my bed like it was nothing, moved my bed around trying to find the evil giant thing, and then proceeded to pull my bed apart until she had found it and crushed it.

She even cleaned up afterwards.

And then she sprayed my bed with vast amounts of flyspray, even though she's allergic to it. The only contribution I made was to then spray suspect places such as the corners, window and doorway (so anything that crosses the threshold will die).

As a result of all the spray neither of us could stay near my room that night. I still haven't slept there. I need to sterilise all my belongings.

I hate cockroaches.

Kallie's ark... err... bedroom!

This is an account of all of the creatures that slept in Kallie's room the other night (that she knows of):

- 100+ silkworms
- unknown quantity of aphids
- 4 ladybug larvae
- 2 stick insects
- teddies (Remus, Hendrik, Fredrik, Petruchio, Pingu the Burnt, Plucka)
- Desperado
- Kallie

Her excuse? It was too cold for them outside.

And because I haven't done one of these in ages:

What type of insect are you? Firefly You may seem drab and uninteresting to other people, but in reality you have amazing hidden talents.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

That's right. I'm special.

Not everyone can keep their marbles.

Someone has lost their mind.

Again.

Someone put carrot peelings in the fridge.

Someone intended to put them in the rubbish bin.

Clearly, the rubbish bin and the fridge have a lot of similarities.

At least this time she didn't put chewing gum in the freezer. Or pepper in the fridge. Or commit other bizarre acts of absent-mindedness.

Said He doesn't remember anything about a wall

God has been pretty good to me lately, so I need to share it! Okay, here we go:

1. It's okay to be forgetful when your Father in heaven remembers. I accidentally brought home a certain set of keys that I think cost about $10,000 to replace. I intended to return them, but forget. Last night I remembered because I needed them today. I searched through my bag BUT THEY WERE GONE! I freaked out. Ten grand worth of keys is a lot to misplace. Sam helped me go through my bag again. I then said something like, "Dear God, please let me find them". For some reason my fuzzy snotty (I have a cold) mind went instantly to "it's in your laptop case. You were going to take it to work" and there it was. YAY!

2. Today I was finishing setting up my painful experiment of doom. Two Fridays ago I got rained on, hailed on, covered in leeches and I think I had hypothermia. Today the weather was pleasant. It started getting cloudy towards midday, and praise God! It didn't rain or hail until we were in the car and on the way back to uni!

3. Without going into details, I thought past issues with my family had caused me to have a twisted mindset with regards to something in particular. It was reaching the point where I kept condemning myself for something which logically and even morally speaking is completely fine. I then recently discovered that this twisted mindset was not due to my family, but due to improper teaching by the church, which they have now apparently rectified (and yet failed to tell anyone so people still believing what was once taught will feel just as self-condemning and just as much a failure as me). This means that it is a more short-term (rather than long-term) mindset I need to readjust (which is easier), and it is not my screwed up family's fault! It makes it easier to bear, the self-condemnation makes more sense in this context (it was hard to understand why my family's issues would make me feel this way), and it has given me greater insight into why I seem to be on a different page to others. Yay! Thank you God for somehow letting me know the truth.

4. I thought I just lost my phone. I thought I left it on the bus. God prompted me to check my pocket, even though I couldn't feel anything in my pocket. It was in my pocket. X.x hehe, my brain is gone.

5. Our experiments haven't floated over the weir, or flooded. Pray they won't burn! It's meant to be a harsh fire season this year.

God is so good to me.

Okay, I admit this is stranger

This is mostly in response to observations made by Sam.

Observation 1
To me the letter A looks black. Just like all letters look black.
Sam, you're missing out. Seriously. Which isn't a badly coloured word. Word, on the other hand, isn't such a nice colour.

Observation 2
Samantha has yucky colours. I don't like green.
Actually, while there are a lot of green letters in Samantha, when I think of the word as a whole it is a blue word. Samantha is a blue word. I think the first letter of a word, or the stronger letters in a word, or where the accent is in a word, dominates the overall appearance of the word.


You see black. I see blue, but really it's blues, black and green.

Another example is Sunday.

If we accent the word so that you say it as SUNday it looks like:


while if you accent it so it sounds like sunDAY it looks like:


For some reason the letters U, V, X, and Z are all differing shades of grey. Maybe whenever this weird association thing happened in my head I didn't get much exposure to these letters so they didn't get other colours.

Yes, so now you know all this wonderful information.

Okay, I admit I'm strange

Before we get to that, let me ask you a couple of questions.

Do you see numbers in colours? What about letters?

If you're reading that and you haven't figured out what I mean, then I'm guessing you don't. What I asked didn't make sense to you, right?

Well, to me it made a lot of sense. If someone asked me that I would know exactly what they were talking about. You see, I see numbers and letters in colours. I think it's something I've always done, and up until a couple of mouse years ago I never questioned this, assuming everyone else did the same. Then I discovered that not many people actually do. Most people I asked would stare at me blankly and get confused while I struggled to explain it. Then they would think about it. Then they would answer, "Err... no." I have only ever met one other person who can do it- Rebecca- but she's a special case in that she taught herself to see the colours while at uni.

By now you're thinking, "Desperado has lost the plot." I never had the plot. Anyway, let me explain what normally happens to me. Let's say we examine the word mouse.

You probably see it as:



I see it kind of like:



I don't consciously make the letters and numbers change colour. They just have colour. And the colours are consistent. For example, my favourite number 8 is always green. B is always red. How nice I find a word depends on its colours.


Kallie is awful. Too much yellow and pink. The background is black so you can see the white i.



Rebecca also has too much yellow and pink.



Samantha looks better. I like green.

There is a neurological phenomenon called synesthaesia, where the stimulation of one sensory pathway causes an involuntary experience in another. For instance, some people hear a sound which causes them to see a particular colour. More strangely, some people hear a certain word or phoneme and it causes them to taste things, like the sound f tastes like sherbert. There are many types of synesthaesia. One of the most common is grapheme->colour synesthaesia, where letters and numbers are shaded or tinged with different colours. It is involuntary and the colours are consistent.

I'm not sure, but I don't think I have grapheme->colour synesthaesia. Yes, I don't voluntarily make myself see letters as colours, and yes, the colours are always consistent for particular letters or numbers.

I did a lengthy online test to find out if I had synesthaesia. My score suggested that I have grapheme->colour synesthaesia.

Score:
Synesthaesia: < 1.0
Normal memory/association: around 2
Desperado: 0.54

Accuracy:
Synesthetic: 85-100%
Non-synesthetic: < 85%
Desperado: 98.61%

I'm still not convinced. It still might have been a memory thing. If I do have synesthaesia I must not have it strongly. It doesn't affect my life in any way, and unless I'm paying attention most of the time I don't even notice that the black letters are coloured. Possibly I just associate letters with colours. Maybe Sesame Street's letter of the week had a big impact on me as a kid.

Regardless, it's still pretty cool and interesting. So, what colour is the letter A to you? =)

I am being

Being small means...


...I see things from an awesome perspective.


Being distracted means...


...I notice gorgeous details.


Being a science geek means...


...I get to visit beautiful places no one else sees.


Being immature means...


...I have fun playing with model planes.


Being Australian means...


...I am surrounded by oceans.

I am being reminded of God's goodness because He has blessed me with so many privelages.

The family

Sam and Kallie are proud parents of two handsome, well-mannered "boys" (possibly girls).


Above is the eldest son, Elvis, resting on his father's hand. He has become a godzilla of a stick insect, and is nearly an adult. He's very lazy but cute.


And this is Billy Talent. He's only just become an angsty teenager. Previously he was a hyperactive child, but adolescence has calmed him down a lot.

Sam, their mother, makes sure they go to school and receive an education. Kallie, their father, provides habitat and nutritious food for them.

They are much loved by their parents.

Desperado loves heaters

Our heater works! Yay! And just in time for a really cold week of 13 degree weather!

Sure, it smells like it's leaking gas, but that doesn't matter!

Heaters!

Here are some of my educated thoughts on heaters:

a. One of my favourite things about heaters is when you stand really close to them, so close that it feels almost like you're burning.

b. Column heaters are fairly useless. Especially if you're trying to heat a large room.

c. Radiant heaters kind of scare me. They seem like they'd catch other things alight easily. Things such as my tail.

d. I'm not sure what type of heater it is, but whatever heats Kallie's office at work is useless. On the other hand, whatever heats the lab works too well, which she likes, but other people hate.

I have had a stressful day, and now I feel much better after rambling about heaters. Yay!

Helping my friend

I was having emotional problems. A good friend of mine, Arman Filat, has started doing naughty things because of issues with his family. Naughty things such as stealing the bread and having noisy parties. It really stressed me out, and not just because I was getting the blame for stealing the bread. I was really worried about Arman Filat, and the worry grew worse when I couldn't think of a way to help him. Then God revealed to me this while I was studying 2 Corinthians:

2 Corinthians 1:23-24
I call to God as my witness that it was in order to spare you that I did not return to Corinth. Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, because it is by faith you stand firm.

The church in Corinth was unhappy with Paul for many reasons, one of which included his change of plans. He didn't visit them when he previously said he would. In these verses he reveals that he wasn't going to visit in order to benefit them. As a leader Paul wanted to work alongside them and help them grow in their faith. They weren't going to grow very much if every time they had a problem he showed up and dealt with it for them. They were at a stage where they were quite capable of doing things themselves, even if they were still prone to making errors (e.g. 2 Corinthians 2:5-8).

What this means if you're leading someone: Sometimes when we love someone and want the best for them we have to do things they will not like, they will not understand and they will not agree with. The church in Corinth didn't understand why Paul changed his mind, and they weren't happy with this or his previous letter. When you have spiritual authority over someone, or you are looking after someone, you need wisdom. You need to know how to act and what advice to give. You need to know when to act and when to offer advice. You need to know when to intervene, and when you should take a step back so they can deal with it themselves. You need wisdom from God. If you rely on your own wisdom, your own reasoning and your own understanding you will probably make mistakes.

Sometimes you don't need to do everything for them. You just need to work alongside them.

What this means when you come under someone else's authority: Sometimes when someone loves you they will do things to you that you will not like, you will not understand and you will not agree with. Even if you don't quite understand, you still need to submit and act in obedience.


Okay, so this is some rebellious emo kid and not Arman Filat (Arman Filat is a possum) but hey, I'm just trying to make this aesthetically pleasing.

For me this means that I can't just fix Arman Filat's problems for him. I will help him when God opens the door for me, but until then I will just pray for him and just be a good friend. Stressing over it won't help anyone.

I live in a bakery

I kid you not. In the last few weeks a great number of bakery goods have been made in this house.

The first baker is: the girl who plans on breeding like a rabbit. Recently she made chocolate death. I think they were meant to be the love child of chocolate biscuits and chocolate muffins. She more or less created something that is more chocolate than chocolate, and tastes good enough for you to have a massive guilt trip and die moments after taking one bite.

The second baker is: the girl who thinks she'd make a decent boy. She went through a filo pastry phase, and after she mastered the art of cooking with filo, she moved onto making scones, pumpkin scones, banana muffins and banana loaf. Previously she tried make chocolate brownies in muffin form.

The third baker is: the girl with the love-struck expression. Although this is before my time, apparently she made really yummy shortbread biscuits with icing. No doubt she'll soon have the oven fired up again too!

You're probably thinking that I am the luckiest mouse alive, living in mouse heaven. Ha! I'm on a low carb diet. I've been living on tomatoes, salad onions and green shopping bags for the last month. It's really tough living here.

On the bright side of my suffering, I'm going to have the most awesome strength of character once I survive these temptations!

Therefore, I encourage you all to be strong also.

Yours courageously,
Desperado

Hola

Welcome to my journal. This is my first post, so I'm rather excited! My inbred cousin Frankie, who recently passed away in the rain, said I was a whole lot smarter than anyone he knew. I think he's right, so I want to share my awesomeness to the whole world via the internet.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Desperado de Silva. I am six weeks old (I'm a teenager, but not like other teenagers who are silly!). My family originally came from Europe but I was born in Australia and now I live with three girls, two stick insects, and two crickets. I enjoy writing love poems, having midnight feasts and now I have discovered the joy that is the internet.
I really need to clarify something, though.

I am not a rat. I am a mouse. Yes, I am larger than average, but that doesn't make me a rat! I'm just big boned. So for all the people who think I'm a rat you are mistaken. Rat indeed! Frankie was a rat, but I am most definitely not!

I shall update more soon, and hopefully also upload some of my poems. Please read my journal and comment! (Also, to my housemates, I know you think it was naughty of me to chew the handles off the shopping bags, but I was hungry! I promise not to do it again! Please don't try to tempt me with peanut butter anymore!)

Love always,
Desperado =)