Ahh, friendship bracelets. Remember those? Image via Wikipedia

I recall reading on a blog once that one thing (among a long list) that men can never understand is the complicated dynamic of female friendships.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never had a fight with a friend. Male or female.

During school, there have been times when my friends and I tried to run away from a girl who wanted to be friends with us. Real mature, I know.

I’ve had friends turn on me or ditch me for various reasons, then come back to me.

I’ve been jealous of friends striking up closer bonds with other friends than with me.

And sometimes been insecure in my place as one of a few girls in a mainly male social circle.

But a proper throwdown, shouting or silent-treatment argument?

Never.

That said, rivalry has played a part in a couple of friendships for me. I think that it was mainly one-sided (ie, in my head), to be honest. But the outcomes were very different. One I still consider a friend, if not a close one; the other, an acquaintance whose social circles sometimes overlap with mine – we can play nice together socially, but you wouldn’t catch us hanging out by ourselves.

In the first case, we instantly bonded upon meeting in school – we were both emo, introspective soulmates, sarcastic, tough, too clever for our own good. We were good at many of the same things and almost went to the same university to do the same degree. I was glad she didn’t, to be honest. I would’ve gotten too competitive, and I don’t think it would have been healthy for us. I always saw her as a spunkier, more charismatic me (perhaps what I should aspire to be in a parallel world) and in my younger, more insecure days, sometimes that was a bit threatening. Don’t get me wrong; while she can be a hard case, she has a big heart, and I’ll never forget her taking me under her wing after my first big breakup. I admire her hugely, and she’s the only person I know who’s been toughing it out on her own longer than me, having been largely independent since about 14.

For various reasons we drew apart. We studied different things, but now work in similar fields, which brought us closer together. I honestly think that we’ll be able to catch up once every three, five, ten years and still get along awesomely, no matter where our life paths take us.

In the second case, we met, I think, through mutual friends. We were good time friends, and that’s how it always was. We were part of the same crew, hanging out after school and on weekends. I thought we had a lot in common. And I thought possibly we could be good friends, if not necessarily BFFs.

Thing is, at the core of it, she was simply cold. There were some people she treated extremely well, and others who seemed just pawns to her. It was tough to relate to someone who’d never had to work for anything. She was kinda vain (and more photogenic, if not downright better-looking than me. I suppose that’s where the competition was at, in my head, but at least I always had nice-ness on my side, for whatever that’s worth). And ultimately, she talked shit about me. (There’s discussing your friends behind their backs, in private. And then there’s straight bitchy comments – not the kind you would ever utter aloud about a true friend – just while you’ve stepped out of the room, to their flatmate, of all people. Plus trolling your blog.)

I’m really curious to hear your thoughts on female friendship. And have you ever had one of a competitive nature, real or imagined?

The former, I’ve come to like in certain guises. Memoirs and biographies, because I’m fascinated by people. Also, more prosaic books on trends, business and society, if for no other reason that I occasionally review them for my job.

Meanwhile, I’ve always turned my nose up at anything written, well, before my lifetime. When told we needed to include one classic on our reading list in a high school English class, I asked if VC Andrews counted. Worryingly, I seem to recall that the answer was affirmative.

Last year I ventured into some of the most challenging reading territory I’ve ever tackled. Atlas Shrugged. Madame Bovary. Love in the Time of Cholera. The Master and Margarita.

And in the last month, I went back even further to the English literary greats. Three of them, to be precise.

I started with Great Expectations. Now, I’m pretty sure I missed a lot of the second-layer meanings, especially around Havisham and her creepy old house. English was always my best subject, but I never particularly cared for diving into deep literary analysis. I just wanted to be left alone to read what I wanted.

Nonetheless, I found it a true-blue page turner and tore through it in a couple of days. Dickens’ prose was clear and spare and Pip immediately stole my heart, as did Joe. While a lot of it was predictable, for sure, and many coincidences too tidy by far for my liking, I really couldn’t find much fault with the storytelling or the plot itself.

By contrast, Jane Austen’s Emma was laborious, to say the least. The endless exposition! My word. The obsession with class and marriage, the inane dialogue, the lack of any real depth to the characters and their lives, I could understand. There may not have been much of a plot as such, but I quite enjoyed the characters with all their flaws, and seeing just where they all ended up. It’s Gossip Girl, really, set in a different time.

The actual narrative, though, was so fussy, so overwrought I could not help but revert to skimming of the worst degree (a friend suggested Austen by Twitter might agree with me more. Sounds like a fantastic idea, actually). And I don’t think I missed much in doing so.

Ditto for Jane Eyre. My complaint about Charlotte Bronte is similar; I loved the story itself. I do like a heroine with a backbone and while sad misfit Jane starts out a bit of a wimpy child, she’s quite the iron woman by the time she’s, well, my age. Forget Mills and Boon, this is a romance for the thinking woman.

Again, though, while an enjoyable tale of love, life and hardship, the prose was a real slog to get through at times. I’ll admit, I don’t have much patience for long-windedness. When younger, I hated reading books that had no illustrations at all. Today, I don’t require pictures in my novels, but I do prefer at least some dialogue on every double page spread. When it comes to beautiful prose, less is more in my view – it stands out more that way.

What are some of your favourite classics?

Image by airdiogo via Flickr

Life is hurtling by.

It’s terrifying.

Here’s what’s going on, one month on into 2012.

Getting balance

I’ve crossed off a few things off my life list – making pasta, ice cream and mac and cheese from scratch, for starters. Between the cookbooks I’ve been given and the blogs I read, I have no shortage of recipes to keep me on my culinary toes. Bonus: it’s a good way to practise photography.

I started learning Daughter by Pearl Jam, which includes a pretty funky tuning.

I’ve also looked into volunteering opportunities and reached out to a few, so we’ll see if any pan out.

Elsewhere, I have a weekend trip coming up in a few days (hurrah!) and fitting in runs, reading, guitar and relationship time. Surely this can’t last?!

Getting ahead

I headed back to work on the 5th. This gave me a couple of days to get settled in and get ahead before the full daily routine resumed. And it gave me the chance to get organised with my files and folders on my work computer – something I BADLY needed to do. Now to keep it up…

I’ve signed up to Ramit Sethi’s (of I Will Teach You To Be Rich) Dream Job course. Most useful IMO so far have been his email scripts and videos with mock salary negotiation skits – I picked up some great phrases for future use. For all the things they teach you at uni, email etiquette in business communication is not one, and for all the negotiation advice to be found, actual wording is tough to come by.

I’m getting more active on my IRL Twitter account, making an effort to reach out and engage; getting more active in LinkedIn, now that I’ve found some groups that aren’t so spammy and full of self-promotion; and commenting on the odd industry blog under my real name. This does make it a pain switching between accounts. A work in progress, I suppose.

And I’ve hopped on the Codecademy bandwagon, in particular, the Code Year programme. Basically, they email you every week with a list of exercises to complete. By the end, the idea is you’ll be competent in Javascript.

• A few thoughts thus far: It’s a good idea. The gamification and points earned element is fun.
• BUT. I feel there’s too much content covered in each silo. Slow it down, really drill home each new lesson, and do fewer of them in a week.
• Some of the exercises are poorly worded and some of the hints are confusing or unhelpful. Thankfully, there’s a user forum for Q&As.
• For me, the jargon is overwhelming. And the syntax! I’m used to very basic HTML, which makes sense to me. Here, I feel I’m passing each step but not really learning, or gaining a real understanding of what I’m doing.
• If you were any good at algebra, some of this may be less painful for you.
• Personally, I’m not sure how useful Javascript will be. I’m planning to stick with it as long as possible. But probably more valuable is really knuckling down into the front end CSS, which I do plan to tackle on my own.

And just for fun, I’ve started up mock forex and stock portfolios on Investopedia. It’s unlikely I’ll be doing either of these in real life, but improving my financial literacy can only be a good thing, and a simulated environment is the best way to start. In picking my companies, I did some research on the likes of CNN Money, where you can find information on companie -  financials, forecasts, etc. Of course, when it’s play money, you don’t necessarily take as much care as you would with real dollars, and it wasn’t till I’d bought about 10 stocks that I realised I was being charged $20 a pop on each transaction. (To date the extent of my individual stock investment experience has been in the Neopets stockmarket. Remember that site?) And I’ve done the same on the NZX, but the size of the stockmarket would seem to limit potential returns.

So, how has the year started off for you? What are you doing to make the most of it?

Nasi lemak is, I think, a dish it’s hard to understand the appeal of unless you’re from Malaysia. Boiled egg. Sliced cucumber. Rice with a hint of coconut. Sambal. Curry. Laid out like that, it just doesn’t sound all that exciting.

But for us, it’s comfort food. At KL Cafe, the dishes of our homeland are front and centre.

There are oodles of noodle and rice dishes. Egg noodles, hokkien noodles, rice noodles, the mee that I suspect comes from a Maggi packet. Dry noodles, soupy noodles. A couple of dishes featuring prawns. Plenty more with the thick salty, oystery sauce perfect for sopping up greedily. All in the $10-15 range and more than adequate servings.

My first time there, I plumped for the nasi lemak – served with curry chicken and sambal with anchovies (or ikan bilis, as I’m still inclined to call it in this context) softer and moister than I’m used to. Divine.

But what I was really itching to try was the kuan lo won ton mee, and I returned the very next day for lunch, determined to put this dish into my tummy. And I’m pleased to report I walked out with a belly full of it. See those saucey noodles atop a layer of fried mince, livened up with spring onions and nuts, topped by tender, thin BBQ pork slices and dried prawn, er, stuff? Uber-satisfying, especially with a cute little bowl of wonton soup to accompany.

That’s also T’s har lo mee, with fatter noodles and a tart shrimp-flavoured soup on the side. Greasy? Yes. But were you expecting any different?

Oh, and the free hot tea is pretty good – not overpowering, like some Chinese tea can be.

There are no pretenses here. You can walk in with no shoes on, I’m pretty sure. And correct me if I’m wrong, but it may be the only place out west that does Malay. Bonus points.

KL Cafe, Great North Express

4055 Great North Rd (in the large row of shops across from the converted petrol station)

• Funny how you stop taking notice of minimum wage once you’re past that threshold. How you stop caring. In fact, maybe you would like it to stay that way because the higher it gets, the less your rate seems.

• Gangs are the corporates of the underworld. Those at the top are untouchable and keep their hands clean while their worker bees are not that different from cogs in the corporate machine.

• It feels like I’ve been tracking my spending for ages, but it’s only been two years. Thinking back to when I started tracking my spending religiously, I wonder what I would do today if ASB (one of the most forward thinking banks in the country, IMO, along with BNZ) had not introduced the Track My Spending tool at just the right time. I remember the first time I decided to sit down and calculate our spending in late 2007; I literally printed out statements, marked them up and busted out a calculator. 2008 brought on time of struggle as T was laid off; a household consisting of one student and one unemployed person does not make for financial stability or comfort. Then tracking came along just as I graduated, started working and really started getting ahead.

MONEY

Two very personal money stories, shared by Adam at Man vs Debt.

Krystal explains why a line of credit shouldn’t be your emergency fund.

What is the most amazing thing you’ve done with money? Fabulous Broke wants to know.

Little Miss Moneybags lists money habits that make her feel either frugal or broke.

Katie Going Global explains how she financed her career break.

At Cracked, five stupid habits that growing up poor engenders (echoes my post here).

WORK

Three reasons not to go back to university, by She Bloggs.

Tips for being a great mentor, at Intuit.

Financial Samurai says even millionaires find it tough to quit their jobs, and at Untemplater, argues that you shouldn’t be in a rush to join the real world.

One teacher wonders what’s become of her past students, at Red Lips and Academics.

Girl with the Red Balloon has a potential new job in the works – but it’s not a clearcut decision.

At Grow, why every job seeker should be blogging.

Ms Career Girl asks if you’ve been depositing into your ‘social bank account‘ lately.

LIFE

Thoughts on living life and leaving a legacy, at Stratejoy.

Are you backing up your blog, self-hosted types? If not, Geek in Heels has some tips.

Untemplater walks us through what to do when you’ve lost your wallet.

Cordelia reminds us to take things as they come and not play the result a moment too soon.

And lastly, a beautiful post by Andrea on the things her son has taught her.

The Help – Kathryn Stockett

If you were to ask me what I liked about this book, my first response would be something like: The heroine has the best name ever. Skeeter Phelan? It’s just godawful. And hence insanely great.

She’s an ugly duckling with a rich family and big dreams, which endeared her to me even more. While those around her immediately settle into their roles in southern society life, dropping out to get married and organising fundraisers for poor African children while refusing to share their bathrooms with their African-American maids, Skeeter has the balls to buck the trend and look beyond the uniforms, seeing “the help” as what they are. Real people.

Getting friendly with the help, however, doesn’t endear her to her snotty bridge club friends. And what would they do if they knew she – gasp – wanted to write a book detailing the experiences of local maids at the hands of their white mistresses? Fraternising with blacks can only lead to serious doo-doo in the sixties. Cue tiptoeing around as Skeeter leads a double life, telling her mother she’s going to church every night when she’s actually holed up in the home of her best friend’s maid, frantically transcribing the life stories of various local housekeepers (and even hiding it from her rich boyfriend. After all, you can’t trust anyone; apparently being an equal-rights sympathiser is akin to being a communist).

Inevitably, a project like this leads to learning things about your friends and neighbours you didn’t want to know (and begs the question of why Skeeter is friends with them in the first place). And what happened to her childhood housekeeper, the servant Constantine who practically raised her?

Aibileen and Minny, the two maids who make up the other two narrators in The Help, also make for gripping reading. Aibileen is a far better mother to toddler Mae Mobley than her cold, disaffected biological one – and while white children inevitably grow up to turn against the help, she does her best to instil a sense of decency and love in the child. Meanwhile, sharp-tongued, brassy Minny (who is, disappointingly, married to an alcoholic abuser) forms a surprising bond with her new mistress, the endearing white-trash Celia Foote who’s out of her depth in upper-class Jackson, Mississippi.

Stockett is brave, perhaps, attempting to write in a black voice. I’d like to think she does so elegantly and respectfully. Around the edge of the main story, she sketches out the horrendous things humans inflict upon each other in the name of hate – a man beaten and blinded for using a public toilet not specifically marked for blacks. Within that inner circle, she details both the cruelty of cold households, and the genuine affection that goes on behind closed doors in others.

My sole gripe is with an ill mother storyline that seemed to go nowhere. Otherwise, Stockett’s unfussy style and strong characterisation through speech and straightforward narrative gets the thumbs up from me.

Default credit card interest rates hover around 20%. You might see balance transfer offers around 5%. Car and personal loans around 10%.

You bloggers in the States, though (and that’s most of you)? I hear tales of 0% loans. 0% balance transfer rates. Cards without annual fees. Plus of course, you have access to so many more kinds of cards, and it’s easy to compare credit cards online.

Interest rates don’t overly fuss me, because I’m not in debt. What would be nice, though, is if there were local cards without annual fees.

I currently have one plain old Visa, and it’s with the bank I’ve banked with all my life. Luckily, it’s a pretty awesome bank with accounts that suit my needs and the single best online banking system available, IMO. It’s ridiculously easy to make instant payments onto it (because I like to pay off purchases right after making them) and the six-monthly fee of $12 is one of the lowest out there.

Recently I was tempted by Air NZ offering no joining fee on its Airpoints programme. (You know travel is number one on my list.) I could sign up for a credit card linked to Airpoints, and earn points on everyday spending.

Thing is, the fee is more than double what I currently pay – $25 every six months. And based on our annual spending, we would be lucky to rack up enough points in a year for a single domestic flight.

Maybe it’s worth it for frequent flyers, who also earn points when they book flights, but for those who are trying to save for travel, it doesn’t sound like such a hot deal.

Tell me, how many credit cards do you have? Anyone out there an Airpoints member?

Image via Wikipedia

driver.

Combine his skill with my caution and you would come up with the perfect blend.

T has the confidence, the quick reaction time, the coordination, the spatial perception, the ability to park effortlessly.

But he’s prone to taking too many risks, accelerating and braking too hard – which is just uneconomic in $2-plus-a-litre times – and belongs to the “try to get ahead at any cost” mentality. By that, I mean when stopped at a light, he always edges as humanly close to the car in front as possible without touching (and laughs at me for leaving “enough room to fly a plane” in between cars). On long trips through the single lane country roads, he overtakes cars only to then get stuck behind yet more cars further along the track. It’s a loser’s game, I tell you.

Granted, since he was in a string of accidents a few years ago he’s less reckless on the roads. But fundamentally, we’re opposites behind the wheel.

It’s the same with our personalities and approaches in real life, really.

We even each other out.

Combine his physical attributes (strength, perfect vision, coordination), quick learning, inability to sit still, some kind of charisma with my work ethic, stubbornness, patience, planning, attention to detail and we’d be a pretty formidable superhuman.

Does your driving reflect how you navigate the real world?

And while slow, bad tech makes my life (both work and personal) hard, good tech makes it exponentially easier.

Some of my go-tos are:

Evernote

Syncs “notes” across all your devices. Radtastic. I use it for running lists and blog scribblings, mainly.

Dropbox

File storage in the cloud, accessible from anywhere. A godsend. Also much preferred over YouSendIt for sending/sharing items.

Buffer

Enables you to tweet links right from the webpage, and “buffer” links to go out at scheduled times throughout the day. Also integrates with link-shortening analytics services like bit.ly. Has totally changed my social media flow at work.

Flipboard

A seriously awesome way to keep up with the stories of the day.

Summify

Compiles the big stories shared by your peeps on Twitter and sends a digest to you. Need I say more? (ETA: Since I first drafted this post, Twitter has acquired Summify, the bastards, and its lifespan looks very limited. Alternatives I’ve found are news.me and Percolator).

Hootsuite

I despair if you’ve not heard of this. Hootsuite is much like a web-based version of Tweetdeck  – a simple way to manage multiple social media accounts (including integration with Facebook, LinkedIn, etc), track links, lists and schedule tweets. I use Hootsuite exclusively for my own various profiles, and other various apps for work purposes, to avoid mixups.

Goodreads

I have a terrible memory for books I’ve read, movies I’ve watched, etc. Goodreads deals to the first problem, letting me list and rate what I’ve read, keep a “bookcase” of titles to read in the future, and suggest others. Plus there’s social networking fun to be had!

What apps can you not live without?

Coconut chocolate blondies

I ran with this recipe from Brown Eyed Baker.

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar
1 large egg
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup sweetened flaked coconut
1 cup chocolate chips or chunks

Topping:
1 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon butter

• Combine the flour and salt; set aside.
• Stir together the melted butter and brown sugar until smooth; beat in egg and vanilla extract until well blended.
• Slowly beat in the flour mixture until blended, then stir in the coconut and chocolate chips.
• Scrape the batter into greased pan and smooth even with a rubber spatula.
• Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until set in the center but still soft. Do not overbake. Let the bars cool slightly before drizzling with chocolate, then cool completely before cutting.
• For the topping, combine the chocolate and butter in a small bowl and microwave in 30-second intervals until melted and smooth. Using a spoon, drizzle over the bars.

I only used about half the flour; it would have been too dry otherwise. I’m guessing that in this case the 1/2 cup of butter refers to the melted volume, not the original amount… I definitely like to err on the side of moister when it comes to baking. I also skipped the chocolate topping altogether.

Anyway, I definitely recommend making this! For not much work, these are incredibly tasty. As you can see, though, my chocolate chips (despite being tiny, delicate drops) all sunk to the bottom, even though I mixed them through evenly.

Yo-yos

Buttery, delicious biscuits with fluffy lemon icing? What’s not to like?

I used this Kidspot recipe:

125g butter, softened
¼ cup icing sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup plain flour
¼ cup cornflour

Filling

30g butter, softened
¾ cup icing sugar, sifted
1-2 teaspoons lemon juice

• Use an electric mixer or beaters to cream butter, icing sugar and vanilla essence.
• Sift together the flour and cornflour, add to butter mixture and mix on low speed until just combined and a soft dough forms.
• Place a piece of plastic film on a work bench, tip dough onto plastic film, wrap up and roll into a sausage about 2cm diameter (no messy bench or hands!).
• Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
• Preheat oven to 160°C.
• Line two baking trays with non-stick baking paper.
• Remove dough from fridge and slice into about 30 rounds.
• Lightly flour hands and roll each round into a small ball.
• Place each ball onto the tray about 5cm apart.
• Dip a fork in flour and press each ball to 1 cm thick.
• Bake for 10-15 minutes or until just starting to colour.
• Cool on baking tray.
• To prepare filling, beat the butter, icing sugar and enough lemon juice to make a thick paste. Sandwich cookies together with icing.

In this case, I definitely advise erring on the dryer side. My first batch melted too much and flattened out. I left the remainder of the dough in the fridge overnight, added more flour the next day and the second lot turned out much better, if not exactly photo-pristine.

And finally, my coup de grace!

Minimalist lemon ice cream

My favourite food blog, Stonesoup, walked me through this:

1/3 cup lemon juice
250g icing  sugar
300mL (1 1/4cups) whipping cream

• Combine lemon juice and icing sugar in a small bowl.
• Whisk cream until soft peaks just start to form and the cream has thickened slightly.
• Whisk the lemon mixture in with the cream and mix until the texture is back to the soft peaks.
• Freeze for at least 6 hours.

You really cannot go wrong, I tell you.

I ran out of icing sugar, so used mostly caster sugar, and it was fine. Super easy!