2 more weeks of uni to go. Can't wait for the holidays, actually. I'd like a little more variety in my daily routine. Having said that, there hasn't been very much to blog about, but here are some pics of experiments in the kitchen.

Tortilla with refried beans, salsa, rice and avocado. Avocado actually goes really well in this kind of combination.

Muffin with icing, sans muffin shape because I don't have muffin moulds, so I just used a baking pan and cut them into squares. Tastes good if you ignore what went into the icing. I need a renewed dedication to exercise over the holidays.
I find that I eat too much when I don't get out of the apartment, probably because boredom makes your tongue itchy (must be some form of cabin fever). See...that's why it's a win-win situation if I get out for a walk. Exercise and it keeps me out of the kitchen.

~~~~~~~

Recently, I've been finding some really good books in the uni's library. Currently, I'm reading Midnight's Children. So far, I think it's really interesting, funny and serious at the same time, and it has a unique writing style, with a lot of digression and metaphors, but everything links up in the end.

I also got to read the Golden Compass. Too bad the library doesn't have the other 2 books in the series though, because I think I'm a little hooked on it. Actually, I don't remember the story from the movie, although it was good, look wise. But it's true, you'd really want your own daemon after you've read the book. It was surprisingly scary for a children's book though, there were parts with gory details, and some psychologically disturbing parts. (spoiler alert)There was a part about a small boy who got his daemon separated from him and how he was hugging a piece of dried fish instead of his daemon, which kind of felt like an ironic black humour thing, but makes you feel sick at the same time.(spoiler over) I heard that the Abhorson trilogy is even worse though. Maybe I should try reading some of Garth Nix's books sometimes, they seem very popular.

But I noticed that most kids stories will have these 2 things: animals, and parent-child issues. There are other things which are pretty standard, like school life, friendship, puppy love, etc too, which are often present but not always. It's true then, that good stories always have some way in which the reader can relate themselves to the story, so kids' stories will always have themes about what any child would encounter in real life.

So...animals. Popular with children, I think it's because animals are like friends, but less judgmental. Also, it helps if they are cute and furry. They could be pets like in the Harry Potter series, unfortunate experiments like in George's Marvelous Medicine, the main characters themselves, like in Wind in the Willows, or imaginary creatures, like any story with unicorns or dragons (although they might be just extensions of ponies and lizards). It could also have something to do with fun in creating collections. It might be just me, but when I was a kid especially (even now) I liked to collect things in categories. There's something fun about visualising the chickens in George's Marvelous Medicine, some with long necks, some with long legs, some big, some small. Or the owlery at Hogwarts, with different breeds of owls with different personalities.

And then there are the parent-child issues. Regular conflict, step parents, dead parents, surrogate parents. I remember one lecturer commenting about Coraline, that the use of the 'other mother', and cruel stepmothers in other children's stories, is supposed to mirror bad experiences of children with their own parents, and how stepmothers are used so that kids can maintain a good image of their parents and separate the bad experiences as coming from a whole different person. Coming back to the main story, let's say the Harry Potter series, has quite a lot of parental issues going on. The dead parents (his real parents), the step parents (the Dursleys), the surrogate parents (the Weasleys),the ideal father (Dumbledore), the godfather (Sirius), the father that could have been (Snape), and what could have happened instead (the Longbottoms)