My weekly budget: $50

Since the itchy-fingered DG challenged me to substantiate my claim that I live on no more than $50 a week in the very expensive Land of Oz, here is a standard weekly budget:

$2.25  - 1.5 bags of rolled oats

$3.00 – half a bag of powdered milk, used for both breakfast (oats) and home-made yoghurt

$2.20 – two home-made loaves of bread.

$2.80 – 500 g of cottage cheese

$1.00 – usage of jars of honey, peanut butter and vegemite

$2.00 – 750 g of brown rice

$1.15 – a kilogram bag of pasta, if I don’t make my own.

$3.60 – assorted fresh beans (red kidney, chickpeas etc) and cans of beans

$10.00 – fresh fruit and vegetables – in season and on special

$1.50 – toilet paper

$3.00 – my indulgence: coffee beans (decaf)

$5.50 – occasional items, such as soap, detergent, toothpaste etc.

$12.00 – Meal out, transport, bicycle maintenance, etc.

$50.00 total

As you can see, there’s considerable room for luxuries, such as coffee, eating out, etc.

Note that this does not include accommodation, utilities, and internet costs: $180 per week. That’s a total of $230 per week for a very comfortable life.

All this comprises one reason why I argue that most people working at universities are grossly overpaid.

 

The truth diet

Deeply immersed in that classic Chinese ‘novel’ of over 2000 pages, Journey to the West, I came across this recommendation for a truth diet – of a Buddhist tendency:

She [the bodhisattva] ordered him to adhere to the truth and eat only vegetarian food, cutting out the five pungent vegetables as well as the three forbidden things: wild goose, dog and fish. (JTW, vol. 1, p. 178)

The ‘west’ in this case is, of course, India.

 

Upcoming lectures: Queer Readings and the Garage Blackboard

I’m heading south of the border shortly for a couple of talks.

1. Queer Readings of the Bible, at the Jewish Museum. All part of the Midsumma Festival.

I’m joining Rebecca Forgasz, director of the museum, for presentations and then a freewheeling discussion. Rebecca will situate such readings in the Jewish tradition, while I’ll say a few things about ambivalent texts (Song of Songs) and camp readings (Chronicles).

Apparently you need to pay for this one (book on the site), which feels a little weird. But it seems to have a reverse psychology, since the tickets are selling rather quickly.

2. Garage Blackboard Lecture. This one is on Marxism and religion (translatability etc.), at a regular event that would have to be one of the more interesting and fascinating things going on these days. As they put it:

Garage in Brunswick.
Some seats.
Blackboard.
Hand-pumped Beer from a Keg.
Homemade soup and possibility of baked goods.
Lectures.
Two Speakers.
Dialogue.
Getting the Picture?

Apparently I get a chance to talk for about 45 minutes (along with Lachlan Ross). By the time the beer has flowed freely, we’ll be pumped with all manner of questions (and soup). No cost here!

Can’t wait.

 

New year’s resolution: bring back the auroch, or, the palaeo-diet

Since the Fall was actually the invention of agriculture and all its evils – such as bread, beer, wine, and wool – I’m joining the palaeo-crowd come new year. It’s the paleao-diet for me: huge hunks of dead animal, fish, a few plants that grow as they will. And just to make sure I go the whole hog, I’ll take up palaeo-exercise as well. I will spend my days pretending I am dodging wild animals, running down prey, lifting heavy things and walking long distances with them, strutting around a fire as my prey roasts.

To make sure it’s authentic, I’m going for the real palaeo-experience. I will ensure that I eat only game animals I have hunted myself. None of this domesticated beef, lamb and pork for me. That will involve a project to bring back the auroch, the predecessor of the domesticated bovine:

 

A mean bugger it was, standing more than two metres at the shoulders, aggressive, with long, inwardly curved horns.

Actually, that’s all crap, since the real palaeo-diet involves mostly stuff you can gather from the ground: spiders, cockroaches, grubs, bugs, marsh rats and other scrumptious vermin, odd looking grasses, unidentifiable mushrooms, strange roots. And I will go out for long runs and return dejected and weary, shaking my head at the game we were unable to catch, lamenting my companions skewered on the horns of some wild beast. I will crouch by the fire roasting my ‘catch’ – making sure I burn off the spider legs, retrieve the cockroaches from the fire at just the right moment, turn the field mouse that I grasped in a desperate lunge. For exercise, I will spend my days shuffling about, bent double, looking intently at the ground, and leaping upon whatever crawling thing happens to pass my way, since our hunter-gatherer ancestors spent most of their time doing precisely that. And there will be no alcohol at all, since one of the main reasons human beings settled into agriculture was for the production of beer and wine.

I will ensure that I die at no later than 30 – bugger, I’ll just have to commit suicide, since I’m already older than that.

 

Pigs in ancient Israel?

As part of my Sacred Economy project, I have been enthralled by the animal remains that provide insights into the basic features of the economies of the Levant, with subsistence agriculture at their basis. Sheep and goats have turned out to be the key, with small numbers of bovines for traction.

But what about the much-debated pigs, with their lovers and not so enthusiastic consumers? Were they fostered and consumed in that largely dry zone between Egypt and Mesopotamia. The remains of pig bones fluctuate over time, with abundant distribution during the Chalcolithic, declining to a low in the Late Bronze Age, rebounding in the early Iron Age for a while, until full resurgence in the Hellenistic era. When they are present, they are so pretty much everywhere; when absent, the same applies. Rather than laying the cause of such a patchy pattern on an emerging ideological aversion to porcine products (and investing wasted energy in trying to determine ethic identity in the basis of pig remains), it is more realistic to focus on the limited possibilities of pigs within a subsistence survival institutional form. Although pigs provide good quality meat, they fare ill under temperature extremes, requiring relatively high levels of water. Pigs are limited to the 250 mm isohyet, much higher than that required by sheep and especially goats. And they do not provide fiber or milk for human consumption. Our porcine cousins provide only limited resources, under certain conditions, and are thereby not always the best option when conditions are tough.

As a footnote, it is worth noting that where the conditions were more well watered and therefore favourable, class issues often turned on the humble pig. More often than not, pigs were used by common farmers and shunned by the ruling class. A similar situation applies to Egypt, where the riverine environment is more favourable to pigs. Here the abundant remains of pigs are limited to the rural population, while they were denigrated and avoided by the ruling class.

 

On sweaty cheese

Carrying a lovely block of Gouda Oud cheese over the last couple of days gave me pause to reflect on the appeal of sweaty cheese. Untapped possibilities lie here, such as a literary simile:

Her skin had the lustre and fine sheen of sweaty cheese …

Or perhaps a line of soaps, deodorants and fragrances known as ‘Sweaty Cheese’, with the slogan:

Forget knob cheese, try sweaty cheese – because you’re worth it!

 

The best dumplings I have ever eaten

Eaten in Beijing, while talking with a Buddhist about religion and politics – can’t get much better than that.

 

The emperor’s hot puff

No comment …

 

What happens to all that kangaroo roadkill?

As anyone who has travelled somewhat in Australia soon notices, kangaroos are not the most astute when it comes to roads and vehicles. Their well-honed skills in avoiding pursuit involves zigzagging sharply to throw off the hunter – which is absolutely useless with a truck or car, since they simply leap straight into the path of aforesaid vehicle. Hence the regular roadkill every few kilometres, in various stages of decay. But what to do with all that roadkill? Until recently, only human roadkill has been removed. All other animals remained to feed those who love a fresh or not so fresh kill. But now, the roo roadkill is being removed as well, as we found on a road trip to Adelaide:

 

The joy of Chinese: Tofu is made

I have finally managed to make some of my own tofu. The process is relatively straightforward, with about as much complexity as making your own yoghurt. The real challenge was to decipher the instructions I was sent:

Tofu is made?

Ingredients: Soybeans right amount; Gypsum appropriate amount of

1. Head the night soaked soy beans into a paste with stone grinding (However, in order to prevent parents too tired or of machinery).

2. Bucket of slurry inverted pot with open fire.

3. Boil and then pour the pulp into the container underneath the gauze.

4. And then set off the four corners of the gauze grabbed forced to squeeze in one direction, to filter out the pulp.

5. Then forced to squeeze in another direction, so that repeated many times as possible and screw out the most pulp.

6. Filtered sauce and then fire repeatedly boiled.

7. Has become the drink soy milk.

8. Ext Portland plaster pounded to a powder form.

9. Gypsum powder uniform, rushed into the cooked milk slowly.

10. Then close the lid and you can see about 30-60 minutes after the curd-like with a scoop when sung to the following container (tofu dedicated container).

11. Then put a clean stone pressed, about an hour or so open look.

12. Turned into a shining white tofu, ha ha!

Needless to say, this is a valiant effort by that very primitive tool known as google translator (just as well world peace doesn’t depend on google’s ability). All of which has made me realise that the only way to go is to learn Chinese – putonghua as they call, the ‘common speech’ (aka Mandarin). So during that quiet hour over breakfast in the morning, half is given over to studying Russian and the other half to Chinese.