I had an epic weekend, so taking monday off to recover and recharge

 Friday night, we had an nice little chinese new year gathering at pickelle's
 We gave ourselvs a little early mark after throwing berry bliss lollies at each other, and scraping knees
First, we headed off to coles and the asian store to pick up groceries before going over to pickelle's apartment for cooking
She pulled off a yummy meal for the eight of us (the spare ribs were ultra yumyum in my tumtum) and we even made tong yuan
Tab's were the most consistent and rounded, followed by mine, and then pickelle went for a "marbled" effect, if you get what i'm saying

I think we must have downed 3 bottles of moscarto
And we caught glimpses of a game of Cards Against Humanity as we rolled the glutinous flour 

Highlight of the night goes to Jan's fingering card in response to women's best friend, which opened up a whole new level of intimacy
Love these crazies.

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We've started a running club - unbelievable! Well when we started talking about it is was only a handful of us and then, nekminnit, there's nine of us running the centennial park circuit.

Here are some pre-run photos:

Here we are post-run: 

Silly me.

I've been using the Couch-to-5K app for tracking my running and was up to Week 6 Day 3, so when I started running with Janice at the same time I was expecting us to keep time since we're on the same day.

Forward to about 10 minutes in when I'm struggling and I check my phone and there was still another 17min! Gave up on the spot!

Turns out I accidentally clicked on Week 8 Day 3 - in Jan's words - what an idiot!

It was really hard today, and I really got to work on my stitches :(

Afterwards we all piled into the cars, stinky and sweaty and headed towards NARUONE which still wasn't open. Ended up somewhere random and had the most random D&M sesh with out half of the table. It was v nice.

Also, immaculate reception?

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I took this little cutie for a trip to cabramatta the other weekend, because he's never been
I must confess that I didn't expect that I would ever be able to convince him to eat vietnamese food, but I think I've got a convert
(Praise the power of pho!) 

First stop was PhoTauBay where we got the standard raw beef pho, and some pork mince wrapped in rice noodles (so yummy!). I also ordered an vietnamese ice coffee even though I'm really not supposed to :P

After that, we headed towards the main street to check out the shops.
I was a bit sad that we went on a bit of a cooler day, because I didn't feel like having my normal sugar cane drink. I did get my normal sweet potato and banana chips to go though.
I couldn't stop munching on them, and they eventually got taken away because I had no self control.

Then, finally, we went on the hunt for some good ol' nam neoung.
Had to call up dom at this point to ask, and he was amazing and even highlighted which shop it was for us, from the photo I sent him of where we were standing! How cool is that!
(Still think Bankstown nam neoung is better though :P)

Before I forget, it was also the most hilarious drive ever because we wanted to avoid the traffic on John street so we kept going around it but having to take the biggest loops ever because you could only turn left.
I think we must have gone around and around for 20 minutes or more.
Good thing I was the one driving :P

Also, penis!

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Had a little random catch up with my westies/lab201/masters faves last weekend

It was just so lovely to get to see the two of them, since I don't get to see them that often 

Had the sweet corn fritters, though my heart was after the pancakes

I don't usually feel regret but...I wish I had ordered the pancakes 

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Weekend brunch - oh, how I wish I could quit you!
Miss wynwyn flew off for some hawaiian fun today, so the group of us high school friends made a last minute decision/choice/judgment to have brunch
Cherry decided to bring Johnson along, and it was probably the most inappropriate brunch to take him along to, I mean, what didn't we discuss?
It was like an agenda taken straight out of sex and the city - laser hair removal, menstruation, protection, with a standard bitch session to top it all off. Felt like I learnt a lot haha.

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It sort of snuck up on me - but not really - that my scholarship is close to ending (life of a phD student :().
On top of that, I've realised that I need to save a little bit extra for my epic post-thesis trip, so that I can still have a little bit of money leftover in my "future fund".
So instead of thinking about all that money I should have saved, I'm going to take the approach of what can I do going forward to maximise my funds and the answer is of course to start budgeting and expense tracking.

Now these are both things I've dabbled with in the past, but as more of a fun side project than a ZOMG IF I DON'T BUDGET I'M GOING TO BE BROKE kind of thing.
So I took a couple of hours to think about what kind of cash I'd likely have coming in and going out and did it all up in a good ol' excel spreadsheet.
I found IHeart Organising printables pretty helpful in setting it all up (see link)

And I'm currently using the Wally iPhone app to track expenses. So far so good :)

I did my budget for the next 6 months on a month by month basis - simply because my income is going to change on a month by month basis (sadface).

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Incoming

• Calculating this was pretty easy since I'm pretty certain I'll be getting the rest of my scholarship until the end of February, and I know I'll be taking at least one two-hour tutorial.
• I've been a bit more conservative here and didn't add in any money for marking (just in case I don't get any :P) 
• There's also the possibility of red pocket money and end-of-phD money, but i'm going to pretend they're bonuses

Outgoing 

So my major expense categories include:

• Fixed expenses 
• Utilities: mobile phone bills, and the household bills I currently pay for (because it would be mean to stop paying them) 
• Transportation: fuel and bus tickets (this isn't really fixed for me, but I calculated it as such; thankfully car rego and insurance isn't in this half year)
• Savings: I thought it better to set aside a predetermined savings goal to make sure I could have a more flexible trip budget 
• Occupation-related: university fees, registration fees (this is really what's killing me)

• Variable expenses 
• Food: Groceries and going out - I've allocated myself around $20 per week for groceries, and $25 per week for going out (we'll see how this goes :P)
• Household items: Haven't really budgeted for this...I probably should 
• Gifts: A few birthdays coming up so I've budgeted for those, just in case 
• Entertainment: see note for household items 
• Medical/health: most of these have been taken care of pre-budget, fingers crossed nothing major comes up ;P

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So with the current budget, as it stands I still have a little flexibility for those items I didn't account for. 

It starts 29th January and I'm kind of excited to see if I can actually stick to it.
I hope posting this will keep me in check :P

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Did you know that apparently you can revive a goldfish even when it looks dead?
Yeah, you can can change it water and hold its gills open in an effort to help them breathe.

Sadly, I only found this out once one of our pond koi turned upside down and never went right side up again.
It's really quite upsetting to hold a dead fish in your hands.

RIP nameless fishy.



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