Just because something is simple, doesn't mean a lot of people won't get it wrong. I've been living without a dishwasher for the first time in my life, and while that's not been a problem for my own sake, it's other people not using one that's more of a bother. Because I hate reaching for a plate, and getting my hand greasy just from touching it. We do share the same dishes after all.

The idiot's way

You cook food, you leave the dishes to be done after you've eaten. By the time you get back, the remains of the food have dried and have stuck to the dishes. You scrub like a madman and realize it's very hard to get everything, so you get the worst bits off, then leave the dishes to dry.

The normal way

You come in to do the dishes, you see the food has dried. You pour water over the dishes, put some some dish washing liquid in there as well, and let it soak for half an hour. When you come back, most of the food comes off without touching it, the rest you gently scrub.

If you don't know this, then you aren't terribly astute. A ten year-old will, at some point, have seen *someone* pouring water over dirty dishes while you were watching. I don't care if it's your uncle or your home ec teacher. When you saw that, it should have made you ponder why it's being done.

What is clean?

Clean = pure porcelain. If you run your fingers over a plate and you feel tiny crests on it, it's not clean. If you see tiny dots on it, it's not clean. A good way of checking is running water over it. If the stream of water reveals that the surface isn't even, then you know it's not clean. All you have to do is scrub some more and it will come off, trust me. And be generous with the dish washing liquid. Forget that "one drop is enough for a bucket" crap, you can afford to wash your dishes properly.

Also, just washing one side of a plate isn't good enough. The whole dish has to be clean on all sides. If you cook rice in a pot, and wash the pot, but on the outside there are long streaks of white, it's not clean. Pans will eventually look pretty nasty, because of all the burnt food. If you have a pan like that, you're not obligated to remove all the dirt on its sides and bottom. Just restore it to the condition it was in before you started using it.

I inspect every dish I need before using it, and wash it if need be. I wish we had a machine to sterilize them after use.

You can't let people choose any topping they want. Because that will give them ideas of choosing stuff like cucumber and broccoli, which tastes awful on a pizza.

*Kramer making a pizza*
Kramer: Yeah, some cheese.
Poppy: Nota too much.
Kramer: And... cucumbers.
Poppy: Wait a second.. what is that?
Kramer: It's cucumbers.
Poppy: No no no, you cannot puta cucumbers on a pizza.
Kramer: Oh why not, I like cucumbers.
Poppy: That'sa not a pizza, it'lla tastea terrible.

It do, Poppy, it do.

Kramer: But that's the idea, you make your own pie.
Poppy: Yes, but we cannote give'e the people the right to choose'e any topping they wante!

The smell of pot in your kitchen? :lazy:

Or the realization that the smell of pot in your kitchen doesn't bother you that much anymore, because it's becoming a common thing? :wallbang:

Fucking potheads.

I can't think of a less fun and less rewarding way to exercise than the gym. When the gym first took off in Norway, I think a lot of people found that their needs were being catered to. That they didn't enjoy the traditional forms exercise and found their match. I was never one of those people.

The problem of the gym is that it's out of context. Why am I pretending to ride a bicycle when I could actually be riding one? Why am I pretending to be running when it's just a conveyor belt moving under my feet? I'm staring at a blinking monitor in front of me, which displays increasing numbers, and this is supposed to mean what? That I'm currently biking at 15km/h? I'm not, I'm sitting in this chair moving my legs aimlessly. "If you were actually biking, you would now be nearing 10km." There's nothing moving around me, it's just me sitting here pretending to be moving. What drives me to push myself when I'm exercising is precisely the natural elements - the sense of speed, the cool wind on my face, seeing things move around me. Meanwhile I'm moving my limbs in this big room and it's just make belief. There's bad music playing, there's a row of tvs bolted to the ceiling and there's a lot of sweaty people around me also pretending to be running.

Then there's the weight lifting. I don't know about you, but I've never had the urge to lift weights. When I was a kid it was exciting to lift heavy things, to see who could lift what and try to compete with your dad. But then you turn twelve and suddenly it doesn't excite you anymore. Before I ever tried it, people told me how great it was and I never believed them. And it's not great, it's pointless. Why am I lifting this? Because it's heavy? Give me a real reason. I don't know if you consider the machines as weight lifting, but there too you are just moving weights for no reason.

Going with a group is more fun than going by yourself, but the gym is inherently an individual form of exercise, so even though you can talk to them and make them laugh as they're trying to lift something heavy, if you want to be serious about it, the presence of others doesn't do much for you.

The fundamental problem of the gym concept is that it approaches exercise the wrong way. It's just numbers. Do I feel good after biking 50km? Yes, I do, but not just because of the distance, mostly because I was out there and I enjoyed the whole experience. I could have sat in a room and pedaled the equivalent, but what's the point of that?

I suppose you could say that exercise is about applying this much effort over this length of time to process this much energy. Some may define it that way. But that's not what sport is about. Sport is about pursuing some goal defined in the sport, and the exercise is just a side effect. Getting in shape is a by product of sport, it's not supposed to be the goal itself. The goal is to run faster or hit the ball stronger, and the fact that you have to expend more energy to accomplish this, is a consequence, not an aim. Sport is about expressing yourself physically, using your natural instincts, it's not a science at all. So why make it one? Why have a calorie counter on the display? I don't care how many kilojoules I've used today, it's completely beside the point.

If you look at exercise from the point of view of the gym, then it's really just an obligation to do this amount of work and go home. So you come in the first day, you do your sets, then you leave. You come back a few days later, you do your sets, you leave. Five years later, you're still doing the same thing. You're in better shape now, cause you've been exercising for a long time. But even though you are doing more reps faster, you're not doing them in a different way. You're lifting weights in the same way you did the first day, there's absolutely no development, ie. there's nothing to strive for. And after five years, your physical development has stabilized too, you're no longer improving your physical shape, you're just maintaining it. Thus exercise is no different from, say, washing the car. You wash it once, it gets dirty, you need to wash it again. Rinse and repeat. So where is the passion??

Still, for those who don't feel passionate about any sport, or they haven't yet played a sport they liked, I suppose the gym is a good enough alternative. Although I can't help to feel a little bit sorry for them.

I've never liked cooking and home ec was my least favorite class in school, probably of all time. So I don't make much of an effort, but every once in a while you want to do something more interesting or make an effort just for the sake of eating healthy. I'm very far from being one of those health crazed people and I couldn't make myself eat for some long term goal. But after a decade of coincidental and unhealthy eating, I'm migrating towards eating in a way that promotes short term well being. I'm just not excited about food, so why not just eat whatever makes me feel good, right? While I haven't exactly knocked out a firm diet for this yet, the idea is just to eat food that doesn't get in the way of anything that I do. Obviously, overeating does that, large amounts of trash food does it too etc. I'd also like something that promotes good sleep, or I wouldn't be writing this at 5.30 in the morning. The lack of good sleep is very annoying, but it might be more of a mental problem for all I know.

Anyway, back to making the occasional effort. What bugs me about recipes is that they have to be so complicated. Half the ingredients on the list I've never even seen in the store, I've no idea what they look like and it's just a wild goose chase. A few years ago someone gave me cookbook of a 1000 Chinese recipes, and I tried a bunch of them. Hunting down the ingredients (after translating them from Polish) took a long time, and not really knowing what I was doing in the kitchen made some of those efforts come out weird. But there were some success stories as well. Still, doing one recipe was a big commitment, it took rigorous shopping and implementation of the recipe. It wasn't exactly a lot of fun, even though the food was good in the end.

Now, I can understand that adding a quarter of a teaspoon of something slightly enhances the flavor, but they really make it hard to cook these dishes. Meanwhile, if you go simple and cut everything that seems like an accessory, it ends up tasting very... plain. Good thing my home ec teacher isn't reading this (or is she?).