We Doodle

When I was little, one of the careers I contemplated was 'artist'.  That innocent childhood dream died a long while back when I realised it wasn't a viable career.  However I will say that I am quite a deft hand at drawing crap and this skill has been reignited by the game We Doodle.  It's a Pictionary of sorts but for the Iphone.

Drawing with a mouse is hard enough and drawing on an Iphone is probably only slightly easier.  Either way, the precision of a pencil or a paintbrush is just not there.  But that just all adds to the fun and you get the hang of it!

The We Doodle app is somewhat annoying.  Lately it has been constantly crashing, generally quite slow and it frustratingly forces me to turn my phone off and on to reset it.  Normally, that would mean I would delete the frigging thing but alas it has me kinda hooked.

The game gives you three different inks - red, blue, black and a pencil.  As you accumulate more points, you can buy more colours, writing instruments and stencils.  I put quite a bit off effort into my pics and if I am especially proud of what I've drawn, I get a little upset if they are guessed incorrectly.  That being said, some words are a challenge and I do have to take an abstract angle.

Anyway I've created many masterpieces and now I'm going to show them off:

I personally think this was a pretty awesome drawing of 'soul'.  How else would you draw it?!?!  Also, I know I am cheating by using letter/symbols of any kind but no one here is judging me.  

Another favourite.  How else would you draw a pole?!?!?!  Sure I could have drawn a thin cylinder but no one would guess that.  It's gotta be in context people!!  What better context than a pole dancer complete with boobs?  

One of my utmost favourite doodles.  The symbolism!  The stereotype!  Of course, it's a terrorist! 

The above three I thought were just plain cute.  

How awesome is the dead husband!?!

Superb detail.  I even drew a Tarzan.

Well it was either going to be a frog or a toad. 

I even drew a little bow on the bra. 

Yes, cheating again using words.  But he's quite obviously beastly.  

The poor amputee. 

This is how I feel after I burn myself on the iron. 

Part of my earliest collection.  Ok, I admit, I googled to find a picture of sphinx to help me draw.  Yeah I cheated when I wrote Kikkoman.

More of my early collection. 

Once again, I emphasise the importance of context.  You can't just draw 'dip'.  What is a dip without chips and other party food?  A noodle is just a squiggly line when it's not in a bowl being held up by chopsticks.

Ok, I really didn't know to draw bluetooth.  In hindsight I should have just drawn the bluetooth symbol.  I wasn't thinking that day.  

Alright I was a bit upset that this was guessed wrong.  It's so obviously Godzilla!!!!!!  Look at those little stick men running away!!

Oh come on.  It's a roulette table!!!  

I had a bit of difficulty drawing just a chandelier.  It just looked so crap.  So I had to draw people dancing underneath something chandelier-esque.  I'm pretty proud of my Elvis drawing but again I did use google to get a better grasp of his jumpsuit.  

All that Harry Potter reading has paid off.  My wizard drawing skills have been refined.  My scarecrow is pretty scary and maybe even a little depressed. 

Yes I cheated by writing 'Extra! Extra!'  Clearly the man is a journalist.

Here are a few of my faves by other We Doodle players. 

Chief.  Pretty damn good!  So good that if I ever come across chief, this is how I will draw it. 

Hunt.  I felt sorry for the deer!!!  It's fate is sealed!

Snuggle.  This would be hard to draw.  But with the letter clues given towards the last 10 seconds, you could see what was being conveyed.

Now, along with the good drawings, come the errrr... not so good.  I'm not here to lambaste other people's drawings or offend them (and names have been removed to protect the innocent) but I'll acknowledge that a 'wavelength' connection between players can help considerably.  Things which are wtf to me can be crystal clear to others.  Likewise, what may be exceedingly obvious to me can be clear as mud to others.  

For example, I had to draw a picture of 'focus'.  The best way I could represent that was to draw a basic physics diagram of an optical system.  No one would guess that if they didn't do physics!  I also had to draw 'relative'.  How the hell do I do that?  So I drew a genealogy chart.  A bit difficult for those without a science background to understand and regardless, I admit it was a fairly roundabout way to draw 'relative'.  I was banking on the clues to help with the guessing.  

Here are some of the few I had difficulty guessing.  You take a guess of the following.  Like We Doodle, I'll give you 30 seconds!!!  (Answers at the bottom)

1.2.

3.4.

5.6.

7.8.

9.10.

11.12.

Answers:

1.  Safe.  All the important features are there.  

2.  Goliath.  Very obvious in hindsight.  I had guessed victim, recipient, injured.  Haha.  

3.  Tape.  Believe it or not.  This is tape.  I'm pretty sure that looks like a cheerleader and another player agreed with me.  All that effort to draw a cheerleader, so how do we get 'tape'? When we questioned the drawer we were told, 'I was drawing a cheerleader but somehow when I submitted the picture it changed to tape!'

4.  Throat.  You'd be forgiven for thinking it was a spade/shovel and that the arrow was pointing to the handle of the spade/shovel.  Some eyes to the person's head would've added more context.

5.  Headphone.  Another person actually guessed it was 'pizzaphone'.  

6.  Porch.  Pretty obvious when you break down 'pea' + 'torch' = ptorch = porch.  But with a time limit, I first had to figure out that it was a torch not a lamp or flashlight and therefore not 'plamp' or 'peaflashlight'.

7.  Board.  A basic drawing but the point is quite clear.  

8.  Sand.  Again quite basic but the important thing is that it's quite a clear point.  Some colour would be nice though.

9.  Greens.  I guessed grass.  This is hard to draw though.  I had drawn some green veggies together and it still wasn't clear.

10.  Bottle.  You can see I initially guessed spade and shovel.  

11.  Cloth.  I had guessed paper, sheet before finally with the letter clues, I got cloth.  Hard to draw but I would've drawn a kitchen with a cloth hanging from an oven door handle.

12.  Donut.  Some coloured sprinkles and pink icing would have been nice.  You could mistake it for a plate or dish though.  

Yes, I have laughed out loud at my phone many times when playing We Doodle.  The novelty is wearing off because I've had the game for over a month now but get the app if you love drawing!  

Understanding Wine - Aged Wine and Fortified Wine

Tonight Chas was sick and our substitute teacher was a winemaker from Penfolds.  He looked a good jolly sort and very informative.  The first half of tonight was devoted to aged wines and the changes wines undergo when left to develop characteristics.  As a general rule, wines tend to become less fruity in flavour and take on more 'complex'  nutty, toasty notes.  However that doesn't mean that the longer you age a wine, the better it will taste.  White wines in particular go through a lull where there is a loss in flavour as it changes from the fruity to the more complex.

Teacher tonight (I forgot his name) wisely said 'I would rather open a bottle five years early and enjoy it now than wait another five years for it to potentially get better but has instead been ruined.'  He suggested that if we ever bought wine with the intention of ageing, we should open a bottle every few years and taste it.  Hmmm yes, when I have my wine cellar I will do that.  *looks sideways*.

We were also given tips about ideal wine storage conditions.  We were told of a lady who had $200K worth of 30 year old Penfolds Grange which was ruined because she kept the box sitting upright above her wardrobe for many years.  Eeep.

On to the tastings.  There are white wines which are not designed to be aged e.g sauvignon blanc, pinot gris (drink it quickly!) but there are some which can benefit - riesling, semillion and chardonnay.  Funnily enough, the riesling and semillion take on chardonnay characteristics.  Prior to tonight I had assumed that all white wines were intended for immediate quaffing but now.. yes now I know better :D  The aged white wine served tonight was a 2005 Penfolds Aged Release Riesling.  Rieslings are usually ho-hum with me but this one was really nice and yes, Teacher was right, it was chardonnay-like!

I learnt that aged red wines tend to accumulate sediment in the bottle and so should stand upright for about 24-48 hours before serving.  Teacher talked a bit about decanting but I've largely forgotten what was said.  We then went onto fortified wines and hmmmm well, I liked the less sweet ones.  Some of the others were just like drinking maple syrup.

As a side note, our table felt pretty smug to see that other tables had brought cheese tonight.  Heh!  Next week will be our final lesson and involve blind tasting.  Putting our skills to use!

Understanding Wine - Red Wine

This was the class I was hanging for - red wine.  Our dunce table decided were going to enjoy this to the max and we had brought along three different cheeses to compliment our wines.  All of the other tables watched us with envious eyes.  Hey, our table may be full of wine dumbos but the rest of you were pretty stupid to not bring any cheese for tonight's class.  *nyah nyah!*

Tonight I learnt that pinot noir grapes are difficult to grow in the warm Australian climate.  All 'burgundy' wines from France are pinot noir and decent Australian versions are few and far between.  I shall keep that in mind!  Where Australia and especially the Barossa does excel is the shiraz.  No news to me.

Tonight's tasting began with a rosé.  Chas was a bit 'that's interesting' as he considers rose to be a 'pink white wine'.  They are mainly made from grenache grapes which were historically used for cheap cask wine.  In other words, rosé is a quaffing-style wine.  We were advised that rosés generally tend to be either very dry or very sweet and it's hard to tell until you open the bottle.  I'm not big on dry rosé wines generally but tonight's one was slightly sweet and finished dry.  It was actually quite nice and I would pick up a bottle if the occasion demanded it.

We also tasted a pinot noir (ok), a nebbiolo (Whut?  Never heard of that.) and sangiovese.  The last two are associated with Italian wines with the sangiovese being the main part of Chianti wines.  The nebbiolo I really quite liked!  Aaah yes, wine tasting class has opened up a new world for me.

I (predictably) liked the merlot.  It's the wine you should drink to ease yourself into the whole red wine scene due to it's soft tannins.  I still don't quite understand what tannin is.

The tempranillo wasn't that great.  This is a grape which is abundant in Spain and is usually one of my picks from a wine menu.  However that was when I was in UK and had easy access to many Spanish wines.

We finished off with a shiraz and the king of reds - a cabernet sauvignon.  Both were pleasant.  Chas also ran through why wines are blended e.g merlot blended with cav sauv makes it 'softer' and easier to drink.  *thumbs up I say*.  Our dunce table polished off our cheeses and left the night a happy bunch.

Understanding Wine - Sparkling Wine

I didn't get around to doing my homework (drink some sparkling wine) from last week.  No matter, there was plenty to drink tonight!  *clink clink champagne flutes*  I've kinda avoided sparkling wine for some time now mainly because I've never had a glass which totally blew me away.  Tonight's tasting has changed that and I'm ready to embrace bubbly once more!

Sparkling wine is just that - wine with sparkles.  Sparkles come in the form of bubbles, hence the term 'bubbly'.  However, don't confuse all sparkling wine to be champagne.  That term can only be applied to sparkling wines which come from the Champagne region in France.

This course specialises in Australian wines and nothing foreign will pass our lips.   According to Chas, this is not a bad thing.  He suspects that most of the French champagne sold in Australia is ruined by oxidation during the importation process.  He's never had such an experience when drinking them in France/Europe.

We learnt about production differences, how bubbles are achieved and the differences between champagne (more yeasty) and Australian sparkling wine (more fruity).  Then we got onto the best bit - tasting.  It's not a myth that you get drunk faster on champagne - the bubbles assist alcohol absorption and our dunce table got quite happy indeed, polishing off the leftover bottles.  We even clinked flutes!

The last time I had a sparkling red I was left a bit 'meh' about the whole deal.  Not expecting much, I was pleasantly surprised to actually like all three sparkling reds served tonight.  They would definitely go well with chocolate and chocolate cake.  Num nums.

So suffice to say, I left tonight's lesson a bit drunk.  Wheeeeeeeee!!!!

Understanding Wine - White Wine

Tonight was white wine night.  Our presenter tonight had a pretty cool name - 'Chas' - and he was much more enthusiastic than last week's substitute.  His absence was explained by a bout of bronchitis last week.  The first thing Chas did was make us all wear name tags and forced us to interact.  He reasoned 'What's the point of drinking wine if you can't talk about it with your classmates?'  Hear, hear.

We tasted eight white wines tonight and pretended to be wine judges.  We assessed each wine by their appearance (colour), their nose (smell, bouquet) and it's palate (taste).  By the end of the night my table had decided we were the class rejects.  Could we detect the citrus-y smell?  Err, no it smelled like banana.  How about the meaty, earthy smell?  No, it smelled like a dusty bookshelf.  Despite Chas telling us 'everyone will smell it differently and there is no right or wrong', he still gave one of my table-mates a resounding 'No' when she thought her wine smelled like foie gras.

All that smelling became a bit too confusing for my nose but if I only learned one thing, I am quite confident I can identify the smell of an oaked chardonnay versus 'any other white wine'.  That tuna and melted cheese smell is quite distinctive.  I might be able to pick a riesling and a sauvignon blanc... I might.  I don't know.  One of the whites (a semillon) was actually deemed by Chas to have excess sulphur dioxide and a bit disappointing.  I had no clue!  The girl next to me judged that particular wine to be her favourite!  Hohohohohohohoho..

In regards to taste, again I'm pretty sure I can pick out the chardonnay but the other seven wines just tasted like 'white wine' to me.  My next door neighbour thought that same.  Hehehehehehehehehe.

Yes indeed, we are the table who needs remedial wine tasting lessons.  We've been given some homework in preparation for next week's lesson - drink some sparkling wine!  Will do!

Learning How to Drink - Understanding Wine

Prior to my first visit to the Barossa Valley in 2006 I was a casual wine drinker and certainly not someone who knew the difference between a shiraz or a riesling.  My run-ins with wine were mainly at university balls (where I'm sure we were given crap), random glasses at weddings and the occasional stab-in-the-dark-I'll-drink-that-one in a bar or restaurant.  Cocktails and mixers were my thing.

Well since that first fateful wine tour to the Barossa, I've become much more interested in drinking the fermented grape juice.  Having enjoyed many wines on three separate trips (and counting) to the Barossa, I've learnt to distinguish what I did and didn't like but I was yearning for more.  I was yearning for the ability to tell why I preferred some wines over others - to identify flavours and other characteristics in the wine.  I always thought it was a bit wanky when wine tasters would use terms like marshmallow, tobacco, chocolate to describe wine.  I'm now going to become one of those wankers!  

When Spu and I went to the National Wine Centre, I had picked up a pamphlet which listed several appreciation courses.  I actually had come across these courses in the middle of last year when I had another long stint in Rad-City but was unable to make the cut off date.  I totally forgot about them!  So happy to have collected the pamphlet, I promptly enrolled myself in their 'Understanding Wine' course.  I'll have a weekly two hour session over the next six weeks and even if I don't end up learn anything, I'll at least have sampled many, many wines :D  

Tonight was the first lesson and we were given some purposely doctored wines so we could taste the difference between sweet, acidic, bitter and tannin flavours.  Bitter was seriously gross and like drinking tonic water (or in my case, I also thought it tasted kinda like a bitter grapefruit).

We also got to smell some purposely doctored 'faulty' wines.  I'll be honest, out of the five faulty wines, my inexperienced nose would have accepted three of them fit for consumption.  Eeek.  It kinda reinforces my suspicion that I killed a few olfactory receptors doing chemistry experiments in uni.  I could definitely smell the burnt matchstick smell of excess sulphur dioxide, a commonly used preservative.  It was like someone lit a match, blew it out and immediately threw it into the back of my throat.  I could also smell the 'Bret' spoiled wine.  It smelled like someone's old Band-Aid.  Disgusting.

At the end of the night, we also got to sample two reds and two whites and put our tutorial to good use.  Looking forward to next week's lesson!