Sunday

Woke up hungry, found fettucine I made last night, heated up, still looks & smells nice, here it is:I know I know, normally fettucine goes with white sauce, but all I had in the fridge were mushrooms, mince and tomato paste, so I've decided to do whatever I like to food again.

Addition @ 10pm
Hungry again in the afternoon, found leftover dumplings made by parents, re-boiled them and made "sour soup dumplings". This is one of my favourite food back home, where after dumplings are cooked, rather than serving them plain with dippings, they are served in "heavy" soups where spices, vinegar are added, garnished with pickles and spring onion, coriander etc. As seen below:


FYI - My stock of instant noodles ran out.......

Random stuff

My lack of broadband internet connection is getting really annoying and I'm blaming it for my less than frequent postings here. (Totally not relating to me being lazy, nah-ah).

I guess I just want to do some random ranting, so here it goes:

Following yesterday's post, I remembered I left something out: on the bench next to me, a family came after us, sat down and told the chef that it's their first time having teppanyaki, esp for the 2 girls who looked like about 7-10 years old. So he started cooking and doing his fancy tricks, then he dropped the pepper mill, "SHIT" he exclaimed, then apologized. We were a little puzzled, was he sorry for the stuff up or using that kind of language in front of kids??

Went to a property auction today, for those who are not familiar with the house auction here in Melbourne, we just have people gathering casually around the property (garden mostly) and the auctioneer will just call out bids after buyers raise their hands to make bids and the highest bidder wins. Now I have a question, why for most auctions, the agents choose to conduct the auction in the noisiest spot possible on the property? Ie. property located on the main road, woooohoooo! Let's just do the auction right outside the front yard where there's cars/trucks drive by every 20 seconds instead of the 200 square meter+ of quieter area in the back! Is this some way to confuse buyers with current bid and to get more money???

Bad Service

Altho I whinge a lot here, I'm not a serial complainer in real life (I think) and I can tolerate a lot of things quite well. (Really, trust me!) But today I seriously had a very unpleasant experience at a local restaurant.

To start, I very rarely complain about restaurant service, whenever I see people complaining about services provided in some restaurant review, I always think they are probably just being too picky and unreasonable. For me, if I'm not paying top bucks for a meal, just some basic service will do, not a big fan of being attended all the time, I'd say I'm quite easily pleased with restaurants.

Now, me and a colleague decided to go to a restaurant near my place, heard a lot of people talking about the buffet style menu there, you dine like standard restaurant but pay a per person charge, however food is ordered and then prepared rather than collecting them from hot/cold food bars. The perks are food is freshly cooked and all the sashimi prepared are fresh and tasty.

Great, we arrived at the booked time, stepped into the restaurant, had to stand for a good 5 minutes before anyone actually noticed us existing, then we were allocated to an empty teppanyaki bench although we were not having teppanyaki meals. Well, I didn't mind. Now this is a beauty, some waitress dumped a wine menu between us and just left! This is a bit extreme, normally they ask you if you would like to order any drinks to start, or at least give you some tea! We've decided to order some wine, we picked out a couple of things to start with, filled in the little menu and handed to the waitress and asked for the wine. Without expressing any emotion at all, the waitress put our menu down and said "write the table number and number of people on the order" o...k......the night looks very fun ahead.....

After we filled in the order the correct way, the food came out quite quick, altho I've NEVER been to a Japanese restaurant (this ranges from Nobu to nameless takeaway shop around the corner) where they do not serve wasabi with sushi/sashimi. Busy restaurant, must been forgotten, nevermind, I will just ask a waitress, um, why are all of them seem uninterested to serve you?? On my 3rd attempt to talk to a waitress, she was obviously on her womanly cycle as she even frowned when she was talking to me, and just banged the plate on my side where there's no one sitting and away from the direction I was facing, this was the same for all of the staff, when they come with your food, they were just casually leaving them on your side or shovel the plate between us without even telling you the name of the dish!

Now we are a few dishes into our meals, the drink we ordered was nowhere to been seen, had to talk to the manager to get them. This got the original waitress into trouble, which oddly I didn't feel that bad (a little bad), because we should have got the drinks before we started eating! I haven't been working in a restaurant before, but I know alcohol is one of the most profitable items in a restaurant, so it makes sense to try to get guests to order them and serve them quickly. When we got the drink, seems like it has been diluted with 3 parts water and 2 parts ice.......

The meal went on and pretty much same story repeated, unattentive/rude/zombie staff, and one of the orders got lost and we had to re-order, a few things missing from the order. But the food was quite good, that kind of made up for the service, whooops, I mean the NON-EXISTENCE of service in the place.

When we got the bill, we only tipped them with the few coins in the change, my colleague says "I almost always tip, and I'd feel it's an insult to the restaurant to receive a few 10 cents coins as tips, but I think I was more than generous with them" I totally agree.

Yawn

I'm sooooo tired, it was so busy at work, for a split second, I believed I saw sparkly comet like things before my eyes! I won't write too much here coz even I felt like I bitch too much about being busy and stuff, plus, I want to keep my cooking pic up for longer lol.

Sometime worth to tell tho, I went to the casino with friends for dinner last week, as the restaurant we wanted to go was on the gaming floor, so we had to enter the gaming area that was guarded by staff to check id's. I really love this staff at the entry, as I walked straight pass him into the casino, he yelled at me to report back to him and show him my ID and gave me this evil DON'T TRY TO GET PASS ME look. This in turn means, I don't look old and I look YOUNG! Wheeee, I look underage!

I'm not sure what the moral of the story is here, but I'm feeling damn good about myself!

Cooking follow up

As mentioned, I've finally stretched my lazy bones and cooked the mushroom risotto I've always wanted to try. Also not wanting to follow the rules and do whatever I feel like, I've used some dried shitake mushrooms, instead of proper arborio rice, I just used whatever we used to cook rice everyday, normal medium grain rice and then added some jasmine rice, this is fun......rather than cook mushrooms separately, I've just cooked them up with onions and garlic together, then added rice. To top it off, I've cooked up some mixed seafood with butter and chopped parsley. Here is the final product:

Five addictions

The talented and smart and presumably very sexy Jackdaw featured five things he's addicted to and was nicely invited me to share on the same topic. But before I start, I need to clarify the brutal false accusation (>:P) he made against me, I would never cook instant noodle for my guests, coz once I bitched about some guy who offered me and a friend "home cooking" lunch, it turned out to be instant noodles and canned food! So if I offer to cook, it will be proper cooking, done in underwears (lol, again, sorry for whoever that's gotta see it), so JD, if u take up that offer, u might need to bring something to wash your eyes. LOL

Now getting to the 5 things I'm addicted to:

1. Watches

I liked watches since I was small, always wanted to wear one. Even now there are numerous ways to tell the time, I still prefer to read it off the hands and dial of a wristwatch. I was attracted by the looks of different watches, but now what amazes me even more is the craftsmanship each watch possesses. I'm talking about the real haute horlogerie watchmakers like Breguet, Vacheron Constantin, IWC, Patek Philippe, A. Lange & Soehne etc, mechanical pieces constructed by hands, assembled into a tiny case yet performs complicated functions like perpetual calendar where the watch adjust number of days in each month and leap years all by itself! Easily done by computers and electronics, but truely amazing when it's done through cogs and springs. I might not have the ability to own all the desirable pieces, but I certainly enjoy to look at them and learn about them, and hopefully at least purchase a few :)

2. Travel

I've started to travel around in 2006, enjoyed every minute of it, and definitely looking to do more. Love to browse through another country/city, experience the local food and culture, see the attractions. I love both the city and nature of the destinations I've been to, stay in the busy city center and take a day trip to the park/forest/beach nearby is pure heaven! My favourite destination at the moment is Hawaii, love the weather and beach, snorkeling there is magic! Hopefully I will get to learn surfing next......

3. Food

As my previous posts on cooking shows, I love food, whether it's eating or making them. I have always been very curious about food from other cultures, especially any exotic flavours or ingredients. Nowadays I'm earning income myself, I've started to indulge myself in different foods, dining out more often to enjoy food from all over the world. What I will do normally is, after I've tried something nice, I will always attempt to make it myself, if I can come up with something similar to what I've tasted, that will be a huge ego boost lol.

4. Internet

The single GREATEST invention ever! Whatever you need you can find in cyberspace, information, music, movies, shopping, porn (:P). Chatting is cool too, I'm very much leaning towards chatting on msn rather than chatting on the phone lol, sad, I know. It's a great research tool, I have been doing "mini researches" almost everyday. I will just pick out something totally random and do a little research to learn about it, examples of my topics include: cheese, diamonds, perfume, cyanide, glacier, spiders.......

5. Self loving

I changed the terminology a little so it doesn't look like I'm copying from JD, but really, it is addictive, especially combined with point 4, lol. Suprised to find out JD and I are sharing similar frequencies lol. Sometimes I think the reason I could even fall asleep is because I'm exhausted afterwards lol.

Now, I suppose I need to appoint five bloggers to share their addictions, being on the scene for only 2 months, I don't think I have that many fellow bloggers yet....but anyways, hope the bloggers below will spare an entry on their blogs:

1. MCV: tying the knot soon with his bf, he's a very humble person that shares some quite meaningful posts. Also the first person who left comments on my blog, and I have and will always appreciate him for that, as it gave me the initial drive to keep my blog active. Check out his blog HERE

2. Sean appears to be a very hot young college student in Boston, underneath his nice set of abs, he's also sensible and quite interesting. Hopefully he will post some of his secretes for us.

3. Upcoming writer, Shane, whose blog I have been following too, very knowledgeable with analytical ways of thinking. Altho having exams atm, good luck and let us know how you went.

4. Joshua also was very nice to leave comments on my blog, and he loves Prada, which I did a lot too, until I decided to get one, their wallets were not the best they could be, to be honest, which instead, I bought mine from Cartier, weird, but it was nice :) Despite that, I still love Prada a lot :)

Well that was all I had :)

P.S. I have been posting less frequently because my internet connection is capped at 28.8k speed, for those who visit my blog often, I am not giving up (yet), just too frustrating to manage everything with dial up speed......

OOOOOLD

SIGH, I feel like I'm getting senile and going through mid-life crisis at 26! Somehow I've become forgetful, I've promised someone to call them back in 5 and forgot about it after 2 minutes! (although again I'd blame work being chaotic). When I'm home today I couldn't find my bluetooth ear piece, and couldn't be bothered to look for it and decided to do that tomorrow morning. Now I'm in bed and found out my wireless mouse is not working! Great day! The more frustrated I get the more I think about things not done at work or things I've forgotten to do at work, at home and for my friends.........Really need that break now!

Annoyed

OMG! I've used up my download limit for the month!!!!!! Holy crap! How am I gonna survive with 28.8k internet speed for another 20 days???? Didn't even think I've downloaded that much, watched lots of youtube movies and maybe downloaded some of *ahem* ..those..movies but seriously, not that many......

Anyways, about last night's dinner/party, it was pretty good generally, although it was dragged on for a bit long because food wasn't served until about 1-2 hours after arrival, the hostess kept apologizing, although no one was upset over it, as we all had snacks during the activities in the afternoon. However there was a guy whom I met before, kinda made me a little uncomfortable. He's young and very good looking and smart, but I feel that he lacks certain aspects of personality.

Firstly the second course of the dinner was soup, because it was an asian restaurant, so it was your typical asian style thick gooey soup. Lots of people were adding soy sauce to taste, although I thought the soup was salty enough, then I heard him talking to the guy next to him about adding soy sauce to the soup to add flavour etc, suddenly he giggled and said "it's asian's blood". I was a little taken back by that, as I didn't find that "joke" particularly funny. Although food forms an important aspect of a culture and they can be defined by some typical ingredients they use, I just didn't feel the positive vibe in that comment. Maybe I was overreacting?

Half way through the meal, a store was mentioned and I had no idea where that was, so I asked the question, someone told me it's in a certain complex next to a well known designer boutique, I then said I kind of knew where it is now. Then he (or someone else) commented that immediately after that brand is mentioned, I knew where it was, which I thought "shit, that's a pretty obvious flameboyant gay thing to say" as I'm not out for a number of reasons, so I quickly mentioned that I knew because my friend works there (well, sort of, they offered him a casual/temp position and he didn't take it). Apparently I got worried for all the wrong reasons, as that guy started to ask me if I have any connection to that brand, ie owning shares or sell the product etc, which I found funny because I don't have anything from that brand apart from two fragrances and both of them not really my kind of style. Again, he let out another obnoxious (at least to me it was) comment "woops, sorry, I mean does your family supply them? Does your family make them in China?" I was almost ready to shower his face with soy sauce and leave, but I was nice enough to just dismiss his comment with a smirk and a "yeh rite" (which I wished I could do a bit better than that) because I didn't want to get pissed off in front of all the guest that I met for the first time and ruin the party for the hosts.

Needless to say, although the rest of the night was ok, but I just couldn't help to resent him for the whole time. He could be just too young (~20?) and didn't have any bad intention in his comments and not yet learnt about thinking before making any potentially offensive comments, or he was simply obnoxious?? Personally, as an immigrant living in a country with relatively short history of acceptance of immigrants and multiculturalism, I don't like to use the word "racism" easily, because sometimes it was simply not understanding someone else's culture. I feel like the things I've heard was a little intimidating in a racism way, as he just linked some offensive comments simply to where I was from.

Normally I just bitch and moan here as a means to express myself, but this time, I'm begging to hear what you have to say about this post. I want my readers to help me to analyse this situation, was I overly sensitive to those comments or I really should be pissed off by his comments? Your contribution is appreciated!

Headache

Haven't been posting for a few days coz work has been busier than normal (note, busy, not chaotic, for a change), for the past few nights I just didn't feel like to do anything, tired, sleepy. Went out to dinner with friends on Friday night and had some fun times until 1 in the morning. Today I went to a birthday party, it was quite fun altho it just reinforces my cynical view of human interaction sucks, too much people is never a big thing with me.........I'm have a bad headache now and hopefully I'll write something interesting tomorrow...

Saving water

Today I'm feeling preachy, so I have chosen an important topic: water. Melbourne (and Australia) is experiencing severe drought problems. Click here to see the current water storage levels around Melbourne, currently at ~34%. This is equivalent to only half of storage level 10 years ago (70% in 1998). At this rate, it's scary to think that we might run out of water supply in another decade or so! Currently we are having water restriction in place to stop water wasting by prohibiting home car wash, watering of lawns etc, but we need action from everyone to conserve water in every possible way.

Water conservation is often overlooked by people, afterall, you see them fall from sky, flowing in river, rise and fall in the sea, how can we be running out of water? Well we can! I will not go into the details of cost of treating water and consequences of extracting ground water (I was also a little lazy to do enough research to comment). I just want to talk a little about simple ways to save/recycle/reuse water and get everyone to conserve one of the most basic yet most precious natural resources. (eeew @ my expression)

One of the biggest and easiest thing is to TURN OFF THE TAB. When shaving/brushing teeth or washing vegetables prior to cooking etc etc, do not keep the tab running, turn it off and only turn it back on when you are using them. Try not to let water go straight from tab to the drain, overall you are paying for them too.

Then there's reuse water, face it, things are not as dirty as 20 years ago, whether it's fruits and vegetables, clothes, your own body (not sure about the last one). This is what I try to do, when washing fruit and veggies, use large bowls rather than running tabs, normally the water looks as clean as before the wash, of course you DO NOT drink the used water, but they can be used to mop the floor, rinse cleaning rags, water plants or in the bathroom. I will explain a bit on the last one, I also keep a bucket in the shower, it can be used to collect that bit of cold water before hot water comes out of the shower head, and collect some water during the shower. Normally when I wash my hair, I will do it over the bucket (no special awkward position or yoga style body twitching, just place it between your feet and lower your head as usual), let the bucket collect the water running down and it will always collect some water during the showering. This water can be reused to fill the water tank of the toilet after flushing, if you think about how much drinking grade water is used to flush bodily waste, that idea will not be weird at all! Also there's using washing machine water to water garden and lawn (not your edible plants I'd imagine), again, I don't think I know enough to comment, but I'd think you need bio-degradable detergent etc.

Although I probably sounded like some weird hippies, I don't care, this is serious and I feel like I need to make others aware of it. If you don't like it, don't come to me when you stink from no shower with cracked lips from not drinking water!!!

Ok now the serious stuff is out of the way, I'm looking for new jewellery, mainly rings and pendants, coz my wrist is too thin to wear bracelets, random info......

Cooking

I had instant noodles for breakfast and lunch yesterday and had it again from brunch today, wheeeee.......

I cooked for the first time in about a month, reason being I was too busy and normally in a pretty lazy/angry/tired state and can't be bothered to cook. Unlike while I was in high school and university where I had plenty of time and I cooked almost everyday, nowadays I'm hardly in kitchen. I really hate myself for that, because I'm a food enthusiast and I have been cooking since a very young age (<10>:P). So far my skill has not deteriorate that much lol, although I need to explore different things, my next target is mushroom risotto with my own twist! ;) Stay tuned......

1874

Firstly check out this song by Hong Kong pop singer Eason Chan titled "1874"


Here's a brief translation of the lyrics:
Still have not met that lover that perfectly compliments me,
You have never appeared or have you already passed away?
Suspect in some country in some year, the day I have not been brought into this world,
There was someone waiting for my love, losing sleep over me every night.
Never have met and then disappeared, this person was really like a fictional character,
Maybe they supposed to accompany me into this life, but went to the incorrect era?
If lover was born into 1874 alone, just 100 years, 1 century too early,
Will they persistently wait for their entire life, rain season will arrive over the dry land
Why wasn't I timely born into 1874, meeting you, look after you, until we die
Even if we cannot meet in peace, we will still have a good time in war fields,
Why wasn't I timely born into 1874, holding your hands and fleeing by night,
With the sky lit by beacons, separated from each other in the same era, yet still we can live and die together.

I've just translated the lyrics in a simple way, translated the original lyrics based on characters into complete sentences. (if anyone feels like to correct any part, you are very welcome to do so)

This particularly interesting concept has appeared in my mind before, MAYBE there is one for everyone, but the problem is they might be in a completely different continent or even a different page in history. Everyone is then given the goal to try to find that someone, some people succeed, some people fail; in this game of pursuing each other, everyone is searching amongst unlimited possibilities but given limited time.

Although nowadays finding "the one" is not really on my priority list (or so called relationship for that matter), I kinda think that maybe someone's searching for me, in the mean time, I will just wait for that to happen lol.

"Superior" people

Hmmm, some people are just seem to be "superior", not that they are, but they certainly act as if they own the world. I dealt with this pretty girl from our major client, she speaks in a very nice tone, but every now and then you just can't help to feel that she feels like she's looking down onto you. (and many of the employees there gives out the similar vibe towards us)

I was talking to her about some pending orders, which we advised her that we will need time to prepare, she told us that she will review them and let us know the requirements. This afternoon she mentioned to me that she needs some products next week into other states, I told her that the operations guys were flat out, and we do not have any prepared products to meet that date, and her response was simple (and jaw dropping) "I guess someone will need to work during the weekend then" I was like HUH??? You can give pressure to people who rely on your business to get things done, but I couldn't help to find this comment a little insulting. I felt like she's assuming us as some sort of cheap second grade workshop that just rise to their commands. We are in business relationship, not slavery, frankly after hours when my office doors are shut, I couldn't give a rat what will happen to you if you cannot get your products, isn't it? Sometimes I feel like the more we do to look after some people, the less recognition we receive, they will just take it for granted and assume that we SHOULD have done that because they are GOD......

Altho sadly, I did have to make some last minute arrangements to ensure we can meet part of the orders on Monday morning. It really sucks to have to "obey" those commands you REALLY do not want to take up.......

Tired/Appearance

So tired......work has been extremely busy and it feels like I can't get enough sleep, every morning I need that extra 20 minutes or so of "half sleep" time. I've been yawning all day and feeling very exhausted. Someone visited our office today, I hated it when customer/supplier drops by unannounced, as it is TOTALLY casual in our office and not many of our staff are up to date with style, I basically wear the same daggy stuff to work every day, and they HAVE to come over and see me like that! I mean the hair, clothes, lack of accessories such as watch, necklace and rings and I wasn't even wearing cologne! Gosh, I feel ashamed! I wanted to tell them "go somewhere and give me an hour to get myself together!" LOL

Justice???

A new month, and today there has been quite strange. HUGE traffic jam caused by multiple accidents, which made me wonder, how come the innocent ones always lose their lives in an accident?? Why the drunken shithead dumbass survives? Everytime I hear news like this it gives me the shits, badly. Some idiot learner driver does 150km/h or so while under the influence of alcohol kills a university student here to compete in uni games. WHY??? Why the fuck on this world would something like this happen, why doesn't the stupid driver get crashed and burnt with his stupidity????? Where is the so called justice? Can't help to think there's no such thing........