Monthly Archives: February 2010

The Plan

★ Posted on at 08:19 pm ★

yu sang

The lou sang prepared by Jun Kit for the Chinese New Year reunion dinner with my relatives. It was really tasty, and I’m curious how this dish came about and who would have thought that the respective ingredients would go together.

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Need to rejig my schedule to fit in more activities. I’m thinking it’s possible to sleep earlier and wake up earlier so I can go swimming or jogging before I go to work. Heh, would like to study in the wee hours of the morning but I don’t think I’d warm up to the idea of waking up early just to flip open the notes to study.

The plan will only go on for a month, and after Run for the Kids 2010, I’ll see how things go. Always good to have immediate goals to achieve so you don’t get too side tracked.

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Went to Bundoora for dinner on Monday. Had an impromptu barbeque at my place last night. Had to clean up the apartment for a house inspection on Friday. My first week of studies haven’t quite materialised yet so I’m really needing to start tomorrow.

Well, the plan calls for me turning in before 12am so I can get up early. Time to hit the sack.

A Wet Chinese New Year

★ Posted on at 06:10 am ★

satay

Carols’ satay and peanut sauce. Quite tasty. The new year is always about eating and catching up with family. Was at friend’s place on Friday night having dinner, with a variety of dishes and even home made lou sang.

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The weather’s been pretty wet of late. So much rain that certain parts of Melbourne got affected by flash floods, disrupting traffic and businesses. Not really the Chinese new year weather I remember (usually very hot and dry in Malaysia then) but you take what you can get.

Was in Boxhill yesterday afternoon to see some of the CNY festivities they had. Lots of stalls setup, selling DVDs, a bit of food here and there, face painting, toys for sale, more shops selling real estate, politicians campaigning the coming election. Not really the kind of atmosphere I was expecting. So I was a little disappointed and sad, as I remember there was so much more going on in Malaysia. There used to be firecrackers, with lion dances and beating drums, all the excitement, the sights and smells.

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Had dinner with relatives last night. Simple food and too many dishes overflowing on the table. It was good in a way, since we had been eating non stop since the night before. It’s the company that’s important I feel and I do miss home during times like these, but circumstances would keep us overseas.

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Feeling a little hectic these days, just want to sit back and have some time to reflect. I always want to just sit back on a lazy chair, have tea and just read a book on rainy days. Heh, have bought a whole stack of books recently and I really want to start reading them. Just need to get the self organised a bit, hence why I need to keep the computer turned off. It’s time to get moving.

Number Six

★ Posted on at 07:53 pm ★

white rabbit

I find that my taste profile for beers favour the darker ales, so when I picked up some White Rabbit to try (being a fan of other Little Creatures beers), I found it to be very good (in my opinion) and am currently a fan of it. It’s full of flavour with strong caramel notes to it. Always happy to pop open a bottle just to savour the refreshing taste.

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So it’s the big six for this blog now. 6 years since I’ve started it. Wrote a silly and worthless first post. Heh, it’s moved on to a new home without hiccup and all the better for it, considering the blistering speed at which I upload stuff to it via FTP. Would like to do a few more enhancements but this weekend already seems chock full of activities with Chinese New Year just around the corner.

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Took delivery of photos from Snapfish when they had their 9c per print offer. It’s a significant saving from the usual 15c, saving me about $10 for the 160 or so prints I made. Delivery charges were painful though, at $10, so it’s sort of like paying for 15c copies but free delivery.

Printed my pictures at the standard 4 x 6″. Only bad point to the photos were that the photo paper was on the thin and flimsy end, and would probably bend easily, unlike older film developed photos that had the postcard feel to it. Other than that, the pictures were great. Having a colour calibrated monitor really helps out here, as the pictures in my hand were exactly as they looked on my screen (well, from memory anyway, I didn’t compare them directly). Having a colour corrected monitor helps you to identify colour casts on pictures and fix them up (another side note that even with a calibrated monitor, you need a colour calibrated printer to go with it and my previous prints on the home printer were slightly off). Without colour correction, my monitor tends to be on the warm side, with white webpages imparting a slight yellow hue that you probably wouldn’t even take notice of. Images were sharp, and some colours a little too dark but mainly due to error on my part for overprocessing the images. They look fine on the screen but didn’t translate over to print.Your eyes can see more variation of colours than your screen can display, and the screen subsequently can display more colours than what you can print.

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My cousin has caught the grub growing bug and I transplanted some of her tomato plants (I hope they are what she thinks they are) that grew offshoot and have invaded into her chilli plant pot. Heh, will try my luck again with the coriander and parsley later on this year. Also have more experience with aphids, and when my friend (who is also trying out some herbs) brought it up, I knew exactly what she meant by white bugs covering the plant. Coincidentally enough my cousin is also experiencing the same problem now, and it does require some urgency to remove the bugs before they destroy your plant, as they have done so in my previous two attempts with growing coriander.

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Heh, just so many other fascinating things in life to keep me occupied, the only dull moments are when I can’t do it all quickly enough.