Monthly Archives: March 2010

Little Snippets

★ Posted on at 03:14 pm ★

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One of the tasty morsels from the Up the Amazon themed dinner at Jacques Reymond. Zucchini with langoustine (a kind of lobster) and some Brazilian herbs I think.

Next time I’ll just put a negative 2 EV on my built in flash and see if the pictures turn out nicer. Worked well for my steak in the previous post.

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Was on a picture taking spree over the weekend. Heh, finally recapturing that joy of picking up the camera and just having a go at it. Sometimes I dream of other equipment for certain situations, but for the most part, other than the long treks when travelling, my camera does well enough. The photos I’ve enjoyed taking of late are mainly portraits of people. Hope to keep that up.

* * *

Adding to the experience of my car accident, went to get some quotes for the insurance company today. The first panel beater (what they call car repair shops, it just sounds weird though) I went to just went through the motions and said they’d submit the amount to my insurer. The second one I went to wasn’t so pleasant, saying they won’t do it because my insurer was scum and cheap, saying they caused them double the amount of work. Heh, you don’t have to like someone, you don’t necessarily have to be bad mouth them either, so this was pretty unprofessional of this second panel beater I visited. The third one was a bigger establishment, so had more formal processes in place. I needed to make an appointment and they could only fit me in next Thursday for a formal assessment.

I really just want to get my car fixed and after speaking to Jun Kit, decide that when I move to the new place, when I get home and content insurance, to bundle it with car insurance as well with the provider that he is using. Heh, there seems to be a lot of ‘bad blood’ between my current insurer and some repair shops as even the third one that I went to today, when asked about my insurer, the guy had to call up management to see if they’d take my car in.

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Two soccer matches this week with Manchester United against Bayern Munich and Barcelona against Arsenal. Daylight savings has crept in for the UK so it means I have to be up by 530am to catch a match. Next week when Australia rolls back the clock, it will be 430am matches.

Heh, at least it’s something to look forward to.

The First Mishap

★ Posted on at 09:43 pm ★

steak

Been wanting to have steak for 2 weeks now, so finally got round to getting it. There was scotch fillet on sale at the local supermarket. Got that and some rocket leaves to make a salad, which I seasoned with salt, honey and white wine vinegar. Grated some pecorino cheese on top and added a few slices of pear. Heh, the salad recipe was something I picked up eating dinner else where.

Steak is simple to cook, but looks best when you cook it with a griddle, as you get the scorch marks on both sides of the meat and it imparts a slightly smoky taste to your meat. The basics for making steak is to just marinate it with olive oil on both sides, before putting the salt and pepper on. The layer of oil is to stop the salt from drying the meat out before you cook it (or so I believe). You just need to let it marinate for a few minutes (which I did to prep the salad) before putting it into a hot pan to cook. You only need to flip the meat once (four times on a griddle, to get the grid like marks) to cook it through. You know it’s done through experience, when you press against the meat and you know how firm you want it to be (the firmer it is, the more cooked the meat is).

Take the steak off the pan and let it rest on a plate for a few minutes to let the juices settle in the meat. Otherwise if you were to cut it now, all the juices will come out and towards the end of it, you will get a dry piece of steak.

So the picture was my dinner. Downed with a nice bottle of chilled beer. Heh.

* * *

Now about the mishap. Not needing to inject too much drama to it, I just decided to go out for lunch today, and while driving back to work, got hit from the back. The driver behind wasn’t paying attention as we had just started moving from a traffic light. The impact didn’t feel that strong but my rear bumper has semi caved in, exposing the exhaust pipe at the bottom.

Was surprisingly calm at the time, and was shaking less than I normally would under a stressful situation such as this. Anyway, need to make a police report in the morning (tried doing it this evening but something was happening at the station and I couldn’t wait for the police to resolve it) and call up the insurance company again.

It’s 3 years since I got my car, and other than a self inflicted pillar scrape, I haven’t done anything serious to it. Oh well, fortunately no one got hurt, now it’s just all the paperwork to get everything back the way it was. Heh, there’s going to be a few headaches here and there, hopefully things will resolve themselves.

The Busy Week

★ Posted on at 06:14 pm ★

wine!

It was the Melbourne Wine Festival along the Yarra River on Saturday. Vyanne, Jerome and I went to sample the various wines. It’s sort of our annual ritual, where Jerome and I would go from the Arts Centre end all the way to the other side of South Bank

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Been wanting to blog a while now, but always seem getting caught up in doing other things. Had the wine sampling on Sunday, then stayed up late to watch the exhilarating match between Manchester United and Liverpool. Was only supposed to watch the first half but at 1-1, I couldn’t resist staying up to finish the game, with the match winning goal from Park Ji Sung’s courageous header. Monday night was over at friend’s place playing Catan, which is a boardgame that has trading, backstabbing and other fun elements. Tuesday night was out at Jacques Reymond having the Amazon special which was part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. Wednesday night studied a little, did some errands and watched some television.

Yes it’s like a regurgitation of what I did over the week, but it’s been a more eventful week for me. I was feeling restless at work, but have recently found some other side projects to keep me busy. I like putting two and two together and figuring out the puzzle that is accounting, but maybe things get a little stagnant at times and I badly crave for change. Heh, been wanting to dig out that résumé and just updating it a little.

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Today is Thursday and feeling a little burnt out. I felt energetic all week long and just today after work, I wanted to just switch off. All the frustration at work has sort of sparked me to do be a little more decisive and just get on with things. Heh, time to get moving again.