X'mas 2008

Well, first of all, Merry Christmas! I know it's late by 2 days, but nonetheless I should at least write something about Christmas.

I didn't send and receive lots of Christmas messages this Christmas because not everyone knows that I'm back at home and am still using the old cellphone number. I feel like I really should send them at least a text message, but... yeah, I didn't do it this year.

Perhaps being months apart with so little contact loosen the urgency to send greetings.

On the other hand.. I received 3 Christmas cards from my friends this year. Yay :)

I was ill from Dec 23-24. I was still sick on 25th, but I felt slightly better. And on 26th, I kinda worked since morning to prepare for a huge Christmas party at my house. About 60 people came yesterday. Whew. Felt tired and hot, but nonetheless fun because my gaming partners (my dear cousins!) came over!

Met an annoying person whom I'd never met before. She is... extraordinarily impolite even though I kinda know that she didn't mean it in the mean way (meaning that she's probably joking). Still, her attitude last night was outrageous enough to make 6 people unconsciously shared the same thoughts: she's annoying.

Anyway~

I have a really bad sore throat today. Ergh.

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No more finals!

I only have 1 "true" final exam, so I'm done for this semester!

My mum told me to call JAL and ask for earlier flights, and I got them! I just changed my bus ticket to O'Hare, paying $10 cancellation fee. But going back earlier by 3 days is worth $10!

Psych 100 final exam wasn't as hard as I expected. At least I find that the questions in the workbook are much more demanding. One thing I love about psych exams is that they always give out funny questions, and they made me laugh in the middle of the exam. At least they alleviate my exam anxiety by a little bit.

I didn't spend as much time studying for psych exam, which made me somehow worried. On Saturday, Julie (my roommate) started reading Hana Kimi, and because of that, I began reading it too! And I couldn't stop! I read the entire series (143 chapters) on that particular day. Oh gosh. And I didn't do much on Friday either. I watched When The Earth Stood Still (which I mistakenly thought was "When The Earth Stopped"). Not a really good movie; I slept while watching it. I was sleepy to begin with. LOL.

I don't know what to buy for souvenirs... Everything in America is so expensive. The cheapest keychain was around $4.65, excluding tax. And it's not aesthetically pleasant. Urgh. Might as well buy something from Japan when I transit later...

Anyway, I had a weird dream last night. Perhaps it's because I read too much Hana Kimi (I even re-read some of the chapters on Sunday).

There was a girl (I don't know who, but she's my best friend in my dream anyway) who ran away from her parent's match-making plan. She then somehow got along with a boy (whom I seemed to know very well, but apparently he's just another character I created in my dream), and they planned to get married! I don't know why, but later on she went back to her parent's place and then saw the match-making photo. Oh gosh, their parents were trying to match-make her with the boy she likes! So it should be a happy ending... not. Somehow her parents changed their mind because there's a rich/famous/seemingly powerful guy who liked their daughter, and he's a... monster. Maybe. He has such a pale face, as pale as paper. He was sitting in front of his desk, and his face blended very well with the mountain of papers stacked on his desk. Eew. It was freaky. His facial features somehow appeared to be black in color. Aaahh....!! So freaky!!

But I guess I know why. I've been studying psych too much yesterday, and there was a chapter on sensation and perception. I guess I was paying too much attention to lateral inhibition, which is responsible for the contrast of black and white in our eyes. Yes, that must be it. LOL.

Anyways.. yeah, she was kind of dragged to the white man's castle/mansion/dungeon (?), and I came to rescue her. Yes, I took the role of the boy she likes. I don't know where the boy went after the white guy took her away. And... I heard beepings.

It was my alarm clock. Darn.

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Yet another commemoration!

I love this semester. I have 3 courses with similar policy: get an A or A+ (whenever applicable) before the finals, and you're exempted from the finals.

So, yeah, I skipped 3 finals this semester, leaving me with one final exam next Monday.




I love the last line:
Do you have to take the final?: NO.

Happy :)

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Evil Laughs

It started because I watched Code Geass, and I spread the addiction virus to my roommate.

1st rank on my list: Lelouch from Code Geass. He ROCKS! Well, this is EXTREMELY AMUSING. Try watching this:


I extracted the audio from the video using Vixy, and both my roommate and I made this our MORNING WAKE UP ALARM TONE. Woo-hoo! I bet I'm gonna stay asleep having nightmares instead of waking up. LOL.

This is how a person snapped out of his mind would laugh:



Seriously, Lelouch's voice dubber (a.k.a. seiyuu) Fukuyama Jun is terrific! His laughs give me chills!

Here's a transformation from normal, happy-life laughs to... sinister, psycho, evil laugh of Yagami Raito from Death Note (anime). LOL.



And someone made a techno version of this sinister laughter.



Which turns out to be pretty... cool?

This is... creepy. Very. Very very very creepy. If you don't have the guts to watch gory, disturbing scenes, don't watch this. I don't even know the title of this anime, but... yeah, I don't think I'll ever watch it.



And the last one is Prince Laharl from Disgaea. Alf sort of recommended me to check it out.

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Another Commemoration

Gehh. Too small. You have to click the picture to see the bigger version!

Before the grade can possibly be destroyed by the final exam next Monday, I'm gonna paste a screen shot of my psych grade. Hehehe.

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Slippery time

Snow on the ground = beautiful
Ice on the ground = hateful

Went for a work out today because it's warm. Yay.

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Awesome Assignment!

Just to commemorate. LOL.

50/50.

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Fools in Snow

I self-declare that I was a member of F4 (Fools 4 / Freshmen 4 / Freak 4 / whatever... we're not Flower 4 or Fantastic 4 :P)



When everyone was desperately trying to be home as soon as possible, we were standing in the middle of the snow storm, taking photo.






P.S: I love my coat and my hat!



Mogi + Andrew




Found some ice sticks underneath cars. So childish... tsk tsk :P




Snowball fight! I had it in Korea... my hand froze but it was fun!












An elf and two hobbits? Ahahaha...




Cold but beautiful winter. The snow disappeared after the rain today. Well, it makes the air warmer, but... the snow on the ground is now gone. For now...

:P

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More from Thanksgiving :)

Before start posiyng pictures of the dishes again, I want to post a picture of me with my red coat that I like so much :)



A self portrait of myself. Well, there was practically no one on the streets of Urbana on Thanksgiving day. I had the streets to myself. I could even try to stand in the middle of the road for a more than 15 seconds without getting afraid that a car would hit me!

Well, these are the photos of the "dead" town :)



The view I see every Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays:


And this is the Alma Mater statue of my college. The effects of acidic rain makes the facial expressions a bit scary :P



Okay, food time!


Shrimp Chap Cay! Unknown green vegetables with bean sprouts and mushroom slices, and shrimps!



Itadakimasu!

Next, the food I ate on Sunday. I didn't want to make something complicated, so I thought of making pasta. I tried mixing half-and-half milk with butter and tomato, hoping to make a cream of tomato, but... I used too much milk, and somehow there was a raw taste of tomatoes :( Didn't taste so nice.



And because I poured too much milk, the sauce was very watery. Nyahh. Initially it tasted good. I regretted adding more milk to it :(

Discovered another way to present bananas! Peel 1/6 part of the banana skin, and pull the skin wide open so it looks like a sheet. Then cut the bananas!

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Baked Rice with Egg

Made something out of the blue again. Was actually inspired by the baked fish.



Well... I forgot to add the tomatoes. Hmph. I totally forgot of its existence in the bottom compartment of the fridge. Because of that, I feel that "something's missing". I used hams, slices of red peppers and sharp cheddar cheese. And a home made white sauce which has too much salt in it. You know, I don't really like the taste of the salt they frequently use here in the US (the brand is called Morton Salt). Yes, it's more fine, unlike the coarse granule salt I used in Indonesia or Singapore. Again, it feels like "something's missing". It's just a salt, but... I don't know, it just doesn't taste nice. Hmm :(

Anyway, I discovered that if you bake strong cheddar cheese, part of it will become watery. That can be a nice sauce for baked rice :)

And baked eggs taste weird. It's like eating a crisp of egg - the same feeling when I tried to cook fried eggs using microwave.

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After Thanksgiving

Lonely? No problemo! I enjoyed having a personal lab session in my own kitchen!

Had a nice Miso Ramen with shrimp for breakfast. Normally people don't use shrimps for miso ramen - more often than not, I always eat miso ramen with chashu (sliced pork). LOL. But I DON'T HAVE THE INGREDIENTS!! I just made up something with anything left in my fridge. Haha.



Yummy~

Okay, and for lunch, I made something simple that my mum used to cook for me whenever I'm home: steamed ground pork filled into big, red chillis!

They don't have the same type of red chillis here, so I used long peppers instead. Unlike the big chilis I use in Indonesia, the big peppers have very little seeds inside, so there's not much of cleaning the inside :)




But, I'm too lazy to take out the steamer, so I decided to put it in microwave instead.


Doesn't look really appealing, so I sprinkled some spring onions (or onion greens, as people would say it here).


The red peppers were actually not bad, but the sweet taste makes it different from the original. And using microwave to steam it was actually not a good idea. Unlike the steamed version, the meat taste somehow hard. It's not tough, but it's far inferior compared to steamed one.

Next, desserts!

I have nothing but yogurt and strawberries left in the fridge, so I just made "fruit yogurt". LOL. But I figure that doing that is very boring, so I added chocolate dip and condensed milk and cereals. Hohoho...


This is the 3rd layer of the dessert. The first layer was diced strawberries. The second one was strawberry yogurt. I sliced the strawberry thinly for the 3rd layer. Then I added a bit of chocolate dip over the 3rd layer strawberries and some bits of cereals before I added another layer of blueberry yogurt.

These are the yogurts that I used:


Yeah, I was kinda addicted to Activia. It tastes great! Not sure about the laxative effect they promote in their commercials, though.



The reason why I used this cereal is because my brother bought it, and he doesn't like it. Knowing him, he'd probably throw it away later. Knowing me who doesn't like food to be wasted, I used it in my dessert experiments. And, yeah, those are the condensed milk and the chocolate fruit dip I was talking about.

So this is the side view. It's like seeing a layer of purple and pink stuffs.


And this is the top view:



Hoho... and this set became my lunch menu on Black Friday!

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