It's been a while

To put it simply, I've been busy these days. Looking for summer internship, chasing after my professors to schedule my research, thinking of honors class projects to be done this semester, working part time at a cafetaria, club meetings and activities... Whew!

And I just had an exam yesterday, and there is going to be another exam tomorrow.

Enough complaints! Now, time for food! Luckily, I managed to cook for myself almost everyday. Saves the money, adds the experience, adds the fun!

Spicy mayo shrimps with musrhoom:

Bento preparation:

Checkered rice (plain rice and rice with furikake)


Added some fried sausages and hams

2nd bento. Fried egg + rice + mayonaisse + chili paste!

I decided to make a fruit gelatin to stack at the bottom... I need more fiber these days :P

Seafood spaghetti with vodka sauce (thanks, Bertolli!)

The healthiest food of the semester. Haha. Mixed vegetables + leek + chicken gizzard.

My Saturday breakfast! Pork wanton noodle with shrimps and mushrooms:

I used Nasoya wanton wraps. They're pretty good!

Ayam balado. Indonesian spicy chicken, cooked with my mum's recipe :D

Time for more artistic food! Peeps born out of clementine orange!

Pork rib with lotus root soup. One of my favorites!

Sliced beef and king oyster mushroom cooked in Korean galbi sauce

Okay, enough for now. Time to study!

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Summer 09 Singapore trip

Went to Singapore for 3 days to accompany my Mum's medical trip.

3 days was definitely not enough to cover all the food I've come to like in 6 years. Well, these are the few of my most favorite foods in Singapore:

Sarawak Kolo Mee



I found it when I was lurking around Toa Payoh area after church. It's quite hidden in the corner, almost next to a petshop. When I first found it, the price was still $6, but now it's raised to $10 :(

The one I ate above was in Vivocity. Indeed, the restaurant Vivo has better atmosphere because it is air-conditioned, but I still prefer eating in Kolo Mee in Toa Payoh. The noodle in Toa Payoh is more chewy and more fragrant because they use minced meat in Toa Payoh (in addition to the char siew). Also, I don't remember having fried wontons in Toa Payoh branch. In Vivo, the noodle is served with fried wontons. They're okay - they're just like normal fried wontons - but I think I'd prefer minced meat over fried wontons.

I almost always had my lunch after church there. Most of the servers speak Mandarin, and I can't speak Mandarin (but I try to speak a little bit). Since I always visited that restaurant at the same time every Sunday ordering the same dish (I always ask for pieces of abalone instead of prawns), the servers there know me well, and they always gave me extra noodles and meats.


Crystal Jade La Mien & Xiao Long Bao (Takashimaya level 4)



I like most Crystal Jade restaurants in general. I like Crystal Jade Kitchen the most. To be honest, I don't really like CJ La Mien that much, so I seldom visited this restaurant. What I love the most is the Xiao Long Bao. Compared to Din Tai Fung's xiao long bao, the xiao long bao here has the best xiao long bao skin. The skin of the xiao long bao in Din Tai Fung is too thin, so the xiao long bao often burst before I can put it on a spoon. To me, the best part about xiao long bao is the broth, so if the broth is lost, I feel that it's just the same as eating normal meat dumplings.

The xiao long bao in Crystal Jade comes in 5, while the one in Din Tai Fung comes in 8. I often eat alone (very seldom people would accompany my food trip), so the serving size in Crystal Jade is just nice for me.

Viva xiao long bao!


Prata and teh tarik



The best roti prata I have ever had was in my first year of junior college in NJC. The vendor changed after a year, and I didn't really like the new vendor as much. I'd say the one in Al-Ameen (Upper Bukit Timah Road) is also a good place to eat prata.

My favorite of all prata is cheese prata. Plain prata is nice, too, but normally I'd have to order 2 pieces because 1 piece was normally not enough to make my stomach satisfied. Some people prefer to eat prata with sugar, but I prefer to eat it with curry. Sometimes, the prata is good but the curry is not. That's why I'm a little selective about eating prata.

The one in Food Republic (Wisma Atria) was not bad in terms of both the prata and the curry. The curry is a little too thin, but it's still acceptable to me.

Teh tarik normally accompanies my prata, but it's quite regrettable that the teh tarik in Food Republic was not good. There was a strange bitter aftertaste, and somehow the bitterness 'sticks' in my throat.

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Ujung Pandang Crab

My dad brought back one tub of crabs from his business trip to Ujung Pandang (Indonesia).




These were biggest crabs I've ever eaten.




Okay, the claw/pincher is always my most favorite part. I had some difficulties trying to crack the claw. Normal crab cracker won't do. I had to use a stone pestle to crack it because it's so damn hard and thick. But a hard work comes with a big reward!



The sauce has similar taste to that of Kepiting Saus Padang, but it's a little sweeter. It tastes great with white rice or mantou. My cousin said it's quite hot, but maybe my pain receptor has been pretty much dulled, so I didn't really think that it's that hot.

The female crabs were filled with tons of crab eggs. Normally, crabs with eggs don't have much meat inside, but these female crabs from Ujung Pandang have so much meat inside the legs and the claws.

I love the crabs!


P.S: beware of your cholesterol level after you ate these crabs xD

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Mousy bread

This was what happened when I couldn't finish my bread roll but felt bad if such a beautiful roll was thrown into the garbage bin.



I don't really like bread, simply because it had been my only portable breakfast during my first six years living in a dorm. I was quite a busy person in JC, so I had to wake up really early to school. Even though it only took at most 8 minutes by feet, attending meetings at 5.30 or 6 am just means that I had to wake up latest by 5 am.

I ate too much bread that I can't make myself to eat bread when there are other options.

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Devil and Devil

It was on mangafox's front page, so I decided to try reading it. It's a completed series, and it's quite an old-styled manga. Nevertheless, it's a good one to readby Miyoshi Yuki!



===========================
Summary from Mangafox:
Above the Earth, there is a continuous battle between angels and devils. One devil in particular, Sword, has it in for a certain angel, Ios. In their 101st fight together, both are severely wounded. Not only that, but their clashing power causes the two to fall to earth. By chance, Sword finds a beaten, unconscious teenage boy nearby, and he is able to take over the human's body to save his own life.

Some time later, Sword awakens in the hospital, briefly confused about his whereabouts. The father of the body he possessed enters the room, extremely happy to see his boy Souma alive. Then the older twin brother shows up. Immediately, Sword recognizes his enemy's energy. Also nearly dead, Ios had joined with Kanna's body. Sword goes to attack Ios, but quickly realizes that the body is far weaker than his demon form, especially from being recently beaten to hell.

Since the brothers had been found heavily thrashed, their memory loss isn't that surprising. Their large change in behaviors is also explained by amnesia. As it turns out, Sword entered the body of the cliché nerd who can't run fifty meters without falling. Ios's new body is a terror, feared by all and constantly suspended from school. While the angel and devil have primary control over the bodies of the twins, reflex actions and memories of the other souls (still alive within the bodies) do appear. More importantly, the human bodies cannot handle the powers that Sword and Ios had used with ease. This a problem especially for Sword who is both over eager to use his powers and targeted by devils and angels.

===========================

The ending is pretty expected, but it's still a good ending for a 15-volume atory. I like the mangaka's sense of humor - they're idiotic, but the level of idiocy is not too exaggerated. I find some storyline development a little strange and out of the blue, but overall, I like the storyline. I like the part where Sword was doing good deeds while he was actually planning to do evil things, and gradually he turned out to be a good person. Um, well, not a really good person, but... he has his good points. Yep.

And of course, fighting scenes! Clash of swords and fists! Sexy girls! Uhh... no, I mean, girls who are not as annoying as other kyaa-kyaa-useless idiot girls commonly found in many manga/anime. Heheh. Sorry, I'm not a big fan of those type of idiot girls.

My rating: 4.89/5.0

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Boredom during work

I managed to cram my lunch time working on this:


Okay, damn, it wasn't supposed to be like this. I only made the silhouette of Cloud's head up till the neck, and then suddenly I became too lazy to draw his torso. I wanted to create some borders around him, but ended up using the wrong preset brush because I was too lazy to draw it manually, and... Cloud's wearing a feathery Chocobo costume! =.=;

Cloud, I'm so sorry I turned you into a disgrace.


Well, it's supposed to be like this:


It's unfinished. But, yeah, it's supposed to be like this... In the end I used a normal brush to draw those details manually. My right index finger was kinda burned by my laptop's touch pad. My laptop gets heated pretty easily nowadays.

Oh well. It's quite fun to draw this without a tablet pen xD

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Firefox vs IE

I know, it's a boring old topic.

I'm bringing this up because I was somehow reminded of the problems with my HTML designs. I took a look at my private blog with interactive sushi design today. It doesn't look like it should in Firefox - everything became aligned to the left, even though I set it to the center. It looks perfectly normal in IE, though. As the designer, I feel very unsatisfied with this, although I tried my best to overlook it.

But after using Firefox for a year, I grew liking to it. I like customizable things better. Firefox add-ons are the most favorite features to me. I like the new Persona, which allows you to set a theme to the browser. IE... Well, certainly, it can be customized, but it's not as pretty and as easy as Firefox. Honestly, IE 8 looks boring to me.

In addition to that, downloading is more organized in Firefox. I like the idea where Firefox organized all the downloaded contents into one window, in contrast to IE, which causes tons of windows to appear as you download (well, they're not tons - I'm exaggerating it).

As far as safety is concerned, I'm not too sure which one is safer. My laptop was attacked by 14 malicious trojan worms before it crashed, and that happened when I was using Firefox.

So, Firefox vs IE? My choice is Firefox.

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