A Wonderful Pre Christmas Eve Dinner :)

A big thank you and a very Merry Christmas to the people at TGIF and Nuffnang for the sponsored pre-Christmas eve dinner.

I have finally decided to spend that RM100 gift voucher from TGIF and Nuffnang yesterday with my 2 favorite people..Miow Miow and Tobiyama :).



We selected the TGIF at Subang Parade as that was where the winning post was done. When we first got there... I made sure that I was allowed to used the voucher.. as it was the eve to the eve of a public holiday. We were assured that we could.. so..with no holds barred.. we ordered a wonderful meal.

For starters, we ordered a Friday's Mushroom (we had a 2nd serve later as it was so yummy), Friday's Onion Rings and the Ultimate Nachos.







I didn't want mains as the starters were quite a lot. But Miow Miow and Tobiyama ordered a Tossed Tomato Basil Chicken Pasta and a Garlic Marinated Grilled Lamb Chops respectively.






I was ladylike enough to wait for them to finish eating before I ordered what I really wanted... the Friday's Sundae...oooo yummmmy. The waiter was smart...he brought 3 spoons.. else I would have finished the entire Sundae myself.



Washed all that down with 2 iced lemon tea and a Coke Light..bottomless :).

The total bill came up to only RM63.50... heehee..coz TGIF & Nuffnang paid the other RM100....burrrrppp!.

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Sometimes .... lack of equipment may be the cause....

Do you remember those horrible looking muffins I did some time back? I was thinking.. was I that lousy a baker or was it the oven? I was discussing this with a girlfriend Siva a couple of weeks ago. She was saying that she does not have an oven at home and asked me for my opinion on what oven would I recommend to her.

I told her that for people like me, all I had was an el-cheepo type oven which costs no more than RM200... no fan, just heating elements. But the turnout could be like these...




So, yesterday, I decided to test my theory that sometimes an oven does maketh great cookies, muffins and cakes. I decided to try to make muffins again but this time with a slightly more expensive oven...the RM400 plus one which comes with a fan. The result was this. It is a little better than the previous batch...mmm...still far far from how a good muffin should look like....could it be due to the baker (mua)?


Didn't help even when I took a picture of the muffins under a different light haha



I see all those lovely cookies and cakes done by babe_kl. I know she is a very good baker and cook and she does have better equipment to work with. Mmm maybe one day I can get babe-kl to invite me to her place to use her kitchen. Then once and for all.. I will know what category of a baker I am :p

pssssstt... I want to claim to be able to make muffins like these lah... :)

from babe_kl's blog



Or these type of muffins from Fotosearch.com



and

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A Homemade Lunch

I so wanted to go shopping yesterday but since it was a holiday.. woke up rather late.. and by the time i did the morning prayers plus a bit a house chores, it was almost noon. Decided not to go out just yet. I was imagining the long line of cars trying to get into the various shopping malls.

Anyway, I opened up the fridge to see what there was in there. Saw some steaks that was going to expire by this weekend. Took 2 pieces out and some broccoli out from the fridge, a can of Campbell's soup from the larder and some potatoes.



Before I started cooking, I went and googled the web for some brown sauce recipe. Found one for the Basic Brown Sauce and the other under Chinese Brown Sauce.

Mmm.. they both sounded a little complicated... so I cheated. I made sure that when I pan fried the steak, I kept most of the juice from the steak. After they were done, I just added water, soya sauce, sugar and flour to make the gravy. Heehee..ok lah.. not the real stuff but I think good enough for home-cooked food.

This is the nice yummy Campbell Soup

The 2 pieces of steak with broccoli and potatoes

I did this up as a dish for vegetarians...mashed eggs, broccoli, potatoes and toasts.

Bon appetite :)

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Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder

The definition of cute as per dictionary.com is "attractive, esp. in a dainty way; pleasingly pretty: a cute child; a cute little apartment". But some of my friends defined cute as "attractive but ugly"... and this definition sure applies to this animal.

Was checking out the Sun2Surf Pix Gallery 2007 when I stumbled on this very interesting photograph.



Mole (Dec 18, 2007): The Axolotl ('Ambystoma mexicanum') is the best-known of the Mexican neotenic mole salamanders belonging to the Tiger Salamander complex, at the Friedrich-Schiller-Univerity of Jena, Germany, today. Larvae of this species fail to undergo metamorphosis, so the adults remain aquatic and gilled, which is the reason the scientists breed them. So they can examin the development of cells from the early embryo phase. The Axolotl also have the ability to let lost extremities grow again. - EPA

When I saw it...I said "awwwww....so cute". Would it make a nice little friend for Keenu and Stripey (my little sugies)? So, I went to google for more information on this little fella.



Then I saw its side profile. They don't call him a walking fish for nothing...eeeekkk.. I've changed my mind. I don't think I want him as a pet.


To read more about these walking fish, click here and here.

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Nearly burnt the house down last nite :(

My precious Guru H.E. Tsem Tulku Rinpoche is unwell again.. and this time is as serious as the last. We all received sms-es and emails requesting us to do prayers and light tea candles for him. The magic number to offer was 50. By the time I got back, ate dinner and washed up, it must have been close to 11pm. I was not going to light 50 candles outside the house and have the neighbors watch me behind their curtains.. thinking.. "this woman is either a nut case... an arsonist wannabe.. or worst..doing fishy voodoo-vy stuff..."

I decided that it would be better to do it inside the house where I could also keep an eye on the candles until they go out. I was not going to sit outside the house ... all by myself.. no, that is not so bad.. what if other "beings" decided to join me at my little mini bonfire. So, I got me this (which I thought was a damn sturdy) tray which I bought from Ikea and lay 50 tea candles atop it. Place this in front of Lord Dharmapala Setrap in my Tara Room inside the house and began my prayers.



20mins into prayers...sniff..sniff.. something sure does not smell right. Wah.. the tiny tea candles which was aligned in straight lines now seemed to be doing a wavy formation...mmmm.....what's that.... water on the tray... no... it was melted wax.

Yikes.... the tray looked like it was melting....

I was in the middle of a chant so decided to just shove a metal tray beneath the plastic one and continued with my praying... thinking.. just a little bit of wax what..

Waaaahhh...the flames from the tea candle seem to have grown bigger.. coz they were burning off a bigger pool of wax now...waaaahhh...panic.

Did something only a stupid doink will do.. pour tea over the flames... arrrrgghhh the flames jumped up like those in the kwei teow hawker's stove. Luckily the brain managed to engage in the right gear... ran to the toilet with a tea towel, made it wet it and placed it over the flames...ssssssssssssssssssss

That was a close call. The whole room was choked full with smoke.. opened all the windows and switched on the fan full blast. Sat down.. finished my prayers.

By the time I finished cleaning up... coz there was wax and water all over the floor...I only managed to get to sleep at 2am... served me right for being so stupid.



This morning.. a friend KK told me "remember...any chemical....never put water"...now I know...:(

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Alien vs Predator 2

Alien vs Predator 2...so sorry folks.. I am not doing a review or a writeup about the sequel.. in fact...I have just feasted on my yummy breakfast which was inside this box. Thanks to JW, I had fusion food for breakfast this morning... a sweet potato (from Mr Sweet Potato at MidValley) and 2 lovely doughnuts from Big Apple Donuts&Coffee. I am going to miss the doughnuts...opps.. I mean JW when she leaves the company (sob).





Going......


Going......

Gone!


It was a totally awesome and delicious breakfast...burrrpp!.. So, what's for lunch? :p

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Nuffnang's ads on my PC... gotta see to believe...

I think with the exception of Codename: Dreams and My Random Thoughts .. nobody believes me or gives a crap to what I am talking about when I keep bitching about my PC and the display of Nuffnang's ads. Everybody sees them perfectly and so do I... on the PC at home. But when I come to office and switch to the blogs at the office PC ... this is what I get...

This my blog (note the white patch where Nuffnang's ad is supposed to be)



This is A Tale of Two Superheroes' blog (their's slightly better than mine.. got one baby miniature display there heehee)




This is the blog of http://bunchofplayer.blogspot.com/ (this blog has 2 ads from Nuffnang but notice that one displayed the ad but the other one is also a white patch)


By the way, nobody has yet managed to replicate this phenomena on their desktops or laptops... neither can I do it at the PC at home ... still figuring..(scratching head).

Complete your shopping list whilst doing a bit of charity

Click here for details

Hey.. since everybody is in this shopping mood and I know that most who are not exactly Christians will also be celebrating Christmas by presents exchange, why not do your shopping and also play a small part in bringing a little cheer to the orphans.

The Budimas Year-End Charity Bazaar is on today and on Wednesday. This charity bazaar is sponsored by the The Budimas Charitable Foundation, in support of orphanage homes under their sponsorship. At the bazaar, you'll find a variety of stuff, ranging from clothes and accessories, to food, handicrafts and even temporary tattoos! A portion of all proceeds will be go to the foundation

Click here for details

It'll be great if everyone could spare a little thought and a little money for those who needs it, especially now when we are in the season of giving and sharing.

The venue of the bazaar is as stated in the brochure, at the lobby of Menara MAA (located at 12 Jalan Dewan Bahasa, 50460 Kuala Lumpur). The location map of Menara MAA here, via Streetdirectory.

Budimas currently provides sponsorship for the following orphanages:

Asrama Damai Rumah Anak-Anak Yatim
Kg. Damai, Kuang, Selangor

Bethesda Children’s Mission Home
Batu 9 Cheras, Kajang, Selangor

Good Samaritan Home
Klang, Selangor

Precious Gift Home
Ipoh, Perak

Hannah Home
Ipoh, Perak

The Children’s Protection Society (CPS)
Penang

Persekutuan Kebajikan Anak-anak Yatim Islam (Perempuan)
Penang

Pondok Penyayang Raudhah
Gombak, Selangor

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How to Cross the Road Safely

Have you ever caught the advertisements on the radio lately on how to cross a road safely? As I listened to the advices, I wondered to myself, how applicable and "safe" are they? There have been several (I think) but there are two which I felt that I needed to comment on.

The first one talked about how suicidal it was to cross half a road first, stand in the middle of the 2-way road whilst waiting for the traffic to clear, before crossing to the other side. Yeah.. they mentioned that it was suicidal to do that. But wait a minute. Have they tried crossing Jalan P. Ramlee during a working day? There is no way you can make it across to the other side of the road in one "dash". Now, that would either be really suicidal or you can opt to stand there and wait until the cows came home just to cross to the other side for lunch. Sure, there is a set of traffic lights somewhere but this also takes blinking long to change for the pedestrians. It seems that this set of traffic lights has been designed to favor drivers on the road. With only 1 hour to eat lunch, do some banking (now that banks are not opened Saturdays) and a mite of shopping, no choice but to attempt to cross the road without the help of the (no help at all) set of traffic lights.

This is followed on by the next advertisement where a kid tells her dad (who apparently has poor vision) to stop looking left and right and left...but just take it easy and cross at the zebra-crossings. Buahaha.. now that is suicidal. Firstly.. are we really sure that our Malaysian drivers (most anyway) knows what is a zebra crossing, what it means and more importantly, whilst they are busy talking on their handphones or yakking with their passengers did see those stripes painted on the road. Then we also have plenty of selectively "vision-impaired" drivers who at times miss any lines drawn on our roads, be it a zebra-crossing, yellow boxes, bold yellow lines which denotes no parking and also yeah.. even double solid lines for strictly no overtaking. Then there are those (I am sure that there are plenty around) who chooses to rev their engines and to pick up speed just because they know that you intend to cross the road... zebra or no zebra....now that really sounds suicidal to me.

See, if one knew the mentality of our Malaysia Boleh drivers, there is really no safe way to cross our Malaysian roads. It is really and truly cross at your own risk. Too bad our KL infrastructure is so unlike Singapore... where one need never surface above ground level at Orchard Road... I think that is so neat :).

So, what is my safe way to crossing the roads? Me.... i follow a bunch of people crossing the road and I try to stand in the middle of the bunch....more buffer for me hahaha (kiasee)

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Numerologist.... what does this number mean??

Quick quick.. what does this number mean??

I am so happy to see this number.. and it is all thanks to my old friends, new friends and soon to be friends.. all those who have dropped in and who will continue to drop in... I would like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas in advance!!

Enya - We Wish You a Merry Christmas

Gilbert O'Sullivan - Christmas Song

(I like this one)London Gay Men Chorus - Christmas Medley

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It is snowing .... at the Curve...

I was at The Curve last night for dinner. There were so many people there and we wanted to eat at Sakae Sushi and the reason was not that it's sushi is more yummy than the other fast food sushi places but because we wanted to accumulate RM500 worth of receipts within 3 months to get the VIP card. And what do we get with the VIP card? To eat more sushi with a 10% discount....geez.. the things I do with some people :p.

Anyway, there was a long line outside Sakae Sushi. We were the 6th in line to go in...sure gave me a real Singapore type of feeling... In Singapore, your want to eat.. you gotta queue.

By the time we finished eating, we decided to go down to the flea market and suddenly there was this sound of cheering. Being the ever KPC, I quickly walked towards the crowd and that was when I saw it.... it was snowing.... at the Curve.. in the middle of a 27degrees celcius nite.



From afar, I could already see the kids and the young at heart really enjoying the falling "snow".. actually it was soapy foam pumped up from a mobile machine on the 1st floor. Some had their whole head completely covered by the foam. I guess when they got back, all they had to do was add water to their hair and they can do a quick shampoo already.



The atmosphere was really fantastic. I sure had a nice christmasy feel last night. Yes.. the season of christmas is really here at The Curve.

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Why do you look like a Geek?

Why is it that when you attempt to take your own photo, either with a camera or a camera phone, you always turned out looking like a Geek.. or looking slightly better than Goofy? I asked my friend this question yesterday and the blardy idiot replied "Hey.. you look goofy what..even if you get the best photographer to take a shot of you". SMACK!



Honestly. I must admit the photo is much better (ok lah.. in my case.. slightly better) when someone else takes the photo. But I managed to solve the problem when I realized that if you had those 3G phones and you opt to use the secondary camera, at least you can position yourself a bit better before taking the shot. However, I think the pixel for the secondary camera is much much lower.. perhaps even in the range of 0.03 mega pixel or something like that..(actually I have no idea..just guessing).


So, when one of the HH (shhhhh.. HeadHunters) called the other day for me to send in a photo of myself, I decided to take a photo of myself ... by myself. Sent the photo over to him via MMS. 5 minutes later...he replied "Hey.. stop goofing around. This picture of Frankenstein's sister is you meh?"...:(

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Earning extra money to help with the rent

I was at Kechara Arts Department last night to help out as a volunteer and was chatting with the Presidents of the Department. We were throwing around ideas on how and what we can do to collect some funds to help with the rent and the maintenance of the Department. It was almost midnight when I left but I could not help thinking that there must be some projects that we can do which can help generate funds for the running and operating costs of Kechara Arts Department. At the moment, all who are “working” at Kechara Arts Department are not receiving any stipends. Everyone there is a volunteer. The running costs will mainly be for utilities such as rental electricity and water. But with the recent launching of the Department, the books are now in a very cheery X’massy RED but that is to be expected.

There are quite a lot of suggestions that I found online and some included: -

1. Having a garage sale. This is actually quite a good idea. We can make request for people to donate items like books, CDs, unused sports or electronic equipment, novelty items. Clothing can an item too but I would rather not. I have know many people who dump even their “holiest” under garments to charity organizations in the name of being charitable.

2. Selling items on the internet. Being an Arts Department, we could sell t-shirts, trinkets and lots of stuff on-line.

3. Have a bake-sale. As the festive seasons of Christmas and New Year are just round the corner, we could organized for people to bake cakes and cookies, or kuehs or sponsor Secret Recipe Cakes (I’ll be first in line to buy). These can be packaged and sold in nice jars or boxes.


4. Organize a car wash.. have guys go topless and wearing skimpy shorts… nah.. that might not work..haha… then again maybe it might.. depends on who is in the skimpy shorts I reckon.

5. Organize mini-classes for children and young adults (or older adults who are forever young at heart) for :-

a. Press Flowers
b. Candle Making
c. Plaster painting
d. Holiday Greeting Cards
e. Pasta Jewelry
f. Etc etc

I am having brain constipation at the moment. Cannot think of anything else. If anyone can help with any ideas, do let me know. And no suggestion is too wild or ridiculous. For all we know… it might lead to something bigger… something that I might leave my day job for. Thanks in advance 

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What’s a Viewty?

I am still having that problem with my computer at the office. Somehow, it is not able to display the ads on my page or some of the other bloggers' pages too. However, I can view them perfectly from the computer at home. Anyway, a friend on MSN yesterday asked me, what is that Viewty thingy on your blog? Hmmm... I can't see nothing but a white patch on my blog where the ad is supposed to be sitting. Luckily I knew what she was asking coz another friend showed me the pamphlet the other day.

Viewty is actually a rather cool mobile phone from LG which did away with the physical alphanumeric keypad and replaced it with a large 3in 240 x 400pixel touch-sensitive screen, thus completely hiding any sign that it’s even a mobile phone when in digital camera mode. Looks rather impressive. In fact, there is a write-up of this phone in todays InTech.



This phone has a playback capability which allows it to play in slow motion. "This is great for analyzing your golf swing, ....."... Ha Ha.. I think this came 3 years too late.. I've already hung up my golf clubs.

I went to their website this morning to check out Viewty. Actually, it is rather impressive.. the camera bit. I might be tempted as I really need a good camera now that I have graduated from a "kindergarten" blogger to a "primary school level" blogger ;)

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Mmmm.... when you give into your cravings...

Still having some food cravings left, despite wolfing down a plate of nasi lemak down for lunch. Apart from the thoughts of durians that the Two Superheroes planted inside my brain, I was still thinking very much of the Secret Recipe's Cakes that I would have bought if it was not raining that day, if there was a Secret Recipe outlet which was in the promotion outlet-list nearer my office, if I was not stuck in a 2 hr jam getting home that evening... and on and on ... the excuses.

Since it was drizzling lightly after lunch and I was not able to get back to the office without getting rather damp after that, decided to convince JW to accompany me to the Secret Recipe outlet at the Weld. To satisfy the cravings and the feeling of having been cheated out of the damn good deal of a buy 1 cake and get the 2nd for free...... I decided to get a 1 + 1 promotion.. which in this case was a buy 1 slice and pay for the 2nd slice too, haha.. i order my favourite Oreo Cheese and to feel a little less guilty, I order the sugar free chocolate as the 2nd slice. Order a latte for JW and I just took warm water... healthier and less fattening...buahahaha.

Wow.. the Oreo Cheese was heavenly. JW and I ate gobbled it down before I could even remember to take a photo of it. So, have to go borrow a photo from Sato's photopages

Oreo Cheesecake from Secret Recipe

The 2nd piece was not that great.. rather dry and a whole world of difference compared to the Oreo...so, not even bothered to take a photo of that ... even though we left about 1/2 a slice untouched.

Was asking JW if she had the recipe for the Oreo Cheesecake. She said "No idea". Should have remembered... she is a breakfast type of cook only... she said so herself wor.

The rain was still drizzling but we managed to catch a ride with a colleague back to the office. Since babe was not around, I quickly googled for Oreo cheesecakes and i found a goldmine. Going to safe these pages and then "salivate" over my keyboard whenever my cheesecake cravings surfaces.


Robbie's Recipes : Oreo Cheesecake

Chocolate Cheesecake + Oreos = Indulge!

JJ In Da House : Baked Frozen Oreo Cheesecake

mmm... there is still the durian craving though.......Two Superheroes....

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