Food can definitely kill the Monday blues :)

The days flies by at such speed that the weekend was over in a blink of an eye and Monday is here again :(. Sigh.. as I was driving to work this morning, I was like slowly working out of my sleepiness when an sms arrived. It read "...good morning 2u. i baked a cheesecake 4u. I'm on my way to the office now. when I reach, I'll sms u". The message was from my gal pal Sue. She has a blog but cannot be called a blogger yet as there is nothing in her blog presently. She tells me..."one day lah... when I feel the inspiration, I will post my recipes there".

Wah, who wouldn't perk up after such a message like that :). Going at the max of 110kph on the highway, I better make sure I arrived before the cake :). I managed to reach the office a good 10 minutes before Sue arrived with the cake. Actually, it was more than just cheesecake, I got some chiffon cake too. The aroma from them cakes were heavenly. Must make Sue send me her recipe for the cheesecake soon.




As I was sitting down at my desk admiring the cakes, my MSN window popped up and babe popped up. After the normal good morning and stuff, she said "later I pass you some cupcakes"...wah liow.. cupcakes. I must have died and ended up in cake heaven lah. So excited about the cuppies as babe is such a great baker. About half an over, a colleague came down bearing the cuppies offerings from babe. They looked so inviting.

The top ones are carrot cuppies and the bottom two are citrus yoghurt cuppies. Babe promised to post the recipe up so I will wait for them impatiently :)

I have already selected the 2 that I am eating during tea break later :)


Thanks sue and babe for those yummy cakes... I love cakes, and muffins, and cuppies and I could go on and on.

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American Idol 7th Season ...... and the winner is ...David ....

Ha Ha.. I am not really a fan of American Idols but I just cannot help doing this post. Madam Zorra predicted that David Cook will face lots of unfavorable stars on the day of the competition, which happens to be the 1st day of the month of Gemini and David Archuleta is most likely to breeze through the competition. This morning, a radio DJ also predicted David A to run away with the top spot as she thought David C's choice of songs were not that great.

The judges comments were...

"In the final round, Cook came out with "The World I Know" by Collective Soul. Cowell pronounced that it was "completely and utterly the wrong song choice for the night." Archuleta performed John Lennon's "Imagine". "You came out here tonight to win, and what we have witnessed is a knock out," said the American Idol's prickly judge Cowell.

Randy Jackson proclaimed, "The best singer of season 7 is right there" after Archuleta sang John Lennon's "Imagine," that song that earlier in the competition brought him some of his best feedback."

for more, click here.

Over the radio at 10:18am..... the radio announced the winner of the American Idol Season 7 is...
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David Cook

mmmm.... true or not wor????

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When God Paints...

Received a mail from a friend this morning with lots of beautiful images in it. I love great pictures and photographs, especially if the subject matter is mother nature herself. That is one of the reasons why I keep popping into Arch Lancer's blog. I love those photographs he takes of the waterfalls. Each time I look at these photographs, it reminds me of how lovely our mother earth is and it only take Man to destroy all these beauty with his couldn't care less attitude.

Anyway, I would like to share this series of images entitled "When God Paints".

This was when God dropped his paint box. The 1st photo is a real place outside Bakersfield, California.

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Gruesome Photos of the recent Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar

Latest updated from Associated Press (8 hrs ago) read...

Heavy rains head toward cyclone-devastated Myanmar

8 hours ago

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Heavy rains and another potentially powerful storm headed toward Myanmar's cyclone-devastated delta on Wednesday. The U.N. warned that inadequate relief efforts could lead to a second wave of deaths among the estimated 2 million survivors. The International Red Cross said in a new estimate that the death toll already may be between 68,833 and 127,990......

At times, words do little to jolt our senses. We read words and we forget words. However, with pictures, they sometimes stay in our minds for a long long time. The only reason why I wanted to share this photos, albeit gruesome is just to remind us that life is fragile. We will surely and certainly die one day, only the when, where and how is unknown. These words have been spoken so many times by my Guru, Tsem Tulku Rinpoche, but not often enough as many of us still continue to channel our efforts on many things which are unimportant and trival to us in our daily lives thinking that we'll live forever and loose sight of the larger things.

These pictures were sent to me this morning and some of them are indeed are rather offensive. However, please view them (if you are up to it) with compassion and understanding on the fragility of life, if nothing else. If you do not want to view them, there is enough time to close this page before the first picture even appears.
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UNICEF - GIVE THANKS FOR WHAT WE HAVE

Today started off just like any other day for me. As it is a work day, the traffic is pretty much the same (horrendous), so, that is something definitely to complain about (bitch is actually the more appropriate word here) during lunch time. The weather last night was sizzling hot. Yet another item in the complaints department. There are boundless things that irritates , from an unintentional remark from a colleague, a friend who forgot to reply an sms, the incessant calls from the insurance agents.. sigh.

Then I opened my mails and out of the pile of good stuff, the work stuff and the junk, I found 2 very thought provoking mails from 2 different friends. The first one was a video from YouTube and the image that I saw was a little child having his meal from what I think is a rubbish pile.

UNICEF - GIVE THANKS FOR WHAT WE HAVE


(if you are unable to view the video embedded, then try clicking here)


This is an old video but I believe that we humans have very short memories. We need constant reminders lest we forget our priorities. I watched the video and remembered the Four Immeasurables (this is part of a buddhist prayer and aspiration) ...

The Four Immeasurables

May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all sentient beings never be separated from the happiness which is without suffering.
May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from both attachment and hatred, holding some close and others distant.

The second mail was filled with pictures of death. I will not post the pictures with this entry as they are rather gross. But they too serve as a reminder that death comes in many ways and death is a definite. Only the time and the manner it comes is unknown. Those photos will be rather graphic and looking at them might be totally offensive... so, you've been warned. Come back later at your own risk.

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Prince Caspian arrives tomorrow at our cinemas

I wonder if I get to see it tomorrow? and pick up the 2nd Narnian glass with the popcorn and coke :)

Evil Icing Queen....

When you do something that you really like doing, everything else seems to blur into the background. The weekend past just went like that. Of course, Saturday evening was a great time at the restaurant celebrating mothers' day with my mum. But nothing beats the time I had on Sunday night.

After a long time of not baking, suddenly, I had the inspiration to bake again..actually that is not true. I wanted to play with my butter cream decoration again and I thought that it would be a waste if I just piped the cream onto the tracing paper or plate and then just throw it all away. So, no choice, took out the flour and all the other ingredients to make some chocoloate, coffee cupcakes. No nuts, no cream cheese....just plain cake.

The last time. I think I only had about 12 cupcakes to "play" with, this time I made sure that I made enough to really have a great time with the butter cream icing. The result was 32 of these lovelies... all sitting there on the "sacrificial table" waiting for me.... the evil Icing Queen...buahaha.



I made a fresh batch of butter cream as the cupcakes were baking in the oven, so by the time I was done, the 1st batch of the cupcakes were cool enough to be "attacked".

I started with some of the designs that I did previously. Then as I have bought myself a few more pipping tips, could barely wait to see the outcome of them.


These are the results from the new pipes...



By the time I finished the first batch, there were a few spoilt ones... and no free cupcakes for guessing where those went. Down the bottomless pit of a stomach of mine.

I was done doing all of the cupcakes by 11:30pm and even with the spoilt ones done away with, I still ended with almost 28 of them...now..for the final part of the evil plan of mine...how to get rid of them...hehehe...

Send a batch of these to my favorite Superheroes......


and sent some of these to JW....


forced some on my ex-colleagues during our gathering last night...


phew...only a few more left to go... *grins

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