The Reading Room

I've read 2 books recently. I know, I really shouldn't have in the middle of my HSC but, ah well! It was too tempting. It was a nice feeling lying down on my comfy bed and reading. Haven't done it in ages!

Dead Sexy - Kathy Lette:

This is the funniest novel I've read in a while. Warning: 18+ material. It contains so much smut its unbelievable. I think the only reason I picked it up was 'cos of the sleazy title. But turns out it was actually a bit more substantial that soft-porn. Really good read! It goes from creepo reality TV to to a tropical honeymoon that starts out badly and deteriorates into a hurricane, volcanic eruption and terrorists. LMAO. That description just made it sound like the biggest load of rubbish, but it's such a fun read. Do try it ;P

About A Boy - Nick Hornby:

Yeh, they did make a movie about this one. The only reason I read this one was because the cover was cool. I know, I'm so fickle about choosing books to read! Anyway this one is about the weird relationship between a immature 36 year old man and this creepy 12 year old kid (nothing sexual between them d/w). It's so hilarious! The story is really good but the main part I loved was the weird character of the kid, Marcus. And Dead Duck Day. A MUST READ!

Mr Rat is in CUTE hands...

My eldest sister (Raidah) does this Muslim-chaplaincy thing at Westmead Hospital. She talks to the sick children and makes them feel better. It's a really noble cause I suppose. I'd like to do it someday. I'm good with children; I can make them smile. I know what they are feeling very easily. I'm like that with everyone actually; I seem to notice things other people don't notice. I like to think I'm kind-hearted and would be able to make people happy, but I dunno.

Anyway, my sister works with Mission of Hope, and she receives donations of presents, which she wraps and gives to the sick children. One of the presents was this HUGE stuffed animal, a rat from the animated film Ratatouille. It was the hugest, cutest thing ever! It had really soft fur too. I used to play with it when I studied. Haha, I know, it's not my present, but anyway.

My sister gave "my" rat away today. I felt sad. But then she showed me the kid who got it and I really didn't care anymore because the kid is SO DAMN CUTE! He's been in hospital since he was born or something (so slack) so making him happy with Mr Rat is just a small gesture of kindness. I hope he likes!

!! CUTE OVERLOAD !!

Open-House + Van SCREECHING...

I went to an open-house today. Full of Malays. I only went for the food. Socialising with Malays is just not my thing. Especially with most Malay boys my age. They're such drop-kicks and should be shot before they can reproduce. Oops. That's a bit harsh.

I hoped Rai would be there but she didn't come. That would have made it a bit more fun. Actually, maybe not. Too much gender segregation. I was stuck with my brothers talking to their friends about how much they hate "fags". I know. How manly of them. Somebody kill me please.

I couldn't take the atmosphere anymore so I went home. My mum was stuck there so she asked me to come pick her up. Lucky I have my license. I used the van. Guess what? Half-way there, when I was on the highway, the van went nuts (he's an old fella) and started screeching like crazy. I was scared. I drove really slow (like 30 in a 70 zone), got honked at, swore back at the idiots, and got there in one piece.

Mum called up NRMA. He saved us. We got home.

The End.

Britney - Piece of Me



I like it! It's got a nice catchy beat, and actually has some meaning. Some of the lines are quite interesting. Makes you feel weird about reading Perez Hilton (who I happen to dislike quite a bit). Have a listen.

What do you think?

Cake Worship...

Remember my last cake binge? Well, I just had another one. Jeez. Weightloss is not gonna happen anytime soon. Summer is coming up and I'm gonna scare everyone on the beach with me FAT BELLY! HAHA. It is so worth it. Cake is LORD!

Everyone, stop buying cakes from wherever you buy your cakes, and come to Sergio's Cake Shop (link) in Greenacre. Seriously this place sells the best cakes in the universe. Well, out of the cake's I've tried (which is QUITE A LOT let me tell you) this place tops them all. Everything is nice there. Seriously! This is the crap I bought recently:

Fruit sponge-cake layered with custard. Man! SO GOOD~!

And a KILO of these fellas, called "yo-yos". YUM!!!

Au Revoir CHEMISTRÉ!

I had my final HSC chemistry exam last Wednesday. Yes. Tragedy. It went really well, 'cept I mixed up propanol and butanol. Totally lame. Ah well. Anyway, to rub some more salt into my sadistic wound, that (on LEFT) is what the enthalpy-thingy graph is for an exothermic reaction. Damn pricks. That's just plain evil.

Hope I get 98+.

First in the state would be nice. XD.

NOOOOO! No more chem!! *Cries*.

Here are my chemistry-related posts, for old-time's sake:

Sayonara ENGRISH!

Yesterday I sat the last English exam of my life! Goodbye, oh worthy adversary! The long hours I spent analysing banal texts, the tediousities of creating beautifully flowing paragraphs and the wristache and cramps your endurance-sports of exams gave me will be sorely missed.

In a strange way, that's half true.

Let's just say I hope it went ok, and that rhymed so I feel fine, and on the 19th of December, all Hell will be torn asunder and my life will either be, most glorious or deathly free and I give up trying to rhyme, it's much to hard you see!

Anyway. During the exam I had:
  1. Tonsillitis
  2. Major headache
  3. Diarrhoea
  4. Stomach cramps
Yet I struggled away for 2 hours to finish my damn essays, my body cursing me for putting it through such anguish. "FREE ME FROM THIS TORTURE!" I cried to myself, "Release my contents!" my bowels begged. Hopefully it all pays off. *Fingers crossed*.

Slowly, slowly, a few more days until BONFIRE NIGHT!

Goodbye Huckleberry Finn! Goodbye Ovid and Wordsworth! Goodbye Charles Foster Kane! Goodbye Antony, Cleopatra and Octavius Caesar!

P.S. I think I made up like 10 words in this post...

Eid and Rendang

I know, I'm meant to be in HSC hiatus mode, but too many ideas popping in my head to report for future generations (i.e. blog about). So I thought I'd blog about Eid. I know, a bit late, but wtf who cares! Eid (or eid-ul-fitr if you wanna get fancy) is like Christmas for Muslims. Well not really, but it's our biggest religious celebration that marks the end of Ramadan and means we can eat all we want again!

Remember my Ramadan weightloss plan? Well let's just say starvation type diets (a.k.a fasting) just don't work for me, and I'm now fatter then when I started. Woohoo. Yay. Cheer.

I went to the mosque (Lakemba Mosque) in the morning wearing nice formal clothes, all handily scabbed off my brother. Sometimes it pays off being the fifth child (out of 6, mind you). It wasn't the most exciting Eid, I was too tired because everyone stayed up helping with the food.

I cooked chicken rendang!


First time ever too! Rendang is a very Malay dish; its like a coconut-ish curry. It's so rich and thick its like a liquid stroke; one taste and your arteries are GONE. But, oh, what a death. Let's see if I can remember the recipe off the top of my head...

Chicken Rendang!

INGREDIENTS:

Vegetable oil
Some chicken
(one, two?)

Onions, garlic, ginger
(the TRINITY of Asian cooking)
Lemon grass
Galangal
Tamarind paste
Chilli paste
Tumeric powder
Cumin, fennel and coriander seed powder

Dessicated cocunut
Coconut milk
Kafir-lime leaves

Salt, chicken stock, MSG, all that extra jazz.

MY SPECIAL METHOD:

Firstly, cut up the chicken into curry-style pieces (if you want you can coat the pieces in tumeric powder and salt and let them marinate for a while. I don't. LOL). Next we need to make the rendang paste, which contains the tasty flavours. In a blender (food processor, liquidator, whatever) put a few...
Ok. At this moment I am trying to type up this recipe but people are SERIOUSLY annoying me on MSN. Jeez! I like you people but I don't want to talk to you ALL THE FREAKIN TIME! And no that does not make me emo. It makes me a self-centred bastard. *Shrug*.
...peeled onions, some garlic and some ginger (I tend to use the canned versions; 'tis heaps more convenient). Chuck in a sliced stalk of lemongrass (peel off the outer layer first princess), some galangal (weirdest thing ever), a spoon of tamarind paste, chilli paste (according to how spicy you want it to be), a heaped teaspoon of the tumeric powder as well as a level teaspoon of the ground spices.

Turn the blender on and voila! Tasty paste. Add only a little bit of water if necessary to keep the blades moving. This is still a raw paste, no tasting allowed silly fools.

Now that we have the paste, we need kerisik. This is an essential ingredient of rendang. Using a dry-blender, blend a cup of dessicated coconut until it disintegrates into a oily paste (LOL! Isn't that cool? Dessicated coconut, the bloody driest thing on Earth, turns into an oily paste if you blender it). Then take this paste, and using a little oil, fry it in a frying pan until it turns brown (not TOO brown; like the colour of dry leaves). Woohoo! We have kerisik!

Using a big pot, add oil, and fry the rendang paste. Fry, fry, fry until you can't be bothered, and then add the kerisik. Stir till you get cramps and then chuck in coconut milk (like a can? Or more?) and the kafir-lime leaves. Add salt, chicken stock, voodoo spices and taste. Yum? WIN! Not yum? F*** OFF! Or add more salt.

Add the chicken, and let it cook until tender. And there you have it.

Chicken rendang!

(...)

HSC hiatus in place. Will be back soon...

PIZZA!

It's official. I should be given the Nobel Prize for Foodies this year. Guess what I did!? I made a PIZZA that tastes like a BIG MAC. YES! I made a pizza taste like a burger. I am SO amazing. Praise me! PRAISE MEE!!

Ok, it was my turn to make iftar, and I was really not in the mood for rice and/or other Asian foods (yes, I know I are Asian PHAIL). All we had was mince meat, so I randomly started asking people what to make with mince meat. Nahyan suggested pizza. "Hmmm..." I said. I've never tried making much Western savoury food. I didn't know how to make it anyway LOL.

When a 21st century teenager needs to know something, who does he ask? GOOGLE of course! I searched, "How to make pizza dough," because that is basically all you need to know; the toppings are pretty much experimentation.

I came across eHow.com which showed how to make a pretty good dough. I didn't have many typical pizza ingredients in my fridge so I just dumped anything and VOILA! Tasty!

Big-Mac Pizza!

INGREDIENTS:

500 g plain flour
1 and 1/4 cup warm water
Packet of dry yeast
(usually 15 g I think)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

Chilli sauce
Dijonnaise mustard
(yes, you read right. MUST HAVE!)

Some raw mince meat
Some left over kima-aloo mince meat
Mushrooms
Cucumbers
Onions
Spring onions
Red chillis

Cheese slices
(NOT mozarella)

MY SPECIAL METHOD:

First, dissolve the yeast into the warm water in a large bowl and leave it until you see some bubbles. Mix the flour into this and knead it into a dough (HAHA! That makes it sound so easy. If your kneading by hand, knead until you get arthritis and your dough is all smooth and shiny. Or use a machine with a dough-hook.) Oh yeh, I forgot to tell you, add the oil and salt. I think that was meant to be done a bit earlier, but anyhoo...

Cover the dough in oil (like kinda rub oil over it? LOL) and put it in a bowl (oil the bowl too. We like our oil.) Cover the bowl with cling-wrap and leave the bowl in a warm place (like next to the stove after mummy made iftaari) until it at least doubles in size (SERIOUSLY! It gets really fat, its so cool). This takes like 45 minutes. This is what I ended up with:

As you can see, not a very smooth surface. I used my HANDS ok!! My wrists hurt after that. I wonder how all those grandmas do it without getting huge biceps. Anyway, this would be a good point to preheat your oven to the highest setting it has. REALLY! That gives a nice crisp crust. Most ovens only go up to 220 degrees celsius. It's good enough.

Roll out your dough into a pizza-base, as thick or thin as you want, remembering that the dough does rise a little bit during cooking. Then the fun stuff starts! I covered it with a layer of chilli sauce (like the hardcore Asian type) and then a layer of dijonnaise mustard. Dice up the onions, chillis, spring onionsm cucumbers and mushrooms and chuck them over it. Then cover it with the meats. You should end up with this prettiness:

YUM! I want to eat it again! Usually most normal people would then cover the pizza with mozarella cheese. Unfortunately, one, I'm not usually considered a normal person (for good reasons of course) and two, we didn't have any mozarella. I was gonna use feta, but then I remembered that feta doesn't really melt. LOL. I chucked on some cheese slices, in a nice pattern of course, and popped the bugger into the oven:

I left it in there for a while, about 20 minutes. The cheese kinda oozed everywhere and didn't stick to the pizza very well. Ah well. It tasted really nice. Did I mention it tasted like a Big Mac? I think it was the combination of cheese, onions and mustard. Oooo! It was SO good!

Mum told everyone to go pray and then eat, but I snuck in a few bites. What!? I MADE IT OKAY!! Great success! Maybe white-people food ain't so bad after all. After I was done, the evil kitchen wall monster reminded me of what to do next:

L-O-L.

Chemistry is DONE!

Finally I've finished my chemistry notes! HOORAY!! Let's celebrate with a nice section of the Mandelbrot Set. Utter nerd celebration (LAWL):

Pure MATH. Isn't it beautiful?

This is why HSC is not good for you...

Today was another one of those days when HSC just got to me and I flipped and did something crazy. Do you have those days? Let's hope it doesn't happen to too many people, the world is crazy enough. Anyway, the stress levels got so high that the spirit of Jackson Pollock raped me and forced me to paint.

"Paint, fool! PAINT!!" his spirit cried to me. And paint I did:

Wow. Now isn't this just a masterpiece? Here's a close-up:

OMFG. It wasn't Jackson Pollock, it was SADAKO!!

Anyhoo, here's real JP painting for you to compare.

I still think mine's better. Hehe (NOT). His paintings are nice. Very colourful and weird. Although I wouldn't pay $140 million dollars for one of them, like some crazy nut did. Ok, the real story is I found some photocopy machine toner in the shed, and we don't have a photocopy machine so I decided that it was free-for-all, so I opened it and started playing around with it. I burned it, threw it around, sniffed it (joke) and put it in a cup and mixed it with oil. Voila! Instant black paint. It got boring sitting there in a cup so I threw it on the fence.

Hope mum doesn't see it. HEHE.

Sushi Experience

My sister had really bad sushi cravings, so she went to Sushi Train and bought like 10 packets of sushi. There were so many weird types! I know, I'm Asian, I'm supposed to eat weird things. I'm not THAT asian though. I prefer being known as Malay. One of my Chinese friends asked me if my mum cooks weird food. I asked him, "Like what?" and he said "Blood cubes."

*Gag*. Might be racist, but I find eating blood really offensive.

Anyway, back to the sushi. In the package was soy sauce, Japo mayonnaise, wasabi (!!!) and of course the different types of sushi. The one I mainly eat is prawn tempura sushi. That is really nice. It's prawn fried in some batter and wrapped in rice and nori. The only other time I've had something different was when I accidentally ordered normal prawn sushi (which was SO GROSS; the prawn was all cold and it stank). Oh, and there was that one time I was in the city with my English teacher and Azmena for some lecture, and I thought I'd try the raw salmon and cucumber; I put too much wasabi and gagged on it and they all had a good laugh.

Skanks.

Any-hoo, this time, I tried a few different things. Raw salmon and rice was a bit strange. It didn't really have any taste, it was just kinda squishy and gross. Lobster sushi was nice, a bit strange, but nice. I had more prawn tempura. YUM. Then there was EEL. I actually ate it. It was eel and egg. Such a weird combo, it was SO weird tasting.

Ah well. I love trying new things. Heh.

Consumerist Madness

I bought a LOT of clothes today.

Moth Invasion!!

Sydney is being infested by MOTHS. As in those furry flying things. Not the pretty moths, but the nasty brown ones. They're called bogong moths (wiki) and they are really obsessed with light. They're a common sight in summer time, and they're always flying around. But this time it's INSANE. They are EVERYWHERE. I swear, I was walking in the city and a moth flew into my face, dropped to my arm, CHUCKED A SHIT on me, and flew off.

OMFG. Has a moth (or any insect for that matter) ever shit on you?? NO!! I didn't think so!! It was so gross. Green slimy poo. Lucky I had tissues to wipe it off. The crap fell on my bag as well. Nasty:

YUCK.

Apparently they migrate at this time of the year annually, but this time since it's been a bit windy lately they've been blown off-course into urban Sydney. Poor moths. They're dying everywhere.

A really weird thing happened on the train today. There was this moth flying on the window trying to get out (it couldn't see the glass or something). Then this fat emo chick (nothing against fat emo chicks; I was just being brutally descriptive!! SORRY!!) in front of me cupped the moth in her hand and opened the window and let it out. It was SO strange! She wouldn't look at anyone after she did that. It was incredibly weird.

Pavlova Disaster!

My eldest sister bought a pavlova for everyone from The Cheesecake Shop in Bankstown. I had a little bit after iftar (like a tiny nibble) but I couldn't have any more because Saturday's cheat-day (the day I can eat anything I want!) I went to the fridge to cut some and to save it in a container because I knew it would definitely finish by Saturday.

I put it on the benchtop, and prodded the cream, then OMFG the F***ING box started slipping and then it slipped off completely. I managed to catch it, but ALAS the damn box is so retarded it flipped open and everything fell on the floor.

NOTE to TheCheeseCakeShop people: CAN YOU PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF THE FREAKIN' LORD, MARY, JESUS AND MOHAMMED MAKE STRONGER BOXES TO HOLD YOUR CAKES? IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T NOTICED THE SIDES AREN'T CONNECTED AND TEND TO OPEN, SPILLING THE CONTENTS ALL OVER THE FLOOR. YES, IT'S HAPPENED BEFORE, WITH TWO BLACKFOREST GATEAUS AND NOW THIS PAVLOVA. THANK YOU.

I picked up what I could from the kitchen floor and dumped it back in the box, fuming like crazy, and I threw some hairy cream in as well for good measure, and dumped the box back in the fridge. I was SOO PISSED!

Then I went a bit crazy. I took out the box, took out the pavlova and threw it on the fence in my backyard in the darkness, and threw the box over the fence. My cats were staring at me, thinking: "Hmm. What a curious fellow."

My sister went to the fridge and noticed the box was missing (OH CRAP!) but the funny thing is she wasn't surprised at all HAHA. All she said was: "Wahh! It's finished already!?" and gave me a dirty. I think it's definitely official now.

I eat way too much cake.

L-O-L.

Weird Dreams

Today was a really weird day for me.

Firstly, I woke up in the night 3 times, had 3 separate dreams and remembered ALL of them!! You have no idea how seriously weird that is. I never remember my dreams; NEVER! They were kinda weird dreams too. They were, not in any particular order (plus I can't even remember):
  1. I was doing my English HSC paper (Paper One) in a hall and in the middle of the exam I was having a chat with my English teacher, then I looked at the time and saw that there was only half and hour left and I had 2 sections to go and I realised I had no hope and freaked out insanely. It was SO SCARY. Don't LAUGH!! Total nerd dream. LEWL. I woke up horribly traumatised, and VERY motivated to study.
  2. I was in some random south-east Asian country like the Phillipines and I was at an ATM machine (or an arcade?) and the guy in front of me had shoulder length black hair, and he turned around and IT WAS ROI!! OMFG. As in Roi from hoiitsroi (a.k.a. Wasabi Productions) on YouTube! LMAO. I wanted to take a picture with him (they are SO KEWL), and he was all happy, but my little sister freaked out cos she thought he was Am/Dom (cause of his long hair HAHA. My family's been buggin' me bout her since graduation. *Sigh*.) Anyway, as I tried to get rid of my little sister he left and I was left depressed.
  3. And lastly, I think this was a kinda continuation of the last one, same kinda gloomy/monsoon kinda weather as Phillippines except that I was with my classmates and we were running through people's backyards wearing only boardshorts and then we found a pool and jumped in. Then *someone* (read: person I am way to obsessed with) was being mean to me and I stayed under the water, but it was cold so I wasn't emo.
How completely demented are these dreams? Well, not really that demented (compared to my nightmare of Ronald McDonald chasing me on wooden logs over a lavapit) but it's weird enough for me!

Summer is definitely here...

It is SO flamin' hot right now. And windy too. Hot wind is nasty. The air is so damn hot. Argh! I'm fasting too. I feel soo hungry. And thirsty. But I can only eat whole grains and proteins every 2 hours, and only eat cake nice food on Saturdays, cos' BITCHES, abs are made in the KITCHEN, not the gym!!

In other, more pretty news:

The first Summer bloom...

Hoarder

Today, the rubbish hoarded in our family for over a decade was finally thrown away. I think if my dad finds out he'll freak. LOL. Well that's too bad isn't it? Lucky he's not even in this country. The hoarding genes definitely come from my dad; let's just hope I didn't inherit too much of it.

Anyway, my mum called up the council to use one of our 2 free bulk-rubbish collection days. Then she went and decided to throw EVERYTHING out. I think it's one of those turn-over-a-new-leaf slash I-want-to-get-rid-of-my-past hidden under the cover of happy Spring Cleaning! Ah well, I don't mind. I hate clutter. Have a peek:

Tons and tons of boxes (I know, wtf, why so many boxes!?) I think after we unpacked after moving here, we didn't really get round to throwing them away. Chairs, suitcases, empty drawers, junk symbolising millenia of repression (oops!). Can you see Imposter in the background? Hehe.

There was more junk out the front. A LOT more. Poor rubbish people. Look! Cupboards, more boxes, a toy-car, chairs (heaps of chairs, another major weird), TWO washing machines (WTF), a car bonnet (HAHA) and an oven. Yes, an oven. We really like to hoard our big appliances.

Another view of the rubbish. I wasn't really that embarrased about it. Some of my siblings were. Ah well, it's just another part of the weirdness of my life. Add a full rubbish bin or two!

I found this painting hidden amongst the junk. It's such a beautiful painting! I didn't want it to get thrown in to the junk. So I stole it and hid it HEHE. Damn it, my hoarder genes are coming out again...

...

Woohoo! The adhan just went off. Now I don't have to eat, with a religious excuse! Woohoo!! I can't be bothered exercising dammit. Can't I just go get lipo?? *Self-Control*.

Sword Fighting

Guess what I started today....? JAPANESE SWORD FIGHTING! Like full-on with wooden katanas and stuff. It's SO awesomeee. My arms are dead tired from the training. It was in a park, with a small group of people. It was my first lesson, so I was pretty nOOb. Ah well, I'll get better! It's really weird 'cos most of the strength comes from one arm, so I have one arm ache. I hope I don't end up with an out-of-proportion body.

Here's a sort of mosaic-ish photo (that is a mosaic right??) of the wooden sword. It was too long to take with a single photo, so I joined 3 together!

Pretty, eh?


In other, more predictable news, I took a photo of myself and it was TUBBY. Dude, you gotta cut back on the cream puffs!! ARGH. I feel bad. I can't stop eating. Food is nice.

I started watching Popular again. Greaaat. Another distraction...

Plastic...

Humans suck. Like REALLY bad.


Look at this photo. Do you know what it is? It's the decaying body of an albatross. Look inside its ribcage! What do you see!? PLASTIC!! Bottle-caps, washers, plastic scraps and just human junk in general. Must have been a really sucky death.

When they teach us in chem class about the development of biodegradable polymers, maybe its not as pointless as we all think it is...

[Edit: Just found out the picture is gone. Sucks, it was such a striking photo. Anyway, here is a link to something similar.]

Cake Binge...

My mum went nuts and had a total cake-buying binge. Then I joined in. I have a feeling the cake cravings run deep in the blood. My mum bought a gigantic cake, that was like, what 50% cream (JAYSUS) as well as two pavlovas (GOD they're so NICE!!). Guess what I bought, all for myself?

A freakin' KILOGRAM of cream puffs!!

It was too much. I had to share ;P

Here's the cake. Notice the excesses of dairy fat?

Ok then. Note to self, do not follow cravings when fasting; you will end up with a fridge full of sugar and cream. Hmmm...

Is that so bad?