Daring Bakers - Challenge EIGHT!

And the challenge for December is .... a French Yule Log!

Yes! Here is my attempt. All friggin parts of it: Mousse, creme brulee insert, crisp insert, ganache insert (which you can't really see, shame really) hazelnut dacquoise and dark-choc icing. And strange hemispheres on the top. I started off with only 2 (only had one Lindt ball left) but then realised that it ... umm ... didn't look quite right and then had to go buy another box of the stuff to make it a total of 4!

Anyway, I hope you like it as much as I want to destroy it. OH HOW I WISH TO RECIPROCATE ALL THE PAIN IT HAS CAUSED ME. I am so damn tired. I don't even want to taste it LOL.

This challenge was brought to you by the letter F. For fun. Not. Ok really now: This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux. They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand. Happy now demon program?

Lebo Wedding!

I went to a lebo wedding for the first time today! It was SO MUCH FUN. I learnt so many bellydancing moves. LOL! My ears are still ringing slightly from the music. The food sucked, as usual. That's one thing Malay weddings have that will make them stand out. Good food!

Bush Caving...

Hey slutinas. I went on a "business trip" with a few "business associates" the past weekend. We went to an amazing foresty/bush-place called Govetts Leap (an absolutely amazing STUNNING view of the Blue Mountains valley. ARGH it was so crazy good) and then we went adventure caving at Jenolan Caves (the Plughole Tour through the Elder Caves).

All in all, quite a fun trip, except the part where I ate a stale burger and got food poisoning and had intense vomiting the whole day and a mind-destroying fever at night. The sight of red meat still makes me want to puke. I can't eat food without paranoia anymore.

Anyway! Here's some pics!

Wee!

Some seriously freaky drops...

...like this 100m sheer cliff face.

Yay.

Woah my thighs are huge. So rotund!

DIE INFIDEL.

Deeper into the belly of the Earth...

Head-first...

Byeeeeeee!

Queensland!

So.

I'm going to the Gold Coast in 13 days, my one-month plan to lose 10 kilos failed miserably (Abs Diet book collecting dust on my new shelf), I'm still bald (hair grows slower than I thought) and I still haven't told my dad that I'm going.

Joy!

Still have half a mind to ditch all my friends and not go. But for stupid reasons. Mainly the clubbing issue. I don't want to go clubbing in Queensland! LOL! Can't we all just be young and naive and "boring" and stay home and be completely anti-social? I am seriously hardly clubbing material. I hardly listen to music, I can only dance when I'm in Sayed's movie room on his hot red couch, alcohol and skanky girls really are not part of my life, so I dunno! I just don't think I will enjoy it.

Unfortunately, due to the magnetic pull of peer-pressure, most likely I will succumb and be dragged to a night out of red-faced "fun". If I come out alive I'll do a little dance. Just for the irony of course.

Well, looking on the bright side, there's so many fun things we will do in the daylight hours! Like theme parks, pristine white sandy beaches and snorkelling and funnel cake (OH MAN I hope there's funnel cake. I've only seen it in documentaries. It's SO American!)

See?? No need to be such a sourpuss. LOL.

P.S. The Abs Diet is actually quite a good book.

Doctorness

One of my close friends has left Australia to go study Medicine for 6 years in Bangladesh. We all went and sent him off today at the airport. It was kinda sad. He went all teary! I got a card for us all to write on (cards are the best presents) and forced him to only read it on the plane. Hopefully he'll be alrite.

Little Observations of Life, Part Deux...

As life goes on, poor Ahmad notices more and more how weird this World he lives in is. The perils of blowholes, the lameness of dry skin, ah! What an adventure. Click here for Part One. I love this type of post! Enjoy.

1. Bath bombs aren't very bomb-like. They're actually quite lame. After years and years of wondering what they were like I gave in and bought some, prepared a bath, jumped in, dumped in the bath bombs excitedly, all for less bubbles than if I had farted in the water. LAME!


2. If you ever happen to meet Abu Caristmas, the Father of Christmas Beetles, do not kill him lest he sends his army of ants to come and kill your cats...

Oops! He's dead!

NUUUU! MY POOR KITTIES!!! :(

3. Box jellyfish have eyes. And can see you. And stalk you. And sting you. And eat you. Ok, maybe not the last one. But still. Freaky. What happened to brainless sacks of water??


4. I used to think I had amazing skin. Now I realise I have very dry skin. As in ridiculously dry skin. Like I flake more than weetbix. Old weetbix. Here's my arm peeling at IKEA (I seem to live at IKEA these days):

Don't look at the hot furniture look at ME!

Look how ridiculously OLD my toes look! YUK! Someone hand me some moisturiser. Urgh. I hate moisturiser. So greasy. According to my Dad, cracked feet can be cured by a long soak in water, which is something I tried. Which didn't work. Another great piece of advice.

I thought, why not soak my feet WHILE PLAYING COMPUTER GAMES! Genius! Not! Maybe I should have just got electrocuted and won this year's Darwin Award.

5. I found out what cats do when the silly hoomans are away:

SCARED YET!?

Doggy Dog Shoes

Earlier today, an Iraqi reporter threw not one, but both his shoes at George Dubya Bush's head. News sources from all around the world felt the need to emphasis how, in Arab culture, it is so very rude to throw shoes at people, and so thus, this was an extremely rude thing to do!

LIKE HELLO!?! Last time I checked, throwing your shoes at someone's head is quite rude, no matter where you live. It was so weird how every single news source emphasised that part so much!

I LOL'ed.

P.S. if there does exists a mythical Shoeaklabaad where hitting someone over the head with shoes is a sign of greeting, I want an invite. Just for the lulz.

Watch Bush duck the shoes!

[N.B. I just stole that line verbatim from CNN. I kid you not.]

He's got some pretty good reflexes aye??

In similarly momentous news, my nose bled for the first time in my life today. I think (ok I know) I was picking my nose with unmatch gusto, and accidentally severed something tender. Blood ensued. And we all know in Australia, blood is often seen as a sign of bleeding.

An Oceanic Sonnet

It rose from the Deep, churning violently,
Spewing forth its contents; mist, drops of spray,
Upwards (mostly), drenching, distractingly.
'Twas the day the sea took my slipper away.

So soft on the skin in the mornings bright,
Cold, liquid invigoration; Cleansing.
Yet through ancient stone of unequalled might,
It cuts and scrapes, a brutal dispensing.

Too lazy, am I, to write four more lines,
And so you must bear,
With these words of mine.

So mighty a force, there is none rather,
So satiate the beast! Throw in the other!

...

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
10 syllables.
Iambic pentameter...?

Not quite.

Kitty time

Hey ya'll! GUESS WAT. My cats are allergic to fleas. Yes. After all these years (4+ they're so old!) of giving us fleas and spreading flea-ness everywhere, they're immune systems seem to have died and now they are allergic. It's so slack! Unlike silly hoo-mans with nails, they have claws and so they tend to scratch their skin into bleeding sores which get infected. And their hair falls off in awful patches so they look REALLY REALLY raggedy.

So after learning why their hair was actually falling off in bloody patches and learning what to do to stop it ( -$200 to happy vet man! CaCHING!) one by one we had to catch the kitties, put them in the toilet as they cried (yes they make crying noises. It's so pitiful. Makes you sad.) shave off the hair around the sore and rub in some funky cream.

Not fun.

So now the cats are paranoid, hate us heaps and don't trust us when we come closer. And don't listen to evil Dr Harry. FRONTLINE IS NOT AS EASY TO PUT ON AS IT LOOKS!! Especially when you cats are psycho lunatic street sluts who only come in for food and strokes. Eww.

Bad joke time. My sister called the cats cutters. Cos they cut themselves. LULZ LULZ! I know if life is so fair why do cats have claws. And cos the cats would only let the girls touch them (the cats are girls too) and they make all weird noises when it happens, my brother calls them the Pervy Lesbos. LULZ LULZ!

Ok. I think thats enough for today.

Aren't they cute??

RANDOM!

So anyway, my long-held belief that I couldn't get sunburnt turned out to be crap, I shaved off all my long luscious locks in a Britney-esque mental breakdown moment, and all subsequent attempts at making macarons have failed miserably. So basically my face is peeling off, I'm bald and I have a crapload of dishes to wash-up, with no reward. FRAKKERS!

Beach trip...

Me and the school mates had a BBQ/beach-trip yesterday. It was a lot of fun. We left really early in the morning because they wanted to see the sunrise. It was so beautiful. Surreal. It was so nice to hang out with the guys again and totally go nuts without a care in the world. I felt like such a kid again, going wild in the sand.

And they really liked my smoked salmon sandwiches too!