Faceboooook!!

Lord help me. I've finally been seduced by the satanic minions of Hell (little devil applications) and now I officially have a Facebook account. LOL! It is such a pointless waste of time! But it's so much fun HAHA. I've always seen my older siblings on it and I guess I always thought of it as some "rite of passage" thingy into university. Now I'm in!

So many random things to do. I'm a soft Banana, hard Cocaine, screw-the-world Claire Bennet, been poked, slapped, bitten, raped, headbutted and worshipped all in a matter of days. All my Vampire wants to eat is Grace, my IQ is 135, I want to save Darfur and my sister sent me an adorable Scottish-Fold kitten. It's hilarious!

I'm trying to forge an identity here, but it's so ridiculous you can't take it seriously. Everyone's making their own little facade of a life with photos, videos and whatnot, and stalking each other to see if they fit in to what everybody else is like.

Ah well! *Runs off to go poke random people*. Hehe...

Driving...

I stole someone's parking spot for the first time today. HAHA. Does that make me a bad person? I don't think so. Well, it was like this. I was driving behind this other guy and there was a person pulling out of a parking spot on the right (we drive in the left lane here in Sydney). The guy in front of me signalled to take the spot but he was too far ahead so he had to drive up and do a U-turn but I just slipped in while he was turning. He started honking at me but I just ignored him.

Should I be trying to prevent roadrage? LOL.

University!

I am now officially a university student! I just enrolled online into my 5 year commerce/economics degree at the University of New South Wales. It's so exciting. I can't wait to start. Not so much because of the degree (LOL) but more of the new experience of university. I wonder what it's going to be like...

Random

Note to self: When buying add-water-and-shake type pancake mixes, be careful not to buy the gluten-free kind. Eurgh. Gluten-free pancakes are not pancakes. They look like pancakes. They smell like pancakes. But they don't feel like pancakes. Too crumbly.

It actually tasted a bit like a Malay sweet, putu piring. Now that is nice. *Drool*. It's like a rice-flour based steamed caked filled with gula melaka (palm sugar). Here's another description. When I was in Singapore my mum always bought putu piring from one stall in Geylang. Apparently it's the best putu piring in Singapore. I dunno; it sure was yummy.

LOL! I found pics of the place on Flickr. There's always long queues there. I remember this woman making them; she was so efficient! Freaky production line stuff. Found another kewl blog post on it. Look at this and this and drool.

In other news, NEVER EVER eat stale dragonfruit bought from Randwick. God. I had a bite and nearly vomited. Yes, dragonfruit. Another random Asian fruit. I bought half a kilo of lychees the other day and munched on them as I went walking around Parramatta Westfield. That was fun. Haha.

AmazonMidwife!

YAY! Welcome back to the chaos of my mind!

Croissants...

Made croissants for the first time ever. It's summer now in Sydney so sleeping tends to evade me a little bit more; hence my staying up and baking goodies. I've always avoided baking yeast-based breads (especially laminated-dough sorts of things like croissants) because they're a bit intimidating for a not-so-experienced baker like me. But I thought ah wtf it's boiling and I'm bored, might as well do something. LoL.

Here's the dough after rising. Multiple risings, mind you. Croissants do take ages to make. But seriously (I know it sounds oh so cliche) but even for noobs like me the flavour you get out of freshly baked croissants (the smell and the buttery crispness) makes it so worth it. Here's a quick summary of how to make croissants. Do bear with the jumbled nonsense; I'm kinda tired and I did sorta make up the recipe on the spot. So here's what you do:

Put 2 sachets of yeast in a large bowl with about a cup of lukewarm water and 3 tablespoons of white sugar. Mix and let it sit for 15 minutes till it develops a foamy layer (kinda like cheap coffee from a machine). Then add a pinch of salt and stir the mixture. Now for the guessy bit. Using a wooden spoon mix plain white flour into the mixture until you get a gloopy mess. Keep adding flour until it becomes a pliable dough and then knead it until it's nice and smooth. It will take ages. Don't be afraid to keep adding flour. Leave dough in a bowl and cover with a wet cloth and let rise for about an hour until double in volume. While you're waiting, get a block of butter (250g) and use a rolling pin to flatten it into a rectangle about 1-2 cm thick. Refrigerate it. Get the dough, punch out all the air and roll it into a rectangle 3 times the size of the butter. Put the butter in the middle and wrap it in dough ("laminate"). Roll out the dough and keep folding it over and over so you get heaps of layers (which makes it a fluffy bread) but make sure no butter leaks out. It will get funky so keep putting it back in fridge every now and then. Then roll it out, cut into triangles, roll into croissant shapes and let it rise for about 45 min. Bake for 12-15 minutes in a moderate oven (180-190 degrees Celsius).

I hope that made sense. If you did it correctly you should get something delicious like this! YUM. The butter will leak out like crazy, but then the dough will absorb it. Not something you'd wanna eat everyday. LOL. Also, I stuffed a few of them with chocolate. Bad boy.

Enjoy!

Extracting My Wisdom...

My last 2 wisdom teeth were ripped out today. Ouch. Well not really (thanks to Mr. Lidocaine) but after the surgery (i.e. RIGHT-FREAKIN-NOW) my mouth stings like a biatch. I'm pumped full with powerful prescription only pain-killers to stop the dull, throbbing ache. Seriously it's terrible. I tried eating bubur (it's this Malay rice porridge, the softest thing in the universe) but it hurt so much I had to stop. Ah the pain.

Well this is what happened. I went to the dentist and eventually ended up in the chair. He stuck 2 needles into each tooth (bottom ones only; I took out the top ones months ago) which kinda stung a little bit but not really and then my face went all numb and I tried to gargle my mouth (with Listerine) but my bottom lip wouldn't close so I ended up spitting all over myself and looking like an unfortunate sort of person.

After I was all woozy, numb and totally not in the right state of mind to be signing any contracts the dentist (well dentist's assistant) hands me this form. A surgical consent form. It said that I agree to this surgery even though I might permanently damage my nerves (which would result in not being able to taste bitter anymore. How LOLable!) I signed it; my writing was a bit wonky SINCE I WAS SO FREAKIN DRUGGED.

No offence to my dentist or anything (I actually really like him. Awesome bloke, really.) but I think you should give patients consent forms before you stick their veins with mind-numbing goodness.

Then push led to shove, the dentist drilled, pushed and cut, stuck a tool into my mouth and friggin' CRACKED my teeth into 2 pieces (I didn't feel any pain, but OH the PRESSURE!) which was by far the most disturbing part, and used another tool to pull out my teeth in 2 pieces. With a nice suction-ey feeling everytime the roots came out. With my head pounding and the dentist sweating, these babies were popped into a sterile bag and sent home with me:

Pretty, isn't it? When I got home I steam sterilised them (then bleached them) so now they're all white and gleaming. Yes, I am a clean freak. But the pain! And the BLOOD! My stitches wouldn't stop bleeding. Well they're not bleeding now, so I suppose a picture would be nice:

First stitches of my life! LOL!

Here are the top 2 wisdom teeth. It was a much cleaner exit for these two. My dentist said he can do the top ones with his eyes closed but the bottoms are skanks (pun totally not intended.)

DRUGS, DRUGS AND MORE DRUGS. They do keep me smiling :D.

Max Brenner (FINALLY!!)

So. Finally, after months (literally) of nagging, my family finally agreed to take me to the very famous Max Brenner's Chocolate Cafe. Chocolate by the Bald Man. Not exactly an appetising slogan, but who cares!? The moment I walked into the Parramatta cafe and saw the huge vats of swirling metal molten chocolate I was a stark raving lunatic screaming to dig into some waffles! FEED ME!!

I was kinda sizing out the place and comparing it to Sydney's other famous chocolate joint, Lindt Cafe (which I have also been to). Mind you, I'm heavily biased towards Lindt, since it just sounds so much cooler, and has that prestigious air, like it's an aristocratic establishment (it's also kewl that Lindt invented conching, although serendipitously...)

ANYWAY.

The Max Brenner place was kinda, er, dark. As in really dark. Maybe they were trying to give it that seedy feel of a nightclub or something I dunno. It was different I suppose. It was very full too. Irrelevant details. All that is important is the FOOD.

ALL HAIL CHOCOLATE LORD.

We ordered crepes, waffles, suckao, hot chocolate, strawberries and melted chocolate (*moans*) and peanut butter milkshakes. It was SO good. I don't really want to compare it to Lindt (I can't really, I haven't tasted everything, and plus Lindt is so friggin' expensive) so I'll just describe the food in all its glories.

The strawberries were so good! They were actually sweet (I'm too used to sour supermarket strawberries.) I wonder where they get them from. And the chocolate! Just TOO good! It finished so quickly. *Sigh*...

Here's a close-up/artistic-shot. Pretty.

Here are the Tutti-Frutti Waffles (or should I say waffle.) Waffle, GODLY chocolate, bananas, those damn good strawberries again and some vanilla ice-cream. It was SO GOOD. Some people (*ahem*) say that it's better than the Lindt waffles but I don't really think so. However, I wouldn't mind someone buying both for me again so I could compare! HAHA.

Suckao. A strange Max Brenner invention. Suck + Cacao = Suckao. Capish? I didn't think it was all that great. Honestly it was kinda lame. Finished far too quickly. But the chocolate was as good as ever. Maybe just a bit over-priced. Hmmm...

And lastly, the peanut-butter milkshakes. Tasted so AMERICAN. Such a strange taste! I don't really understand the American obsession with peanut butter (yes, I do know he's an Israeli chap), but it was quite nice actually. Very heavy. We JUST finished it. Another sip and we would have POPPED.

Very happily too.