BATTLESTAR GALATICA

The latest craze in my crazy household:

Marathon sessions of scifi series Battlestar Galatica!

It is really good! I was reluctant to watch it at first because most sci-fi shows these days are really lame (Stargate just annoys me) but I got hooked after the first few episodes! Coolest storyline ever. I totally want to write a scifi novel now. That's after I finish my other imaginary novel first, of course.

Food Review: Cupcakes on Pitt!

Cuppy cakes cuppy cakes cup cup a'cuppa CAKE! Let's all sing the cupcake song! After uni today (MATH1151 tutorial ARGH) I had THE STRONGEST cravings for cupcakes. I was meant to take the train straight from Central back home but I was like stuff this and took the 394 bus to Pitt St @ Town Hall.

Straight to Cupcakes on Pitt!!

[Link]

A Young Foodie's Short Review:

Seeing as how cupcakes, mini-cakes, baby-cakes and all that sorta stuff is all the rage in Sydney right now I thought I might as well try it out. NOT! I JUST WALKED PASSED THE STORE BY ACCIDENT AND SAW THE PRETTIES AND HAD TO GO IN. Haha.

Well, for starters they make the best looking cupcakes out of places I've seen in real-life. Seriously pretty. They have a wide range of pretties. I bought 6 today. They're very pricey though. $2 a cupcake. Sigh. Here's the ones I bought:

The flavours I got were (starting from bottom-left going clockwise): Dark Chocolate, Pineapple Coconut, Tiramisu, Peppermint, Lemon-Meringue and Sticky Date Pudding. Now, the almighty question.

How did they TASTE!?

Well. For starters, I thought the muffin bases were a bit dry. I know! *Sob*. I didn't like how they used the same chocolate base for the tiramisu, the peppermint and the dark chocolate. They were all very dry. The peppermint was probably the worst. The buttercream on top was so fugly, and the mint flavour was too light. Almost bland. Tiramisu was nicer, still dry, but the coffee buttercream was much nicer.

The dark chocolate was nice. The moist ganache off-put the dryness of the muffin base so as long as I took big munches it was good. The coconut pineapple was quite nice. I'm very partial to pineapple so I might be a bit biased. The dessicated coconut pieces were a bit big and poking out everywhere. Not a nice feeling in your mouth, but very tasty.

Now for the big hitters. Sticky date was just DELICIOUS. The muffin was so moist (they didn't use the lame basic choc or vanilla base) and had bits of dates in it. YUM! And the caramel icing was so good. I microwaved it for a bit and it was so warm and good! Lemon meringue was also so very amazingly delicious. They used a vanilla cupcake base, but the core was dug out and filled with the lemon curd. It was so good. It's my favourite one!! Here's a close-up:

I'm not gonna do some out-of-10 kinda thing as it's so tacky. So, all in all, a nice experience. Not to mention I almost got hit by a truck crossing the road in peak-hour frenzy traffic to get there. Do give the place a visit! The service is very good and follow my cupcake recommendations and you should leave as a happy fellow.

Ciao!

Economics Exam...

I have a confession to make.

I cheated in my microeconomics exam.

OMG THAT SOUNDS SO BAD.

Well it wasn't pre-mediated cheating in cold-blood!! I swear. Serious! It's not like I stole the exam paper out of the lecturer's office and then wrote all the answers on my forearm and then just copied them down onto the answer sheet!!

[Answers: A B C C D B A A D L O L J U S T K I D D I N G ]

Ok. This is what happened. I finished my exam with 5 minutes to go (completely legitimately, mind you) and then my eyes started to wander around the room. Then I saw that the 3rd last answer of the guy on my right was different to mine. I thought ok, maybe he's just retarded, but then by then my eyes weren't just wandering, they were freakin' slutting around and so I saw about 3 other answer sheets and they all had THAT answer I didn't have so when the announcer person said "One minute left!" I did a spur of the moment thing and changed my answer to the popular majority vote.

Then I was like. Ok. Hmm. Maybe that wasn't such a great idea. I mean, I'm pretty smart y'know? Maybe everyone was retarded like I previously thought. But almighty Maths is superior to me and probability is Maths' illegitimate love child and hence is also superior to me and so according to her Laws of Chances they were right and I was wrong.

So I call up my brother (who's doing honours in economics, mind you) and turns out I had it wrong before and the one I changed it to was right!

WIN!

Yes, its unethical, yada yada, and if I got busted academic misconduct on my record would totally molest me in the future, but hey, life's not fair. And plus it was only one little itty-bitty question...

:)

ANZAC & Exams.

ANZAC day. Well, 24 minutes past ANZAC day. I really should be sleeping. My economics midsession exam is tomorrow and I swear to God if I have to draw another supply and demand curve I am gonna have to kill somebody. I studied SO LONG today. I am so drained.

I'm 18....LOLWTFYAYZOMG?

Today is my most glorious joyful of birthdays! I will update this later as I get all my late prezzies so I can display them all in their magnificent glory!

Karaoke Bitches!

LOL no silly children, this post was intentionally blank, not glitched to pure nothingness. I'm waiting for internets to get uncapped so I can get the photos from Facebook and DANCE around them in words for ya'll to enjoy.

...

Ok, internet back to normal again.

Anyway, last Friday, I got dragged to a karaoke place by my uni friends and turns out it was SO MUCH FUN!! LOL! And the skank uploaded all the pictures to facebook and so the whole internet is flooded with our photos LOLOL.

Here's a few:

Purikura!!




The End!

"SELF IMAGE" - Creature Comforts...

BEST VIDEO EVER!!

The Candy Man!

[Note: Videos might not work yet. Be warned, the videos are of seriously crappy quality. I used my phone! But still, better than nothing ;D]

After uni on Friday I went with my friends to Circular Quay (Sydney Harbour basically) and we danced around and had heaps of fun. Here's a panorama-ish shot I took of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge with my phone's cool panorama function. I think it looks quite pretty:

After that we went to Sticky! The world's COOLEST CANDY SHOP!! They make THE most awesome lollies ever. They look so cool and taste oh so good. And the best part is that everything is hand-made, and they make it in front of your face! I stood there for an hour watching the guy make them. And now I can share it with you! YAY. Looky-look!


They are so pretty. Little designs of sugar. I was thinking, "HOW THE HELL DO THEY DO THIS?" and then the guy (his name is David) popped out and was like, "I'll give you a demonstration in 10 minutes." Cool! We danced around and talked to the people for a while (David used to be a lawyer but dumped it to be a candy man. LOL!) and then it finally started.

First he got out a humongous vat of super hot BOILING sugar syrup at 160 degrees celsius and poured it on to a metal bench in front of him (turns out it was a water-cooled metal thing). His assistant (Lily; she has cool hair) helped him get all the bits out:


Then Lily got out some colours and added them into the sugar and started mixing. Normally, I'm not much of an anti-artificial-stuff kinda person, like I'm ok with food colouring and stuff, but some of these colours freaked me out a bit! For example, to make the sugar syrup white (like opaque white) he added this weird white stuff. I asked David what it was and he said it was titanium dioxide. I WAS LIKE LOL WTF? He told me it was biologically inert and I was like, "Umm. Oh ok. Fair enough!" but still slightly creeped out. Anyway, here's a pic of the blue:

Here's a video!

It was cool how David worked on one side and Lily on the other side. You could tell they were a really good team. Here's the creepy titanium dioxide stuff. Didn't stop me from eating it though:


The just-a-moment-ago boiling sugar cooled pretty quick because the table was cool (LOL PUN!) and so then they slid off the metal guiding things, leaving a funky weird pliable sugar mass to work with. They started cutting it into sections (to separate the colours) and then kneaded it:

Here's a video of them folding the sugar around:

After some kneading (using heavy insulating gloves, of course) this is what we were left with on Lily's side of the cool-table. A blue blob!


Unfortunately, old titanium-white had to be a bit weird, and so kneading it was not enough! To make it really pretty and have a nice sheen, the white sugar mass had to be pulled. Literally! The point of it is to incorporate air. Kinda like a meringue. Anyway, David used a hook and some cool technique to do it:

Pull, pull, PULL!!

Magically, a creamy looking mass remained:

Then we were left with 3 blobs of cool sugar syrup:

Now the three blobs of sugar are ready to be worked with. They were making a candy that spelt "AUSTRALIA". David had to slowly make all the letters in a long 3D kinda way so that when u cut it the cross-section spelt "Australia". Pretty cool, eh? Here's Lily fixing them up:


It's then rolled into a big giant cylinder and wrapped in another layer of sugar for decorative purposes. And extra flavour, I think. Video:



NOW FOR THE AMAZING PART! The huge barrel-looking sugar mass is then stretched out into a skinny tube, which is then sliced up into the lollies! Isn't that SO amazing?? You end up with miniature versions of the big thing!! AWESOME.

Stretching it....

And then chopping them up!

I think Lily does most of the chopping. She's really pro. She uses a tool that's kinda like that teppenyaki sort of thing. She's make an awesome teppenyaki chef!! She puts the candy rods on a mini anvil and then chops away, packs them into jars, and sells them for a ridiculous profit!!

WIN!

Rejection

I am very scared of rejection.

It takes me a very long time to open up to people.

I don't completely trust anyone.

My friendships are shallow.

I've never sat down with someone and laid everything bare.

I doubt it will ever happen.

Song of the moment: From a Shell.

[Link]

(...)

Nothing.

Happy slapping!? STUPID!!

Three people about my age (2 are my brother's friends from high-school, both whom I know, and another is my sister's friend's brother) in my local community got busted by police yesterday bashing/beating up a homeless guy to put up on YouTube for laughs.

[Link]

WTF!? It's so creepy!! Imagine someone you've known for ages getting arrested for bashing random people (the laughing/taunting part makes it so disturbing) and possession of drugs. It's just so bad. It's so scary how fast people can change isn't it?

SCREW FINANCE!!

*Sob.* I hate finance. SPAWN OF THE DEVIL. I had a 15% assessment quiz today. It was so hard. I think I failed. FAILED. What a terrible feeling.

And everyone's saying, "Get used to it!"

Little observations about life...

I've noticed a few things since I've started going to uni. Some quite unrelated to actually going to uni. But still interesting life observations nonetheless. At least I think so...

1. Textbooks aren't very wallet-friendly, but are so pretty. Not so sure about reading them though. I'm being very slow on starting me studies:

2. Even when it's so very cold in the morning, it's going to get very hot in the afternoon. Strange weather Sydney's been having lately. Winter's coming too fast.....

3. My cat's like to sleep in weird places. Like their litter boxes:

4. Ranting about Nicole Kidman is an awesome way to make a lot of random people suddenly want to read your blog. [Edit: As an after-thought, people like Keith Urban too :P]

5. You can't guess a person's ethnicity by their name. James Vincent is not asian. Doesn't it sound like a typical white-washed asian name? SERIOUSLY! LOL. Not that I mind of course, oh great student mentor of mine. Ok. Please don't find this.

6. Global warming suddenly becomes an after-thought when bus-lines at Eddy Ave (Central Station) stretch out so long people pitch out tents waiting for for buses to get to uni. PERSONAL CARBON DIOXIDE EMITTING VEHICLES ALL THE WAY!! WOOHOO.

7. 9 am lectures are so not cool. Neither are people with bad body odour.

8. Family problems suck. But lying down on the library lawn with friends, munching on weird food and talking about ridiculous infomercials (i.e. Cindy Crawford's Meaningful Beauty with melons that have SO MUCH ANTIOXIDANTS THEY JUST DON'T ROT) is so much fun.

!! OMFG NICOLE KIDMAN !!

ARGH GAH GAK SNAP OUCH OHH AHH ADJIGA DJGP ADK @!@!@!!!!!!

I WENT TO THE EASTER SHOW AND SAW NICOLE KIDMAN AND KEITH URBAN TOGETHER OMGGGGGGG! HOW CRAZY. I WAS TOTALLY ABSOLUTELY FREAKIN' STARSTRUCK I COULDN'T STOP JUMPING UP AND DOWN IT WAS SOOOOOO INSANE.

I SAW HER IN LINE AT THE FERRIS WHEEL AND I WAVED LIKE A TOTAL NOOB AND SHE SMILED AND LAUGHED AND WAVED BACK OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG. THEN SHE WENT ON THE FERRIS WHEEL AND I KEPT WAVING AND SCREAMING AND SHE WAVED.

OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG. MY LIFE TOTALLY HAS MEANING NOW. ARGH ARGH ARGH GAH GAH GAH.

CLICKKKK THAT PICTURE OMGGG ZOOOOM INTO IT YOU CAN SEEE HER IT'S HER IT'S HER OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. DUMB SECURITY GUARDS DIDN'T LET US CLOSER ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Random...

Spaghetti out of a can is just freakin' nasty. Do not try!! I would find a picture but I'm too lazy. Blogs without pictures are boring. No-one reads my blog. I want to earn $500 a week from my blog. GIVE ME MONEY!

Baked beans out of a can are quite tasty though. Never tried beef curry out of a can. Apparently its nice. According to Facebook my typing speed is 81 words/minute. Which is decent I suppose.

Hillary Clinton is so weird. Why'd she lie about that sniper thing for? I don't want to be one of those people who just HATE her just cos she's her, but still. She's so random. 3 am phone call scare tactics are just weird...

In other news, my friends want to go to the Royal Easter Show tomorrow and I want to go but I'm so broke. Damn scholarship money hasn't come in yet. I hate my job. Tutoring kiddies is hell. Especially when they don't answer their damn phones.

Want to know why I'm broke? Cos I love buying cake decorating equipment much too much. I like to make cakes. Have you noticed? Of course you have. I sound insane. Yay. But seriously. Cake decorating stuff (DAMN YOU WILTON) is so expensive:

All hail Tibet.

Allergic reaction...

As you can tell, I've (for the time being) given up on making a new template, so you'll have to bear with this only slightly lemon-tweaked blogger cookie-cutter template. Still pretty. HTML is just not my thing, and Blogger is being all hormonal, not allowing any edits.

Speaking of hormonal, MY BODY HAS GONE INSANE. I've had 2 allergic reactions attacks in the past 2 days, and my tonsillitis is flaring up again really badly. I seriously don't know what I'm allergic to; I just broke out in itchy bumps all over my body. I thought it was ok, then I went to sleep, and the next morning my eyelids were so swollen I couldn't open my eyes properly. It was BAD.

I went to the doctor straight away and he said my tonsils were really bad but he had to deal with this allergic reaction. Gave me a cortisone shot (which by virtue of the internets, I've just discovered was a steroid injection. Why am I not hot and muscular yet? :D. *Dreams*.)

That cleared up the allergy really quick. But it stung like a bitch!! Not the actual injection, but later on when the stuff spread in my arm it was such a painful dull ache. Ouch ouch. The itchiness came back though. It still comes back every now and then. It's like a wave of prickliness that just covers my entire body really quick and then goes away.

So weird.

Latest song obession: Caramelldansen. Damn internet memes...



In my uni easter break. *Dances!*

New template/layout...

Bear with me for a while as I molest my blog...

Uni overload...

Week 2 starts tomorrow. Week 1 was such a blur! I don't remember anything, and totally didn't learn anything. Right now I feel kinda overwhelmed. There's a lot of things I have to do, but no-one to guide me through it properly (could ask my siblings of course LOL). All these tutorial questions, assignments, presentations (ALREADY?!). It's such a weird load on my shoulders. I am OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE when it comes to being organised, so all this chaos is making me even more agitated and just all-out fuglified.

Recently something really strange happened. I've started to really, REALLY like the taste of coffee. Like seriously. Before a few days ago I was a typical adolescent total coffee hater. Hated the smell of it, the taste , the bitterness, everything! And now (omfg) I'm totally addicted. It TASTES SO GOOD! I think its a kindness from the Lord; once uni started He knew I would need the caffeine. Haha.

*Slurps coffee.*

(Not a good idea at night mind you.)

My first week has been rather strange actually. When I was walking to the bus-stop to go to Central station, this old man collapsed next to me and had a seizure. NO JOKE! Like a full on epileptic/old-person kind of shaking like crazy thing. I WAS SO SCARED!! I called the uni-emergency line but they didn't pick up (I was thinking WHAT THE HELL?) and so I called the emergency number (which is 000 in Australia). It was my first time ever calling the emergency number! It was cool/scary at the same time.

Maybe I should have taken a first aid course in high-school.

In other news, I had to be part of a photoshoot with other scholarship students. It was so freakin' random. Imagine sitting on the main pathway with 5+ other ppl as this crazy chick jumps up and down and takes photos of you and screaming "LAUGH! YES LAUGH! YES JUST LIKE THAT!! PRETEND YOU'RE TALKING TO HIM!! YESSS!! AH AH YES YES!!"

My uni reputation has been destroyed.

*Printer hums as I print out tomorrow's lecture notes...*

STARTING UNIVERSITY

ARGH!! UNI IS SO WEIRD!! SAVE ME!!

Well. It's not so bad. It's just so weird. Very different to high school. They should have prep courses for students. Seriously! Some kiddies might not be able to cope! I'm lucky I have a few friends from high school in the same course or else I'd be totally suicidal. So many people in these lectures and weirdos in tutorials; SO WEIRD.

The subjects I'm talking this semester (see, I know uni jargon now!) are:

• ACCT1501 - Accounting & Financial Mgt 1A
• ECON1101 - Microeconomics 1
• FINS1612 - Capital Markets & Institution
• MATH1151 - Maths - Actuarial & Finance 1A

This is a picture I took at the back of the accounting lecture. WHAT A BORE! Accounting is a nightmare. The lecturer was a Kiwi and he kept on droning on and on. Terrible. So I took out my food and started eating, contrary to uni policy. *SHOCK HORROR*!

"Accounting & Financial Management 1A"

So much walking. The campus is so bloody huge. I'm huffing and puffing everytime I walk into a lecture hall. I hate that! I'm always lateee and you gotta squish in between people you don't know and who you're not really in the mood to socialise with. And the transport! AH! The pain of having to take public transport everyday. *Sigh*. I would have loved to live on campus. But the only people who do are the international students and those who come from interstate. It's just not worth it if you live like an hour away. But the problem is that you never really get a chance to meet people.

Hmmm. I should join the tae-kwon-do club or something. Or the anime society! I already joined the chocolate society. LOL!

Maths and economics are good. Accounting and finance are death by boredom. Textbooks are so expensive I haven't even bought them yet. Course notes alone cost $50 each. Jeez. I'm so broke!

Sigh.

Firsts...

Here are a series of my firsts (for the first of the month). Strange, precious moments weirdly captured in photos by my trusty K610i. Reminds me of The Last Goodnight's "Pictures of Me" (link). Here we go:

I won a stuffed toy in an arcade pick-it (claw thingy) game.

I taste Japanese ramen (noodles + chicken + miso soup).

I did my first reverse parallel park.

I played squash for the first time.

Cosplay...?

I have a new obsession. Cosplay. Yes, you read right, cosplay (read: costume + play = cosplay). Depending on your intention, it's like playing dress-up for older people (except much MUCH more expensive and infinitely more perverted) where you dress up as bestest you can as an anime character, or it's a perfectly rational excuse to cross-dress or wear something that would normally classify you as clinically insane.

WIN!

So basically weirdos like-minded people like me get together at anime conventions (like animania) and dress up funky and oogle at each other and dance on stage and get voted Best Cosplayer of 2008 or whatever. Seriously fun. I was planning to go with Am and that crew but OTHER people suddenly were interested in it to so alas! We are at an impasse.

Anyway, I'm going as Orochimaru, that snakey tongue-flicking (PERFECT!) baddie from Naruto. I tried his face today using acrylic paint as face-paint (don't think that's too healthy for me skin) and it turned out COOL. Just need to make the rest of his costume now. Which, if I am totally true to his character, would involve me losing 20 kilos, piercing my ears, buying $400 yellow cat-eye contacts and growing long luxurious shoulder length hair.

GOOD LUCK TO ME....

Luna PARK!!

LOL had a cracker of a time at Luna Park on Saturday for Ahmed's birthday. The actual place is really not that great (read: quite shitty) and there are only one or 2 good rides, but we make our own fun wherever we go, spreading wacky teenage havok everywhere. I'm on the left posing with Luna-Bob (totally the craziest one out of the lot *LOL*):

"Who needs crack?"

Prime Minister Rudd Says "Sorry"...

Australian News.

BBC coverage.

Full text of Formal Apology.

Video of apology.

Some Aboriginal responses.

Today, for the first time in history, the Australian government (Rudd-Labor) has formally apologised for the mistreatment of Aboriginal people in the past, especially the Stolen Generation (something John Howard completely refused to do for a decade)! It's a very proud day to be an Australian.

Maybe people outside Australia won't really recognise it as such an important event, but it is seriously such an amazingly important symbolic act. The types of things that were done back in the age of the "paternal" attitude towards the "sub-human" Aborigines will shock you. If you want a quick overview of the subject watch Phillip Noyce's "Rabbit-Proof Fence". If by the end of it you don't feel like crying you're a heartless demon who deserves to die.

Some people (about 30% of the population; mostly snobbish rich-kids) say "Why should WE apologise for something our forefathers did? WE had nothing to do with it!" but I think that if you take that stance you are acknowleding a wrong but choosing to do nothing to try and fix it. Kind of like if you see a person getting raped and not doing anything to try and stop it. "It has nothing to do with ME!" You have to realise that in reaching true reconciliation we need to have both symbolic and practical solutions. Apologising was a vital step forward.

But anyway, that's just my opinion...

Ah well! I get to tell my kids that I lived through Sorry Day! HAHA.

Bayt-Al-Zakat

Look! It's ME accepting my GIFTSIES! Hehe.

Yesterday was the Bayt-Al-Zakat dinner celebrating the Muslim High Achievers of the 2007 HSC. One by one they led the students on to the stage in terms of UAI from lowest to highest and gave them a gift...and I was the last one! They gave me a standing ovation. Everyone in the hall was standing and clapping I was SO embarrased but so happy as well. One of the proudest moments of my short life.

I got a $500 Parker pen too! YAY A COOL PEN!!

Obama '08

For change we can believe in!

(link)

On the subject of jobs...

I went to my first EVER job interview today. I found an ad in the local newspaper and called up for funsies and somehow ended up with an interview. It was for some sort of an educational company. It went well I suppose. The only hiccup was when I asked, "How big is this company? How many people do you employ?" and the interviewer woman GLARED at me and said, "We do not discuss such details."

SCARY.

Anyway on the same day (i.e. today) I get a call from some parent of a kid from my old high school (I'm so incredibly famous you see) asking to tutor her kid. And another parent too. How cool is that! Lots of moneys soon to be rolling in....

I hope Myer accepts my job application! I really wanna work there!

Computer fast again!

I just formatted c-drive (C:/ for the DOS oldies :P) on my comp and now it's all fast again! YAY!! I think I used to accidentally (or not so accidentally) reset the computer too much and maybe just hit the hard-drive every now and again (LOL) so the bad sectors and crap started to build up. Windows went bonkers and took half a lifetime to load everytime I booted up.

So I said STUFF IT! I'm deleting YOU! Had to copy all the files and crap. Fun fun. And had to install all the programs and drivers ALL over again. Oh the pain. Well it was worth it I suppose.

Anyway, on the 'new' comp (before I installed Photoshop) I went to my blog and the Header ("Evil Lemons") was PLAIN UGLY. I didn't realise maybe some ppl didn't have the "Juice ITC" font. Anyway, THIS is what you're meant to see. If you don't then go install Photoshop!!

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.