The Gnomes Made Me Do It!

Science Geek Domesticated

Senario: Mother fussing over ginger tea making in kitchen
Question: Why are you putting in salt so early!!
Geek Answer: Salt reduces the boling temperature of water and it'll boil quicker as compared to just boiling plain water

Problem: Lunch and a bottle of new chilli sauce, Geek banging furiously on base of bottle upon receiving chilli sauce
Kind Soul: Want me to help you with that?
Geek Answer: I know what's the problem! You see, it's new so the sauce is packed all the way to the top. All you need to do is to make a small hole like this (Puts knife in and presses one side down), to create an air passage. Now air molecules will rush in a take the place of the sauce, hence pushing the sauce out.

Senario: Potato peeling video
Statement: Come have a look at this! The Japanese are so smart!
Geek Answer: See, you boil the potato with the skin on, once its cook, put it in a basin of ice water. As the potato is subjected to rapid cooling, it contracts alot faster and pulls away from the skin. See! That's when they make lacerations in the skin and the skin will just fall off!

No points for coolness earned, and most times, strange stares of "You fucken Geek!" but useful nonetheless. I wonder if they have a book on the science of domestic chores.

Posted by sideshowjo at 10:32 pm | Permalink | Comments

So they say you're a foodie...
1) You wake up sweating under the covers, the electricity in your block has been cut off. The first thing that hits you is your vienetta ice cream in the freezer! You sit in the kitchen, in your PJ's, finishing your vienetta for breakfast to save it from it's melting fate.
2) You've had a full dinner, complete with ice cream after work, you come home to the lovely smells of your mother's famous black sauce pork knuckle stewing over the stove. She asks you if you've eaten, you tell her you're famished.
3) You are on a rampage. You had gastric the day before, and now you're eating for yesterday on top of today.
4) You stuff your face at buffets, fully utilizing the 20 minute window before your stomach relays the message to your brain that you're full. You panic at the 19th minute and pile up the eclairs.
5) The steak in the fridge has gone slightly bad, there's green mould on the top. You take some kitchen tissues and wipe of the mould. You fry up the "cured" steak for breakfast.
6) You strategise how to pile up your plate at the 'All you can eat on one plate' chinese dim sum stall at an Australian foodcourt. You make skyscrapers with wontons.

Not guilty of all of them, but these are moments I've had and 2 from other "foodie" friends.
I'm going straight to hell.

Posted by sideshowjo at 12:36 am | Permalink | Comments

Great. My father just called me a tub of lard.
Great. I've had a long and TEDIOUS day at work, have to get on those journal readings tonight and he goes and messes up my mojo by calling me f-f-f-f-fat names. I can't help it if I've got a distended stomach from that bowl of Laksa during lunch or that I'm wearing a skimpy cotton singlet at the dinner table which accentuates my flippers. I'm doing ok for a beached whale if you ask me. Great, now i'm in self pitying mode and wallowing. Fuck. I hate the world.

Of course thoughts of starving till I'm skin and bones consume my thoughts every so often, but I just love food too damn much. This constant battle with chocolate and evil carbohydrates. Food Food Food. I just want to be skinny so they'll get off my back damn it. It's bloody irritating. TUB OF LARD! Damnit. I just need to hit rock bottom, just that once, then they'll stop their nagging, 26 years of it an counting (They used to call me Baby Sumo, go figure). When I get my MBBS, I'll device a way to branch off one's esophagus just before it hits to stomach, where food will pass into a disposable bag which is attached to a valve just below your diaphragm. So you can choose what foods go into your stomach and which do not. Let's see, Fatty steak- bag, veggies- stomach, coke-bag, water-stomach, chocolate-bag, fruits-stomach.

Yes.
This is the solution.
Now to work on getting that MBBS and stealing some tools.

Posted by sideshowjo at 7:29 pm | Permalink | Comments

Meiji Shrine
Meiji milk is so rich, creamy and buttery, it tastes like you're drinking molten shortcrust pastry.
Needless to say, the snacks which employ the addition of their wholesome full fat milk is delectable.
Hello Panda, Chocolate Mushrooms, Pucca, Choco Baby, Chocolate covered jellybeans my all time favorite Apollo which has the most ridiculous looking pink rabbit with chocolate ears on the back of the box.



So of course for the longest time, whenever I read/hear of the Meiji shrine in passing, I naturally associate it with my favorite confectionary maker. What a dream it would be to visit the Meiji shrine in Japan and row boats in their chocolate rivers, pick apollo mushrooms off chocolate covered jellybean grass and see apollo rabbits burrowing in the distance.

But now I know the Meiji shrine ain't no chocolate paradise.
Damn :(

Posted by sideshowjo at 3:07 pm | Permalink | Comments

GNOMEo and Juliet
From Wikipedia: Gnomeo and Juliet is an animated film coming in December 19, 2008 from Miramax Films and Rocket Pictures.
Starring Ewan McGregor as Gnomeo, Kate Winslet as Juliet, Judi Dench as Nurse and Greg Ellis as Tibault.
Two garden gnomes fall in love with each other, although their families are sworn enemies!!!!

Finally a Gnome movie! Though I wish it was claymation instead of animation. But that would mean a good 5 years wait.

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.
Where can I find a gnome just like the one in Amelie!!

Photo Courtesy of Shatil.co

Posted by sideshowjo at 12:22 pm | Permalink | Comments

The Misery has come to an end. Now we just wait for Mogwai.


The Juayster running on 3 hours sleep


When in Macau, eat egg tarts and roll some die.


The only half decent shot we had. I'm not sure if you can see Jonsi sawing away at his guitar with the cello bow.

Posted by sideshowjo at 7:10 pm | Permalink | Comments

Random, As Usual

Gastric:
I drank some sour watercress soup last night. Alarm bells should have gone off when it tasted citrus-y but I just put it down to strange soup stock. Like they say, got to learn to listen to your gut (All pun intended). Woke up with teeth grinding gastric. 5am dose of Buscopan and 2 heaped tablespoonfuls of Mylanta. Acid buffer and anti spasm should do the trick (I hope!). The joys of self medicating. Monday and no work. yay.

Straits Kitchen at the Hyatt:
Gourmet Hawker fare. Wasn't too keen when mom mentioned it a few months ago. Thought it was just atas local fare for the ang mos. I eat my words. Dinner there with mom and dad was divine. They serve up the best Chilli Crabs, Buddah Jump Over the Wall, Grilled mushroom northern indian styleee, ice kachang, pineapple tarts, roast duck, chicken rice, kueh lapis, oneh oneh, it was beautiful. It's hawker fare minus the grease, minus the MSG and made with a whole lot of gourmet chef love. A Cool $38+++ (I think!) for buffet dinner and if you have the hyatt card, even better. 50% of for 2, 33% off for groups of 3 and %25 off for groups of 4.

Indie Rock, Post Rock and other strange music:
Mogwai is coming to Singapore. We have all been too damn lucky! Bands I thought I'll never ever see. Mogwai is coming.

Un Chien Andalou:
A surrealist short film by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali made in 1928. 17 minutes of surrealistic visual imagery, I have deduced that Surrelism is nonsense but very fascinating. My vacuous little mind never saw beyond the surface of the film. Later in an interview with Luis Bunuel's son, said that surrealism is not meant to be interpretated. It is the vision of dreams. Ah! all these Avant-Garde films! Enjoyable nontheless.

That's all

Posted by sideshowjo at 1:04 pm | Permalink | Comments

THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS
Without fail.
There is always islandwide rain when 3pm approaches on Good Friday.
The heavens are weeping.
40 minutes to the stations of the cross.
Happy Easter everyone.

Posted by sideshowjo at 2:07 pm | Permalink | Comments

We have a policeman in our class.
My male lecturer is a pathologist by day and Madam Fifi by night.
We talked about securing a crime scene.
According to Mr. Policeman:
In Singapore, a warrant is not required for HDB flats and a search can be done under the supervision of a sergeant. A warrant is only needed for private housing.
Singapore where got social divide?
Bah.
Stay in HDB flat better hide contraband properly.

Posted by sideshowjo at 12:48 am | Permalink | Comments

The Aftermath
As they perform the opening track, I couldn't control my tears, only after 3 songs did I stop and sit quietly, in my soaking t-shirt.
When they played track 4 from ( ) I was back on that lonely balcony in Queensland feeling sorry for myself.
When they played Svern-g-englar From Agaetis Bryjun, I was in bed being moody and pensive.
Today as I walked the long road in, I listened to Takk, and silently, tears welled up again.
I want to write more but how do I begin to express how profound the concert that was, and that, I'll probably never be the same again. I'm depressed. I really am overly melodramatic but I just want to be in this funk, for just a little while more.

Posted by sideshowjo at 11:04 pm | Permalink | Comments

Are you comfortable with the company you keep when you're alone?

Posted by sideshowjo at 2:26 pm | Permalink | Comments

Going back to uni after you've worked for long enough to know that money is the hardest asset to aquire makes for a very big tangent shift in your source of motivation and priorities.
I really believe that we should have all worked prior to University
We should've worked long enough to know that the daddy bank loan is a very special thing, and a privillege not to be abused.
Perhaps by then, we would have started to have an inkling as to what the hell it is we would have wanted to do in University and not run around like a chicken on speed oscillating between courses we probably didn't enjoy.

Hoorah to my old school mates who pulled shifts at fastfood joints while coping the the demands of school. They are all the more wiser.

I've given up playtime on days this week, on Saturday and half of today to sit down and chalk up those study hours.
It's tough and sacrifices will have to be made, people will talk, judgements will be passed, and little support may be given.
But you know what?
I wouldn't want it any other way.

On a seperate note, to remind myself:
I've not been taking any decent photos for a very long time.
I'm not very good at it, but I do enjoy it.
And everyone should be doing things they enjoy, as long as they are good things.
I don't particularly look forward to learning the techical aspects of handling an SLR just as yet, so I've been very happy with a simple LCA Kompat Automat. I love the colours, I love how it's so easy, and I love the fact that every picture is a surprise. You really never quite know what you are going to get.

Some photos from almost 2 or 3 years ago, those were the days.

Looking down Clifford Pier, a view we will see for not much longer :(


Hair and Make-up reads her book amidst the pokey grass.


Halo


One of the motels during a road trip in Australia


The caffine addict


Elvis and his detachable pelvis

I need to use the LCA more more more.
Perhaps in HK.
No, DEFINATELY in HK.

Posted by sideshowjo at 11:26 pm | Permalink | Comments