Freestyler

I'm not being obsessed with my weight here but can I just say, swimming is freaking awesome? This has not happened once so I'm pretty sure it's not a coincidence. Yesterday before we went swimming, I weighed myself. After swimming, I weighed again and I lost 700gms! And it's not just water weight that I lost, I lost that 700gms for real! I weighed myself again some time through out the day yesterday and that 700gms came back. But then I weighed again this morning and that 700gms is gone. Isn't it amazing?? We were damn sure about swimming again today but sadly that didn't happen because we were loitering in the city for too long and it was getting late when we came back. 

Talking about swimming, I've been making good progress! =D I can now do freestyle yay! It's not completely perfect though... I still feel like I'm not doing it right somehow. Oh well maybe it's just me. Whenever I do things, I rather not do it than to get it done half-arsed. Which is why I am quite determined to fix and perfect it. I remember the first day I went swimming here in the community centre, I couldn't even do half a lap. Yesterday was our 5th time and I'm doing laps already =) Well half the credit goes to my determination and the will to learn, half goes to my swimming instructor who's been very motivating and really patient with me hehe.

Today I had to accompany Wk to his project's site in Moreland. He had to take some pictures for his work stuff.

Nah this is Moreland lol. While he was doing his thing, I was reading up recipes and see if there's anything special to make for the week. So aunty ahhaha.

There's nothing much in the place we were at. Houses, a hospital, parks and more houses. It's so quiet. The thing I really like about the houses here is the very low fences, or sometimes none and you can see into the compound. It just gives a very sociable, friendly vibe. Some houses have really beautiful gardens. There was one house with light pink walls, and there's white roses planted around the fence. When we were walking towards the train station, an old man with a walker in one of the houses said hello to us. I think he wanted to have a chat but we just kept walking and smiled and said have a nice day cos we had to get to the market before it closes. Sorry old man =(

The houses in Malaysia have walls and gates at least 5 feet tall - otherwise it's like inviting robbers into your house. Sometimes taller or made of complete concrete if the neighbours don't like each other lol. Gardening is possible but with the humid weather and sun all year round, flowers don't really survive well. And if you say hello to a stranger, they'll look at you all weird and walk away. Or if there're some crazy dogs in the compound, it'll bark at you so hard as though it's going to kill you if it ever comes out of that gate.

Bought 16 pieces of lamb cutlets. So freaking expensive man... and the french trimming is not even clean. The dish that I'm planning to cook better be good. Found something really similar to codfish - steamed codfish is my favourite! We found this fish called toothfish which we suspect might just be codfish but with a different name here. It's so expensive, more expensive than a yellow fin, sushi grade tuna. But it's always good to have fish once a week. It better be good as well.

Okie. Time to make tomorrow's lunch! Thinking of maybe a fruit salad... since I bought some mangoes and strawberries. Oooh cherries are in season now! Time for a good Black Forest attempt =)

Since this post is full of random things Imma add one more randomness. When I was younger, I was a huge fan of this song - Freestyler by Bombfunk MC.

Still am a fan!

Recipe please

Here comes some food pictures again! If you get hungry while looking at the pictures, I hold no responsibility. 

 Hokkien Mee

This was the second time I cooked Hokkien Mee. I tried making 猪油炸 (I hope I got the chinese characters right... if not, you may laugh away) or “zhu yao zhar” which is deep fried lard, but it didn't turn out right. If you've eaten Klang Hokkien Mee, it is NOTHING without zhu yao zhar. In fact, zhu yao zhar is in almost every 大炒 “tai chao” dish. I trimmed some fats (or possibly skin?) off some pork loin chops, cut them into pieces and deep fried them only to realise it's actually not lard hahah. Anywaaaaay. The Hokkien Mee sauce is actually SOOOOO simple: water, oyster sauce, dark soy sauce and light soy sauce. Sugar, salt and pepper to taste but I hardly use any because the sauces are already quite salty. It definitely didn't taste like what you can get from tai chao (some more no zhu yao zhar T_T) but it's good enough to satisfy some craving for this cheap and tasty Klang food. I don't remember where I got the recipe from but I googled and referred to multiple recipes.

 Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Maggie and I baked this during the weekend along with some Peanut Butter Cups you'll see below. Sooooo good! Except that we think the frosting is too sweet to our likings and we didn't even use the recommended amount of sugar, we used lesser! Gosh I can't imagine how sweet it would be if we were to follow the recipe. And we would have preferred it to be more 'cheesy'. Apart from the frosting, the cake is actually really good. I highly recommend this recipe. She (the recipe girl) made it into trifle but it can definitely be in a cake form, which was what she intended to do initially. Maggie and I didn't have enough round or square cake tins so we decided to bake it in 2 loaf tins and it worked! So we got to keep 1 loaf each which is more than enough for 2-3 people in the house.

 Peanut Butter Cups

Peanut butter is my weakness, good ones that is. We used the recipe from the same girl which we got our carrot cake recipe from. Again, it turned out to be too sweet to our likings. And also we experienced a bit of difficulties here and there while trying to 'assemble' it. It's too long to explain here so I might just make a separate post when I make these peanut butter cups again. Don't get me wrong, it is a very good recipe, but when things don't work out the way you like, you need to improvise and innovate.

 Instant Noodle But Better

Lol at the name. Boil soup with salt, sugar or some chicken stock powder, pepper and sesame oil. Cut some spam (luncheon meat) and carrots and throw them in. If you have some extra vege lying around in your fridge waiting to rot, cut some and throw them in. Grab some noodle and throw it in. We used  this instant Asian wheat noodle called Kan-To noodle which resembles spaghetti + mee sua, which we randomly bought. It's actually quite good! It doesn't turn the soup all starchy like mee sua does, and it doesn't have as much resistance as spaghetti and it cooks faster. Drop in an egg, cook to how you like it, and serve with some green decorative leaf (coriander, parsley, spring onion), a dash of sesame oil and pepper, if you want it to look all nice and fancy in pictures hahaha.

Stuffed Baby Bell Peppers and Shiitake

I learned this from one of my favourite Youtube cooking channels, cookingwithdog. I know wtf with the name but it's a very good channel to learn Japanese cooking! I've never liked to eat capsicum/bell peppers except when it's in pizza but lately I've been enjoying it! And besides these baby bell peppers are so cute, the size is perfect for stuffing. Imagine stuffing a normal size pepper... walao. I would have love it even more if I could cook with all 3 colours of baby bell peppers (green, red, yellow).

Ok that's it so far. Time for lunch. I made some salad yesterday for today's lunch at school. And................................. I'm at home now because I skipped school HAHAHA. Anyway. The salad didn't look very appetizing =.= how can a salad be appetizing anyway, right? Blehhhh.

A lil' eating and shopping

Sea Salt | Fish and Sushi Bar

If you're looking for awesome sushi or fish and chips for awesome price, Sea Salt is the place. I first discovered this place when Lenny, one of my classmates brought me there to get some sushi rolls. They're awesome because not only do they taste good, they're affordable. I especially love their inari (beancurd pockets), so huge! I ordered this Sea Salt Fish Burger the other day and omg it was massive. I swear there was like 3 pieces of fish bites in the burger along with vege, cheese and a fresh sesame seed bun. For healthier option, they even have grilled tuna or salmon burger, which are only a dollar more than their normal, battered fish burger. Those taste really good as well.

Ramen-Ya | Melbourne's Best Japanese Ramen Noodle Restaurant

I haven't tried enough of ramen in Melbourne to know if they are really the best, but their ramen is indeed good. Not cheap but still affordable. Apart from ramen they have bento boxes but I've only tried the Tonkatsu Charsu and Shoyu Gyoza Ramen. I'd say if you were to try, go for their specialty which is the Tonkatsu Charsu. I'm not a huge fan of ramen and these definitely didn't blew me off my mind but they're decent-tasting and the warm soup's great for a cold day.

Kenzan @ GPO

I can't seem to find the website for this restaurant but doesn't matter because I don't quite like the fact that their food does not justify the price at all. The dish in the picture for example, is their Sake Teriyaki which is basically grilled salmon with teriyaki sauce, served with vege, mashed potato and steamed rice. That cost $22! Ok for salmon, maybe that's alright but seriously, $22 for a single serve, don't you think it's too much? We ordered this entree of 4 shitake mushrooms with minced prawn filling, and it cost us S16! That's like $4 for 1 freaking mushroom! And their Agedashi Tofu is S10. Will I go back and give it a second chance? Hrm... not keen. I can see that there's a lot of attention to details put into the preparation of each dish, and ingredients are fresh but I can't help to think that they are a little overpriced for something that tasted 'good' and not 'omg I want more'.

***

Online shopping is my bestfriend now. With Ebay and Asos and a friend to onlineshop with to save on shipping, who steps out of the house to shop anymore? Hahah.

 Colour contact lenses

I can't seem to find the info page to these contacts from the website I got it from, maybe they don't sell them anymore :/ but look how cute the packaging is! They even gave free gifts which were a pair of lenses (which was crap, naturally) and a cute animal lens case. The colour of the free lenses were slightly different when worn so I threw those away already. My animal lens case are pig faces! ^@^  <--- obligatory lala emoticon to go with the pig face lens case hahahah!

 Ardell false lashes

Can I just say putting on individual false lashes is a bitch? They are so tiny and flimsy and it's so difficult to put them in the right position. That being said, they look so much more natural than the strip (full) ones.

 Asos.com

Currently waiting impatiently for these few items to arrive at my doorstep! 2 dresses, a top and a slip.

MAC Morange & Ruby Woo Lipsticks

I didn't buy these online, never buy MAC online unless you know the seller sells genuine stuff. MAC counterfeits are everywhere and they look real. Anyhow, I would never get lip products online cos you never know how long they've been kept. Lip products are essentially liquid/cream so they generally don't have long shelf lives. 

I've always been afraid of loud, bright colours but recently got the urge to try so when I got to pick 2 lippies for B2M (Back 2 MAC), I decided to go crazy. I knew I wanted Ruby Woo (as the name suggests, it's a red) for the first, for the second one I decided on an orange. I went to 3 MAC counters to finally find Morange, and I'm so glad I tried searching for it instead of settling for something else. 

These pictures are obviously edited, it doesn't really show how bold the colour is. It is truly bright and I luff it =D

云吞

With food/recipe magazines everywhere, anyone can cook! =P

Today I attempted to make wontons which turned out pretty good. The recipe said to use chicken mince but since chicken meat here is so expensive, I decided to go with pork mince. I mean come on, who makes/eats wonton with chicken meat anyway? At least I don't, for all I remember wontons are always filled with pork. I think it would be a completely different texture if it was chicken meat, possibly not as 'soft'? Which defeats the purpose of making wontons cos literally wonton or 云吞 means 'swallowing cloud' which indicates the wonton being so soft it's like swallowing clouds. 

My version is probably a cross between Cantonese and Shanghainese. Cantonese serves it with noodles, Shanghainese uses only pork and wombok (no prawn) and wraps it the way I did. The first time I tried to wrap it, I didn't know how to do it as the instructions weren't clear in the recipe. It turned out looking really ugly and weird so I looked up Youtube and found the right way to wrap them. Seriously, the internet has just about anything you're looking for it's not even funny.

By the way, I just finished watching Lord of the Rings (all 3) yesterday. I know, so freaking late. It was out when I was 15, at that time I probably still didn't have that much freedom to hang out with my friends and watch movies so when the 2nd or 3rd movie came out, I didn't watch it cos what's the point of watching when I didn't watch the first movie, right? Can I just exaggerate how freaking long the movie is? 3.5-4 hours for one movie, are you serious? Lol. Nevertheless, it was good. Next, The Matrix. Yes I haven't watched that either, because the name sounded boring hahaahh.

My Mexican Cousin

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On Sunday we went over to St. Ali for brunch. It's said to be famous for their cofee but I don't know much about coffee so gimme a cuppa macchiato and I'm good to go.

Wk had a latte (1) and the Daffy's Whole Egg (3) which has roasted assorted mushrooms with soft boiled duck egg, sauteed spinach and smoked sea salt. I of course had a long macchiato, and for my brunch I went with My Mexican Cousin (2) which is their secret recipe corn fritters, baby spinach, haloumi and kasundi with poached eggs. Maggie had the Napoleon Complex which is their french toast, you can see it in the second picture.

Loved the corn fritters! Corn fritters instantly reminded me of my Form 5 English literature subject where we had to read a book called The Pearl. Anyone remember that? Anyone? I really enjoyed the book so maybe that's why I can still remember the details. By the way corn fritters is not 'jagung goreng' ok... it's similar to pancakes but with corn in them. I guess traditionally people deep fry the mixture so maybe that's why it's called fritters but I'm pretty sure mine's not deep fried, it didn't taste oily at all.

I'm don't know much about coffee but I did enjoy my long macc. Food and service was good too but I heard they're always crowded and you can't book for a place though. They have quite an extensive menu, would love to go back and try other stuffs.

When we were on the way back to the city we passed by the Convention Centre and noticed there lots of people and some people with costumes so we decided to get down and have a look. I still don't know what was going on that day cos I was too busy looking at all the different costumes haha.

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The Star Wars characters were all getting their photos taken (4). Then we grabbed a Stormtrooper for a picture (5). I did take pictures with them but... gosh I look so fat if I put it up it'll break the screen wtf.

By the way, speaking of Stormtrooper, I never knew they were called that until Wk and Kai Mun mentioned! All these while I've always referred them as "the white soldiers" or "the clones" haahahah. Even my brother calls them clones lol.

Their costume was really, REALLY cool btw. When they talk the voice goes through something in their headgears that digitizes it and make it sound semirobotic, exactly like in the movies. When Maggie and I was about to take a picture with one of them, we dropped our shopping bags ith the boys and the Stormtrooper asked us "Have you been shopping today" in that digital voice hahahaha it was so freaking funny. That day was a really warm, sunny day. I cannot imagine how hot it would be for those people wearing those costumes. Especially Darth Vader hahaha. I was kinda disappointed to not see Chewbacca though.

***

Teaching went pretty well last week! :) It was a piano distributing company, which is the sole distributor of Steinway & Sons in.. I don't know if it's Victoria or the whole of Oz but omg... a huge lot full of pianos! Steinway & Sons some more! I would choose to get a Steinway over a car... since Wk can buy a car hahaahah!

Ok time to go.

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Life isn't as easy as it used to be but I am constantly grateful that I am always very well taken care of. If I feel like it, I'll cook. If I don't feel like it, someone is always there to make my meal for me.

***

Michelle, my former boss in a music school I used to teach at in Malaysia who migrated to Melbourne, asked me to help her relief her piano classes because she is back in Malaysia for the moment. A temporary opportunity to have a job but I think it's going to be a great experience, to know how it's like in the music schools here.

School on the other hand is getting interesting. I'm now thinking of what I really should do. Initially I wanted to change to another course but I couldn't do it because it wasn't offered to international students, it still isn't offered now. I'm stuck with this current course I'm doing because I'm supposed to change only when it is approved by the government and offered to international students. I was convinced that it'll happen in August. Then September. Then October and the list goes on. The last I heard, it's not going to happen till next February. Which will make it 8 months from when I started this course I'm currently doing! Which makes completely no sense if I were to switch after being in it for so long.

I honestly don't mind continuing to do what I've been doing since I'm doing well and I do see some career prospect in it. The thing is I don't feel excited whenever I go to school. I'm only doing it for the sake of the fees I've paid, not for the love or interest of it. But to change after 8 freaking months? I don't know how's that going to happen without needing to pay some extra moolah, which obviously I'm not willing to. I can only blame the institution for tricking me into agreeing to do this course while I wait... oh wait. Maybe I should blame myself for being so stupid. Haihhh.

So today we went swimming again. It was our 4th time if I remember it right. We've been going swimming pretty much every weekend and Wk teaches me how to swim. My dad taught my how to breaststroke when I was younger but it's not quite right... the technique. I'm guessing he learned it informally/self-taught which explains the wrong technique. I've always wanted to know how to swim... just because. It's a great cardio workout because in the water the exhaustion is somewhat disguised... if you know what I mean. I can never get the motivation to jog. So freaking tiring and boring.

I'm almost getting there with my breaststroke! Even did laps today. Not many but compared to the previous times, today felt very rewarding. Before this I had to break my swimming into 'sections' to complete 1 lap ok, it was that exhausting for me as well as demotivating looking at everyone swimming like a fish wtf. Even kids! Then again, I was most probably swimming wrongly so that's why. 

And each time I was approaching the deeper end, I panicked when I looked at the base getting deeper and deeper, and then I'll stop swimming and turn around as though there's a monster in front waiting for me wtf. Today, it felt so much more in control! There was still a few panicky moments but I tried to be as calm as possible and it really did work - to stay calm.

Once I get my breaststroke right, Wk will teach me freestyle. Looking forward to that! Slowly I shall overcome my fear of the water and swim like a fish too! =D

This was my second attempt at coffee cake, after a pretty disappointing first. This time the cake turned out much better - much lighter in texture and more moist. Finally satisfied.

Thinking of what I should bake next...

I've finally finished reading Kafka on the Shore. And honestly I have absolutely no idea what it's all about. So I Wikipedia-ed it like a loser... and found out that's exactly how the author wanted it to be. Like a riddle. So I'm supposed to read it a few more times to figure out more which I can not be bothered. It was a good read though... very mysterious and strange which kept me going on only because I was as curious as a cat. Ha! What a coincidence for using that idiom cos the book talks about cats as well.

Today marks the start of daylight saving aka the clock has to be adjusted to an hour faster than before aka we just lost 1 hour of the day in this Sunday. Oooooh well.