gay

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Amid 1 + 0.5 CIRs, 2 outstanding assignments on International Business and a truckload of unwashed laundry, I managed to squeeze a half-day off to celebrate YP's birthday.

We left the office at around 1130 AM and proceeded to Seed, an organic cafe located in Nagore road. I know I have made countless references to this blog post describing YP's fetish for all things organic, but I will do it again (link).

"Salad more raw than The Great Kali vs. The Undertaker"

"It's called Vitamin King, which is, potato leaf blended with pineapple"

I finished my pine nut pasta (which was also green) and used my own saliva to aid in the process of washing down Vitamin King. Feeling all vitamized, I rushed back to start preparing for the evening.

"Flowers check"

"Card check (see my marmoset holding his bamama)"

"Dummy pressie check"

"Real pressie check. Ok, it aint exactly the Eye of Thundera, but its all I can afford"

We arrived at Mansion 32 early, so we walked around and took some pictures.

"A little inoki mushroom appeared behind me"

"Cheesy smile, shifty interlocking fingers, and NOT wearing my necklace"

"With her 1970 put-one-leg-in-front-of-the-other pose"

"YP, forager of dead leaves, friend of nature, and hobbit"

We got in slightly after 7. The stuff on the menu were very elaborately titled. It's like the chicken I ate has 3 PhDs and carries the title Yang Amat Berbahagia Tan Sri Datuk Dr. Prof. Ayam-Yang-Sudah-Mati, Hons, LLB, MBA, Ameritus.

"I'll have the Datuk Seri Paduka Tengku Besar Ikan-Salmon"

The food was (in my opinion lah), ok only. The price? Well, I thought it was overpriced but not absurdly expensive (cheaper than The View @ EQ).

"Nothing very funny about this pic."

I bought a slice of green-tea cake from Bread History and soon it was candle blowing time.

"She made a wish and blew out the candles"

"Before attacking my blueberry cake"

She opened her dummy present and was quite… speechless.

"Wtf …"

I then sneaked out and un-dashingly re-emerged with her flowers and her real pressie (which was all the while stashed away in the trunk of my car, along with a monkey wrench and a dead racoon).  The pagat, waiters and restaurant patrons were giving me wierd stares, and some were sniggering like Muttley. Here she is wearing the necklace I bought her, finally.

"With the Eye of Thundera I now possess the power to defeat Mummra… but why does it smell like racoon?"

The chain is really small and the rocks are even smaller. The salesperson that sold the necklace wore black gloves like those baddies in Aces Goes Places. He insisted that I buy their 'True Love' collection (ooo… like LN's mic eating pose in the ATS poster). Those diamonds were smaller than my eye booger and when inspected through special magnifying lenses, reveal heart and arrow patterns arranged in concentric rings (much like a halo). Yes, that's pretty amazing from a scientific viewpoint, but the diamonds were smaller than a pinhead. Having to use the FA lab's SEM machine everytime you wished to see the heart patterns seemed a bit ridiculous to me. So I ended up buying the normal (cheaper) diamonds instead, and gave her two small t-shirts worth RM 7.90 with hearts big enough everyone to see. Haha. With the money I saved from not buying those TL diamonds, I can put a down-payment for another car.

"No the lamp did not set her hair on fire"

I guess I will only be updating this blog again in Christmas. I have to get back to appeasing Huawei, the God of Altera, and pay homage to the M4K experts in ICD. Till then… be nice and merry. Ciao.

I just finished my exams yesterday and it has been an insane semester. To (so-called) celebrate, YP and I decided to bake our very first cake together. Our mission was to successfully bake an apple cake for her mum and some of our colleagues. The cake turned out all wrong and I am writing to share how NOT to bake an apple cake.

1) Copy a dubious recipe from the internet.

2) Spend your precious afternoon peeling, chopping and grating apples instead of watching a good Hindi film on TV.

3) Crush walnuts with bare hands.

4) Mix eggs, honey and flour using your mum's old mixer.

5) Fold in the grated apple and walnuts and get your fingers almost chopped off due to poor depth perception.

6) Not trust your intuition that the batter appears unhealthily dark and evil.

7) Make fun of your batter by imagining you're mining an asteroid and coming home to Liv Tyler and her animal crackers.

Sprinkle the remaining walnuts over the top of the cake batter instead of letting your better half eat them.

9) Bake for 45 minutes and sit opposite the oven on a plastic red stool staring through the oven window with a concerned expression wondering if your hopes and dreams will rise like a phoenix or sink like a certain US based MNC building built upon reclaimed land.

If you do all of the above in the exact prescribed sequence, you would have successfully baked something the swamp thing might fancy.

Mafulat!

ps: I'm going to bring the cake to work tommorow to give it to the people I love.

The weekend we went to Ipoh was also the last weekend YP would keep her trusty old kancil. Named Berry for its giler maroon paint job, it was every ah beng's dream, and the apple of one little girl's heart.

Berry was kept in the most pristine of conditions, to the point that I would have to be cleaned and de-liced before entering lest my impure and sinful fingers sully its innards.

As with all things, old age, unfortunately, caught up with Berry. Riding on it was like riding on an Osim uGallop. Just a few weeks back, we sold Berry to someone who needed a small and inauspicious looking car (haha) to ferry illegal DVDs from Jelutong to SuperTanker.

"Oh Berry…"

Now, YP is absolutely in love with the mini cooper, and if at all possible, she would sell her kidney (and mine) for one. However, YP's kidneys are much too clean for most end users, while mine are nearing or is at the threshold of expiry. So, we had to settle for something much less. We bought a light green Viva.

I can tell YP isn't crazy about the new car. She says the color's insipid (a.k.a. spiritless, lifeless, subdued… you get the idea) and would have very much preferred the stronger ultramarine (which me and her mum was not in favour). She says the tint was not dark enough despite my (again) earnest attempts at explaining that dark != protection. Among the other potential candidates were the MyVi, Kenari, Suria & iTen. But we got the Viva for the most heartbreaking of reasons: practicality.

Since it was a Viva I suggested that we name it Vivian. I also thought of the name Hempedu by means of some weird mental association I have with the word insipid. In the end, she decided to name the car Riverine. Today, YP and her woodland creature friends gave Riverine a good wash (later, I am going to buy a tiny Ah Beng scorpion sticker to stick at the fuel cap…kekeke).

So here's saying goodbye to Berry. Though I didn't get a chance to sit in you much, thank you for keeping someone safe.

"Bye Berry"

'It's meat meat meat… just different size, different shape, different color…' says YP's mum flatly (accompanied by circular hand signs). Her daughter however, regards otherwise. We went down for a half day trip to Ipoh last Saturday to satisfy her 'thing' for these tiny blobs of sticky nourishment called Dim Sum.

The day started at 7 AM when I was awoken by YP's phone call. (I was supposed to have reached her house at 7 so I tried to sound very awake when I picked up the phone) (but failed). Washed up and jumped in my 10 sec car (4 sec *masuk gear*, 2 sec *eh sangkut*, another 4 sec *re-masuk*). Reached her place at 730. It was raining seals and dolphins that morning, but, berlandaskan kegigihan dan berjiwa rempit, we pulled through, arriving at Ipoh at 9 AM.

By this time, the tables of the infamous Fushan would undoubtedly be strewn with dim sum carcasses and pots of refilled-for-the-10th-time-chinese-tea, with wrinkly nippled pagoda singlet wearing cross-legged one-slipper-dangling uncles (Benson clipped in left hand and Kwong Wah Yit Poh on right… is the image complete?). So we went instead to Kao Lee (just 10 minutes away from the Ipoh Selatan exit).

What next, we ordered lo. First came the pot of chinese tea. Strong yet delicate, drinking this really makes you realize that those chinese tea that's served in economy rice stalls during them student days really sia sui.

"Relaxing by the window seat"

Then, almost simultaneously, came the flurry of hakau, char siu pau, lobak kueh, fish maw soup, chee cheong fan… (dan lagi dan lagi).

"Lobak Kueh"

"Chee Cheong Fun"

"Char Siu Pau"

"Dunno what"

"Loh Mai Kai"

"Fish maw soup"

The little wolverine (which she believes is a wolf despite my earnest attempts at convincing her that its a ferocious little animal the size of a rat with razor sharp claws native to New Zealand) pausing just long enough for a photo.

This babi obviously couldn't pause long enough.

Why doesn't Penang serve good dim sum ha?

My default CNY conversation has been:

Other person: Eh, Happy New Year! Wah, never take leave ah? So hardworking? (quick, say I'm hardworking also)

Me:  Happy New Year! No la, where got hardworking? You also wat…

Other person: *syok sendiri*

Today, my panties abit tight, so I tried to be anal.

Other person: Eh, Happy New Year! Wah, never take leave ah? So hardworking? (quick, say I'm hardworking also)

Me:  U-huh.. *cucuks beverage dispenser* *whirrrr*

Other person: *muka tak syok*

Yea, my CNY sucks. So sucky I've been drowning my sorrow experimenting with food. Today, I created a new recipe over dinner. It's called black pepper capsicum herbed chicken. Wow – so long a name? Yea. we could call it 'poco rosso di rotini formagiatta con bacon-bitte della Toscana' too if you want (go ahead, google it).

Here's the recipe. Don't ask me for measurements. Pros don't measure (stoic and square moled lips as I say this).

1. Finely chop onion and garlic. Sautee over olive oil. Don't have to be virgin, unless you're into that sort of thing.

2. Throw in yellow and green capsicum (I never did eat capsicum but YP has since 're-educated' me. Mmm).

3. Dump in chicken breast. Left breast is more tender. Check out the fibrocystic breast tissue survey in Google Scholar.

4. Oh, did I mention that you need to marinade the chicken? Yea. Massage oyster sauce, sugar, black pepper and a dash of vinegar into the meat the night before. Please resist the temptation to lick your fingers.

5. Cook under MAXIMUM fire. Must got steam come out from wok. There's nothing more pathetic than stir frying with low heat.

6. After all sides of chicken appear cooked, rinse the bekas containing the marinade with a little bit of water and pour it into the wok. Lower heat and cover.

7. Go fiddle with your cat/dog/leftover right-breasted chicken for 3 minutes.

8. Close fire. Serve.

There are two curses to noob cooks. The first is over-estimating the amount of ingredients you need, and ending up with a wok more crowded than Sunshine Market on CNY's eve. The second is the paranoia of super-cooking meat because if you should (crom forbid), bite into any raw part, you'll get infected with the T-virus and turn into a Resident Evil zombie. See, the one tip I want to share about cooking chicken, is that you don't have to cook it all the way. Chicken has the 'ability' to continue cooking itself even after you remove it from the fire. So really, you shouldn't have to cook it till it's rock hard. But do use your own judgment la (yea, I learned this from the same place I learnt the word snarbering).

 (And if you do turn into a Resident Evil zombie, sorry lo).

A paradox is a dichotomy of states that contradict one another, that by intuition leads to an 'unresolvable' conclusion, and therefore cannot exist together. When you are traveling faster than the speed of light with the headlights on, or when you drown in the fountain of eternal life, are examples of paradoxes. Yet, paradoxes do exist. When you have to be cruel to be kind, is an example of two paradoxical states (i.e. mutually negating), that exists cojointly.

Examples of real paradoxes I've come across recently (you may have to examine the messages carefully to detect the paradox), are:

(Case A: Gym talk)
Singlet man: Wah! Friday still come to gym?
T-shirt man: Aiyah, nobody goes home on Friday wan, coastal highway so jam…

(Case B: Guy spanar-ing a girl)
Girl: Do you think its my fault?
Guy: It's not your fault la… all men are liars…(trust me..)

(Case C: The mamak case)
Me: *pffooostk* Boss, tolong lap meja!

Then there are more profound paradoxes that comes to me only in my 'prime' moments (i.e. when I'm showering).

Like when ten toes isn't enough to keep you steady.

Like when what you do to survive kills you.

Lalala.

Photos are coming rii-iight up!

(No prize for guessing who our lovable friend in this photo is)