I can cook Chinese!

I cooked dinner today. I managed to put together a not-too-shabby Chinese style dinner for my brother and Alex! Quite proud of myself sia...here are some pictures (courtesy of Mr Lim).

This dish doesn't look like much, but it sure tasted good. I fried snow peas, fresh shitake mushrooms and prawns together, and the only seasoning I used was vegetarian oyster sauce. It looked a little...errr...brown, after I added the sauce, but it smelled and tasted great! My brother and Alex both approved of this yummy dish. The snow peas were surprisingly easy to cook. You just need to rinse them and stir fry them in some oil until they all puff up and look plump.

The fresh mushrooms are exceptionally juicy lor...I don't think I will ever truly like dried mushrooms ever again. Wahahaha...

Now this omelette was an excellent lesson for me. Here's what I learned about long bean omelette frying:

1. Stir fry the chopped long beans lightly in oil first to cook them thoroughly. This brings out the sweetness and makes it easier to combine the flavours of the beans and the egg.

2. Mix the fried beans into the beaten egg mixture to ensure that the beans are evenly spread throughout the egg mixture. (Failure to do so results in the above omelette - looks like the Earth where the beans make up the land, and the egg make up the water)

3. Use a non-stick pan to aid in omelette frying and do so on medium heat.

4. Flipping the omelette takes skills and practice. Without these, you may end up 'chipping' off a piece of the omelette leaving less than round. (See above for 'chipped' omelette)

This picture is a bit blurry (blame the photographer...HAHAHA), but it's a sample of the soup I cooked. It's really easy to make yummy soup. Just boil dried ikan bilis in water until fragrant and the ikan bilis is soft. Then add a little salt (or in my case, I cheated and added one chicken stock cube). Add diced potatoes and carrots and boil till soft. Then roll minced meat (I used pork) into little balls to add to the soup. Voila! A hearty soup with lots of ingredients to chomp on! ^_^

Three happy boys!
From left: Alex, Xing Wei and me!

After dinner, I was trying to sharpen my knife (it's too blunt already...cannot cut things properly...). And while I was doing so, I managed to 'persuade' Alex to do the dishes and to hang my laundry! Wahaha...manipulative me! Heehee...

Here's proof:



I love cooking...what shall I cook next? Hmmm...

*think think think*

GuildWars: Eye of the North

Today I delivered an ultimatum to my shit of a tuition kid. I'm sick and tired of setting aside time for his tuition sessions, only to have him cancel/postpone on me. Argh! I told him he's going to set the timing and then I'm going to appear regardless of whether he can make it or not. Yeah...

Anyway, onto cooler matters...

GUILDWARS: EYE OF THE NORTH!


This weekend is the preview weekend, and so far, it's been a blast! The new characters are looking cool and some of the new skills are not too bad. I'm trying to play as much of it as I can...don't think I can finish all the available quests though...ah well. Fortunately, they are letting us keep whatever we get during this preview period, so that means when the game actually starts on the 31st of this month, I will have a slight head start already! Woot!

Here are some screenshots from the new game:

From top:

Hot new Norn babe Jora,

Her possessed brother who cannot change back to human form,

Shamanistic ritual to summon ancient bear spirit

&

Ancient bear spirit (appropriately and unimaginatively) named......Bear.

I sense a conspiracy...

I always surf www.magicthegathering.com and the new set's theme decks seem to indicate some kind of 'collaboration'...I may be wrong, but don't you think the artwork on the box looks suspiciously similar to The World of Warcraft? Maybe Wizards poached WoW's artists? Or maybe the artists' have been free-lancing (which is normal) and they ran out of ideas, so they started to sell to both Wizards and Blizzard?

Heheh...just speculation of course, but one thing's for sure... The new set looks incredible! ^_^


Very WoW-esque right? I'm quite excited about it actually...but I don't know if I should splurge on the new set or not...jialat...another dilemma. Sighz..

Movie Marathon + Shopping Madness!

I watched TWO movies yesterday!

First up, it was The Simpsons at GV Plaza! Hilarious I tell you! I guess since it's nearing the end of it's run, that's why the cinema was generally empty. Also it was a weekday afternoon, so I'm not surprised. My friend and I were the ones laughing the loudest I think...also because I don't think everyone in the cinema got all the jokes and references. Ah well...the humour was lost on them I guess.

To be objective, I would say that the movie was not something that we could not have enjoyed on TV...so Homer was right, right at the beginning at the film. AH well...good laughs, are, well..good laughs, so I'm not complaining. =)

At Plaza Singapura, I also picked up a copy of the latest and final expansion for GuildWars! Blew $59.90 on that sia...but it's worth it lah... If not I will whine about it till the end of days anyhow. So might as well satisfy myself right now! Heheh..so excited about it. I get early access this weekend....all that new game content! Confirm mind-blowing I think...heehee

Later in the evening I met up with Xinwei, Max and Yiting to catch 881! Another excellent movie produced locally! I laughed and cried and enjoyed the Hokkien though I didn't understand about 2/3s of it...but I tried my best to recall what little Hokkien my mom had taught me, and it wasn't too bad...at worst, I resorted to the convenient subtitles lor...hehe

The emotional scenes really struck a chord with me, and I teared quite abit in the cinema. I wish I had someone to lean on though...heheh..ah well...all in good time. =) Before the movie, I realised that the pair of shoes I was eyeing at Pull and Bear had received a second mark down! It's now $39.90 from the previoue $49.90! I was so excited lah! So how? Buy lor... WAHAHAHA.

In total, I blew close to a $100 on shopping, and I don't even dare to add the movie tickets to everything lor...

All in all, I had a great day and really enjoyed myself! Now I have to go and pore over my readings liao...sigh...

9am class tmr...sianz...

Pol Starmaker the Diva Elementalist

I haven't really posted much Guild Wars lately...so here's a little something for those gamers out there.

"Watcha looking at?"
"C'mere! C'mere..."
"You wanna piece of me?"
"Nah uh..." *Diva finger wave...*

Who says MMORPG mages can only cast spells and look sexy in next-to-nothing armour? LOL!

First Day of School!

Heyhey ladies and gentlemen!

This is the mandatory first post of the semester. I had lessons from 9am to 2pm. And they were generally really fun! I enjoyed myself, and I had enough company as well.

The new FASS canteen is swell, and though I've yet to eat the yong tau foo (cos' of the long queue and limited lunch time), I still loved my entire 35mins I spent there. ^_^ The view is now spectacular...can see the sea now leh. And there's now a nice new staircase leading to the guildhouse! Wheee...

I should go and sign up for my gym membership soon. Will wait till the end of August so that I maximise my time, ya know?

Just went to Big Bookshop in Clementi to do stationery shopping and bought everything I needed for cheap! Shiok lah! Glad I went there instead of the CO-OP. I'm now in my CCA room wondering what else I should do. Bored bored bored...

Songs of the Sea

Went to Sentosa to watch Songs of the Sea with HX, Ding and MM. It was soooo LAME can? LOL. But fortunately the company was excellent and we had a lot of fun talking and being silly and nonsensical.

Generally, I felt they should've done away with the terrible storyline and just focus on the pretty light, fire, water and sound effects. I mean, a rehashed musical fountain would be much much better than some lame-ass story plot about reviving ancient spirits of fire, light and water right?



Beautiful evening sky...so nice right?



Strolling along Tanjong Beach before the show...Wahahaha....and there were many many cute dogs too! ^_^



Water! Lights! Sound! Songs of the Sea!



Wahahaha...silly picture we took with the lame ass lionfish, Oscar.

That was my National Day for you. Fun fun fun. Glad we still have time for silly things and great friends. ^_^