Ironically enough...

... I seem to be spending less time on the Internet even with all this free time on my hands. It happens all the time. I can be in the midst of the most gruelling, time-consuming assignments, and yet I still find time to blog. Then here comes the holidays, and you would think I'd be spending 24/7 online, yet I can't bring myself to sit in front of the laptop for even 10 minutes. Why? As much of a paradox as it might sound, I think it's actually because it's the holidays that I find it so hard to come online. It's like, with all this wonderful time to spend on other more lazy activities (re: TV, playing computer games, doing nothing), it just seems like such a hassle to use the Internet. It doesn't help that my laptop has serious lagging issues everytime it's hooked up to the Web. Speaking of which, it's nearly 2 weeks since I last blogged. Shocking, isn't it?

But it's been an eventful first 2 weeks of my holiday. I've been to Hornbill Steamboat with my coursemates (2 Fridays ago), the new eatery where Italiano's used to be with triSh and Vivian after watching Madagascar 2 (last Thursday), and even India Street to accompany triSh on one of her photoshoots. Had great fun pretending to be tourists too. That was just this morning, and we even had lunch at McDonald's! What great fun! Tried the shaker fries "move it move it" thingy, and well, let's just say it's not as good as it's advertising. Interestingly enough, I've also been accepted to work onboard Doulos for 2 weeks, starting the 11th of December. It's on some sort of volunteer program, and I'm looking forward to kitchen duty. I just hope they'll trust me enough to let me stir the pot. triSh will be onboard too, and between us I'm sure we could come up with some good pasta, right?

My craze with anime seems to be getting more interesting too. Currently I'm in the midst of watching Saiunkoku Monogatari, Ouran High School Host Club, and Bleach. I'm not going into details here (due to the risk of driving the remainder of my blog readers away) but I suppose I should say that it's quite hard for me to come across anime that really do pique (and maintain) my interest. I find the majority of anime rather silly and plotless, so it's rare for me to find one that actually has a good plot. It's something akin to digging up gold nuggets, I suppose. You dig through the pile of dirt, and every once in a blue moon you find something worth keeping. Does that make sense? It doesn't matter if it doesn't. I'm just trying to fill up this blogpost. Teehee.

So that's it this time. The next time I blog would probably be, well, next year? I hope not. Cheers you all, and happy holidays.

What a wonderful feeling

Thus ends the mental torture of one week's worth of exams. Such a relief, but such a pain too, to agonize over my performance this semester. I talked with my gang of friends last night, and we all unanimously agreed that this has been the worst semester for us, in terms of our carry marks and probably final grades. Sigh. But it's over, and I'm not complaining in the least. Almost two months stretch before me, eight weeks of not having to do anything but eat, sleep and slowly rot.

So last night, some of us celebrated the end of the exams by having a steamboat fest of sorts, as we always do each semester. It was ferocious, the way we literally attacked the food. Lamb, chicken, prawns, clams, fish balls, prawn balls, crabsticks, sausages, mushrooms, chocolate ice-cream, the only thing missing being nuggets, which I'm still quite upset about. Why no nuggets? What happened? Did they decide to quit their job and run off to Hawaii? Where did they disappear to? These questions still resound in my mind.

When I got home, I vegetated in front of the telly for a bit, just catching up on all the shows I'd missed. Not that I missed much, considering the amount of time I still spent watching telly every night of the exam period. I think I watch more telly during exam week than any other time. Why is that? Denial? Fear? Or just plain laziness?

Anyway, to get on with the rest of the story. Last night, to kick-start my holidays, I watched the first five episodes of Ouran High School Host Club. I must say that my first impression it was that it wasn't as good as the manga (especially as I was expecting a much deeper voice for Tamaki, and I thought he would be much more macho, manlier and charming). But you know how it is, when you picture something in your mind as you're reading, and the animated/movie version of it doesn't quite live up to what you were expecting. The mind is a powerful thing, I say. But after the first episode I grew to like the anime, so that's 5 down, 21 more to go, and loving every moment of it. It helped that I had an ice-cold drink to accompany my watching.

And it's Saturday today, and I'm happy it's the holidays. If only holidays lasted forever. But they don't, so I'm gonna treasure every minute of it. Cheers to you all, and happy holidays!

It's just one week!

That's what I keep telling myself this whole week, and it's probably what I'll keep telling myself the whole of next week too. It's been a great two weeks off from uni, but I'll be having my final exams the whole of next week, and it's torture just thinking about it. Truth is I haven't started studying. In fact, I haven't even started locating my notes. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if I even have any notes. How?

Anyway, it's not like this blog has many readers, but this is just a shoutout to the two or three of you that I wouldn't be blogging from now till the end of my exams. Just so I can stay focused. That's the plan, anyway. Knowing me, I'll probably get distracted from studying by the sound of the air-con or something. Or even the sound of the wind. Or something. But I will be back, as soon as my final paper's over.

So until my next post a week from now, cheers!

Dinner for one

This week alone I've prepared my own dinner twice. Don't go feeling all sorry for me now, it's actually something I look forward to, as it's probably the only chance I get to cook, which would come as a shock to many. So, yet again, I will describe my Maggi mee cooking process.

I always gather all my ingredients before I start the actual cooking. No point letting everything boil into nothingness while you go searching for that elusive egg or two. And I have a habit of crushing up the noodles (I think this makes it easier to eat with a spoon - lazy me). And I separate the eggs (yolks one bowl, whites one bowl), the reason for which will be explained soon. So once I've got all the ingredients ready, I fill a pot with approximately 2 centimetres of water (depending on the size of the pot), which I know is very little (and not following the actual instructions on the back of the packet), but then again this is creative cooking we're talking about. I let the water heat up a bit, just till I can see little bubbles forming, and then dump in one packet of the soup mix. Again, the reasons for all these specifics will be explained soon. Patience, my hungry friend.

When the soup heats up a little more, and then I dump in the egg whites and turn the fire to its lowest setting. I do this so that the egg whites don't poof up and spread throughout the soup. I want the egg whites to stay in one solid mass. So then I just watch the soup and eggs until they solidify. Then comes the fun part. Moving as fast as I can (actually the speed of my movements don't really matter, I just think it sounds more dramatic), I dump all the previously crushed-up dried-up noodles into the pot. Ahhhh... The sound of the noodles as they hit the pot and sizzle up... Nice. This is where the barely-enough-to-cover-the-noodles 2-centimetre's-worth-of-water-now-evaporated-to-1-centimetre soup comes into play. I like my noodles to be dry, so by the time the noodles absorb the soup, there's really not much liquid left. Then I leave the noodles to fry up a bit. Sizzle sizzle smoke smoke. Nice. What happened to the egg yolks you're wondering? Well, truth is I don't like them all cooked up. Like them as raw as they can get. So I just leave them at the bottom of the bowl, roll them around with a bit of seasoning from the second soup mix packet, and gently spoon the steaming noodles over the raw egg yolks. Leave them to just heat up a bit, just warm enough not to taste icky and cold.

Then comes the eating part. Before I actually devour the whole thing up, I use up the remainder of the second soup mix packet to dust the top of the noodles. Salty, I know, but very delicious. And later when I eat the whole thing up, at the bottom of the bowl lies two beautiful treasures, the two warmish raw-ish egg yolks, which I poke and mix around with the last few spoons of noodles and there, yummy yum. Slurp slurp. What a beautiful, satisfying, totally enjoyable meal. I love cooking my instant noodles this way, but I've come to the realization that Maggi mee curry flavour is the best fit for this style of cooking. Better still if it's the Kari Letup version, so much more flavour and kick. Maggi mee can really be an art form if you know what to do with it. Not that I'm claiming I know how to cook, but I think I'm quite good at cooking up a pretty fantastic Maggi mee. And it never fails to put a big smile on my face. Nice, isn't it?