London Transport Awareness Ad

I got this from my friend's blog, and I thought that this ad is brilliant. Thus I posted it here on my blog.

Do check it out.

http://www.dothetest.co.uk/

Mood: Busy, busy.. and so not looking forward to next week's lab session... :-(

Bridge score!

Haha.. if you are wondering what this is about.. it's about 4 of us friends who are crazy about bridge. We meet about twice a week to play bridge, and we keep a score sheet on the winnings. (yes, we are that crazy about it).

We started playing bridge since June last year, and I am going to announce our scores so far here. Oh dear.. I typed out a table in excel but somehow the table didn't transfer over here well. Guess I will have to type this out.

For year 2007 (June to Dec)
Total number of games played: 1154

Number of wins
ST - 630
CM - 532
KB - 580
WY - 566

For 2008, during the first 3 months of this year, we played 603 games already!
And the scores, thus far, are:

ST - 320
CM - 301
KB - 280
WY - 305

I know it is just a matter of time before CM or WY catches with me on the score, so.. I will treasure the lead while I can.

Bridge is a really addictive game, the only down side is only a maximum of 4 players can play. Actually you can only play when you have 4 players. Funny how bridge is often thought of as "old men"'s game, when it is so challenging and exciting to play. Of course you'd have to have the patience to sit there for a couple of hours to play, chatting nothing but the strategies of the previous game, and how bidding could have been improved with your partner.

I am glad I found 3 other friends with such passion about the game as I do. Let's not let the playing stop.... ever...! (haha.. I can hear someone fainting..)

Caramel Bread Pudding

I made this after the ginger egg pudding as we had some milk left so decided to make the caramel bread pudding.

I will not elaborate on the process. Just to share with you what the end product looked like.

Oh, someone took the camera back from me so I will not be able to snap as many photos of my activities in the coming days.. so.. blame him..

(hint hint: I want the camera back when you are done with it... :-P)

p/s: looking forward to the bridge session tonight!

Ginger Egg Pudding

My plan today is to go pasar tani with mum, buy wall fan for the kitchen, and make ginger egg pudding.

It'd be my first attempt, not sure how it will turn out. As usual, I will try to take some photos of the process and show you the outcome. That's the plan...

Oh, aunty is here. We should get going now..

Ta!



Ok, as promised, here are the ginger egg puddings.. the puddings turned out great! It tasted fantastic as well, but unfortunately, everyone only had stomach for one cup of ginger egg pudding. Luckily I only made one recipe.

Love this art!

Ever heard from "Shui Jing Nei Hua" (Literally translation means Drawing Pictures Inside the Crystal)? Well, It is truly an art in itself, and one that I appreciate and enjoy so much!
I made the discovery during my Jan 08 trip to China, and it was in Nanjing that we saw this form of art. It takes tremendous amount of accuracy and perfect timing, coupled with stable hands and artistic imagination to complete every piece of artwork. I am truly amazed and fascinated by it, and I can stay there and watch the sifu at work the whole day. Unfortunately, because we are on tour so we could only stay a while, but I took quite a fwe photos of the crystal. You will surely be impressed by it.
Here are some of the photos of the crystal:

Notice the detailed artwork? Amazing isn't it?

In the form of teapot

I love them...!

Who is that...?

Who on earth would be wearing such mis-matched shoes?

Haha.. (that's for being too busy to pay attention to me :-p)

Guess who?

This one?

:-p

Pivot Table

Argghhh...! I am doomed...

I have no idea how to use a pivot table and chart, and all my colleagues are pivot experts. Every excel sheet is presented in pivot as there are lots of data, and I am still trying to figure out the "how-tos" of pivot function.

Tried the Help button on Excel, but it's too brief. I need something that will teach me the ABCs of pivot, to hold my hand and guide me through each step of the way. No wonder I saw a book on Pivot on my colleague's desk the other day. Who wouldn't, given the complexity?

I am off to the bookshop to get myself a book on pivot. I think it is a really useful thing to learn.

Ta ta!

My All Time Favourite Potato Chips

Tada...!

The love of my life

This is my favourite potato chips. I adore it, I abdolutely love it.



I started eating it during my uni days in the UK. When I finished my degree, I came back to Malaysia and that was the end of my romantic interlude with Walkers Potato Chips.



Whenever I know of people travelling to the UK, I would plead/ beg/ shed tears (ok lah, I merely had to ask nicely) for them bring back a few packets for me, but alas the supply don't last long.



Through someone, I currently have some on stock and I am very happy..! I have even taken photos of it so that you know exactly what to buy for me should you be in the UK. Remember, I only like the Cheese and Onion flavours, there is the individual mini packet, and there's the 6-in-1 packet. It is easier to carry the 6-in-1 packet (and of course because then I will have more of it.. >_< hehe) so do look out for it.

(right) The 6-in-1 packaging

Ok, bye for now!

Monday morning..

I am not in the mood to work today....

All I can say is, it is very frustrating when you are not in control of things and you have to rely on others' inputs. All you can do it just wait and wait, and hope that they will be able to deliver what you EXPECT them to deliver.

Yes, I am talking about the external consultants. It has been a very frustrating experience so far, and is causing me to have sleepless nights and awful working days.

I really hope that they finally get what we want, and expect and deliver!

Happy Birthday Mummy..!

On this joyous occassion of my mum's birthday, I decided to make her a cake. So I waited till mum woke up in the morning, and asked her what cake would she like me to make.

Once we decided on tiramisu, we then got down to work. I hear you asking "we"? Thought it was supposed to be me making a birthday cake for mum? Well, you have to understand.. mum is er.. not very confident about my baking.. hehe.. *shy* although I HAVE baked a few cakes before. Plus, mum is an expert in the baking department thus she wants to "supervise".

Mum baked the sponge cake base while I made the coffee liquor syrup, mum basically took charge after that. She delegtated jobs to me and efficiently instructed next moves. And voila...!

The cake is basically done, and we are waiting for it to chill. I took a few photos during the process and I will post it here, together with the recipe. I have not tasted the cake thus I do not know if the recipe is a success.

Tiramisu

Ingredients:

Sponge Cake
3 eggs (Grade A)
90 g Castor sugar
90g plain flour, sifted
*If you have sponge mix, you can basically skip the steps above and use the sponge mix to bake the sponge cake instead. Much faster...!

Coffee Liquor Syrup
250ml (1 cuo) boiling water
2tbsp instant coffee
4-5 tbsp sugar
4tbsp Kahlua/ Tia Maria (coffee liqour), optional

Cream Cheese Layer
500g mascarpone or cream cheese
80g castor sugar
120g whipped cream

Garnish
cocoa powder


Method:
1. Sponge Cake: Whisk eggs and sugar till very thick and fluffy. Fold in flour lightly. Pour into a 22gm/ 9" round cake tin and bake at 190C till golden brown (about 20-25 minutes). Remove, leave to cool and cut into small rounds.










2. Coffee liquor syrup: Mix boiling water, instant coffee and sugar till dissolved. Leave to cool and add in Kahlua/ Tia Maria.

3. Cream cheese layer: Beat cream cheese and sugar till light. Add whipped cream and mix well.











4. To assemble: Line serving bowl with 1 small round sponge, sprinkle coffee liqour syrup generously over cake to soak it.

5. Spoon cream layer to cover the sponge cake.
Place another layer of cake on top of cream layer and repeat as before.








6. Finally, sprinkle some cocoa porwer on top of cream layer. Chill in the fridge for at least 3-4 hours before serving as dessert.








7. Decorate as you please (ok, ok, not part of the recipe... I added the sentence..

VOILA!

(The finished product)

I hope the cake taste good, no.., I am SURE it will taste superb! I had fun making tiramisu with mum today. Now you go and try the recipe ok?