Systematic Chaos

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So recently I’ve taken on to baking muffins to pass the time. Searched around for a suitable recipe before settling on one and it turned out pretty well, though my on my first try the muffins were rather dense due to the amount of dry ingredients in it (cocoa powder, coffee powder, flour) and was quite heavy.

First I tried Peppermint Mocha with Chocolate Chip muffins. My only regret for this was not using BLACK coffee, and using those little sachets with creamer and coffee. Coffee taste wasn’t too strong, but the chocolate and mint kinda made up for it for me I guess.

So with a base muffin recipe that worked well with the peppermint mocha muffins, I decided to try making a different kind of muffin. Was getting especially sick of chocolate mint as I baked 1.5 batches (18 muffins) over a week and ate 6 of those, but still felt like baking. So after a bit of back and forth, I decided to settle with Orange muffins.

As before I made a mistake – these things are really sweet. Should have used sugar-free orange juice, or better yet, freshly squeezed juice for the muffins. Nevertheless they turned out pretty okay. Without all the extra cocoa and coffee powders, the muffin was much lighter and more fluffy. I added some citrus peel to the 2nd half of the mixture to add a bit of interesting texture, but it just sank to the bottom as the batter was kinda watery. Still the addition of the peels was a decent thing, just wish they were more flavorful.

Next week I shall try making another fruit-based muffin. Only problem that I have will probably be the availability of the ingredients I need.

Just changed the blog theme and formatting appears a bit weird for some posts, but I’m  a bit too lazy to do the changes to those posts to make them look better, so I’m leaving them as it is.

A few people have asked about my location info in my Facebook profile. It’s says I currently live in New York and I was born in Hudson Bay. Lets start with New York first.

I’m a born-and-bred city boy. I have known nothing but the city ever since I was born, and when I travel I would prefer not to visit the cities just because I already get so much of it back home.

However there are two places that I make exceptions for: One would be Hong Kong, and the other would be New York.

There’s just something about New York that draws my attention to it. There’s no single thing that I like about it. I love the buildings, Central Park, Broadway… I know it’s really silly, but it’s kind of like a high-school crush, y’know?

It’s funny, really. Falling in love with a city I haven’t even gone too yet, and I don’t even know why I like it, but it has been a dream of mine to visit New York some day and soak in the sights and sounds. Too bad air tickets are so expensive, else I’d go in a heartbeat.

As for Hudson Bay, it’s mostly due to my love for polar bears. Hudson Bay is one place you can see them… Lame, I know but I adore polar bears (along with a few other mammalian apex predators).

So.. There you have it. LOL.

So I’m back to blogging after letting this domain kinda rot for quite a while. My computer’s graphics card burnt itself out while I was playing EVE Online, so now I’m basically stuck with a netbook to use the internet with for now.

As expected I’m pretty bored without any games to play, since my PS3 also decided to fail at the same time so that basically that puts any chance of gaming to zero. So here I am, posting on the blog again.

So today I went for dinner with Honey, went to Ikea for some meatballs and chicken wings. Ate some raspberry cheesecake which wasn’t too nice. Their soda fountain was out of CO2 and flat cola tastes absolutely horrible, haha.

After eating we headed towards Giant, and went around getting some instant noodles and potato chips and drinks, and commandeering an abandoned trolley to put the stuff inside halfway.  She commented how others might mistake us for a couple.. lol.

And cranberry + blackcurrent ribena tastes almost as horrible as flat cola. :p

30-Day Challenge – Day 4

Today’s theme is ‘a song that makes you sad’. I took a break from the pop songs, and it’s a country song today! It was hard for me to decide what to choose for this song, as I had several in mind for this theme. Strangely all of them are country songs, hah. Eventually I chose this song. Adultery, alcoholism, suicide, all in one song.

I cannot say that I can identify with this song, especially since I’m neither alcoholic nor am I married (or even attached for that matter), however this does remind me how fragile the human psyche can be. All that it takes is just a single event and a person can go off his/ her rocker. I’ve been there before, had a breakdown and contemplated suicide. I would’ve gone ahead with it, if it wasn’t for a special someone that intervened. Looking back, it was really silly to consider it at all, and I know that most people will be inclined to agree.

What I would love to k now is if that ‘most people’ will still hold that view when they fall into a depression. It isn’t as simple as ‘snapping out of it’. Yes, only they can help themselves if they truly want to get out of the cycle, but support from family and friends is also an important factor. I guess this is one of those things where you will only understand if you go through it yourselves – afterall, it’s easy to be sterile and distant with issues like these when you  have not experienced or cannot empathize with someone.

It’s really sad to see someone take their live. Often those left behind will be the ones who eventually suffer the most. The impact of suicide isn’t limited to the person, but it also extends to their family and friends. ‘Why didn’t we see this coming?’ is often a common question people ask themselves, and in turn, they themselves may go on to commit suicide too, if they couldn’t handle it. It’s a vicious cycle, really.

30-Day Song Challenge – Day 3 (if you’re here for the review, scroll down past this emo shit part)

Today’s challenge is ‘a song that makes you happy’. This isn’t exactly a ‘happy’ song, but everyone identifies with these types of songs sometime or another. I’m going through a bit of a rough patch now, and no matter what you think, this song cheered me up a bit.

Fuckin’ Perfect by P!NK (apologies for the shitty quality of the music).

Everyone makes wrong decisions all the time. I just made another costly mistake that won’t be able to be resolved soon. Thinking back, I took so many things for granted. After repeatedly making the same mistakes, I haven’t learn a thing. At all. So I guess I deserve what I got, huh? Still, the reality of it hit me.

I’m a fucking loser.

I was too blind to see what I was blessed with and threw it all away, and for what? A extra few hours of sleep. I lacked the discipline to regulate my sleeping habits. Though no matter what I do now, things cannot be changed. It’s far too late for that, and the only option left for me is to just pick up the pieces and move on with my life.  I don’t know if I can do it on my own. Whether or not I can count on myself and on my friends I don’t know. Maybe I just have to trust a higher power.

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Super 8 is a sci-fi/ fantasy action movie set in the late 1970s, in a small town in Ohio. While filming their movie to enter into a film festival, a group of teens are witnesses to a horrific train crash. In the weeks that follow, bizarre disappearances of townspeople as well as electronic gadgets and automobile engines start happening. It just so happens that the teens who were filming left the it running, and it captured something far more mysterious than what they could’ve imagined.

Directed by J.J Abrams (Star Trek [2009], Mission Impossible III [2006]) and directed by Steven Speilberg (I don’t need to list his movies, do I), Super 8 gets it’s title from the Super 8mm film which the teens were using to film their movie. It’s an action-packed movie with an incredible start when the train crashes – explosions that would make Micheal Bay proud. The entire movie feels like a mash-up of Jaws and E.T, films which Speilberg also directed. Perhaps it was intended as a homage to Speilberg by Abrams. It feels well executed, and the young cast make it fun to watch. Wish I could say the same for the older cast members, but I felt that the acting of the young stars were far better than the older ones (to be honest, the movie revolved around these stars anyway).

Like in Star Trek back in 2009, J.J Abrams once again shows his love for lens flare. There’s quite a lot of it and it does get irritating at time. I like lens flare sometimes, but if it’s used to much it starts to look gimmicky – something critics pointed out for Star Trek. Thankfully, he doesn’t use as much lens flare this time.

Over the course of this nearly 2-hour long run time, the pacing is fairly even with several more exciting bits, and even puppy love thrown into the mix. There’s also a hippy for comic relief for a bit of cheap laughs. With the kind of buildup you can achieve with a 2-hour runtime, I was somewhat disappointed with the rather anti-climatic ending. After all that the action I was expecting something more spectacular. Not that the ending isn’t nice, it just didn’t live up to the expectation I had after watching the adventures of the teens.

TL;DR: Action-packed scf-fi movie made for everyone to enjoy. Plenty of eye-candy, decent story line with a somewhat disappointing ending.
YAY: Stellar cast, good visuals, decent writing
NAY: Lens flare abuse, anti-climatic ending
Overall rating: 4/5

Okay, I know that I missed a day but I’m continuing with Day Two now. Today, the theme is “A Song that you hate”.

There aren’t really many songs that I hate. I can appreciate most kinds of music, and even if I don’t like it, I don’t exactly hate a song. And then I heard this song:

Yes, it’s Vanilla Ice. I hate this song so much because I thought it was Queen’s ‘Under Pressure’ when that iconic beat came in. Then the guy starts to… rap. The words don’t mean anything, but I still think most white guys (or asians) can’t rap (before you rage on me, I said most, not all). Below is Queen’s Under Pressure, hah.

Still nothing much to post though. I watched Kung Fu Panda and X-Men: First Class the other day and both movies were great. I forgot what Po had said to that peacock near the end of the movie,  something about letting the past go. Seems like it struck a chord with me; I’m wearing all these chains from the past, and if I never let them go, I guess I’ll never truly realize what I’m capable of.

In theory it sounds so easy, but as most things, it’s easier said than done. To me, the past is something I never forget. I seem to remember more negative things than positive ones, which is maybe why I’m a goddamned stubborn bitch at times. Negative things, yet so familiar. It’s hard to do away with familiarity even if it’s negative. Some day I’ll have to eventually face my inner demons, and when I do, hopefully these chains will break and finally set me free.

Saw this on Facebook so decided to just do this on my blog, hahar.

Day 01 – Your Favourite Song

I have so many songs that I really like, so it’s pretty hard to just pick one. I’ll post a more recent favourite, which is Adele’s Rolling In The Deep. I like this song a lot. The lyrics are good, and Adele’s voice is wonderfully unique. It does help that the song itself is pretty good and I like the rhythm and beat, and the tune is great too.

I don’t have anything much to post at this point of time. Generally pretty bored and tired with life, but meh.

Went to the Jurong Bird Park on Saturday with Ann, Honey, Yish and Justin. Had quite a fun time there, especially when feeding the lories there.

There isn’t much to say for this post… though after the outing I felt like utter crap, and puked the contents of my dinner. Saw a doctor at NEX, 42 frigging dollars! So expensive, omg. Anyway, below is a gallery of pictures for your enjoyment… sorry for the crap photos in some, it has been quite a long time since I went to shoot and my skills have definitely taken a hit. Nothing too spectacular… not many usable shots. Might upload more in the next post if I get around to editing more.

Before things start… I WANNA RAGE! I THINK MY GRANDFATHER THREW AWAY MY (STILL UNDEVELOPED) FILM CANISTERS FROM MY MALACCA DAY TRIP! OMG!!!!!!!!!!!! SO HEARTBROKEN….

Now with that off my chest…

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So I went to Seoul Garden the other day with Darren, Marcus, Henry and Melvin. Nothing much… Only one moment where I mentioned the spoon there wasn’t a tablespoon but rather a dessertspoon (I might be wrong though). Darren then pointed to a ladle then asked what that was.

-facepalm-

Anyway, took two pictures from there:

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So for dinner today, mum came back home early then suddenly asked if I wanted to go eat at Chomp Chomp, so naturally I said yes. Then she mentioned my sore throat and how the things people usually order there (sambal stingray etc) would make it worse…. and how we would be unable to finish.

So we ended up going to eat teochew porridge.  Not that I don’t like Teochew Porridge, but after the mention of Chomp Chomp… it’s a step down  for me. Haha. Food isn’t too bad although I prefer another one a further 10 minutes up the road. I think it’s cheaper too. The above meal cost $13. Peanuts, minced pork, salted vegetable, salted egg and some pork thing I don’t know the name of.

Besides the meal…the porridge place had some problem with flying ants with some of them dropping onto the table. One flew into my face… Stupid flies.

The flies were so bad that they caused one young family to leave. C’mon, they just flying ants, they won’t hurt you even if you accidentally eat one. Leaving a table with the food practically untouched… $15+ down the drain just because you can’t put up with some insects? Ugh. What kind of values are you imparting to your little kids in tow… it’s okay to waste food if there are harmless insects flying around? Sure they’re a nuisance but they won’t bite you or anything. To see how much food was wasted, look at the picture below:

Aside from the bowl of porridge which was half finished, the rest of their meal was relatively untouched. When I see this I also feel sad, though I’m prone to wasting food at times (in my defense, I don’t waste so much food), but this is a wee bit too much.. Perhaps Singaporeans are being too pampered to put up with very minor inconveniences like flies.

In other news… Might go for a outing with mummy dearest and her colleague and take pictures. LOL.