cut blue grenadier into bite size, season with salt, sechuan chilli powder, and sugar
stir fry fish with oil and butter. add soy sauce.
after a few minute, add leaves of a witlof.

that’s pretty much the how to. if you have more time in your idle hand, you can do something about the presentation.

pick up the leaves, concave sides up. (like a bowl.) put the fish on top of it. of course, you can use any fish and any large leaf vegetables and any kind of seasoning. i only write this idea of presentation to claim the name.

bro’s computer was having problem so no internet connection for most of yesterday. spent some time on tv watching australia open tennis matches. most of them are disappointing, especially the women’s matches. too many points were given away by unforced errors or double faulted serves.

while doing normal things (as normal as one would do without the internet), i realised my prepaid mobile credit is going to expired today (saturday). and i haven’t been making calls or sending sms much. still about 24 dollars left on that credit. /sigh

it’s been a while since i got a strange dream, and today that period of ‘boredom’ might seems ending, for i got a rather curious dream just an hour ago:

i was in a a shopping centre in a city or town called palembang [a real indonesian city in real life, but i've never been there, i just knew i was there]. one of the patrons there was an exotic looking middle aged lady in her 40s. she was walking around like normal, but singing a familiar song, i think it was ‘indonesia tanah air beta’, one of indonesian national songs in a foreign language. in my dream, i got a hunch that she was singing in tagalog, for i managed to catch one or two familiar words. (i’ve completely forgotten that i was in palembang, which could be one of the dialects there that i’ve never known.)

exitting the shopping complex, i tried to find my way back to hotel or airport, but the sceneries changed from a developed area into an abandoned big road. it was certainly big enough to be consider a four lane road, but deserted, with lots of abandoned buildings on one side of the road, and unattended field on the other.

ever since i left the shopping centre, i heard occasional yelling behind me, maybe trying to stop me. i ignored them, not only because i didn’t understand them, but also because i’ve got a feeling that i have to get out of there quickly.

walking with the sun on my back, i can see my own shadow in front of me. and also a shadow of someone behind me, with a stick on his hand aiming at my head. i turned around and the would-be attacker ceased his move, and being caught red handed, he shied away and cross the road, where his other four or five mates jeering at him.

after finished teasing the failed assailant, each of them produced a metal or wooden bar, and started to attack me, while someone told me (from where?) that should i lost and be captured, i’d be sold as a slave and my wallet (which i somehow remembered to contain several gems and lots of us dollars) will be confiscated.

it was a rather challenging (or hopeless?) fight, five men armed with melee weapons versus one unarmed man. and the dream ended just before i got too excited with the fight.

* since the dream occured between 9 to 9.30am, i think there isn’t any significant meaning behind. it might be caused by the temperature drop, it’s now rather cool after two freaking hot days. although i might want to be wary of the keywords/key elements in the abovementioned scenario.

while the people in the uk are having fun snowfighting or making snowman (an unverified claim there are some parts that has minus 20C), people in melbourne are having a hot day. 43C.

yes, it’s 43% of getting the water boiled, for just being in the outdoor. a white christmas for some is a red hot hell for others.

inglourious basterds ***+O
has some suspense scenes that could make you hold your breath. i like the role played by christoph waltz, col. hans landa. that is what a detective should be, imho. although i don’t really like the ending where he was double crossed. he should have guessed it.

speaking of tarantino, the following two b-movies are related too:
planet terror **+OO
death proof **+OO

swimming pool ***OO
been a while since i watched this, cant really remember the detail, but i remember it being somewhat good.

mpd psycho (manga, still ongoing) ***+O
gore scenes at the first few chapters. the goreness is somewhat reduced subsequently, and replaced by layers of conspiracy. i like the concept of personality transfer.

my self-made tradition dictates me to post what i have eaten last year at the beginning of a new year. it maybe a pointless exercise, but the process of the archiving does help making my memory a bit better. (or so i think)

meal09.

wish people could celebrate new year without so much fireworks, traffic jams, and mass sms. the fireworks cost lots of taxpayers’ money and together with the rest, they cause not small amount of pollution. all for a few minutes of entertainment.

sure the government can bring more money to their coffer by celebrating the day. however, although money *could* pay for a more sustainable planet, the analogy would be similar to a hungry rich man stranded on a desert. in an ideal world, he can buy food when he’s hungry, but where can he buy something that no longer exist?

a happy year would be a year without worrying about the earth’s climate future. what so happy about a year when you have drought, bush fire, flood, and famine? and ‘celebrating’ a new year by contributing to those man-made natural disasters shouldnt make any rational person happy.

a friend forwarded these two files about how to appreciate your partner of opposite sex (presuming you’re straight). not sure if the articles were accurate at all, they could be golden statements in disguise. nevertheless, i find them somewhat insightful.

- how to appreciate a woman
- how to appreciate a man

it’s all started from a friend who posted the following quote on facebook: From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it. - Katharine Whitehorn

when i was a small kid, the leading christmas characters were: jesus, his parents, donkey, three old magicians, santa claus, red nose deer, and black pete. now, if you look at the christmas today, all of them are still there, except black pete.

why is he missing from public appearance? is it because hitting a naughty child is now considered a child abuse and therefore would undermine santa’s reputation? or is it because of his skin colour? or is the economy downturn affected the fat white man so badly that he can’t afford to keep a slave?

why can’t a white saint keep a black slave to abuse young children? (and why could they in the past?)

(bonus question: within the almost two thousand years of catholic traditions, why is there no black pope so far? you might also try plotting a pie chart of the popes based on their ethnicities.)

(another bonus question: how about the pope equivalent to the protestant americans, the tv-evangelists?)

the absence of black pete from general knowledge should have raised our awareness about how the society whitewash anything that might be used against them later on. slavery, racial discrimination, child abuse were accepted as norm back then, and now they’re disappearing due to lack of popular demand. i hope commercialisation and lies about christmas being jesus’ birthday would go next.

(what would you do if some politicians hijack your name and birthday to pursue their own agenda? what would jesus do? jesus would think they’re jerks)

contemplating all these, i tend to agree that christmas is just a man-made invention. if people accept this sobering conclusion, then celebrating it would be similar to praising our own ‘greatness’, much like masturbation. it might explain the term ‘christmas joy’ very well.

merry christmas? meh!

woo… it’s been almost a month since i last updated this blog. not much interesting things happened lately, except:

* wow patch 3.3
inter-realm dungeon party member finder = less drama, but lot more ninjas. to be expected when one can role play being a bastard with less chance of repercussion. also with 3.3, blizz released the query to list and check whatever quests you have/haven’t done, making the road to loremaster achievement bearable. which i obtained yesterday :)

* raymond e feist’s riftwar saga
been reading 4/5 book so far. now on the fifth book. will throw some (hopefully) useful review later.

* youtube patrol
now that most torrent sites are rendered unusable/useful, i switched my visual entertainment to youtube.

it’s been a while since i last reviewed things that i watched/read. here’s a (probably incomplete) list:

- things under the doorstep (hp lovecraft) ***+O
a collection of short stories, all unrelated to each other, except for the old gods pantheon. some parts are really boring, describing things that i don’t find particularly interesting, but some parts are very good. one of the most notable stories in the book is probably ‘the case of charles dexter ward’.
note: there are part where he described a room in which joseph curwen lives. windows with curtain down, strange lights from the room, unhumanly noises… one might think he was describing a wow addict doing raids hehe

rather disappointed with the book, as i expect more from the father of horror. the book wasn’t that scary or horrific. maybe things were different a hundred years ago.

- 時をかける少女 (the girl who leapt through time) ***OO
an animation movie made by madhouse. at first, i was reminded much of ghibli studio; the setting, the colour theme, the music, etc. but when watching it, i feel this movie is much better, imho. it has a far more solid story line and the ending is definitely more conclusive than just a rushed ending (typical of ghibli).

- summer wars (サマーウォーズ) ***OO
another madhouse production. will get you thinking, how would you live without internet these days.

- harry potter and the half blood prince (movie) **+OO
the execution of the movie adaptation is too rushed, i think. to be expected, one can’t squeeze a intricate plot into a two hour movie.
note: the death of dumbledore reminds me of myself as a non-pvp mage. there are tons of arcane tricks that a mage can do to stay alive; teleport, vanishing, illusion, counterspell, etc. yet he (a great wizard) was killed with a single spell, without much fight. rather disappointing. i could be a better mage than him.

- incredible hulk 2008 **OOO
rather childish, but that was expected.

cloudy afternoon
silver lining terminates
at a crushed snail

tried to do the japanese version for this, but it loses its pun. according to an online dictionary, silver lining of a dark cloud is 不幸中の幸い (ふこうちゅうのさいわい). but here it is anyway:

雲の昼
銀縁の端
死んだ蝸牛

for those who don’t get it, here’s an explanation of the phrase. i just feel sorry for the snail, and the irony too. just like a rabbit’s foot; it’s supposed to bring the wearer good luck, except for the rabbit.

hot chick with her gaping hole
warm sticky juice flowing out
chicken kiev, on sale

while i was clearing the weeds from the backyard, i’ve uprooted so many of them that i thought to give myself a title, ‘the uprooter’. housemate v, upon hearing my title, was cautious, as she thought the term might have some other connotative meaning.

then i thought about it for a while, i never heard the term ‘uprooting’ is associated with sex before. searching google doesnt yield anything relevant too. so why not inventing one?

so here i proclaim the word: “uproot” in sexual dictionary.
to uproot: to pull the penis out from the hole it was in (be it vagina or anus) just before ejaculation.

come to think of it, the indonesians already use the word ‘cabut’ for such thing. so it’s not really original. bleh…

having a rather stiff back now, after clearing the backyard yesterday (last cleared: june this year). it was rather unsightly to the eyes of urban dwellers, although i kind of like it.

this was how it looked like. note the door at the right side? it’s there as a comparison.

one of the weed has even grown as tall as a tree, taller than me, for sure. the green plant is the weed. the brown, skinny one is a dead tree:

four people and about two and half hours were needed to clear the empty lot. next week we might do the front bit.

-
once the backyard has been ‘urbanised’, we had a little bbq last night. since we’ve worked hard, might as well ‘enjoy’ it. under the clear summer night sky, accompanied by a few cockroaches.

brother m saw green banana prawns on special, and bought some half a kilo of them. wasn’t very fresh, but that’s what you get for $12/kg (usually it’s $20ish/kg).

didn’t know what to do with them, as i cooked them only once or twice before. so i decided to turn them into something quick like ‘garlic prawn’ (after a quick googling.)
- heat oil, pour chopped garlic and chilli
- add prepared prawns, sechuan chilli powder and salt
- plus sesame oil
- serve on rice (in this case, basmati)

that’s the theory, shouldn’t be too hard. when i opened the fridge, i found something was rather out of plan. the prawns were unshelled and complete with heads attached. i tried to emulate my grandma’s cooking, (fried prawns with heads attached) but the crustaceans in front of me were too small. so i beheaded them, slipped the tip of my knife between their shell and meat, and peel the shell (together with the legs) off. then i continued to cut them and took their shits out (the ones that looks like worms). the process alone took about half an hour.

end result:

from a slightly different perspective:

-
notice something in the middle? it’s garlic. my experiment. lots of people hate to chew on garlic, but don’t mind the taste/smell. so what i did, instead of chopping them and installing a minefield for those choosy people, i cut the garlic in a fashion that lets the garlic whole, but yet releasing the flavour through more surface area.

slice the garlic clove, but don’t slice it through. make it like a comb, if you like. then do it on another angle.

was doing some research on a mythical school of dark magicians on wiki (related to a dungeon i’m designing for my project).

scholomance - hermannstadt - transylvania - dracul - order of dragon - st george and dragon (and how the story was stolen from similar local legends)

warlock - different types of magicians - wizard - sorceror - shaman - 巫 wu shaman (chinese)
the character 巫 and the symbol ☩ (cross potent- an ancient symbol of a magician, descended from indo-european) are quite similar. the character 醫 yi (doctor) was originally written as 毉, which consists of 医, 殳, and 巫 (a quiver, a hand holding a spear, and a shaman).

on bbc, there was a news about a new movie antichrist. got the synopsis on wiki, but also got a summary of a book of nietzsche. must make myself watch the movie and read the whole book. maybe later, when i finished my project. which reminds me, i’ve spent too many hours researching and not actually working. but all is good, as i’ve gained a lot of information.

* all info can be obtained on wiki. can’t be bothered to link them one by one.