Lair of Flying Green Song Rabbits

Books to read (and re-attempt) before I die:

The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Notebook - Nicholas Sparks
Paula - Isabel Allende
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Cloudstreet - Tim Winton
1984 - George Orwell
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The 5 People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

The Good Food & Wine Show was held in July this year from 16-18th. This would be my first time attending because every year I don't hear about it until AFTER, which sucks!!

I managed to get tickets, but not for any of the classes like wine tasting or cheese tasting. Those classes fill up really fast...

I went with N and was shocked at how much wine there was. I mean, it's good FOOD, THEN wine. Nevertheless, I might have gotten a bit happy-chappy from all the wine tasting hahaha.

AND I HAD THE WORLD'S BEST PANNACOTTA. See below for more details.




I did manage to score seats at the Gary and George show, so I saw the judges from Masterchef in real life! A little exciting and a little star struck, I must admit.

Unfortunately, this guy:



Kept talking on and on and on and I was like, hurry up and show Gary and George!!

Then they showed a short video clip summing up their beliefs, values and ideas on cooking and food.





It was a while before the actual hosts came out to much applause and the MC trying to get crowd to cheer. You know, "Everybody on the left, GARY!!!" "GARYYY!!!" "Everybody on the right, GEORGE!" "GEEEOOOORRRRGGGGEEEEE!!!"

Yeah.

I think they took it a little far there. I just want to see the food.

Gary and George posing.






The show overall was just okay. The food was simple (short timeframe after all), I didn't get chosen to sit and try it though :(

I was so close to winning a frying pan too! I knew the answer but in that moment blanked out. I was so upset :(((

After the show we wandered around more, tasting wines, eating tea and salsa samples before we decided that those nibblets weren't very satisfying and that we should actually buy something to eat.

Some of the chefs putting on shows for the duration of the event had set up stands selling their dishes. They're not really their, it's just other people prepping their recipes. We decided to try some of George and Gary's stuff as we'd just come from their show; gotta see for ourselves what the hype is about.



Gary's vanilla bean pannacotta with honeyed roasted apricots, $6

This is the best pannacotta I've ever had, though admittedly I've only have a couple. I guess it pays to use actual gelatin rather than powdered?

The pannacotta was rich and creamy, but not sickeningly so. It was milky, definitely taste the vanilla and just SUPER SUPER CREAMY OMG SO HEAVENLY. I ended up eating most of it and not giving Mr. N much at all ohoho. The apricots were alright, I thought it would be fresh apricots marinated in honey but they were actually dry. Not what I was expecting, but the pannacotta saved it.



George's braised chicken with celeriac.

I don't remember much of this dish except that it was crap. Really crap. George, I thought better of you. This dish was so bad and wasn't even very warm that I had to buy another dish to put this one out of my mind. That was how bad it was.

The chicken was flavourless, the celeriac limp with hardly any crunch (like cooked lettuce, I HATE cooked lettuce). A tiny sprig of dill didn't do much to flavour it.

The most disappointing thing I ever ate at $24 a pop. All dishes come with either a wine or French beer, however.

I ran back out to buy another, more satisfying main (all mains are $24).



Tobie Puttock's gnocchi with marjoram, prosciutto and tallegio cheese, $24.

Sorry, kinda dug into it coz we were so hungry by then (and disappointed in George, who is N's favourite judge).

This was a little better. The gnocchi was quite soft, very buttery and the prosciutto added good saltiness. And with cheese, it was just what I needed to wash away the disaster before it.




Wtf N is so greedy, his hand keeps coming up in pictures, the idiot.

We chose white and red wine. I'm no wine connoisseur (yet!) but I didn't like the reds. There was too much acidity (and possibly tannins that I'm tasting in there) coming through.

Abrupt end!

Because I'm too lazy to go through everything we did on the day, here is some photo porn for you!

Well, it seems that the boy has finally left what was a very long vacation and it's all work and uni from now on.

There were no tears this time. It is just another stage that we have to go through.


I have an interview on Wednesday and hopefully I can get my first real job in a stockbroking firm!!

Just fiddling around with the autofocus on my Panasonic Lumix FS7. Making some interesting effects here.

Forgiveness is needed for my lackluster posting. I really am bad at keeping blogging up, which in turn is bad on all accounts because as a communications student, I should have a prominent online presence and be an avid blogger.

I really have no excuse, just been so LAAAAAZZZZYYYYY. After my internship finished I spent most of my days eating and getting fat. No, really I gained something like 5kgs again. Super fml.

Right now I'm just posting a few photos of the Alpine Winter Festival behind Hype Park that ended on the 4th July.

As soon as you arrive you are hit with a forceful aroma of sizzling German sausages, hot wines, cocktails, chocolate, ice and mud.

We had gluhwein, which is a mulled red wine with cinnamon and orange juice :O It was surprisingly good; the warmth of the wine may have contributed to a slightly lower alcohol content and hence, more flavour. Or perhaps it was the watering down with orange juice, who knows.




AHAHAHA how awesome, this was $10 for 5 minutes or something of that nature. The balls were on leashes lest it fall off the fountain-magig and onto the road.






LOOK IT'S GLUE-WINE! It's hot!





It was at this point that my camera ran out of batteries, boohoo.

It's going to be my birthday in a few minutes, and I've been wanting and dreading it all month.

I'm scared and I'm excited and I'm looking forward to any birthday presents I might get.
I kept thinking about what I should ask for from my parents.

A laptop? A car? A cintiq?

There were so many awesome things I bet they'd buy for me if I just asked. I wonder how I could exploit this once-in-a-lifetime chance.

So I pondered casually as I worked, but then the answer hit me hard. So hard, that I couldn't hold back the wave of emotion that came with it the slightest bit.

What I wanted most from my parents, was to hear, just once, with complete sincerity, them tell me that they loved me.

With just that, I would be happy.

Completely happy.

And that was what made it so sad.

STOLEN FROM SERENA! I can't really think of many things I want to do in my life. I guess I'm more content with fewer desires. (:

第一： 到中国大陆去旅游。
第二： 到臺灣去旅遊(然後去唱KTV！YEAH！：Ｄ）
3. Go to Japan and visit some temples and participate in some 節/matsuri~ (but not in fundoshi).
4. Stalk idols in Korea with Anna? XD
5. 賢賢易色，與朋友交，言而有信。
6.See the EAST Coast of the States, not just the West Coast. <_<
7. Visit Canada.
8. Visit Canada and be old enough to remember visiting Canada.
9. TRAVEL AROUND EUROPE! XD
10. See the rest of the world. XD
11. Be fluent in 6+ languages (alive or dead).
12. Give and receive a nice big hug.
13. To love and be loved.
14. RFTG(wttlw) XD
15. Settle down comfortably. (:

What would you like to do in this life? (:

Constructing a life list, because I need a space to record this stuff.

1) Visit Paris (Eiffel Tower, Arc de'Triomphe, Pierre Hermes).
2) Eat red velvet cake from Waldorf-Astoria.
3) Bathe in an open outdoor, womens-only hot spring in Japan.
4) Visit Hawaii.
5) Learn salsa dancing.
6) Finish 8th grade piano.
7) Decorate my own house/apartment/flat.
8) Own my own house/apartment/flat.
9) Get full license.
10) Make a scrapbook.
11) Learn some kind of self defense.
12) Scuba dive in the Great Barrier Reef before it all dies.
13) Become a wine connoisseur.
14) Go on holiday cruise.
15) Donate blood.
16) Grow a plant from seed to maturity.
17) Swim with dolphins.
18) Drink German beer in Germany (Oktoberfest).
19) Watch the sunrise.
20) Watch the sunset.
21) Sing in the rain.
22) Fold 1000 cranes.
23) Compose a song.
24) Visit the Caribbean.
25) Solve a Rubik's cube.
26) Post a video on YouTube.
27) Watch the opera.
28) Watch a musical.
29) Watch a ballet.
30) Watch a concert.
31) Win a competition.
32) Go snowboarding.
33) Have an organic vegetable/herb garden.
34) Eat cheese in Switzerland.
35) Mock an English soldier.
36) Eat foie gras.
37) Lick a snowflake.
38) Get a job, a real job.
39) Successfully bake a macaron.
40) Own a pair of Manolo Blahnik's.
41) Cut my hair short.

So holidays have started a week ago for me and I've been up to nothing in particular....

The first week, hung out with bf as much as possible as he went overseas on Sunday for an unknown period of time. Went and satisfied various cravings for mochi, takoyaki, egg tarts (tried), soft shell crab etc that I had during exams.

Been job searching with not much luck and don't really want to work at the Cafe as morning starts are too early and I'm too lazy to wake up; but the correct response would actually be dad doesn't really need me there and I would be wasting his money and I don't want to depend on him.

Caught up with Josh yesterday and had (finally) my long awaited egg tarts that were the LAST ones there. Then cuz the yum cha place basically wanted to kick us out (it was almost 4 lol), we went to Gloria Jeans for further catching up. Saw a lady pour >10 satchels of sugar into a large coffee....

I'm also having a massive clean up of junk at home. Book shelves, cabinets, drawers, wardrobe etc. I'll like to think it's like a soul searching/clensing experience but it's really the result of unemployment and something to do with my hands as I watch non stop movies and Chinese dramas.

I am a massive hoarder so I couldn't bear to part with most of my 1-3rd year Uni crap. I managed to throw out lecture notes but have saved reports, typed notes, assignments and lab manuals still on my bookcase. I finally stored away my HSC notes into a box into the garage because I still can't bear to throw them away.

Inside my drawers I still found pretty diaries, stickers and notepads as well as many jewellery boxes with random broken and old jewellery. I threw away or gave to my sister most of them as I was finally able to let stuff go. (Apparently it takes me approx 9years to let things go.) I also cleaned out my computer stuff drawer and chucked out some old installation CDs and crap I no longer needed.

It'll be nice to say all this felt good but I have a headache now.... What was amusing was finding little memories among all the crap. I had saved the SMH annoucement of marks and degree admissions and found the Prefect polls from high school. I found warm greeting cards from people at Christmas and Birthday and Formal party invitations. Also found a Naruto/Sasuke yaoi fanfic Reila and I wrote in class sometime ago; hilarious!

I don't know how I am suppose to unclutter my life at the rate I'm keeping things....

Also been watching too much tv/dramas/movies. Today I watched Bounty Hunter (shit but my god Jennifer Aniston has a hot bod) and Time Travellers Wife (Alright). Also planning to download another 10G worth of movies tonight to keep me occupied.

Tomorrow I should exercise a bit too and maybe do some grocery shopping for food... Going to sleep early tonight for a (hopefully) early morning to try and lead an exhilarating life....