Failure...

Perhaps the reason why I've been delaying this blog entry is because it's highly embarrassing and very disappointing, to say the least. Putting my failure online into an entry for all to see =(

From 06.12

I tried very hard though, scrutinising the recipe till I almost could remember the whole process by heart. That was about a month ago though, I've forgotten it all now.

Bad times, Bad attitude

Am down. It's the second time of the year that I'm sick with something and this time, it's not even my fault. Thanks to all the colleagues who go to work sick and having to work with clients sniffling and coughing (usually without a hand covering), it was only inevitable. I find myself easily irritable because of this flu too. Little things. Like how this guy in front of me at the ATM today was trying to get $1 out. Seriously?? And you wonder why the machine spat your card out? AND YOU'RE STILL GOING TO TRY AGAIN? Wasn't going to miss my bus, so ended up being poor. The entire day. With maybe a few coins to my name.

From 06.12

Then I get home and wanted to blog something happy, but next photo in line was this.

Free Wednesdays shall be missed

Fusion is an excuse for those who do not know how to make authentic food. Such are the words of wisdom from one of BW's friends, and you know, it's quite true indeed. A lot of places which does fusion cuisine are actually doing it wrong... some more so in particular (cough cough wagamama). Some places, I appreciate their concepts of fusion, like Rise Restaurant, but nonetheless, there are some strange flavors and ideas that works theoretically, but not so much on the palate. So it's back to "normal" authentic cuisine. Actually, not that authenetic...

From 06.12

Takeru had always been a safe option when dining. Price is fairly reasonable for CBD area, and they serve half sizes. Seriously, you'd be hard pressed to find places that serve half size dishes...

Don't Leave Anything Behind

After badminton one week, we decided to be particularly unhealthy and craved fried chicken. Not just any fried chicken that you get from KFC, but fried chicken with edible bones.

From 06.12

At this humble abode, one would hardly expect it to get as famous as it did. Looking almost exactly like a school canteen (or at least the ones in Singapore), it was quiet when we went at around 4pm....

Quattro: The Baron

The Baron is at Castle Towers, nice and close =) Located next to Games Workshop, not many people seem to know about this place because you need to walk out to HSBC bank and towards the left before you can see it...

From 06.12

Their blend? Single Origin.

Baking Spree cont~

On Mondays at work, lunch time is always a fun time because we'd be inspecting each others' lunches and being in awe of what some people can make. A current student brought his own pizza one time and it sparked a "please send me the recipe to the pizza base" trend. Of course, that is easily done through his iPad and I received a copy of the recipe immediately.

From 06.12

Which prompted me to make my own pizza. I had always been a little wary about using yeast. Making bread or anything that needs proofing in general. I have every right to be still, considering how that 3 day project ultimately ended with a big fat F.

Random 2!

It seems like this is going to alternate between a cohesive entry and one that is random... Wednesdays tend to be more random... and I don't like getting out my camera in front of people who judge me, namely those who mentally think "oh there we go, typical Asian person taking photos of food". Seem to be getting a lot of that actually...*sad face*

From 06.12

^ Pho from a vietnamese place at world square. Not the best, should have gone to Cabramatta.

Tre: Pishon Patisserie

Sundays are usually cafe days. Pre badminton and post badminton are good times to eat, and you can easily justify eating an extra meal as rewards for exercising. Ok that's a completely unhealthy mentality, don't do that, but at least I like to think that it's better than heading to, say, maccas after badminton *cough*

From 06.12

Pre badminton one Sunday. We used to go as a group to have Korean food at Strathfield before badminton because it's quite convenient to meet up there before heading to Five Dock, but we've since stopped. This was long black from Hello! Happy, who does really good coffee. Check out the crema layer!

Random! Again!

So today's going to be a quick entry before I head off to bed. No more scheduled posts! I've run out, so this will have to be a short one.

From 06.12

ST, if you're reading this, next time you go yum cha, make sure someone orders this and you try it~ because you really need to try this. It's like a bread stick wrapped with... um... sheets of soft... noodle like... thingy... gosh I suck at writing food descriptions.

Meat time!

I'd imagine this will incur the wrath of all vegans and vegetarians~ yakiniku! From Sakae at Eastwood, which is a buffet style barbecue. BW organised this for his birthday I think~

From 06.12

Their menu outside is really impressive, all colourful and bright, showing lots of set menus and choices.

Baking Spree start

I've been meaning to make cookies for a while now, but rather than normal cookies (I know it's easy to make cookies from scratch), I thought, why not venture outside the box and make cake mix cookies? It's been done before, I won't say it's very original, but it's interesting to see how cake mix can be done, cookie style.

From 06.12

White Wings on special!

Due: Espresso Organica

Cafe series II! I should really be writing the rest of my reports up. Last night's all nighter didn't really prove to be very efficient, with late owls sending me youtube clips out of sympathy for my otherwise boring night of work. I did manage to get some work done though, it's not all in vain, but I just got... more...

From 06.12

So this cafe is located at Concord, which isn't far from my place really. Visited after badminton one Sunday, this place is quite amazing.

Lanterns and Lights

There are times when I'll "stalk" people, checking to see where they've gone to eat, and it's so common for people to post pictures of food and interesting things that there's never really a lack of places to discover. Not quite so recently, I noticed more than 3 people who weren't related in any way go to Lantern by Wagaya. Naturally intrigued, I decided to check it out.

From 06.12

It was pretty much like any other Japanese restaurants. It's a branch of Wagaya, but it reminded me of Mizuya and those other restaurants where you can order off a touch screen in a booth.

Arm yourself with Food!

So if you're reading this on the 11th, which is when it'll be scheduled to be released, I'll have you know that it's actually not written very much in advanced, haha. I ran out of scheduled posts! At one point, I had 9 all lined up and ready to go, then I got lazy and now I have... 0. Gonna work hard tonight for a bit even though I'm already quite.. sleepy.

I don't understand that white highlighting either! It's so strange, they just randomly show up in the published version, but when I go into my posts to edit, it's not there. I'm a total noob at websites and html, all that, but I had to manually delete all the span tag that makes the font background white... where do they come from!!

From 06.12

Anyway, I can't fix it without knowing how they get there in the first place, so... getting back on topic, this was from a high school catchup! This was their "Seasonal Sharing Plate with Italian casa panotte bread – mini sundried tomato and mushroom arancini balls, Baked ricotta blended with olives and sundried tomato and Caprese salad – tomato, basil and boconcini".

FireFly~~

So every now and then, I'd crave healthy... actually, I don't crave healthy. I like seeing what it feels like to be healthy for once, so yesterday morning, all I had was a kiwi and an apple for breakfast before work. It was more like a brunch because I woke up pretty late, so the fruits were consumed at around 11am. Had a cup of tea and that was it. Just fruits. Maybe a packet of koala biscuits too...

Then I headed to work and didn't get food till a proper break, which was around 6pm, where I had a bowl of instant udon. Felt it wasn't substantial enough because it was just noodles and NO meat, NO veggies, nothing. Went and bought a loaf of bread and bacon... had two bacon sandwiches.

Still felt like I could eat. Leeched off a colleague for some peanut butter and had a peanut butter sandwich. Had more tea. Felt more satisfied....

Moral of the story? L cannot go healthy.

Filler entry

So I'm trying my absolute best NOT to skip around and post about interesting stuff that happened earlier on in the month and go in a "oldest to latest" order when it comes to blogging. Which is hard, because sometimes I feel that I'll forget a lot of what I want to take note of, but I realise if I don't force myself to go in an order, I will end up just not blogging about half the stuff.

That was actually why I started scheduling posts too actually, because then I can publish more than one entry on a day when I'm free, and have them line themselves up individually to be released on days when I cannot post.

Uno: Coffee Warehouse

Now that Vivid is out of the way, I can get on to REAL stuff. Like the month of June. Everything prior to this was from May... yea... backlog sure accumulates when one gets lazy... but never you mind! June was filled with fantastic adventures to Candy Mountain... many... candy mountains..

From 06.12

There shall be another label added to the cloud of current tags called Cafe Series, and it's basically cafes around Sydney... (wait, could we venture beyond Sydney? We could.. hm...!) and the first one visited was Coffee Warehouse: Cafe and Deli.

Photo Blog Entry 3

This will be the last I think! I've been on a baking spree lately, baking cookies, pizzas... and now, attempting something which I actually find quite daunting because the fail rate is almost for sure, like 80% or something. I've been obsessing over yeast as well, so making bread, things that go poofy (how aptly called "proofing" when waiting for the dough to raise...). Enough about that for now! The current project will take a minimum of two days, but I might draw the process out to three days. If this fails, I'll cry. 3 days worth of... pain and doubt... and 3 sticks of butter.. and about a kilo of flour... and muscle pain from kneading because I don't have a mixer... haha.

At least I get a good arm workout. I find that I knead so much better with my right hand, which is extremely strange because my left arm is supposedly the stronger one of the two. Maybe it's just tired from badminton last night.

Oh right, you want pictures.

Photo Blog Entry 2

Might just finish off Vivid today. I forgot entirely about blogging till I saw the date... and saw it was approaching the end of June. Today was freezing cold, it was literally the coldest day it's been this whole year, and it's pure torture getting out of bed. No, scrap that, it's pure torture to even get out of the first layer of my blankets, much less all three, and don't even talk about getting out of the bed entirely. I can't be thankful enough for my blankets... don't even feel the cold AT ALL even on the coldest nights, and this is without turning on any heaters.

Once out of bed though, it's straight into blue snuggly bathrobe and much needed hugging of the heater. Digressing!

From 117___05

I actually have the description recorded, this is called the Wovenglow by Joanne Pike. It is a multi coloured sphere (but there were several on this tree and other trees) created from woven electroluminescent tape, representing the individual, the whole, as an orb of energy.

Photo blog entry 1

Entry will be a photo spamming one because really, it's just going to be all about vivid.

Some I might have descriptions of, others... nup.

From 117___05

After having a really good dinner at Dan's House, icie and I took a bus down to the Rocks from Central station and stopped right in the middle of it. This was our first location.

One of those "deals"

Because my brother had been forking up the previous two dinners that we've had (we don't go out for dinner often together anymore because someone's more occupied with gf and friends and photogs and stuff), buying those online deals, when he sent me the link to this one, I took the very unsubtle hint and bought it for us.

It was a deal for two at Dan's House, a newly opened Chinese restaurant near China Town. Location's a little tricky because you need to go up the lift to find it, but there is a giant sign right outside at the streets, so it's not too bad.

From 117___05

The food? Hm... very artistic and interesting, and I do approve of the flavors so it's a pass!

Wong Lo Kat

Back about a month ago, BW decided to host a hot pot night... yay! There's apparently a second one coming out, so looking forward to that.

From 117___05

Before that, headed to Eastwood to buy the meat. It's great how hot pot didn't require any preparation, or much of it anyway. Only needed to go shopping! After shopping, chilled at Bom's, had tea, before heading back for more chilling and food.

Wasabiated

Small one today! Thurday-Saturday, Monday and Tuesday are never really eventful due to work, which is why bored people like me choose the most mundane things to take photos of. The thing is, at that time, I recently got a new phone, and I was very interested in testing out the camera and the effects it came with, including vignette and field distortion.

From 117___05

Let's Start!

Funny how many people use this blog as a way of "catching up" with me. It's almost one sided communication unless people leave comments or something on the chatbox, but otherwise, it's almost like I'm giving away the fact that I'm still alive and doing things, but I don't know if my friends (people who read this) are or not. Anyway! I'm not sure how long this string of scheduled posts will last, but I expect someone will owe me certain Japanese trip videos for doing this, hope to get a chance to see them soon *shifty eyes*

From 117___05

Love my coffee from TomnTom's, but this entry is actually going to be about how beautiful Sydney is. I don't think I truly appreciate Sydney for its beauty for a while now, since it's been over a decade since we moved here, everything kind of wanes a bit with time.

From 117___05

Started the lovely day by having sushi from Kura II, a small corner restaurant just behind Market City. I remember it used to be a lot better with its sushi, standard seemed to have dropped.