23rd June 2009
Recently, we have acquired a wii set after hearing several good reviews about the games. It proved to be good but tiring entertainment for us, especially when our muscles ached so much after playing 2 rounds of simulated boxing - yes, you can punch Croaky face down. And the fun part is you can create your own Mii to look like yourself!
This is a snap shot of us in the soccer teams - see Croaky on the top position and me after him.
A close up of my Mii - standing next to Croaky and Beckham before the match.
Croaky giving Beckham a good hug after a victorious score!
And this is my Mii running, with the geeky toad staring alongside.
Our favourite game has to be the double player tennis. It’s exciting to wave your tennis rackets (or the controller) to simulate real life tennis. And the computer is smart - each time you win a game, they will assign someone of a higher skill to beat you.
My favourite position is in front. So my missed shots are received by Croaky! I am super blur if I am stationed at the back.
And we have been on a winning streak until lately when we couldn’t beat the players any further.
And Croaky playing bowling…
There are so many wii games out there - no wonder some kids (and parents) are so addicted to it. It’s okay to indulge yourself once in a while. My arms ached so much now - I used so much brute strength in my boxing game. So have enough self restraint and rest your muscles well.
Posted in Raves & Rants | 1 Comment »
17th June 2009
Shaun the sheep is hardly heard of in Singapore. It was Croaky who told me about Shaun the sheep - apparently he has watched the series many years ago when it was aired in the 1980s. He (Shaun) is the black sheep who is mischievous by nature and often got into trouble because he likes to wander off from his herd.
Recently I have come across one Bandai machine at Harbour Front which carries its figurines - I am overjoyed!
And so far I have only managed to collect 3 out of the 6 figurines despite having turn the machine for 8 times. I got 4 Bitzers, 2 Shirleys and 2 Shauns (standing).
I am still waiting for Timmy and Timmy’s mother to appear one day…
And Shaun the sheep (on fours) someday to appear.
Croaky has placed an online order for a complete set of 3 inch Shaun the sheep figurines for my birthday! Can’t wait to open the parcel to receive them all.
In any case, I will keep turning the Bandai machine. Bless me!
Posted in Random thoughts | 1 Comment »
9th June 2009
The sphagetti - a dish easy to whip up and serve for dinner anytime. I have copious amounts of food pictures parked in my camera which I have no time to edit.
There was nothing spectacular about this picture. As a matter-of-fact, it was taken in poor kitchen lighting and under hasty circumstances because the cook (me) and her customer (Mr Croaky) were hungry.
I have always marvelled her food pictures and admired at the amount of time and effort invested in her editing and presentation.
1. Her composition would be just right - enough noodles, enough prawns and enough gravy. Every single strand of food is meaningfully positioned and never out of place. If it was out of place, it was done for good and artistic reasons.
2. The lighting for each picture is well thought of - enough shadows, enough focus and taken in good daylight. Arrgh… I only cook at night!
3. Interesting utensils or purposeful vessels would be used in a deliberate attempt to match and complement the dishes for presentation. Lucky she is not in my home economics class.
4. The right corners would be sharpened or blurred either with the use of professional camera settings (shutter speed, aperture size) or through the use of PhotoShop.
5. Her pictures are impressive. Maybe she works as a photographer for magazines or recipe books?
I have the intention to purchase a DSL camera but it would be rather useless if I keep on taking short-cuts due to a lack of time or enthusiasm to read up and experiment. Croaky is no photography fan. He yawns at every single mention of cameras, gadgets and related stuff. He likes to gawk at cars, aeroplanes and follows his “Air-crash investigation” and tells me tales of how aeroplanes collide and rebukes me for the lack of similar morbid curiosity.
We have such diverse interests. It makes me wonder how in the world did we end up together?
Posted in Donna Bistro | 4 Comments »
18th May 2009
We have been so preoccupied with our work lately that we have not been using our fishing rods for quite a while. After lunch on Saturday, Croaky suggested we revisit our prawning spot at Ponggol to “try our luck again”.
To be honest, my memory of our first prawning experience was not a happy one. The lady assistant returned a mock expression when we reported that we had not caught a single prawn after the one hour session. And it was really just us! The experienced young boys opposite us at the pool were catching huge (and juicy) mantis prawns every 3 - 5 minutes. And there we were, drooling at the sight of the bucket of prawns they had.
And so we went with an open mind. Nevermind if we did not catch anything. It was fun watching other people count their catch.
This was the view taken from my seat at a corner of the pond. The area was relatively small compared to the fishing ponds at Pasir Ris. Small but concentrated, if you’d say. Just imagine every inch of the pond was a mantis prawn lay in waiting to bite your bait!
And Mr Croaky sitting patiently for the prawns to bite. The rods, hooks and the bait (a small saucer with chicken liver) were provided for upon payment.
Our very first prawn caught. I could feel it wriggling in my hands while Croaky attempted to remove the hook from its mouth. But in the end, I was the one who had to remove the hook as Croaky freaked out at the struggling prawn.
Our two catches for the one hour session. The bigger prawn came shortly after our very first catch and took us by surprise. Croaky was flunging the fishing rod in mid-air and I could hear a man sitting nearby screaming as he tried to dodge the flying prawn.
The two crustaceans had a rather tragic end. They were suffocated to death in our car while we were having dinner to celebrate our first prawning success at Ajisen Ramen. Croaky was telling me not to cook the dead prawns as he was worried about food poisoning and such.
But they appeared delicious after being baked at 200 degrees celsius in the oven for a whole ten minutes. In fact, the meat was rather springy and tasty! Just like lobster meat.
We’d go prawning again soon!
Posted in Simple Living | 1 Comment »
11th May 2009
This is one of my favourite soup! And it is very easy to prepare.
Ingredients:
One lotus root - thinly sliced
300 g spare ribs (cooked and blanched until water runs clear)
4 dried oysters
4 dried scallops
6 red dates
1 small piece of dried cuttlefish
Handful of wolfberries
1 clove of garlic (optional)
Just put all the ingredients in 1 litre of water and switch on the slow cooker for 8 hours.
The soup base tastes a bit like chicken feet peanut soup.
It’s always nice to add soup to the table, after a long tiring day at work.
Posted in Donna Bistro | 2 Comments »
3rd May 2009
For some reason, the previous layout design has some major compatibility issues with firefox and internet explorer 8.0. A friend commented that the words are blocked and unreadable on her screen.
I am using Internet Explorer 6.0 and the site looked normal. But when I viewed the site with Firefox, the google ads actually appeared on the left hand side of the screen, floating like a zombie in the middle of nowhere!
Also the grey coloured mat tiles looked perfectly okay on my standard size laptop monitor. I have realised it looked a bit funny when viewed using a high res computer at a friend’s house.
I decided to switch back to the default theme and modify whatever I can. For those who are unfamiliar with Wordpress, we have two themes pre-installed (default and classic). The one which I was using was an additional skin which I have downloaded from somewhere and did some tweaking.
Hopefully, this solves the problem once and for all. Who knows when Internet Explorer comes up with a version 9 and my website becomes completely un-viewable!
Posted in Tech Board | No Comments »
21st April 2009
After a long hiatus, Woolly decided to put her hands to do something she found at the MPH bookstore. She has been attracted by the little red rose in the glass display - an elegant crystal red rose which comes in a box of plastic puzzles. Check out this website printed on the box. This is a 3 dimension puzzle. By the way, Woolly hates jig-saw puzzle and does not have a knack for such things. She has given plenty of thought before buying this little piece of pricey puzzle rose; pacing at least a dozen times in front of the display and mumbling to herself many times before she decides to part with her hard-to-earn cash. “If I can’t complete this, I have Croaky! He should have a knack for putting things together mah… he’s very good with cross-word puzzles anyway…” Or so she thought!
And so Woolly bought the puzzle and spent a really long time scrutinizing the instructions while watching her VV drama on demand. She felt that it was too tough. And so she waited for Mr Croaky to come home to work on the rose. The half-baked man spent a long time in front of the instructions as well and could not find the first piece of puzzle to start work on. He started to blame Woolly for being so irresponsible and bringing things home “for him to do”.
Woolly knew that she could not depend on this nit-wit to finish the puzzle. He would rather stick his bum watching his “Air Plane Investigation” than to work on the puzzles. (Yaah, he was that lazy!)
Then she came up with a brilliant plan…
She took out the tray table which she has specially bought to make her handicrafts, lay out the 44 pieces of plastic puzzles and grab hold of a stack of yellow stickers (which were used to label her nail polishes and date her cosmetics). She swore she would find the puzzles one by one! Some of the pieces looked almost identical and the diagrams on the instructions were drawn disproportionately.
Then the pieces were labelled and arranged in ascending order. Whenever there was a mistaken identity, she would look through the diagrams and start all over again - the elimination trick worked very well. And when she figured she was lost, she would carry on with her cooking and come back again later.
So 2 nights with 6 episodes of VV drama serials, and this was completed! Isn’t this nice? Talk about sheer determination! Mr Croaky was still gloating that Woolly would not be able to complete it by herself the day she bought it. Heh.
Moral of the story: Depend on no one (especially XY chromosome species) but yourself. You can do it alone!
Posted in My Craft Shop | 5 Comments »
30th March 2009
Recently, we have decided to eat sandwich for dinner once a week. This is much to the delight of Mr Croaky, who is a Subway sandwich fan and one who dreads washing the dishes. The preparation of sandwiches does not involve any oily pots or pans and no messy sinks. Only the oven, chopping board and a pot of water will be used (for boiling eggs).
It takes only 15 minutes to prepare the dinner.
Ingredients:
4 slices of Chicken ham
2 slices of cheese
Some slices of shitake mushrooms
2 tomatoes (sliced)
1/2 cucumber (sliced)
2 hard boiled eggs (sliced)
2 loaves of Gardenia baguette
Slice the baguette into halves, then stuff the ham, cheese and mushroom into it.
Then baked in oven at 220 degrees for 5 mins.
Remove from oven, stuff in the vegetables and eggs.
Serve with pepper!
p/s: I am experimenting the above picture with photoshop… hehe
Posted in Donna Bistro | 1 Comment »
23rd March 2009
These days, mozzies are getting so much on my nerve that I would lock my windows to keep out these unwanted flying insects from invading my room. I have thought of million ways to get rid of them. And I have bought a slew of anti-mosquitoes products to eliminate this awful entomological race.
If you are wondering what mosquitoes are good for, a google search yields this result But hey they do more harm than good! I am more than convinced that these pests need to be controlled… and I share with you all the tried and tested methods.
1. The mosquito coil
These coils are NOT useful at all. It just chokes the whole room making every single object stinks, especially your curtains and your clothes. And this article says it all. Formaldehyde and one pesticide are emitted as the coil burns up to 8 hours. Health issues aside, these coils do not work! There was once I was awaken at night by a mosquito circling the burning coil! *faints*.
2. The electric mosquito swat
Much raved about by a famous blogger who claimed it could kill all flying insects, including the lizard! Very convincing. I bought mine at mustafa for $3.50 and started waving madly in mid air once I felt an itch in my leg or spotted a flying mozzie across my TV screen. To date, I have not killed a single insect with this and now it is collecting dust underneath my sofa couch. Another white elephant.
3.The electric mosquito killer
I am most gratified by this electric killer which captures my mozzie enemies and allows me to do a ‘dead body count’. However, these funny-shaped insects bear little resemblance to my blood enemies and I am beginning to have my doubts. Are these fruit flies? Houseflies? Or just mozzies which are electrocuted beyond recognition? Where do you see mozzies with such round wings and heavy bodies? Where are their long spotted legs?
4. The sound mosquito repellent
This was another high tech gadget which hardly worked. According to the instruction manual included, it was supposed to emit sound waves that mimic a male mosquito so that the female ones would not come hunting for blood (some theory about female mosquitos mate once in their lives). This article fully dispels any claims that such repellent works. But when you are desperate, you are willing to try…
5. The mosquito repellent spray
The best fail-proof method to arm yourself against mozzies. When all the above methods do not work, I always turn to the spray to save myself. This is quick, effective and instant relief for all. No second mozzie bite after a few sprays. And this is the most potent weapon of all when you need to go outdoors. The only draw back is its oiliness and not-so-pleasant scent (which may mask away the most expensive cologne or eau de parfum). So its best to use it last, when all else fails, or when you are going to a place which you cannot bring along any one of the above.
Manufacturer should invent something new - window grille which emits invisible electric waves which will petrify any flying insect trespassing into your house! I am so looking forward to installing this.
Posted in Raves & Rants | 4 Comments »
18th March 2009
Daiso sells this type of clay in a myriad of colours for $2 each. You can make really beautiful things with this type of soft clay if you spend a bit of time. And you just need to add a few drops of water to make them stick. It becomes soft and light once it is air dried.
For the remaining clay, keep them in air-tight containers for your next use.
Try your hands on it… and you will be hooked.
Posted in My Craft Shop | 2 Comments »