A post for the sake of posting

i can't believe it's been a month and a half since i last posted - not much has happened though since then, time appears to have gone pretty quickly. bit of 'excitement' at work though i guess it's not really excitement, more like tense, wary, fear - it was kind of strange. you hear of all the redundancies happening and you don't think it'll strike so close to you then arrive at work last monday morning and find that your team has been affected and people you know are out of a job. I can't say i felt sorry for them and although people were saying that they were sorry you can't help but wonder if they're thinking 'thank god it wasn't me'.

i don't know why but i was kind of indifferent, it seemed unreal to me and i was a bit 'shrug my shoulders, oh well' - I like to plan, i had already decided i'd go on a 1 month holiday to Germany first and then perhaps do a nice country tour of Englad and leech off Benny-boy if i got laid off. I guess it is really bad for people who have a family to feed, mortgages to pay off but if it's not happening to you and you are not in a similar situation it's really hard to relate to it... i hope that doesn't sound too bad of me.. :(

I'm feeling a bit contemplative today so i'm just letting my fingers type whatever comes to my head. Karina, her mum and gran are currently staying with me (though they have gone to Japan for a week at the moment) i was worried the apartment would get crowded but we have managed quite well and we don't get in each other's way, i guess it helps i'm working during the day and they go out and come back late.

hmm, i have a shopping day planned this weekend hopefully i'll do a bit of retail therapy (not that i need therapy but what's the point of earning money and not spending it!)


oh i guess i should write about something a little more interesting. Another food place opened across the street from my apartment! It's a miso ramen place, Karina and I tried it the other day after a nice foot massage session. it was pretty late in the afternoon and unfortunately everything we ordered was already "sold out" - either it was really sold out or they didn't have it in the first place. The staff appeared to be quite disorganised, the waiter told us the gyoza were sold out so we ordered the calamari rings - a little while later the gyoza's turned up!?

i guess there was some miscommunications, maybe our order was the last plate and the waiter misinterpreted it.

The side dishes

Then our side dishes came twice, though being honest we said they'd already arrived. The food was ok - nothing too crash hot but it's convenient i guess. i'll have to go down and take a picture of the food places around my apartment it's great for when i come home late from work and can't be bothered cooking.


bit of a lame post (i'm sure ben/bev will have something to say about this...) but not in the mood to write anymore... maybe after this weekend...

My Sunday Dinner

Mmm, Sunday night dinner.

My all time favourite ingredient has to be chicken wings. So easy to cook and delicious.
Tonight my dinner is quite simple, chicken wings cooked in soya sauce.
Chop the chicken wings (& drumsticks) in half throw it into the wok and through the normal and 'old' soy sauce in with some salt and sugar then toss it until it cooks.
Thicken the soy sauce by dumping in some corn starch and viola!

The Marco Polo German Bierfest 2008

Erica invited me to the German Bierfest held at the Marco Polo hotel in Kowloon.
Headed there after work, it was actually held at the other end of a carpark the "viewing platform" as they call it (the view of Hong Kong was quite nice from there, and we were lucky that it was a 'clear' night as well.
The tickets were $99HKD and included a "free" bier (Lowenbrau) and a souvenir beer glass.
You had to pay extra for real food - relatively speaking the prices were that steep either.
there was a german band and plenty of beer everywhere - the amusing thing about drinking in Hong Kong is how red the people get after one beer (granted the beer was a pretty big glass, i think bigger than the average schooner.
As a starter we got some... pretzels!
I liked these ones better than the ones in Germany, at least you don't get a sore jaw by the time you finish eating it.

Once the entertain started, we quickly went to get some food.
I went for the Nuemburger sausages (I *think* that's how you spell it... it was N..m.. something sausage)
The guys went for the pork knuckle (of course)... i didn't go for it because it didn't have serious crackling...


Here's Erica trying to get a headstart on everyone:
though she didn't even finish her FIRST beer.

After pigging out, i went and bought a round of Jeiger bombs for 4 of us (Purdey opted for an alcohol free night). the only dumb thing is they give you a plastic cup with the Jeigermeister.... and what happens when you try to bomb it into the red bull.... the cup floats so you end up shooting the red bull and you're stuck with the Jeiger... lesson learnt, next time just tip the Jeiger in an scull.

Ok it's getting late here so i'll just dump a couple of funny videos up for you to enjoy.
The night ended with some competitions, the guys had to see who could yodel the best... boy it was kinda embarrassingly.
WARNING: This is kinda painful...



The girls had to see who could blow the horn... (coming soon it's too big to upload here)

The Verdict

I was too stuffed to be bothered to post the picture of the end result last night (not because it wasn't presentable!)

So here it is:
It wasn't too bad, probably should have left it to bake for about 10 more mins (since my crappy little oven only goes to 250 degrees instead of the 325 that the recipe asked for) I think i like pan fried salmon more but this was healthy enough.

The black sauce is, of course, my white truffle balsamic sauce -not bad. BTW, it's sitting on a bed of rice.

Here's the recipe:

Baked Salmon Fillet
place salmon on foil
spread onion on top
drizzle with lemon juice
bake @ 325 degrees for 25 mins

- i obviously mucked around with the order of it and added salt and pepper..

Think i'l just have bread tonight and the soup i made a couple of days ago...

Tomorrow will be fun, going to the bierfest at the Marco Polo Hotel in Tsim Tsa Tsui!

my first cooking experiment

Why experiment? you say. that's because i've never cooked something like this before. I guess i should briefly add i did a spaghetti bolognese last night - delicious as always but tonight i thought i'd go for something a bit lighter.
So i headed off to Apita after work and bought the following:

I bought other stuff (of course) but they're not relevant to this particular meal so i won't mention it for now. The 'white truffle balsamic' was a bit of an impulse buy, i heard/read somewhere that it's supposed to be nice so i guess i'll find out.

Ok,

so first thing first - wash and debone the salmon - unfortunately didn't have any pliers (or fingernails to be able to grab the bones out quickly, need to put one on my shopping list)
anyway after that, pat it dry then sprinkel some salt and pepper on it then squeeze some lemon juice over it (ok not really squeeze coz i cheated and bought lemon juice because Apita didn't have any lemons, that i could see)

Get a piece of foil, dump the salmon on it and pour the pepper/salt/lemon juice over it (from the plate)
Thinly slice up the onion and dump it on top then voila
Pop it into my poor excuse of an oven and wait...

Next, is to make some rice (well, enough for my lunch tomorrow as well) and wash the sprouts.


Damn... mmm 5 day old rice in the rice cooker in humid weather - totally gross!!!! i had to disinfect the rice cooker bowl, that's the problem with living by yourself. You eat out a few days are you have all sorts of weird science experiments. I left some bread and a kiwi fruit in the office overnight and came back to a full blown mould colony - thank god it was in a zip lock bag...

Anyway... just tried some of the white truffle balsamic - yummy!!!

Next post... the end result!

Disneyland

Ingrid and I headed off to Disneyland today, it was a pleasant day and i had fully recovered from my bout of i don't know what, from Friday/Saturday/Sunday morning.

We started kinda late and got to Sunny Bay around midday anyway we were greeted by the Disney MTR.. which is kinda cute!
But what really gets you is the statues inside the train - gosh if there were less people on the train i'd probably walk up and down just to see them all. Here are the ones that were closest to us:

Can't remember how long the train ride took but before you know it we'd arrived at:
It was a bit of a walk to the front entrance, and before we got there -there was a massive fountain that was playing all this Disney music and the water moved in time with the music, Ben will probably love this:

We bought our tickets (which are cheaper if you go between Mon-Thu) and headed through the gates.
First stop was the "Main Street Haunted Hotel" which didn't open until 1pm so we had to wait around for it (but since it was still early there wasn't much of a line and we got in pretty quickly)
There was a group of Japanese children with a few mothers looking after them, they got to the front of the door and a few chickened out (because you enter the mansion through this massive door and the park people actually rap the big door knocker thingy before you enter - i really should've taken a picture of that). No pictures allowed inside (of course) but i have got to say that it would've been pretty scary if we weren't kinda rushed through it (and of course, the group of kids in front were so petrified by the first room they were screaming the heads off - there was a little boy in the group and he had to be carried thru the whole house, poor thing). Back to the house, it was pretty good except it was too dark so you were squinting to see anything. It would've been scarier if they spread out the groups more and brightened up the room a little bit more so you could see (= you could see what would be scary the sh!t out of you)
the decorations were extremely well done - i'd rate it better than the Ocean Park scary houses actually but again, lose points for being too dark.

After finishing the house we headed back outside and surprisingly, all the screaming Jap kids seemed to be fine after seeing daylight (i guess they have the rest of the day to get over the "horrors" they saw... but after "The Ring" i have no idea why they would be scared.)
Anyway, off to Adventureland next

and another Haunted House "Adventureland Haunted Trail" - i think Ingrid found the port-a-loo's more disturbing than the 'trail', i can't remember much of it so i won't talk about it.
We started to get hungry but instead of food we got side-tracked by the "Festival of the Lion King" which Ingrid tells me i'd appreciate more if i had actually watched "The Lion King" but still it was nice. I did get teary in one of the sections, can't remember which bit though...

After a nice relaxing 30 minute show, we heading to the "Jungle river Cruise" and i did have my doubts but the ride actually was pretty fun:

elephants, spiders, crocodiles, pirahnas, cannibals, hippos etc... and more, but i won't say anything b/c it'll ruin the ride.

Finally! Breaktime, though the girl at the snack store managed to somehow think both of us wanted 2 serves of curry fish balls and a pasta cone.. what is a pasta cone you ask?
Yup, a waffle cone with spag bol in it... weird...
what's even weirder is Ingrid finished it all. Adventurous of her to try a fish ball, though it only got as far as her mouth before she spit it back out (didn't even get a bite of it) - they weren't that good... i don't seem to be having much luck with fish balls these days...

Next up was "Mickey's PhilharMagic".... it was brilliant!! that is all i'm going to say about it otherwise it'll ruin it.

Now, with the heat i think i was starting to suffer serious dehydration - we were pretty clever had brought a bottle of ice water and a bottle of just water and mixed the two to get ice water but still i was feeling a bit off after "Mickey's PhilharMagic" so what did i do to fix it?

Yup, we went on the tea cups that spun around in crazy arcs.... Ingrid nearly chickened out for some reason but she did eventually get on and we both had tonnes of fun - though i think the attendant thought we were a bit drunk by the end of it.

I'm surprised we didn't POUR out of the cups by the end of the ride.



Reminiscent of our 'Temple of Heaven' trip, there was this giant cup.....

I guess these photos aren't as blasphemous as those ones...

I was still feeling 'off' after this so we headed off to "It's a Small World" - i don't know what Ingrid thought this was but i figured it'll be something like that cockington green (is that the name?, that miniatures place in Canberra?) anyway. i thought it'll be like that but boy was i dead wrong...
We started the ride, sane and relaxed enough
then came the "Small world"









If you still don't understand what i'm going on about....

Arghhhhhh!!!!! I think it would've been safer for us to stay outside... we were completely traumatised by the end of the ride









Next was the Winnie the Pooh ride, surprisingly fun - totally not whta i expected. it was kinda whacky (again, my (Disney) deprived childhood is being exposed - i don't know any of the pooh stories)You know, sometimes not being able to work out camera, results in the coolest photos!




This picture reminds me of Lulu









Alrightly, Tomorrowland. I must have been tired coz i made the worst call... "wow it's so futuristic!" .... *sweatdrop*




Ingrid tried to get out of taking this photo- no idea why, it turned out pretty good.






We then jumped on another ride, can't remember the name and it was fun but too quick so i won't bother mentioning it - after that we did "Space Mountain"... all i'm going to say about that is:
We went on a few more rides after this, one was some driving track... and Ingrid probably had it worse than me but we both got stuck behind... a putt putt driver!!!!! arghhhhh and i had a little nitwit of a kid bumping me from behind while we had to keep breaking because the old man(!) in front of us couldn't work out how to accelerate. Road rage in Disneyland! They should have separated the lines into two, one for kids and people who don't know how to drive and the rest of us 'normal' people. And this was a ride we waited the longest for too!

We went on Space Mountain again, then the Buzz lightyear ride (i have got to say that was the most fun, you'd definitely have to do it a couple of times though!)

Next on the list was souvenir shopping, i didn't find anything that i liked - Ingrid did though!
good thing i brought a backpack along :) before we knew it, it was time for the Halloween Parade

That was pretty enojyable:


See facebook for all the photos

The finale:

It may have been nice to see the fireworks but the thoughts of the crowd rushing to the MTR afterwards - Ingrid and I bolted after the parade.

Headed home and had hotpot/steamboat and a bottle of beer... ahhh!

Relaxing end to the day.

Halloweeeeen!

Well this is going to be my first 'exciting' post in a long time. Tonight I went to the Ocean Park Halloween Haunted House. Basically it consisted of 8 'haunted' houses that you went through. I went with Jessie, Suki, Erica and Nigel.

We arrived around 5:30pm and being suckers bought halloween themed headbands
then headed straight for the first haunted house, which also happened to be the 'scariest' one of the lot.
We bought privileged tickets which meant we were fast tracked into the haunted house but we still had to wait for while to get into this one (since it was one of the closest ones to the entrance). Poor Erica was already dreading it... (and we hadn't even gotten in yet)
The theme of this particular house was based on the old Chinese village houses - strangely enough i can't remember too much about it except I found everyone screaming really quite funny. It was probably luck that the 'ghosts' all came out and scared the people in front of us so I knew it was coming. Erica didn't fare so well, i think she screamed herself hoarse... There was a really good ghost at the end though, he kinda made me jump at little (in surprise though, not in fear). It was funny to hear people screaming, they were actually scaring themselves more.
It was great seeing the whole park decorated up with Halloween stuff, some people come dressed up as well.
We went to another Haunted house after this one, the Ghastly Entertainment City - I actually can't remember much of it - again it was a pretty funny one. There was a video showing what was happening inside and there was a button you could press to activate the 'scary' thing in the room and watch the reaction of the people - that was really funny, we waited until two guys had just walked into the room and hit the button. The panel of a painting in the wall shot down and flashed something at them and you could see the guys back out the way the came to hide... very amusing..

After that we took a break and went for a roller coaster ride on the "Mine Train" - thank god it was at night you didn't see the scenary flash by you as you went up and down - i've got to say though, for the length of time you line up the ride is terribly short. Jessie was funny, she kept her head down for most of the ride while i was going "OH MY GOD!!!!" Suki, Erica and Nigel totally enjoyed it (Nigel was sitting by himself at the front of the train... crazy man!)

We then moved towards the next Haunted House "The canton case" but convinced Nigel and Suki to go have a go on "The Abyss", a freefall ride... Nigel was eager enough to go

Erica, Jessie and I waited around - watching people get frightened by the various 'ghosts' that were wandering around the place

Anyway, finally it was Nigel and Suki's turn on the Abyss, we were obviously eager to see what their reaction was. Suki had fun but Nigel...
Man, what a funny reaction! Now, you couldn't PAY me to go on that thing.

Ok so we continued to head towards The Canton House, there was a 'quiz show' going on in front of the house. Suki went and had a go but didn't do to well (the questions had really stupid answers). Like "There was a Lobster, Prawn, Crab. Why did the prawn always lose?"... the answer because "ha llo ween" (ha 'no win', ha being prawn in cantonese... *sweatdrop*)

Anyway the line for the Canton Case was quite long, even with a fast track ticket we had to wait 30 minutes, i feel sorry for the people on 'normal' tickets. This House was basically you go to those old colonial/imperial houses, sit down in a 'dining' room where there was a cup and saucer in front of you. You are then instructed to put on some headphones and a recording starts playing, the sound is really bad so the 'guide' says he'll just go outside to check on the recording - of course, no one believes him ( i actually didn't know whether or not to believe him actually), anyway people are like "don't you DARE leave!" and he's like, well what am i supposed to do? so finally he leaves and then the lights go OUT! you're all sitting in the dark and the recording starts playing (you can choose your language, english/cantonese/mandarin) anyway you hear conversation snippets, then you 'hear' people getting killed and you're splashed with something - just as someone is getting knifed. Eeek! it was fun though. That happens a couple of times and then you hear thunder and lighting and the lights flicker as if it were really storming and you 'see' things - all in all it was pretty cool. the kicker was the things that come out from under the table and swipe your legs .... ughh freaky (but not scary). It was too short though...

Next up was the "Gruesome Green House", again the privileged line was non-existant and we went straight in. This was one of the best houses, Japanese style garden/greenhouse. except human heads are used as the pots, then you realise one of the heads is a real person - THAT was excellent. This one has to be one of my favourites.

We then went to "The 4th Dimension"
this wasn't really a 'haunted' house more like a psychadelic house, it used mirrors and wallpapers with 3D images and flickering lights. The people were also were fractal clothes - it did really wacky things to your eyes but it was REALLY cool.

How's that for an entrance?!





Well after this one we only had 3 more houses left and they were all situated in the lowland area of the part so we jumped on a cable car and headed over there.
I have to say these were the most 'disappointing' of the three - they were pretty much the same and not even scary (except i think Erica may disagree for the "Deadly Doll Factory" one) A guy was standing on the gangplank that everyone has to walk past, Jessie, Suki and I all say him and said hello or laughed at him. Erica and Nigel were behind us, she totally didn't see him so when he faced her she screamed, we all had a good laugh and the 'ghost' even had a go at here - considering he had been standing there for so long - that was pretty funny. There was also a terracotta warrior bit, i went through and saw a guy on my right, he sunk back into the shadows. Jessie followed and i heard her say "Ah i can see him!" i turned to my left and caught sight of another 'ghost' on my left. I figured "Drat, no scaring them" but then the first guy i saw walked out and scared them! They only saw the 2nd guy and didn't see the first guy. hehehe

Ahhh it was a lot of fun and the weather was actually really pleasant probably a bit on the misty/humid side but that is preferable to hot and humid. I don't know how the people on normal tickets would be able to do ALL the houses in one night. As it was we finished at 11:30pm and the park closed at 12pm - definitely recommend doing this again next year (it's a different theme every year)


And here's my favourite 'ghost' - well considering she's probably a cult icon

Check out my Facebook profile for more photos!