A Post!

Oh my gawd, what is this? Bink is actually putting up a post after near 3 months of bludging.
What has happened in this time? I've been to Sydney and back (spent a wonderful 3 weeks back home) but it was gone so fast. What i learnt is NEVER to go back and work from in the local office while you're back home, it is terribly unproductive I was in such a holiday mood and the day seemed to go so fast as well. I didn't fit in half the things i wanted to do (mostly involving, visiting my favourite restaurants). Nothing beats Sydney food, sure Hong Kong has the variety but it just doesn't have the taste. I even prefer Sydney Chinese food to HK though there are definitely things you can't get back in Sydney so it's always worth coming over to HK for a food-orientated holiday.

Ok so that was pretty much February gone. I should make a mention of the little accident that Ben had in Korea the day before i left for Sydney. Ben-Klutzy went skiing with Bev and concussed a girl and did some serious damage to his butt - resulting in spending 3 weeks in the hospital in Korea instead of skiing and getting drunk. (Sympathy for poor Bev who ended up visiting him in the hospital every day, all the while having to do Winter Intensive classes at his school). Anyway, 3 weeks passed and Ben came back and met mum and me at HK airport where he was going to rest a few days before returning home.

Not much happened that week, considering Ben wasn't very mobile on his crutches, and the fact that he didn't have much of an appetite (shock! gasp! Ben saying he was full after a half bowl of rice and a little bit of food) not to mention he looked anorexic from 3 weeks of hospital food (good way to go on a diet people!). Anywayz, Ben returns home for a few weeks before returning to London with the parentals, during this time Bev has finished up his contract and i decide to head to Korea to go for one last round of eating/shopping while i have a free interpreter/guide as well as lend him my baggage allowance for the return trip. That was a fun but extremely tiring weekend, which started with my catching a midnight plane to Korea (after a day of working on Friday) - trying to sleep on the plane, then the bus on the way out to where Bev was gonig to meet me. We made it back to his apartment before we crashed (plans to visit the local fish market, out the window as sleep beckoned) then it was eating , eating, eating (interlude where Bev floods his apartment with laundry water - at least his floor was VERY clean afterwards)

Crap, it's 1am better go to sleep and write some more tomorrow. Unfortunately i have been extremely bad and haven't made it to work before 9:15am for the last week.... will have to try harder. I just don't know how it happens 8:30 rolls around and i still haven't left the apartment... *sigh*

Homecoming!

I've been home for 3 days now! It's been great and kind of weird.
My return started off with the quickest exit from Sydney Airport, i was out of the airport in less than 40 minutes (that's including customs!) world record i think.
I even beat mum and dad out!

The doggies hadn't forgotten me (which is a good sign) - i was a bit worried Wei would tear my arm off because he didn't recognise me. But luckily he was very happy to see me. Lulu kinda ignored me a little (sily b*tch) hehe

But gosh it's so different coming back to a roomy house, went into the bathroom and was surprised at how roomy it felt (for perspective, our bathroom at home is the size of almost two of my bathrooms in HK). Hell, i think my whole apartment can fit into our living room/kitchen!

It's been incredibly hard to get up every morning the weather is making me feel so lethargic. I don't know how i'm going to be able to get up on Friday to get to work... but geez i wouldn't mind not working at all!

I was in a writing mood before but no such much now... i'll have to think of something else to write

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!