Thursday, November 30, 2006

Protein Enriched Coffee


There is just so wide range of coffee in the market nowadays…. We are all literary spoilt by choices.

Lately there’s also vitamin/mineral enriched instant coffee in the market. Let’s see, there’s the calcium enriched coffee, ginseng coffee, ginger & honey coffee etc… etc… and the list goes on.

Anyhow, I think it’s all just a gimmick – how can coffee give you additional calcium boast in your body? When it is supposed to work against it, as coffee is known to decrease your body’s ability to absorb calcium – it sorta flush the calcium out of our body. Hmmm… so, go figure.

And today, I am going to introduce you to my new range of coffee – Tada! Meet my “Kleio’s High Protein Coffee”.

Dying for a sip?

The Secret Ingredients:
• One teaspoonful of instant coffee powder
• Two teaspoonful of Coffeemate
• Two teaspoonful of condensed milk
• Steaming hot water
• One miniscule ant (added for that extra boast of protein) - but, the size and type of ant is entirely up to your own preference ya *wink*

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Souvenirs from Abroad & Wormy Cravings

Yay! Gotten a handful of souvenirs from my mummy dearest - Chiangmai souvenirs :D

Mom went to Chiangmai last week for a whole week with her boyfriend. She just got back this Monday night. “The weather’s hot,” she said. Poor thing, she looked half dead when I saw her yesterday night. “It’s a very, very, tiring trip,” she adds.

They followed the travel agency’s schedule for the first 2 days and then, skip em’ for their own free and easy traveling for the rest of the days – Smart thinking, I’ll say.

They went for some tribe visiting, elephant sanctuary and blah, blah, blah, blah…

These are some of the souvenirs from her to yours truly :D ….

Actually, there is also one pretty little black T-Shirt with gold stamping and hand-sewn golden beads but, I didn’t get the chance to photograph it yet. Sorry.

Last but not least… yes, one handmade key-chain thrown in as souvenir as well – and yes, key-chain is a must and the norm you get from frens/relatives from their trips. Irregardless of how much you hate em’ *cheeky grin* - frankly, I don’t hate em’ at all, or mind getting any of it though. As the saying goes, “Anything is Always Better than Nothing”, right? Plus, it’s the thoughts that counts :D So, keep em’ souvenirs coming ya *wink*.


Drum roll…..


Ahem… there is this one little souvenir I very much wanted to get but never did, but arhh… it’s kinda weird.

You see, I am pretty adventurous when it comes to food :P - I am also very curious about worldwide local delicacies – therefore, I have always, yes always, wanted to try those deep fried creepy-crawlies such as worms, scorpions, bugs and such, and don’t forget those gargantuan hairy spiders as well. Weird, I know.

Unfortunately, my mom didn’t try to smuggle some back home to tease my taste buds :( But, I did vaguely recalled hinting her to get me some though *sulk*. She told me she did tried one Deep Fried Wood Worm – and found it to be very bland. Hmmm…. Maybe it should be taken with some sauce perhaps? Sambal belacan worms, anyone for the takings? LOL


Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Urgh! Sticky Fingers

Typed this during lunch today and it's raining like cats n dogs out there. Yeah, I sorta skipped my lunch - due to the heavy breakfast I had this morn. So, don't worry, I am not on a diet ya. Will never go on a diet. I still love eating (especially junk food) too much to ever forgone this heavenly indulges and joy of being a human being.

Ok. Back to my topic.

I was busily writting away (boringly logging some documents) this morning in the office when I suddenly felt something sticky and slick between my left fingers. The first thought that crossed my mind before I look was, "Eweeewww... who's slime was that?."

And this is what I saw................................................................




Wt#$%^@*f!!!!







Yiiiiiii.... it's on my chair too.





This is where I gotten the slick from.


And this is the Culprit - A retractable blue gel pen.



All this freaking happened due to one small little negligence on my part i.e. I forgotten to re-tract its head... ahem, sorry, I meant its eye after using it.


So, Lesson # 1 - Never leave your pen uncap or drawn-out when
not in use - It's one messy affair if you did.

Lesson # 2 - Do not attempt to touch your face with your hands at anytime of the day (except when you are washing of course) - or you might just end up being in the centre-of-attention - in today's scenario especially :D


I was lucky... or I should I say, I am pretty smart for adopting the No-Touching-Face policy at all times. Cos’ our hands are so full of germs and dirt most of the time, it might even the dirtiest part of our body.



After some vigorous washing, I still can’t get rid of the mess.
Sigh… luckily I am not going anywhere posh or something like it after work :P


Monday, November 27, 2006

Arghhh..... I am Fumming Mad!!! (Blogger Beta's Theme)


Very frustrated with my Blogger Beta theme now *sulk*. Blogger Beta has got very limited themes available. If only they just let us change the stupid header picture easily - I would be ever grateful.

I know there are many themes/skins for Bloggers from third party out there... but, it's a pity many of it doesn't support Blogger Beta (which is what I am currently using) Sigh... I seriously thought of moving my blog to Wordpress (which has got a cleaner layout - just exactly as I like em’ to be). Except, I just found out that although Wordpress does brilliantly provide the capability of importing your posts and comments from other popular blogsites such as Blogger, MySpace and LiveJournal etc., unfortunately it does not support Blogger Beta’s imports.

Wahh…huahhh..huaaahhhh…. Shit-to-lo-gi liao.


Maybe I will just have to create a new blog at Wordpress, leaving behind all my previous posts and comments – I don’t see any other alternatives to this. Unless, unless, some good soul could point me to the right direction or better still, a third party source for lovely themes catering for Blogger Beta also.



P/S: Gina (an old fren of mine), I know you are going to be laughing at me right now… but don’t, cause I am seriously pissed.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Gold Medalist ~ Grasp!!! Oh-My-Goshiness...


Just to share my joy on my son's achievement.

He has just been awarded with a Gold Medal for the
Tidiness Award
2006 by his Pre-school. Actually, it was already 2 weeks ago :P - just didn't gotten around to post it here yet. Ha!

Felt like a million-bucks-mom when he showed it to me estatically when I came back from work. Took pictures right after pictures of him berposing-posing with the medal. LOL. Ahh... a mother's pride, don't laugh ok - I can't help it :P

My Little Black Jacket

Very estatic this morning :D - Yeah!

Truly happy with myself.

I found out this morning that I can now fit into one of my old size 4 jacket. Cool... No diet, no wonder drug and no sweat (as in exercising apart from the marital-bed-exercises *wink*) - I just slim down just like that. I can't believe it.

Talking about the jacket... hmmm.... I think I have gotten it when I was still a sweet-young-thing venturing out into the dog-eat-dog corporate world after college. Come to think of it, it was actualy my second job. If not mistaken, I was only 19 years old then - very spring-chicken. Not to mention, I only weight about 43kg at that time as compared to my now addition of 10kg (more or less) :D - almost all clothes look big and loose for me then ha!

So, now you can image my how estatic I was when I tried on this black jacket gingerly this morning and found it to be almost a perfect fit. Bliss....

I am wearing it now ;) - to work. And I have gotten a compliment from a dear friend of mine :D


Thursday, November 23, 2006

Susu's Bliss.... ( In the arms of her beloved )


Took these pix yesterday night. My Studly-Bro was stroking her continuously while we were watching TV.

She looked so blissful and contented don’t you think so. Susu’s my bro’s favourite pooch, and she knew it – always know how to milk all the attention from him. Yeah. I guess Susu’s my bro’s bitch. LOL

Ok ok. She’s cute and adorable too…. provided when she’s not grouchy, that is. Most of the time, she is – that’s the prob.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Poor lil' Susu

Susu had a bad case of rashes and my mom had cut of most of her fur for speedier recovery - she reasoned. Kesian Susu, she now looked so frail and thin.

As per requested by fellow blogger Che-Cheh (her beloved dog Chester is also suffering from some kind of skin allergy), I am now posting some of Susu's photos here. There's also a short video clip on Susu current's condition.




Video Clip


Praying that she will recover soon enough and regain all her glorious fur.

Chef for the Day ( In-house Pizza Pancakes )

5th November 2006, Sunday

Sunday is a day for some quality family time. So, I decided to be the Chef-of-Honour for the day.

Introducing my specialty… Pizza Pancakes!


Ingredients:
Dried Prawns (about one handful, or less)
Crab Meat Stick (5 sticks)
Ayamas Garlic Sausage (1 stick)
Chicken Egg (2 pcs)
Flour (sorry, I don’t know the measurement. As I go by my own judgment)
Butter (for the frying the pancakes)
Salt (to taste)
Sugar (to taste)
Soya Sauce (to taste)
Pepper (to taste)

The Batter
Put some flour into a pot/large mixing bowl and pour some water in it. Proceed to mix it up… thoroughly. Then crack two eggs into it and do more mixing. Try to get the mixture as smooth as possible, please. As for the consistency, I’ll just have to leave it to your own judgment. Oh yes, add in some salt, soya sauce, sugar (just a tea spoon or less as we are making salty pancakes not the sweet type) and a dash of pepper to taste.


The Extra Stuffs to be added into the Batter for that Extra Ohmmps!
Dice the soaked dry prawns and stir fried it until it turn into a yummy golden brown (see pix below).



Slice the Crab Meat and Sausage (as per pix below ok). You might want to make sure you slice it thin enough – cos’ it might not stick well in the pancakes when you fry it. Unless, you make the batter extra thick to support it – then, it will take ages to cook. Hahaha… I like my pancakes thin and crispy. Yum!

See pixs below (clockwise please):
The first top row of the four (4) pix is one of my first attempts for test run. Didn’t turn out well enough for my standard. Taste still not up to par (too bland), size is totally out (too small to be tantalizing due to the batter being too thick to be spread out any larger), wrong technique in adding the Extra Stuffs for Ommphs (I actually tried to stick em’ all on like pizza toppings after I pour the batter on the pan. Wrong move, cause the batter gets cooked and dried almost instantly before I even got the chance to lay em’ all on).

The remedy…
On second attempt, I pour the Extra Stuffs for Ommphs into my Batter at the advice of my “Kitchen-Goddess-Grandmama”. The end result was pretty good (see the large pix in the center and the other two small ones on the right hand side of it). How come I didn’t think of it in the first place? Sometimes, we tend to over complicate things in life hor.



Just for laugh....

As I was a little bit bored in the kitchen, all alone, dishing out one pancake at a time… albeit lovingly so. I decided then to have some fun while doing it hence, I did the “Frying Pan & Turner Dance”. Whoa... did I have fun. It was loads of fun actually *grin*. Hell, it was waaaaay…. too much fun that I had to video myself doing the moves.

Here’s my video clip. LOL.





Here’s my end results:


Oh yeah! don’t forget to use lotsa butter to fry your pancakes. Plus, it does goes well with Thai Cili Sos. YUM! Five stars. Hahaha….

Not bad.... not bad at all. I was actually given thumbs-up by Little Boy, Kitchen-Goddess-Grandmama and Stud-ly Bro you know. So, I am pretty smug about this now *grin*.

Anyway, hope you all enjoy this, cos’ I know I am not a very good cook and I am even suck writting about it.



Extra Bits:

Poor Kopi-O & Susu didn’t get their cut on my yummylicious pancakes. Muahahahahaha….. *mother-of-all evil grin*

Friday, November 03, 2006

Spam Unlimited


Spam is certainly no Ham. That's for sure.

Been busy waging a war on Spam in my Outlook 2002 these past two weeks. It's really getting on my nerves. I get about averagely 10 spam mails per day - sometimes even more. Ugh! How frustrating.

It was really irritating, plus it is a pure waste of time to manually weed these junks out from my Inbox everyday and trying hard to avoid clicking any of it open accidentally as it may carry some malicious wares such as viruses or other dangerous hidden programs. Better be safe than to be sorry ya.

What’s more frustrating is that, filtering them out proven to be &^%$#@ freaking tedious and hopeless especially if you are using Outlook 2002 and not any other higher versions such as Outlook 2003 which comes with a better filter (more features, better flexibility and easier to configure plus, most importantly…. It’s updateable unlike its predecessor).

Spammers are getting more and more cunning nowadays – their spam contains not only text BUT, also contains html or cleverly displayed as picture/image. And these tricks helps it to bypass the normal or an ordinary Junk-mail filter.
Adding these Junk-mail’s sender addresses to the Junk-Mail Sender List would be a total waste of time – I will tell you why…. It’s because these Spammers had a way to create new email accounts for each of its spam. Therefore you may be receiving the same spam content but, it would be from different email addresses each time – So, does this not make adding them into the Junk-Mail Sender List null and void??

What am I supposed to do now?..... Since the normal kind of built-in filtering is not working as effective as I wanted it to be. Am I supposed to just ignore them as what my company’s IT personnel advised?.... Ha! Fat chance that is. LOL - Wage a war I will, and a victorious war it shall be..... Muahhahhahahaha….. Spam beware. Vengeance is my middle name *evil grin*.


The Solutions……

After countless hours of hardcore digging thru the net and some IT magazines and also not to mention, after numerous test runs.... Eureka! two fine and dandy solutions was uprooted at last.

One is by using external help in the form of a third party Outlook Addin called SpamBayes Outlook Addin 1.0.4 and the second option, would be turning back to Outlook 2002 filter for help - But do not fear, for I have somehow managed to fine tune (or customise) a filtering rule to near perfection... ahem..(to me at least :D). I shall only elaborate on this internal filter next week or so. Cos’ time does not permit me to go into the details today. Sorry.

SpamBayes Outlook Addin
Just download it from the net – it’s free and it’s good plus, it’s damn easy to configure :)

Basically, you just need to teach it like a child to differentiate between what is good food and what is junk food and which one to steer clear off. And this awesome piece of software is called a Bayesian filter.



To sum things off….

All in all, I have gain more that I lose in this War I have waged against the Evil Spam. Gained more knowledge about Spam and Outlook filtering how-tos. Gained tons of confidence *silly grin* and self-worth too. Ahha….

So, until later then…. Ta...ta...