Simple Chic

When I saw these throw pillows, I finally have a bit of idea what kind of look I want for the music room.

The 'Simple Chic' look.

I am thinking perhaps I can pair it with rugs like this:

And have some colorful paintings / pictures on the wall.

The only thing I cant figure out yet is the curtains. Few options I am considering:

1. Use similar/repeat pattern of one of the throw pillow. But it means Ive gotta choose a dominant color/ pattern

2. Custom made the curtains to combine the colors. Quite like this one though may not be ideal since i dont want  the window to be focal point

3. Go with the wall color. Most sensible one, but it will make the room looks bland. Too safe, not enough cheekiness.

The biggest challenge is to find it locally, without costing me arms and legs.

AND Not to mention, how do I keep it from hubs, cause he would say HECK NO for sure... Haha

Good luck to me.

  

Charm-me enough

Last night hubs wanted to buy me a Pandora charm and I pass up. 

It was nice of him, and totally unexpected too. But I guess enough is enough, I dont really need another charm, it is heavy as it is. 

Made me wonder though, perhaps I can re-sell my existing charm so that I can buy a different one. Any takers you think? 

Most expensive carwash ever!!

Last I checked I was still Malaysia, and not in some crazy expensive country like Norway. 

So imagine my shock when I was presented with this bill. 

Yeap, it wasnt a typo or anything, the car wash was indeed RM 50. Crazy!! 

So peeps if you are ever in Pavilion and thinking of giving your ride a jolly wash while you shop, just forget it. The Shine Shine located at level 1M, will suck you dry with a simple carwash costing 5 times more than the standard charge. To be fair - they did inform me that it was 'fifty' since I was not a member. And I agreed thinking he said 'fifteen'. Ye la sapa nak expect carwash would cost you RM50 kan. Off I went, not realising my car was being treated with the most expensive ever wash. Balik2 I gave the boy RM15 and the boy look at me expectantly (though I must say he looked guilty), and told me sheepishly that it is RM50 not RM15. 

Huh. 

Lesson learnt - always check the docket!!!

Samsung S3 for sale

Bought it for hubs, but after using it for couple of months he told me that he prefers his old nexus.

According to him, the Nexus was more responsive and had better calendar feature. One biggest difference is the position of the 'back' button which sits on the far right on S3, but it was on the far left on Nexus. Being a lefty, he had to stretch his thumb frequently and has started to experience pain on his thumb after a while.

Because I do not want an injured hub, I decided to just fix the broken Nexus screen (which costs RM 500 btw) and had him changed back to the nexus.

So now I am left with this S3, and no, I certainly am not swinging to android. I tried - but I find it too frilly with all sorts of animation that I honestly don't need nor want.  The only thing that I appreciate is the widget where I can see whole screen of calendars and what not. Though I find it strange that empty pages are still there though there is no widgets/icons on it (unlike iOS where I only see a new page if I have an icon).

Anyhow, if you want an S3 complete with the original box and the phone is still under warranty, just leave a message. Ta!

Note: Item sold on the day it went to mudah.my - twas sellin like a hot cake! 

Ikan kering goreng with chilli

 I am not sure if there is a proper name for this dish. Its basically just fermented fish, cooked with dried chillies and onions.

Very simple dish, and uses everyday ingredients.

What you need:

A handful ikan kering (sliced thin)

A handful dried chillies (cut about an inch)

Two onions (sliced)

2 cloves garlic

An inch of ginger (sliced thin)

Cooking oil (for frying)

1. To cook, first fry the ikan kering. Put aside. Should look something like this once fried.

2. Sautee the remaining ingredients except ginger. Sautee until the onions became brownish

3. Finally, add the ginger and the fried ikan kering. Mix well and serve.

Grilled Salmon with alfredo pasta

  

This is my first time trying alfredo pasta. Wasnt very successful, the sauce came out a bit curdled, maybe next time i should add a bit of water and simmer less.

The recipe was from:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/alfredo-sauce-2/?scale=2&ismetric=1

Ingredients:

+ butter

+ cream

+ parmesan cheese

+ parsley

+ crushed garlic

And  I added  a bit of salt and pepper as well.

Initially I wanted to cook the salmon as part of the alfredo, but changed my mind in case it doesnt turn out well. It was a good call, because Mr Fluff was making faces at my alfredo when he realised that there was cheese in it.

He said it was quite nice, but I dont think he enjoyed it very much. I guess this one is not going to be a repeat - since I am not exactly a fan of Alfredo either.

Miso soup

A friend bought me the Miso soup paste after hearing that I have been looking for it. Apparently a lot of the off the shelves miso paste contains non-halal ingredient. She got this one from a shop selling natural goods, and ingredients are all vegetarians and no achohol.

For the dashi stock, you will need (i got the konbu and bonito flakes from Isetan KLCC):

- 2 x 4 inches konbu ( some kind of dried seaweed)

- 1 x cup of bonito flakes (shaved dried fish flakes)

- 4 cups of water 

For the add ons, basically you can just add on anything u fancy, some have seaweeds, or those soft tofu, it really is up to you but I prefer these:

- dried tofu

- spring onions

And not forgetting the miso itself. Mine is a paste, but it also comes in powder.

I was making it based on the recipe from this site :

http://justhungry.com/2006/08/a_week_of_miso_soup_day_1_zucc.html

I am not gonna rewrite it since it was practically the same, so I'll just post the pix of what I did.

Step 1: 

Step 2:

Step 3:

Step 4:

Step 5:

Step 6: the miso, i found that I dont need to mix it with the stock beforehand, it is okay to just stir it after

Finally:

The final verdict -

Taste wise, its quite okay and not too bad for a first try.

However, would I be making it again? Maybe not. While its quite easy to make, its too time consuming ( because u need to let the konbu sits for a while) and the ingredients are not exactly cheap.  The ingredients costs nearly RM20, maybe more, while you can just have those at the Japanese restaurants for around RM2.50 per bowl. Doesnt really justifies it, but of course u will know for sure that it is halal and if you make the dashi stock in big batches, you can always skip the time consuming bit and have it ready in less than 10 mins.

aztech homeplug - network your home without using electricity

If you are like me, living in a two storey house and would like to have your cat5e cable on different location other than where your router is, and if you want to have a more stable and bigger than the 54mpbs of wifi, u should consider buying the homeplug.

Frankly I was sceptical at first, not sure if it would work out of the box like it says, especially after reading unsuccessful stories over the internet.

In the end, I am glad that I tried it anyway, cos it worked like a charm!

By the way, to state the obvious,  you will need purchase two units for it to work - though I reckon Aztech should have sold it in pairs cos buying just one unit doesnt make sense.

Unboxing the package you will get:

- the home plug

- cat5e cable ( a very short one though, I substituted it with my 3mtrs)

- a simple guide ( though its not exactly necessary, it was very simple to setup)

- the installer CD ( not sure what it was for because I had mine working without needing to install anything)

So first, you just plug in one unit on any plug point close to your router, in my case - upstairs at my TV room/area. As you can see, I actually just plugged it in on one of the power extension strip, and it was working okay. Then hook it with a cat5e cable which goes to the cable port on the homeplug on one end and the router on the other end.

  Next, plugged in the second unit in the same manner on a plugpoint which you want it to be, eg, downstairs. 

Its worth to mention that some people commented that it doesnt work if you have three phase wiring and if the two locations are in different phase. My house is a three phase, but it was working okay with one unit upstairs and one unit downstairs. Perhaps it so happens that the two locations were on the same phase, i dont know. Will update if it wont work elsewhere later.

As you can from the images above, there led indicators on the unit to indicate power, (dunno what the middle on is), and network. It goes green when it picked up signals, it goes amber when it doesnt. It took less than a minute for it turn green in my case, which surprised me at how easy and simple it is.

Overall I am very happy now that I can have a network downstairs without having to run long exposed cable.

The cost:

About RM200 - around RM100 each unit. Well worth the investment :)

More information can be found at http://www.aztech.com/prod_homeplug_hl112e.html

Below is copied from Aztech website to illustrate how it works:

Dinner is on me!

  

Just wanted to share with others who wants to get good sausages, I got those from Las Vacas. I usually go to the ones in Kelana Jaya because its the closest to me. Mr Fluff enjoyed his dinner very much. And I liked it too, its practically hassle free to prepare!

OK, those who'd like to get meat products its located at

No.23, Jalan SS5A/11 Kelana Jaya, 47301 Petaling Jaya, Selangor

03-7874 0711

Money MATTERS. period.

Has the value of our money decreased?? 

I dont know about you, but in the past whenever I withdrew money from the ATM I never get the RM100 bill. Its always either the fifties or the tens. 

The thing is, I had always prefered the RM100 note - because I can spend more.. haha no lah, its because I have a small wallet. I can only put as many notes before it starts to look like a overfed goldfish,and hence my preference on the bigger nomination (besides the obvious advantages :D) 

Previously, whenever I see hubs or grandma with RM100 - I always want to tukar duit with them. For some reason, their bank dispenses the 100 nominations. 

Anyway, of late I noticed that I am no longer getting RM50 and RM10 from my ATM. Instead, I am getting RM100 and RM20 instead as well. The first time I got it, I was happy. But nowadays, I am not too sure anymore. I share the same sentiment as hubs - I think its troublesome because now its a hassle especially when I need to make small expense. Satu hal pulak nak tukar duit. 

Anyway, the point I am trying to make - does that mean the value of our RM has decreased? 

If dulu, RM100 can buy me a whole lot of things. But nowadays, not so. 

The RM20 has become what RM10 used to be. AND RM100 has become what RM50 used to be. 

I wonder what will happen 10 years from now. RM10 are like the RM1?? I sure hope not! 

Fly Malaysia Airlines

Flowers collections

All About Flowers

12 Feb 2013. Taman Tasik Permaisuri

Jack Reaper

At first I actually thought this movie was a remake of those jack reaper movies.

Its not, and it was surprisingly good. 

Its centers adound a killing spree by an ex-army who had history of similar killings, only that it is not what it is. Here comes Jack Reaper who was also in the army - the very person who investigate his previous case and through the evidences knew that he couldnt have done it. 

The movie slowly unfolds each evidences to finally reveals that the motive behind the killings.

My rating: 8/10

Installing HDD to Dune HD media player

This is going to be a basic guide, mainly to give an oversight of whats inside the hood & quick overview of configuring the system storage. Hopefully it'll help you people who were confused like me , to decide if this dune is for you or not. 

Before i start - i should say you basically dont need to do the steps i'm about to explain in this post, the dune hd media player will run out of the box, if you are looking for a simple plug and play device.

I however opted to install an internal HDD for several reasons:

1. I dont have enough storage elsewhere to host the kind of volume these movies and videos are going to accumulate

2. I hated how uncool the dangling external HDD looked on my shelves - kinda defeats the purpose having a small media player

3. When you disconnect and reconnect the external HDD, it doesnt always remember the same volume name. Which is not an issue if you dont intend to use a collection application like zappiti or dune movie. In my case- going through movie titles without some kind of visuals is just not gonna cut it for me

4. Without an internal HDD, I will need to stick an empty USB stick permanently there to store the system storage files ( again, if u intend to use zappiti, u'll need this).

What you will need is just a 2.5" HDD - maximum 2 TB, according to the documentations. I bought a 1TB, so I cant tell you  what will happen if u stick a higher capacity disk. It is also recommended to buy the green version so that you can keep temp lower, and also keep the rpm low. Apparently there will be issues if you use higher rpms like 7200.  Note: You should also know that the Dune gets a bit heaty when left even at standby mode. 

Ok. Now, here are images i captured and basic steps just to show whats inside the hood n installing the hdd.

- unscrew the two tiny screws at the sides, and lift the cover (the sides with the writings like below)

- the inside is quite easy to guess. So just mount the HDD with the M3 sized screws provided at the cover's back. There is plastic film there presumably to protect the HDD's backside. 

- connect the SATA and power cables and fit it back in

Once the HDD installed, you will automatically see it on the screen

Will continue tomorrow with part 2 - to configure the HDD, and installing system storage. Stay tuned.

BMI calculator

Okay peeps ..time to get healthy. Calculate your bmi here!

bmi calculator

Bye bye AFC

After a series of failures in baking - I decided that I am just not meant to be Bree Van Dekamp, and channeled my energy towards what I love best - IT. So folks on my next few posts, you'll see more reviews on gadgets and stuff rather than the kitchen department. So long AFC, welcome Lowyat.net. :D

Midnight Sun

OH MY GOSH!

I was almost giddy with excitement when I realised what Midnight Sun was. I could not stop smile, ear to ear, and I was really really wishing that it was the weekend already where I can take it slow and read letter by letter, line by line, without ever needing to stop.

Edward was never really my favorite character, I somehow prefer Jacob because he was funnier. Yes, I do have a thing with joker/funny guys. Edward, while he is sweet and very gentlement, is just too patronising to my liking.

But whoa... After reading the midnight sun, I understood him more, and I came to like him a bit whole lot more. I now see him clearly, and after seeing the conflicts and thoughts in his mind, I came to appreciate and like him more. He actually sounded normal, unlike in twilight - where he appears to be like too worldly-goody-two-shoes. 

It was a journey on its own, seeing him trying to understand all those unknown feelings. Knowing what his life was like before Bella- or i should say lack of life.  He never knew what love felt like, never knew the intensity of jealousy could bring, never knew what happiness really meant. And to see his rage, when he was jealous or protecting Bella from harm was endearing. Not forgetting when he tries so hard trying to understand Bella was quite comical. Stalking her without her realising, ignoring all those risks and making all sorts of vampire faux pas,  like walking in the sun just trying to peek her book when she was asleep or when he did all those surveillance - anxious about wanting so much for Bella to also like him.. I then finally understood why he was like that in Twilight. 

It is nice to know that he doesnt always hold it together, and he too are battling with insecurities and he struggles too like each one of us, and he has a darker side.

It is enlightening, to say the least.

In short I no longer see him as the annoyingly perfect creature Bella seem to have potrayed him to be, but instead I see him like the heartthrob everyone else seem to think he is :)))

Honestly, I don't know myself anymore...... (drooling mode on)... :D

---

 

Note: midnight sun is a partial rough draft of Stephenie Meyer's book which was leaked online. It was meant to be Twilight companion book- the tale re-tell in Edwards view instead of Bella. 

I am not going to post it here , out of respect for the author, but if you are interested in reading it, i think u can find it on Stephenie's official website.

I do hope that she would finish it, cos I enjoyed reading what little of it way way to much. :)

Twilight Saga the movies

Again, this is one of those belated post. I have actually watched the movies a while back, but I just didnt feel excited enough to write about it.

The movies were, if I have to summarised, just such a big disappointment.

I was sooo glad that I had opted to read all the books first, rather than do the shortcut and watch the movies. Because peeps, I tell ya the movies seriously did not do justice to the funny, witty and entertaining book they are.

I dont know if it was the bad acting, or the lack of depth the movie presented or what, all in all the movie just didnt impress me. To the point that I almost could not bother to watch the remaining sequels after twilight. ( the sucker that I am, I did watch anyway though with much less enthusiasm). Believe it or not, the one person I actually enjoyed watching in the movie was Charlie, cos I thought he did a great job realising his character on the big screen. The wolves clan came second,  especially Sam and little Seth. Jacob is definitely someone to drool at though in twilight he wasnt much, but he grew in his character especially towards the breaking dawn. 

There are just gazillions funny, sarcastic and heart fluttering moments in the book that was not captured, instead they had to pick the dull ones (to me at least). If you just watch the movies you are really missing a lot, it was just too bland and monotonous to my liking.

So there you have it - my take on the twilight saga the movie. I could read the book over and over again, but I cant say the same for the movies. For me, it was far cry from the great novels they really are. What a shame ....

Osaka Cake

With this, I declare that I am totally done with baking.  DONE. DONE. DONE!!!

Sebab frust, malas nak cakap bebanyak.

This is how the kitchen looked like:

And this is how the outcome is like:

Dont ask me why it became senget benget, because i seriously have no idea. And kalau senget benget but edible takpe jugak, ni nay, it is not fit to consume either... Huhuhu..

And since the filling was successful (after two tries i hv to say) ,I just improvise and makan with apple instead. Habih cito..

By the way this is how it is supposed to look like:

Osaka cake, recipe n image from : 

http://nasilemaklover.blogspot.com/2012/04/hokkaido-chiffon-cupcakes.html 

Strawberry milkshake

Two words : easy peasie!

What u need (to make about 1 ltr):

1. Strawberries 25 pieces ripe medium size

2. 3 tablespoon cream ( i didnt have milk, so i substitute with cream)

3. 200 - 300 ml chilled water or crush iced

4. Sugar 4 tsp 

5. Blender 

The process:

1. Blend the strawberries with water

2. Add cream and sugar, blend a bit more

And we are done!