Macaron & Breaking Dawn

After that inconsistent fiasco with my previous few macarons attempt, I decided to do some tweaking to the preparation and lo and behold...

French Macarons

The feets came back and so did the smooth shell. But the interior is kinda shit, there's a lot of air pocket in the macaron but it looked nice so I thought everything was fine. Until I decided to do them again and it came out looking like crap again. 

So I decided to use another method which required a bit of sugar cooking called the Italian Meringue Method which apparently was more forgiving but required a lot more steps. I did everything by myself, never had I wished I had a Kitchen Aid, a proper baking tray and a huge oven all at the same time so desperately, and surprisingly I actually managed to make the meringue without getting any burns from the hot sugar syrup... because I wasn't being moronic and directly pouring the hot syrup anywhere near the spinning whisk.

Italian Macaron +Elle and Vire Butter.

 Cold Storage sells them now, I squealed a little when I saw them (the butter). It's sad

Makes me wonder what reaction I will have when they start selling Valrhona.

The shells for this macarons were so much better, but the trouble was not worth it to be honest. There was a lot of cracking happening at places it shouldn't crack. Honestly the oven's shit because the hotspots were all over the place. As if my damn oven isn't small enough, now I have to avoid placing my pre-cooked macaron batter at certain spots so they won't crack.

I really want those ovens that will rotate as they bake but honestly there's no space in the kitchen and I have this fear that I might accidentally lock myself inside and bake myself alive because it's that big.






So anyways.



I recently went to watch Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2.





 It's actually pretty entertaining, I mean it's not the type of movie that will leave an impression after watching it but it's definitely not as bad as 9Gag make them out to me, 9gag is just the place where ignorance is embraced with love so I shouldn't have based my judgement on the latest Twilight series base what the community there says.


That being said though, the first few Twilight movies were shit. It's too much romance and too little action and I'm not one that will go "Awww" for romances... says the guy who squealed for Elle and Vire Butter. The good thing about Breaking Dawn part 2 was the action scene at the end, I have to admit looking at Dakota Fanning's head getting ripped off by the wolf was oddly satisfying.

Not this Dakota obviously. She was too precious.

And they also introduced a lot of other Vampires that had no lines to speak at all except a few head nods to show they agreed with whatever the main characters had to say, which was sad and I remembered this fat vampire lady who reminded me of the writer Stephanie Myer herself. 

As someone who don't follow Twilight as stalkishly as the Twi-hards, she looked like Myers to me and it's funny because I was watching a behind the scenes video of the showdown scene where the Vampires and Werewolves starting running towards the bad guys, you can see that actress up top lagging behind. 

They have Character Posters for all the Vampires, it's crazy, I mean probably 80% of them don't even have speaking lines and they get their own posters plastered all over the world, or maybe at Subway Stations and like places no one really visits but since Twilight is making so much money why not just stick it in the Priority Toilet Cubicles as well because it's not weird having a face staring at you as you are squeezing something out from your rear orifice. On second thought, actually a lot of people use those toilets, disabled or not. If they really did that though, they should use this one...

She kept looking like she was constipated through out the movie.

Exactly.

Fuck you Inconsistency!

A few weeks ago, I had this sudden wave of baking successes.

First I made a few cupcakes that came out really well, even my sisters enjoyed them which is rare because no one in my family eats what I bake, which is kinda confusing because I'm not sure if it's so bad at baking that they avoid it or they don't like eating cakes and stuff which is weird because who doesn't love to eat those deliciousness.

Successful Batch of Cupcakes.

Followed by another batch.

So a few days later I decided to make some macarons , they came out really good as well...

Salted Caramel with Nutella because I was too lazy to actually make the filling.

Fast forward to a few days ago. I decided to make even more macarons. 

ALL OF THEM FUCKING FAILED.

I have no idea what the hell I did wrong because I've been doing the exact same thing as I have done while I was on my macaron making craze, which by the way all came out successfully.

And I am actually really pissed off because all the 4 batches that I made all came out cracked and looked more like the ones I made when I first started.

The problem with my obsession with macarons is that when I start, I won't stop until I find the problem. But I guess one good thing that came out from this barrage of failures after a wave of successes is that now I know I won't want to be involved in culinary in the future.

MORE COOKIES!

Cookie. And Caramel. Without Salt.... yet

I guess my macaron baking obsession that got taken over by my cupcake obsession is quickly being taken over by my obsession with cookies.

The only difference between the cookie and macaron obsession is that those 2 actually come out decent enough.  My cupcakes are always quite sub par which is really depressing because I love cakes, probably why they are always so shit because my standards for cakes are really high. Cakes are like my own children, anything below amazing will be disowned.

My tastebud weren't happy with the Bitter Sweet Chocolates.

Made some browned butter yesterday for the cookies, smelled like Weathers Originals, it was pretty awesome to have my batter smell so good. The only thing that ruined my whole cookie batter was the fact that I threw in Bittersweet Chocolate instead of Semi-Sweet. 

And it's not shitty chocolate, I actually bought good quality Ghirardelli chocolates. Really need to start reading the packaging properly next time.Should have just chopped up my Valrhona Feves and used them instead. 

I also decided to make some salted caramel today because the browning of my butter was so successful.

My first caramel making was a disaster, had to do another one right after the first failure which burnt, made the whole kitchen smell really dangerous, the fumes that I exhaled from the burnt sugar literally made my nose hurt, that's why I avoided making another batch after my second one, which I didn't allow to caramalise enough, but glad to announce this one came out really well.  The cleaning up was troublesome though because it's freaking sticky as fuck, although it smelled amazing, too bad the kitchen didn't smell like caramel afterwards, which was sad because the ants would have been very happy. The maid cleaned up for me so I'm complaining for her sake.

Made Salted Caramel Coffee with Starbucks coffee beans because there's an espresso machine at home. It actually tasted like the Starbucks caramel drink that they sell in 7-11 for the same price as a Child Laborer....which is around 3 peanuts. It was pretty good until I decided to make a second cup, didn't melt the caramel down properly and ended up with a layer of oil on the top of the coffee due to the butter content in the caramel melting first before the whole thing actually fully melted, it was too gross to chuck it down my throat, so I chuck it down the drain because that one doesn't have any feeling.

PS. And that picture I put on Instagram didn't get a single like. So depressing, I'm like an attention seeking whore on Instagram with my pictures. I need like to feel good about myself.

Even more Valrhona

In my quest to get cheap chocolate powder, I decided to venture to Seah Street after dismounting from camp yesterday. I have read online from various blogs and forums that there's this shop at Seah Street that sells really affordable baking ingredients and anything that's affordable is something that should be bought in excess.




True to what I read online, because I wasn't reading all that information from Wikipedia, I managed to get half a kilo worth of Valrhona Cocoa at half the price. Since I was there, I decided why not get some Bittersweet Valrohona Chocolate for baking as well, and then I got a little carried away because I started getting cupcake liners which I didn't need, 2 sticks of butter which I could have gotten at Cold Storage and Red Food Paste which I got because I thought since it was Wilton, why not. Total cost was almost $50. Like 60% of it came from the Valrhona... which I heard a shopper referred to as atas chocolate.



Once I got home I decided to bake some chocolate cookies which I did not manage to snap any pictures of because it's getting a bit out of hand, I mean the last picture I posted on Instagram was this....

I actually get annoyed when people say "Oh Instagram makes a normal photograph look like it's taken by a professional..." and they themselves probably aren't even Instagram users.

Pictures on Instagram are by no means professional looking, but it just annoys me that people brush of really good pictures on Instagram as "mediocre pictures made amazing by Instagram filters..." Are you fucking blind, have you seen like the amount of mediocre photos that remain mediocre even after filtering? Jeez, or maybe that's just photos appearing on my feed... that being said, I have seen some people on my feed who have taken really good pictures... but I'm very stingy with my likes. Probably one reason why most of my likes comes from random users instead of my actual followers who feel obligated to "like" it rather than actually liking it.





My Asus is starting to show some problems. It didn't want to switch on and it didn't show any response even after plugging my charger in, as in the charger icon didn't even light up, and so I did some research on Google and realise my motherboard might by dying soon.


I have no idea if it's dying soon because apparently dying motherboards don't show any signs of dying, it just dies without warning. I mean Google likes to make me think that that itch at my groin area means I have STD  when it's what it really means is to have better hygiene because STD requires a lifestyle I'm lacking.


Well I decided to go down to Asus service center today to get it checked and my stupid laptop decided to work fine again. Asus Service Center is like really really deep in the industrial area of Singapore, it's not convenient to get there at all... even though my Mum had to drive me there. The guy could find any problem because my laptop decided not to have any problem suddenly. So annoying, wasted trip, I was hoping to at least get diagnosed as a safety measure but it will cost me $60 and the tech guy said my computer was working fine, smooth in fact for a laptop that's a year old. And to think my Mum and Sis always blamed me when a virus pops up in the family computer in the past, now my laptop is cleaner that my Mum's netbook.


I had been maligned all those years. Now I can't prove anything because they won't understand anything.... the injustice.



So my laptop is working fine now but I have decided not to plug in my mouse as a precautionary measure, give the laptop some breathing space, don't want to fill up all the USB ports. Probably doesn't affect anything but just in case.


I wish my laptop had feelings, then I will keep surfing Macbook websites and watch Macbook unboxing videos just to scare it. Better work well or I'm going to convert and Windows will blame you for converting a windows user to apple.

Dishonored

The first tightening for my braces wasn't as painful as I thought it would be. I initially expected extractions to be involved because I see one tooth that isn't really co-operating, same tooth that's not allowing me to fully bite now.

Luckily there wasn't any extraction involved, in fact the whole procedure only took like 10 mins. That was a pleasant surprise. The internet always exaggerate the pain, Yahoo answers tell me the first tightening is going to hurt like crazy, but it didn't, it only felt tight, and even though my teeth felt a bit sensitive, they weren't painful. I really question how people perceive pain sometimes.... either that or I should start question my own  perception of pain.

Well I didn't manage to complete Breaking Dawn because I can't bring myself to read the whole book, I just skimmed through, got lost through the skimming of the millions of Vampires that get introduced along the way and decided to give up. I mean the first few part is just Bella comparing how awesome Vampire life is to a human life and how shit her life as a human was, it's no wonder all the hardcore fans desperately want to get bitten by Edward, because Bella is making human life sound like a pile of horse shit. The other reason I didn't finish reading Breaking Dawn is because I've been playing this awesome game called Dishonored.

I should really buy the game and support the developers but I'm too cheap and broke. It's the braces.

From the same studios that created the Elders Scrolls series and Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, I wasn't expecting any less. It's really good, I'm actually playing it through a second time, trying to get a better ending, I got a darker ending because I ended up killing everyone. It's not really working though because I'm still killing like 90% of the mobs. They kept getting in my way and I like teleporting in front on the enemy and then clicking the left mouse button and watch the main character stick a blade into the enemy's neck before they vanish into ash, it's very bad ass and it made me feel bad ass, until I quit the game and come back to real life. 

I've also been spending a lot of time baking cupcakes and I've finally found the method to getting really fluffy and soft cupcakes like Plain Vanilla and Twelve Cupcakes, that being said, the flavors still need a little tweaking. I actually felt a bit euphoric after getting the texture down. It's like when my Macarons finally got their feet and smooth shell after dozens of attempts.

Baking aside, I've also been doing a bit of sketching for a submission. It's not so much for my submission into Uni anymore, I'm a practical person, I know with my grades I won't get in, but I need something to do in my free time.

Rose sketch made decent after heavy filtering.

I do not enjoy the process of sketching.

Huh?

Out of sheer boredom from doing duty in camp the last 4 days, I decided to do something I never thought I would do, reading Breaking Dawn.



It so happened that there was a e-book copy of Breaking Dawn in the computer in camp, so I decided why the hell not and read through the last half of the book, because I have watched all the Twilight movie and I'm not really proud of it,



I just thought skipping the first half of it would be alright, and it was because the book is pretty simple to read. Simple enough that I don't have to re-read everything over multiple times, and right now I'm getting flashbacks of reading Philosophy text during my poly days, the horrors of reading through just a line of text and only managing to get the gist of it after reading it over 10 times, that's philosophy, interesting when understood, frustrating when not.



Would've rather read Breaking Dawn on an actual book rather than on a computer screen though, but because I am not planning to get the book and reading just the last half of it, and also actually buying a copy of the book in a bookstore, I decided to go home and download the e-book because I can't read it fast enough in camp to complete the whole book. My eyes are on the verge of suicide because it's not meant to be staring at a wall of text on the computer screen for so long, it's only train to stare at a computer screen that's showing games and videos.



Reading Breaking Dawn kinda reminded me the joy of reading books, thus I decided to get to get a new book today at Bugis.

Not Breaking Dawn.

Haven't got to reading it yet but I saw the trailer for the movie adaption, not surprisingly because I love to read books that are going to have a movie adaptation, and it's very confusing initially  until I went to Wiki to read what it was really about. The other reason I bought this book was also because the other book that I was planning to buying cost $50 and it only comes in hardcover. It's a big book called The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling. I will probably get it when the price drops and it's comes out with a paperback version. I'm not going to carry a bible of a book around camp, that's stupid but more importantly it's heavy.





Whilst at Bugis today, while ordering a drink, I was served by this lady, whom I'm not sure whether if she's half deaf or I'm too soft spoken, that kept on going "Huh?" when I was making my order.

"What do you want?"

"Hazelnut Milk Tea."

"Huh?"

"HAZELNUT MILK TEA."

"With Pearls?"

"Can I have grass jelly instead."

"Huh?"

"GRASS JELLY"

"Sugar level?"

"Ummm... 50%"

"Huh?"

"50 PERCENT!"

It was extremely annoying... so maybe I was soft spoken, but going "Huh?" every time I say something is very irritating. Why can't they just say "Excuse Me?" or "Sorry?" 

Even when I hear my own friends saying "Huh?" to me every time I complete like a long sentence, I get extremely annoyed because that would mean I have to repeat myself all over again, and I really can't stand people going "HUH?" in an annoyed tone at me multiple times.

Everytime they go....

"Huh? Huh? Huh?"

.

.

.

.

.

Just makes me want to

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Bye $99 Earphones

Well there goes my Marshall earphones. $99 and only lasted my four months, so maybe I was a little rough with it, but I am rough with all my earphones, my Audio Technica ones probably survived the longest and the shortest being Sony.


Got myself a pair of earphones from a brand I've never heard of. The only reason I bought it was because it came in a metal box. Cost me $41. Not cheap but one of the less expensive quality looking earphones... once again I'm assuming that because of the packaging.

Gavio Gruuve Gazz. Groove Gas?

I've learnt my lesson and avoided getting a white one because everything I buy white will turn off white because the dirt and oil I produce from my body will create a protective layer on the product. So I got a brown one, the protective layer created by my dirt and oil won't even be noticeable ten years down the line.

Did quite a bit of baking over the last 2 days, it was terrible. Tried altering the recipe for a white cake that I actually found online that's actually really good, makes really soft and fluffy cake, but I don't know what the hell happen in the process of combining all the ingredients together, everything started curdling and I thought baking it would fix everything but it didn't. So depressing and as if one failure wasn't enough, I tried making cookies before that and it also failed.


Toll House cookie recipe suck balls, the cookie dough is bloody wet unlike Ina Garten's cookie recipe. Of course being the moron that I am, I decided to take a leap of faith and chuck the wet cookie dough inside the oven, thinking that everything will be fine, but this isn't a Disney Movie and I didn't get my happy ending, that's why I chuck the cookies in the bin as a fuck you... but it's really a fuck me because baking isn't a cheap hobby.


I hate recipes that don't work, give me false hope with the pretty pictures and also waste my money, whenever I see shitty recipes that have positive response, I get a bit annoyed, out of like 10 response complaining about the dryness of the cake, suddenly one pops up saying how it's the best cupcake recipe ever, how it came out fluffy and moist. 90% are complaining about dryness and suddenly got 10% telling us it's the best recipe ever, I'm pretty sure that person's just typing it for the sake of typing, It's like trolling, reverse psychology style. Or maybe it's the person who created the recipe who wrote that. Like how I click my own Nuffnang ads in the past to earn some money.




It's weird how when I can't seem to bake a successful batch of cupcakes and cookies, I can't create a proper batch of brownies. My last few attempts at making brownies failed, so that meant a lot of baking chocolate were wasted, which was pretty painful because baking chocolates are never cheap, the Cadbury Chocolate Block are like 1/2 the price of a baking chocolate, same size and those are the average tasting ones, the really good ones like Valrhona cost like 60 bucks for a bag, which I almost got but luckily was too cheap to actually go through with it.

Now I have a small batch of brownies sitting in the cake stand....

I like Instagram for giving me the ability to make my baked goods actually look decent.

I am blogging way too much about baking. Guess not having much of a life is the main reason.

 I actually heard this from someone a few days ago, that not going clubbing is akin to living a meaningless life. Well the reason he said that was because apparently some famous DJ that I've never heard before was apparently making a guest appearance. After hearing that, I don't know who to feel sorry for, us non clubbers or for him, who thinks clubbing makes life meaningful. 

He also found baking to be very "gay", which kinda offended me. I don't think he said it to offend me but it just rubbed me the wrong way. There are so many male bakers in the world, Pierre Hermes for example, the baker who opened Tiong Bahru Bakery is a male baker,  and PAUL Bakery because PAUL's a dude name and I'm trying to prove a point even if it makes me sound ignorant. 

I don't think any of them likes anal. 

*After some research, Paul Bakery really was open by a dude like a hundred years ago so I guess my level of ignorance isn't that high. 

Oh and I have corrected my blog banner. Yay!

Before~ Because I didn't bother to check....

After~ Because I can photoshop....

In fact I actually photoshopped the crumbs out from the cupcake. There were actually crumbs on the Swiss meringue butter cream that I made without a stand mixer, but I photoshopped it out. 

Like A Skilled Photoshop Noob.

Losing the blogging bug

At some point enough is enough.



There has got to be a limit to how many cupcake pictures I put on my Instagram.

Actually now that I'm looking at it, it doesn't seem as excessive as I thought it was.  Oh well~




So braces isn't really such a bad thing after all, right now I can eat almost whatever I want, just yesterday I had some nuggets and a few minutes ago I had a Mentos. I think my filling dropped out because of the Mentos, or a small part of my teeth broke off, I can't really tell... but I'm pretty sure it's not Mentos because I actually put it back in my mouth to taste for any sign on peppermint freshness.



The main problem for me right now is I can't seem to enunciate my words properly, which is annoying because when I hear other people speaking with a lisp I will always feel superior for having a longer tongue and the metal in my mouth is taking away that feeling.


It's quite cool to be actually be able to notice the difference the braces is doing for my teeth despite losing that sense of superiority, I know the teeth are moving because the tooth that isn't being hooked up by the wire for being way too back is now almost getting blocked by the overlapping tooth in front, the braces brackets on that teeth is literally hidden from view because the front tooth moving so much. The dentist is probably going to have to extract the back teeth seeing how terribly tight the whole row looks right now. Not necessarily a bad thing because that back tooth is also responsible for my inability to fully bite down, it clashes with the brackets on my lower teeth. There's a lot of drama going on inside my mouth it should have it's own show.



And I just realize I've put the wrong blog address on my new blog banner. Since I'm too lazy to edit now I shall do it later. And also I guess trying to continue a post a few days after writing the first 3 paragraphs doesn't really work for me. Makes me lose the flow.

Holland Village Cupcake

Finally went to this bakery at Holland Village to get some cupcakes that I've wanted to get since I got my hands on Twelve Cupcakes. I'm currently going through this cupcake phase which I'm not really sure whether or not end anytime soon because I love me some cake~

Plain Vanilla Bakery

So this shop is really hidden in Holland Village, if you were to scour the place thoroughly without even having the slightest clue where the bakery is, chances are you won't find it. I knew the bakery existed and even so it took me a while to find the bakery, my sister pointed out the signs that leads to the bakery, like treasure hunting, it's fun when you find it but frustrating when you are finding it... makes you look like a fool if you are searching for it alone.

....plus Cinnamon Brown Sugar

Bought half a dozen at $18, which is by no means cheap, I have no idea why cakes are so expensive, then again I'm too lazy to calculate the cost of making one when I actually bake them. I don't want to know how much money I'm throwing in the bin after baking because I literally throw away the cakes I bake if they are not up to standard, which is most of the time. Those damn recipes.



I blame the Hershey's Unsweetened Cocoa Powder, it sucks balls. I have completely moved on from blaming my oven to blaming the Cocoa Powder like it's a healing process that doesn't really lead to any healing of any sort, except for my Oven's pride maybe.  Cocoa Powder from Hershey gave my cupcake a metallic taste and it doesn't have a strong enough chocolate taste, so when I actually made a cupcake that has a recipe that calls for vegetable oil, my cupcake just taste and smells like the vegetable oil, it's really gross.  Time to get some Valrhona  Baking Chocolate soon.... and if the cupcake still comes out equally bad it's time to find something else to blame.



I digress....

From flickr~

So anyways, the shop suddenly became something I wanted to own, it's weird but that shop actually makes me want to own my own mini bakery, the way the shop is design is so simple and so vintage looking it's just screaming for me to plagiarize it. The shop is essentially a kitchen with a display table of cupcakes and what made the whole shop awesome for me was seeing the lady boss frosting her caramel cake. <-And my mind just painted a really dirty picture, nice job pervert.



The cupcakes themselves were delicious, better than Twelve Cupcakes in my opinion, both have really light cake base, but this one is better because some cupcakes like the Strawberry White Chocolate has actual diced strawberries compote inside, it was a pleasant surprise to find stuffing in some of the cupcakes. I actually like both Twelve Cupcake and Plain Vanilla frosting, they're both delicious in their own way, but probably more towards Plain Vanilla because I like to live on the edge and become that much closer to becoming a diabetic.


And the main reason why I prefer Plain Vanilla to Twelve Cupcakes is because Plain Vanilla is more jelak, like it feels more rich, so every time after I eat one cupcake, I'm pretty stuffed, and it's not because I have a eating disorder because I fucking love cake.... Twelve Cupcake is really light, which causes me to finish it really quickly and because I'm such a nice guy, I share them with my family so I usually only get to eat 2 of the 6 I buy. Twelve doesn't satisfy my craving for cake as much as Plain Vanilla.   

Customer Service Woes Self

One thing I've finally come to conclude when speaking to people manning the Cashiers in coffee shops or whatever stores you go to in Singapore is that being friendly to them isn't always the way to go.


I've always thought that being nice and speaking friendly to such people will probably make their job better, make them less tense and maybe more friendly...


BUT NO!



That's like the last thing you want to do because why? Well I shall give you 2 example that happened to me...



1. Home Delivery Service by Saprinos Pizza.



Ordered 2 Pizzas from Saprinos Pizza a few days back for dinner because I'm kinda sick of eating Chinese food thanks to the Army serving us really really awful looking Chinese food that looks as good as they taste, their worst one is their duck rice which they present in a ration box with the duck at one corner that has this really small cavity in the middle of whatever part of the duck you get be it their butt, their ass or their caboose because seriously they all look like shit, filled with a small well of chilli. It sounds really artsy but it's really bad because the foods stale and like lukewarm... not appetizing at all. Of course it doesn't apply to all camps, the cooks in my camp are just too lazy to try making anything nice.


But I digress...


So I ordered the pizza and the lady on the phone was okay, she was speaking like how a customer service person should, polite and friendly.




About an hour later the Pizza Guy comes and delivers the Pizza, he was a middle age looking Malay dude, a bit on the chubby side, not obese but you know he doesn't exercise.  So he was speaking to me, telling me the price and whatever not... and so we exchanged the Pizza for the money. He gives me the change but it was short of 10 cents which I decided to point out to him because he asked if I had received the correct change or not... and I said no because I was shortchanged.




Not only did he NOT apologize, he actually started to give an attitude like I was being picky when Chubs was the one who asked me if I received the correct change. And I was being really nice and friendly with him, I was going to ask him to keep the change but since Chubs had to be such a bitch about, decided to just waste his time and let him dig his little coin bag for a 10 cents coin. Chubs was of course very bitter about it but fuck it... if I attempted to be friendly to you, YOU as the person serving me should at least respond in kind instead of being such a bitch about it... would have gotten you an extra 10 cents if you did... that 10 cents you could've donated to those annoying kids on the streets asking for a donation where they will give you a sticker that will act as a shield to prevent the kids friends from coming up to you. So enjoy getting swarmed by kids who will be constantly ask you for donations you prick.






2. Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Cashier.




Had just bought a few groceries from Cold Storage and decided to go to Coffee Bean to get a cold drink because the weather's been scorching lately.




I didn't know what to get but since I didn't want to make the cashier wait for me, I decided to order on the spot, which was a bad idea because I ended up changing mid sentence multiple times so it went like...


"Can I have the lemo... Rasbe... Hazelnu.... Ummmm can I have the Mango Munchy." or something with Mango..


Ordered my drink and thanked the guy when he gave me my change... waited for my drink and it kinda took a while... and once again this guy isn't very friendly looking, he looked a bit bored and like couldn't be fucked because he's been working at Coffee Bean for a while now.



So afterwards another lady comes up and orders her drink and she had the very typical Singaporean way of ordering her drink. She was taking her time choosing what she wanted, she wasn't smiling to the cashier when she was ordering her change, and she had this very uppity look on her face when the same cashier gave her the change. And I can tell that the cashier was a little more cautious looking when returning her the change.



And when he was serving me my drink he switched back to unfriendly can't be fucked mode, asked to checked my receipt and then walked away as I was digging through my wallet to look for it and never came back. I stopped after a while and just took my drink and left... the time in between I was really confused as to whether or not he still wanted to see my receipt I just stood there and waited a while like an idiot.






So one thing I've come to realize is that instead of being nice and friendly to them, you have to be fucking cold and haughty towards them. Like...

"If you want my money you better fucking serve me or I will feed you to the dogs..."

I will be chanting this in my head next time I order from Coffee Bean... unless the Cashier is really friendly and smiley towards me.


Self Entitlement Mode ON!

Cupcakes again

It has been a while since I've read any books.

The last one I read was pretty bad. I didn't like it personally



Rant on the book... feel free to skip through.

Metro 2033.

It's a Russian book that's been translated into English, and it's set in this post apocalyptic world in which humans have been forced to live in the Underground Subway station, and since it's a Russian book, the story takes place in Russia. And the problem with the book for me starts here.



The Metro system in Russia is pretty big, so at the front of the book there's this subway map, the problem with this is that the stations are in their original Russian name, and they all look the same and sound the same, every time I read the main character going from one station to another, I can't keep track which station he's at, which is a real issue for me because I keep getting more confused when they refer back to the other stations he's been at.


Another thing I really dislike about the book is how all the other characters other than the main characters are so quickly written off, like they will be introduced in maybe chapter 10 and at chapter 12 they will be written off, initially I was keeping track of the characters and thinking they might reappear at later chapters, but as I progress along I realize new characters keep popping up and kept getting written off afterwards.


I couldn't stand reading that book after the middle portion I decided to download the game to get a better understanding visually of how the environment would look like and the game actually changed the subway names to English names instead of sticking to their Russian names so it was easier to keep track.... and that was a little problematic again because that would mean when I go back to the book the subways names that I've remembered in the game will be a different name in the book.



Terrible experience reading it, just extremely confusing, plus they had this one chapter discussing about the new political system in the subway and the history of how the power came about, I felt I was reading a history textbook.

So now I've stopped reading for a while because of that terrible experience.



Baked cupcakes again because I was bored. I don't like baking anything else until I've perfected what I'm currently baking, first was Macaron and now it's cupcake. It's really annoying because I end up wasting a lot of money buying the ingredients. Chocolate isn't a cheap baking ingredient... and I'm not going to settle for Phoon Huat.


Made Chocolate Cupcakes with my favorite Chocolate Cupcake Recipe.

"This batter is so good I could just lick the bowl clean."

Or grab a spoon and eat it like a bowl of melted ice cream... Yums.

Probably one of the best cupcake recipe I've found online because the batter is really chocolatey which means it's a huge pain in the ass to clean up afterwards because the batter is so thick and I have no intention of licking the batter off the bowls because that's what the sponge is suppose to be doing and I don't want to deny it the pleasure. Plus it's uncooked batter.

I love frosting. To frost not to eat the frosting.

I actually used Betty Crocker's frosting for this cupcake because I don't really like buttercream, the oiliness is very uncomfortable, as if there isn't enough oil secreting from my face, I need to smear more on my lips. I also don't really like the butter smell.

Twelve Cupcakes.

That being said, I do love the buttercream on Twelve Cupcakes. I'm guessing they use Crisco because they don't really have that buttery smell, or maybe Swss Meringue Buttercream.

Ranting...

The level of ignorance and stupidity some people exhibit sometimes amazes me, and by amaze I mean piss me off.


Yesterday while doing my duty at the entrance into the airbase, one vehicle drives up to my lane, and it's really common sense for those who have worked at the airbase to flash their entry pass and show me their cell phones before they are allowed to enter the base.


He flashed me his pass and I actually signaled him to show me his cellphone, but apparently he didn't realize, so he looked at me, flicked his head and kinda mouth to me "WHAT?" after realising I am not opening the gate for him to enter, and when I say flick I don't mean the small head flick, this dipshit really flick his head like how a gangster would when you stare at them too long and they want to start a fight with you.


Of course I was pissed off, but Mr Dipshit was a higher ranking army personnel and I was in an army camp, I can't flip him off or anything, so I politely asked to take a look at his cellphone. And he showed me a camera cellphone with a blue smokey transparent phone casing on it and since no one was allowed to bring a camera cellphone in, I told him to surrender really politely.


This was the part that really pissed me off. Instead of replying nicely, he stares at me, like I'm the stupid one, pulls down the transparent casing and question me like I'm some sort of criminal asking me if I knew what the little clearance sticker stuck below the camera sensor opening was.  The little sticker is like a sticker to proof the person has removed the camera from the back of their camera cellphone, technically making it a non camera cellphone that's allowed in base.



Here's the problem.



Firstly...


People who enter the base usually flash me a non-camera cellphone, when I see any cellphone with a camera  opening at the back, I will automatically ask them to declare it before entering the base. It's very rare for people to actually get a camera cellphone and remove the camera because that's just fucking stupid.


You pay money for some cheap ass Samsung camera phone and then pay a hundred bucks or so to remove a shitty camera. Of course I'm going to assume the camere's not removed, who the fuck would want to get a cheap ass Samsung touchscreen phone that cost maybe $400, pay an extra $100 to remove the fucking camera, and then take the trouble to go up to the higher management to have the phone certified camera free  when you can combine that total sum and get a non camera Blackberry.


I would understand if it was an iPhone, I mean the main reason, although it's not stated, for the camps to allow modified camera phones to be brought in is so that people serving the army can get to enjoy their iPhone in base. Even the "example" we are shown of how the sticker would look like on a cellphone is an iPhone.


Secondly...

He sounded really annoyed when I asked him to surrender it because I'm guessing a lot of people from my Squadron missed out the clearance sticker when they check him


It's not very hard to just tell me nicely beforehand that the camera's been removed, give me a heads up so I can spot the sticker easily. This dumb fuck thinks having to tell the Security Trooper that his phone is modified every day is a chore.

I have to stand there for 6 hours and check that every single person has a pass, a non-camera cellphone, salute every officers that drive by and ask every other person who doesn't have a pass to go get one at the office inside.


Although I don't do that everyday, but I'm pretty sure having to check everyone entering the base for 6 hours is a lot more repetitive than having to tell the security trooper that his cellphone is modified everyday.. it doesn't take away 6 hours of your day to tell the person you have your camera removed you dumb fuck, Mr Dipshit ended up wasting more time.




And Lastly....



HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSE TO SEE THE CLEARANCE STICKER WHEN YOU HAVE A PHONE COVER!


 So maybe the cover is not opaque but it's smokey blue, I don't have bionic eyes, I can't roughly gauge that the little sticker at the back might or might not be a clearance sticker because believe it not, people will usually go get a non camera blackberry and save that $100 on something else, like maybe buy some common sense.


Dipshit even dared to asked me...

"Do you know what this sticker is?"

AFTER removing the cellphone case...


 Fucking moron. I know what it is but I can't see, having to remove the casing to show me the sticker should probably be a sign that not everyone can see the little sticker.




And because of him my whole day was ruined. Looked at me like I was the dumb one when the person who was lacking any common sense was him. And some manners would be nice.

Red Velvet

Found a great red velvet recipe a week back and decided to test it out. 

I'm not feeling very charitable today so not gonna link the recipe anywhere here. The only tip I can give to people who are looking for any sort of recipes online is to NEVER EVER trust cupcake recipes given by famous cupcake stores like DC Cupcakes and Magnolia Cupcakes. I mean their recipe is their livelihood, they are gonna want you to go to their store to get the cupcakes, not to a local supermarket to get ingredients to make their cupcakes.

I tried both of them which I found online and they were obviously tweaked, the cupcakes come out very dry and the insides look like solid batter. 

Didn't want to use this picture but I didn't have any other left. Was gonna take one nicer one but my Mum ate the last one.


I thought my Red Velvet was good enough, well it's not mine per se but I did tweak the recipe a little bit, until I went to Bugis yesterday to buy cupcakes from Twelve Cupcakes because they opened a new outlet at Bugis recently and since I was around the area, decided to buy half a dozen.

6 small size cupcakes for $17. I don't know if it's worth it but the cupcakes were freaking good. the cake base was really light and fluffy and the buttercream didn't have the butter taste nor the oiliness that my cream cheese frosting has, I suspect they use Swiss Meringue Buttercream but I'm not sure because I haven't had the balls to try making that yet. But the serving was way too small, finished a whole cupcake in 5 bites. And I only had 2 because I gave 4 to my family.


For comparison sake, and also to put up more pictures from my Instagram library, this is a cupcake from Delifrance.... and it's not very nice.

I like how the cupcake look but seriously, how the hell is someone going to stuff the cake in their mouth if the frosting is piped to reach the heavens. Their frosting is really thick as well, not good.



Anyways. After buying my cupcake yesterday, as I was making my way to the bus stop via the underground passage, I decided to go withdraw some money, and I guess because realizing I was slightly loaded, this old man decides to come up to me and ask for 2 dollars to take a ride home. When I say old I mean like around 60 years old, wrinkly enough to be considered old but not old enough that I would give up my seat to him.



I didn't have any spare change with me so I couldn't spare him any, all I had were like 10 cents and 20 cents coin that didn't even total up to a dollar and I wasn't going to give him my freshly withdrawn $50 notes, so I told him I didn't have any money, and he actually sort of gave me a small chase afterwards and kept calling out to me as I speed walk my way to the escalator . Felt a little bit bad afterwards.



I have actually given money to some old guy on the road before because he had no lunch money, plus he really looked like he could  use some help.  He legs were like hock jointed so he walked like a chicken.

I kept thinking of this Manga that I read and I keep thinking he's probably super fast because the main character with that leg is super fast, of course I don't think that's possible .... or is it.



Oh, and I was also confined for 2 hours yesterday in camp because someone threw away a blanket issued by the army into the bin and no one admitted it so everyone was punished. A lot of people were obviously pissed off about it, I was pretty neutral because I really had nothing better to do at home anyway. It sounds really sad.

Love Instagram!

Today was a pretty fruitful day.

Men In Black 3

Watched MIB3 with a friend which was actually surprisingly good. I wasn't really going into the movie with any high expectation so that's probably why. We watched the digital version and not the 3D one, which I guess after a while nobody really cares anymore because it just induces headaches and nausea. Well I'm just using my experience from playing my 3DS over. 

It's probably different but the last time I watched a 3D movie, the glasses I wore was resting on this giant pimple on the bridge of my nose, it was just plain uncomfortable, couldn't enjoy the movie, like how I couldn't enjoy Underworld : Rise Of The Lycans because I really had to pee but there was no toilet in the theater... but it was worth it to hold it in because the release was Amazing~!

Today was really fruitful because I managed to get a few things that I've been planning to get for a long time.

First was an expensive earphone. I wanted to splurge a bit on my earphones.

Chio Box

So I got myself a pair of Marshall Minor. I don't actually know what the brand is but the box looks really nice so I decided to be a little shallow and get them. Even my sister knows about the brand more than me... and I'm the geeky one.

F*cking love Instagram.

 The box opens and the earphones get presented to you. Although I have to say the earphones are so-so because I couldn't really hear the difference, than again I guess my ears are a little damaged because I like to blast music through my earphones, that's why all my earphones spoil so fast.


They cost $99.... after a 10% discount thanks to the GSS I think it became $98.10 or something whatever 90% of $99 is. And I also got a cover for my iPhone from there, which had a 30% discount which was awesome.

Never get a book because the cover's fancy. Ever!

The last book I got from Popular was so fucking boring (pictured above) I could've died. Usually when I read novels, I will usually get to a point when I get so engrossed in it I will finish 300 pages of it in like 4 hours. The last few books I bought I got that but  I spend 4 days attempting to read this novel and I only got to page 100.


I wouldn't say it's a bad book, you probably need to be a fan of such novels to enjoy it. But the characters are so generic. I kept comparing The Millennium Trilogy to this book while I was reading it and I couldn't help but notice how boring the main character is compared to Lisbeth Salander.

"A top government assassin who is very private and keeps to himself" ..... *Yawns*

That's like the main character stereotype in every other CIA movie
Waste of my money. Once again it's just my personal opinion because that books got rave reviews, it's just that personally I don't like it.... at all.




But I've gotten another book from Kinokuniya and I have high hopes for it because I've been wanting to get it for a while now. The reason I bought "Kill Shot" from Popular was because that was the only one that sounded remotely interesting there.

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children

There are like tons of really weird pictures inside. Probably not such a good book to read in camp, at night while doing duty in the supposedly "haunted" part of camp. But it looks good, I mean the weird girl on the cover is floating....Ooooooo~

Need another new book.

Baking day.

Strawberry and Cream Sponge Cake.

Since my last post I have bought, read and completed reading a new book. 

The Help

It's actually a really good book, but I can't help but feel like I'm reading my Secondary 1 literature book because both book are talking about racism, except my literature book was a fucking boring kids novel and this one is actually really entertaining.

To think I was forced to read the whole book in secondary school when I could have just gone to Wikipedia and read the "Plot" section.

In need of a new book...

After completing all 3 books from the Millenium Trilogy, I decided that it was time to start reading books that doesn't have a movie adaptation.


So I went down to Popular one day to get a new novel , which is a bad idea because going to Popular to buy a book is like coming to Singapore to buy Winter Clothes. I mean Popular sells books but their range is really limited so all they had was a shitload of Hunger Games, a bit of Twilight, some Harry Potter lying around and this new book called 50 Shades of Grey, which I instantly placed back at the "Hot Seller" section after realizing it's some love novel that started as a Twilight Fan Fiction, and we know that Twilight fans are a bit loose in the head,  I mean I watched on video on Youtube about this girl crying her eyes out after watching the Trailer for Breaking Dawn.

You're Welcome~!

And then I saw this book....

And I decided to get it despite the back telling me it's going to be a love story between a Witch and a Vampire. I was going to over look that minor setback because Witchcraft and Magic sounds like it will be fun.

But of course because the main character is a Witch, and one that has denied her fucking heritage, she hardly uses her magic until the back of the book, and the back is hard to get to because the middle portion of it is about her and the Vampire falling in love, which was pretty hard to read because my mind kinda switched off at that part. It's so bloody boring, there are 2 pages in the back that I skimmed through and decided was stuff that I could just skip past because it was just the main character and the vampire giving each other blow jobs in a non crude way.

I would probably enjoy it if it was crude because when my mind was painting the picture, it was actually censored by a blanket thanks to the author's description. 

On second thought I'm not even sure if that really happened or that I just couldn't be fucked by the love story portion I just read past the middle portion of the book so quickly everything just clicked the way I wanted them to and not how the author intended them to.

But the last part was slightly better because the main character started using a bit of magic and some revelations were made. Overall it's not a bad book per se and I will probably get the sequel, but the love story part of the book I can do without because it's just so fucking boring. 

Bouncy

Baked my first sponge cake a few days ago and I have to say it's the first time I actually succeeded baking something successfully on the first try. My guildie in Aion gave me really good tips so that's why it became so light and fluffy.

"Mmmm~....It looks as good as it tastes."

What pretentious TV Chefs always say at the end of their video. Those who actually mean it will take a bite and not go "Mmmm~" before they actually take a bite.

That's why I like watching Nigella Lawson videos, it's because she actually eats what she cooks at the end and really look like she's enjoying it, albeit a little too much. 

British Talk Shows are so much more entertaining than Americans one.

And this is probably the funniest interview I've ever watched complete with the British Accent.