Macarons

Hadn't really done much baking this past few days, been too immersed in looking for a job and also playing WARFRAME,  a free MMO which I have spent $50 on just getting in-game cash item.



I kept thinking....

"$10 isn't a lot of money, I have spend more on McDonalds before so why not"

... and I kept having that mentality when I was buying in game cash that it snowballed and became $50. Needless to say, I have stopped after realizing I have less than $1000 in my bank savings.






So today, I decided to try and bake some macarons, using the stand mixer I bought recently and the new oven. The last time I tried making a batch of macarons with my stand mixer, it failed horribly because the batch I was making had so little egg whites the whisk attachment couldn't reach them to actually whip them up... along with a list of other problems. So I decided to just double the portion today and make twice as many shells as I normally do.




The meringues formed perfectly it was so amazingly firm... that's why so many bakers love their stand mixer... it helps me by preventing me from suffering a possible carpel tunnel syndrome.




Decided since I had so much shells, I would do two flavor, a dark chocolate ganache version and a salted caramel version, the sauce I had prepared yesterday because it's always nice to have a bottle of salted caramel on standby in the fridge.

Used 70% Chocolate because that was all I had left in the fridge and after making and tasting the ganache, I got reminded why it was left in the fridge in the first place. Why would anyone eat dark chocolate with a anything higher than 70%, it's not sweet at all.... in fact, it was so bitter I had to stick a slice of fresh strawberry into every piece of chocolate ganache filled macaron for extra taste.  

I know I am not a sophisticated individual who has the taste buds of a chocolate connoisseur. I like Milk Chocolate and White Chocolate.... the former having the least cocoa content and the latter having no cocoa content at all. If I told a french chocolatier I love chocolate and my favorite ones are Milk and White, he will probably scoff at my face.

The salted caramel batch with a healthy sprinkle of Maldon Sea Salt Flakes. I like how the flakes look on the caramel, makes it look so professional, pity the shells were an ugly mess. 

I was feeling generous today, so I decided to let most of the shell become actual macarons, I mean look at the top macaron's bottom shell, that's some shitty feet that I would have normally just thrown away or send to the starving kids in Africa or something.

So many interviews...

Decided to head down to the restaurant on Monday to collect my final cheque after I had been asked to collect it 3 weeks ago.

I had contemplated in the beginning not heading down to collect that money and just treat that last few days I had worked there as charity because I thought the sum of money was insignificant considering the fact it was pay for only 2 days, and on top of that supposed insignificant payslip was an additional sum of money I had to fork out because of a bleaching accident with my apron. My level of laziness knows no boundaries.... every time I think about not heading down, a louder voice in my head will go...

"What about those audience members who screamed like crazy when Ellen presented them with a $100 AMEX Gift Card."

I calculated and the pay was around like $60 - $70 excluding the damaged apron fee.

But on Monday, I was at the peak of my boredom and really needed a reason to go out before I actually started feeling like an actual waste of space, so I decided to just change, take a bus and head down to the restaurant. And the second reason why I was contemplating about leaving the cheque in the restaurants' hands forever was because I was afraid of meeting my ex-colleagues again for whatever reasons.

The last time I quit my job, I got reprimanded by my ex-colleague the following day after I quit for "not having the initiative" to pass them the client list.  It was already a horrible working experience to begin with and to have that senior ex-colleague scold me on the phone the day after I quit, it's like the cherry on top of that wonderful and amazing work experience. 

I was very afraid that that might happen at the restaurant, that one of the chefs might suddenly just come up to me as I was about to enter the restaurant and just throw a pan of freshly fried shallots on my face and crack an onsen egg on my head because I might have done something that might have pissed them off before I left, I'm paranoid like that. I think if someone were to accuse me of doing something I didn't do, others might actually think I did it because I am acting "suspicious" when it's really just me over thinking. 

When I reached the restaurant, the nice lady at the counter, whose name I can't remember and feel really bad about it,  and the cooks who worked in the kitchen when I was still around working as their pastry cook remembered me, the managers were both very friendly and even the boss talked to me and asked me how I was doing. The managers probably understood the predicament and stress level I was in when I was manning the pastry kitchen alone, one of them even came in on a few occasions to help me out, so I think that's why they are really nice to me... it's like talking to a Soldier who went to put his life on the line for his country, except in my case, it's my sanity on the line for the restaurant.... because I have already done my part as a soldier and those were good times before all this real-life insanity started happening.

It was a good thing I went to collect my final payslip because it was actually a lot more than what I had anticipated. Didn't question it though, just took it and left... happy that the people I had worked with had a good impression of me unlike the people in the design firm, that one we parted on a bad term, the secretary was nice to me on the last day but other than that, I really don't have any positive feelings towards that company.




Maybe I might have offended some customers, but they can go fuck themselves because nothing pisses me off more when a customer decides to send back an order because "the souffle isn't high enough" or "the orders are taking too long"... literally after sending out the order, the waiters will bring it back because the order has been cancelled as the customers felt that it took too long....should bake them a complimentary souffle in a ramekin the shape of a dick and ask them to suck it while it's still hot.

So on Tuesday, I went for my trial run at the company which I went for an interview about a week ago. I honestly have nothing much to blog about because it was all quite boring to blog about really. 

I went there early in the morning at around 9 am, earliest I have woken up in 2014 because now I'm a lazy stay at home nerd who only sleeps, eats and plays the computer when he's not doing any eating or sleeping, so I reached at 9 thinking I would be done with the assignment before lunch time and leave maybe at 12 noon.... I was wrong.

They handed me a floor plan on a piece of paper and asked me to draft it out onto AutoCAD, which sounds easy to do, until I realized that the floor plan was not to scale at all... not to one scale anyways, the top part of the floor plan would be to scale, but when you reach the bottom, it's an entirely different scale. It was a nightmare to attempt to measure the floor plan using a scale ruler that at one point, I just decided to eyeball the measurements.  That took me the entire morning because there were a few moments where I was just staring at the floor plan blankly, wondering why the fuck they had to make my life harder by not putting all the measurements I needed on the bloody drawing.

Headed out for lunch with the workers there, who were quite nice and chatty, I mean they were better than the ones at the previous design firm, they actually made me feel welcome and not like the new awkward kid who got invited to sit at the table with the popular kids who keeps talking about their own stuff and telling inside jokes during lunch.




During that lunch, I decided to ask the secretary about the candidates who had gone through the same things as me, and there were like 2 others who came before me and I was the final one before the company will make the decision to hire who.... everyone else apparently took as long as me to complete the trial assignment... which made me feel good, then bad when I realized that I will have to deal with such floor plans for a very long time. 

I have every intention to stick to the next job I get like a leech, the last time i said I will give the job a 3 month testing period, I quit in 3 weeks, another time I said I will work for 6 months, I left in 2 months... don't have a very good track record so I leave out those work experiences on my resume, which makes me look like I have been wasting the last 8 months since I ORD just partying and fooling around... except I don't party or fool around in real life, my social life isn't really that exciting.... or even exist.

After lunch, headed back to the company and continued with the space planning, where I just stared at the screen again for a good 5 minutes because I was suffering from designer's block. I haven't visited an interior design blog for a very long time now so I was severely lacking any ideas and inspirations, the only inspirations in my head are baking related and gaming so it took a while for me to actually get an idea, plus I was looking at the time on the computer because I can't believe I was so slow, like hurry the fuck up man.

When I finally completed everything, it didn't feel very good because I honestly felt like the work I had done was garbage... surprisingly, the boss said I was actually better than the previous girl who came for the trial run and that even though I still needed to brush up my skills, my ideas were more interesting.  I think he might be bias towards me because I was a student to one of his classmates during his schooling days. 

I completed everything by 6 pm, peak hour when the buses are full. It was not fun to squeeze in a crowded bus and also attempt to get off one at your stop. There were students who just finished school, who are honestly a bit on the smelly side, and then there were PRCs who also just knocked off from work and were on the way home...  they were also on the smelly side and they really like to air their armpits like no one's business, it was really gross to see the armpit hairs just sticking out from the sleeves of their polo shirts, it's like seeing the source of where that stench was coming from, which made the stench I was being engulfed in that much stronger.

Today, I went for another job interview at a design firm that was located near the company I went to yesterday for the trial run. I was late though because I got lost in the car park where their office was located... there was no signage at all except the one that was on their doorbell, I actually walked past it thinking the place was under construction.

This interview did not go well though, I left with the exact same feeling as my last interview with the furniture shop, we had a good chat, one filled with a lot of awkward silence... they didn't really prepare a lot of questions to ask me so this one lady kept going...

"Ummmm.... Okay so..."

To try and get rid of that awkward silence, which made it worse because she had nothing to say after that, so it ended up with her just looking at her colleague hoping she had a question to ask, and when that colleague also had nothing to say, I had to quickly shoot a random question just to get rid of the awkwardness.



They were friendly, none of the stupid "What are your strength and weakness" questions and things like that, just straight to the point about the job and when I was available... which I think they ask because they just wanted to get rid of the awkward silences.




When I told them I was expecting a response from another job company at the end of the week, and they told me they will get back to me in two weeks, I knew they weren't going to consider me anymore because if they did, they would be competing with the other company and try to get back to me at the end of the week as well, not 2 weeks later when I might already have been considered and accepted the job offer from the other company. So it was a wasted trip.



The trip home was horrible, realized my ez-link was out of cash, so I had to take a bus to the nearest control station to top up my card, decided since I was going to be going to a control station, why not head to town and see what I can get there.




So I stopped at Somerset, walked all the way to ION Orchard to top up my card, only for the machine to not be able to read my NETS properly, had to keep sliding it into the machine for it to finally be able to read the card, afterwhich went to withdraw some money and realised I was short $200 from my account, which I am afraid might have been because I keep inserting and re-inserting the NETS into the top up machine and it might have deducted a lot more money than it should have.




In the end decided to head home, empty handed with the back of my shirt completely drenched in sweat, it was disgusting to even lean back on the bus seat, was so afraid that when I stood up and leave, the chair will just have this huge patch of sweat.... there wasn't.

Coffee.

Was able to get a cup of Frappcuino today at Starbucks to confirm whether or not I actually have a caffeine addiction.



Bought a cup of Asian Dolce Frappacuino, the coffee flavour of the month or week or day, thinking it was Dulce de leche flavored, it was not.  I mixed up Dolce with Dulce since they are essentially pronounced the same way.... or maybe Starbucks spelled it wrongly and there really is Dulce de Leche inside... like how there's supposed to be Baileys in Twelve Cupcake's Baileys Chocolate Cupcake but you can't really taste any... makes me wonder if they measure their alcohol like how one would measure their vanilla extract... just a tiny drop, a hint of Baileys that you will be able to taste if you were to leave the buttercream in your mouth and swirl it around for a good 10 seconds before spitting it out.




I have made Baileys buttercream before for my Guiness Cupcakes and mine is really strong, because I eyeballed the whole thing, was really just pouring it out from the bottle like I was pouring myself a glass of it to drink.


Anyways, I couldn't taste any Dulce de leche in the coffee drink, which really is just bitter to me and reminded me why I didn't enjoy drinking any Frappacuino from Starbucks, I only drink it sometimes to look classy and shit, because only people in business suit drinks Starbucks Coffee, in my mind really, the people who actually drinks Starbucks in Singapore though are probably teenagers who likes to hang around Starbucks to study for their exams or use the free Wi-Fi... which they have "paid" for by buying the $10 cup of coffee which they nest because that cup is their pass to stay in the coffee shop indefinitely.




So, I thought I had actually made the transition from a tea drinker to a coffee drinker, but I guess that wasn't the case. When I say Tea Drinker I don't mean brewed Darjeeling Tea or any fancy stuff like Earl Grey Tea, I'm more towards Black Tea with the pearls inside and every once in a while when the house is out of soda, a huge cup of Lipton Tea with a slice of lemon in it... which when left on its own for a few hours thanks to my gaming habits, really become something that makes your breath really smelly and if I can smell my own rancid breath then it must really stink.

Running.

My goal to improve my running stamina was put on hiatus the past week because I couldn't find my running shirt.



So the last time I ran was 3 days ago in the gym with my Army shirt and I don't really count running on the treadmill as really going for a jog, just doesn't make me feel like I am about to drop dead and die at the 1.6 km mark... and for that treadmill running session, I actually only ran 60% of my intended distance because I accidentally hit the stop button instead of the "gradually slow down" button if that button even existed, and since I didn't know how to start up the treadmill from where I had stopped, rather than fumbling around with the controls and possibly sending myself hurtling through all the exercise equipment behind me from the accidental "burst of speed" from hitting the wrong key that might exist, I decided to just pretend like I had every intention to stop it and walked off, the lady who was using the treadmill beside me looked at my direction funny when I stopped and I assume it's because she was probably comparing her running speed to mine and in her head was having a running competition with me.



I  decided to suck it up today and wear my army shirt out for a run, and because I also don't have a proper pair of running pants, I had to settle for my army pants.



I don't like running in my army shirt because it's not really the exercise shirt that we wear in the army but the admin tee that we wear when we are not wearing our normal uniform, the one we wear to sleep or when we are just loitering around in the bunk, it's not proper exercise clothes, it's almost on par with the rags people wear at home as their home shirt or at least I wear rag like shirt at home. my clothes literally have holes on them around the sleeves and at the collar... and my running pants were really really short, did not compliment my long and skinny legs that were hairy as hell, plus I am really paranoid and think that when people see me wearing a army shirt, they will assume I am fit and am representing the army, I have to thank the busybody Stompers for this.



Not surprisingly, I was only able to run for 1.6 km before I had to stop and walk the other 1.6 km back. Turns out I didn't really care whether I looked like shit and was representing the army guys in a bad light because I was exhausted as fuck... really wanted to run a bit as I was returning home but I was very sure that if I did, when I actually do stop, my vision will get white from the lack of oxygen,  I will start breathing heavily and then probably squad on the ground to take a breather while people just walk past and stare. I am okay with not looking fit because who am I kidding, with a frame like mine, no one is gonna believe that I can actually run 3 km without stopping... probably being wanting me to stop lest I hurt my frail body. I also didn't properly hydrate myself before the run so I blame that, as well as the McDonald I had for lunch prior to the run, that's not a proper energetic meal at all.




Am currently having this obsession with McDonald's Frappe. It's so fucking delicious. Might have to go Starbucks and get one of their Frappacuino soon to see if I am actually having a caffeine addiction because I use to really not enjoy drinking coffee... not that I hated it, but I would rather watch someone else drink it then drink it myself, it's like how I like to see others enjoy slices of cheese but I won't let that slice of cheese go anywhere near my mouth. I also like watching people eat... it's like porn but you don't get judged so harshly if you were to tell it to your innocent-minded friends... like me because that's what many people think of me when they first meet me, pure and innocent... until they really get to know me... I mean this blog is probably a good sign that I am anything but pure and innocent, if anything really, it just shows how much of a fucking whiney ass fuck face I really am.





The only reason why I can blog so much is because I am so bored at home with nothing to do, and I still haven't collected my final pay check from the restaurant yet, it's been 16 days since they told me it was ready... gave me a 3 pm-5 pm time slot to collect on a weekday, if I had been working, that would have been an impossible timing to head down to collect my pay.... it's right after lunch hour and just before dinner, but alas I am not working and really am just lazy to head down to collect it, the last time I went to collect my pay, it was accompanied with a horrible motion sickness induced headache and witnessing a guy shitting his pants on the bus, plus I am sure they are aware of the terrible timing I have been given to head down so I am just gonna let them assume I am busy working and don't have anytime to go down.

Lunch out.

I have been longing to eat at this restaurant at Plaza Singapura called Hoshino Coffee for a while now and finally had the chance today to try it out today.



The main reason why was because they are serving dishes that were exactly the same as the dishes that are being served at the restaurant I was working at and I really want to dine at the restaurant I was working at but I don't feel comfortable going there as a customer just yet.



It's very tiring for me to have to acknowledge the presence of every waiter who passes by because I used to work with them but I am not necessarily close to them. It's like when you see someone you know on the street that isn't exactly a friend, but someone you know nonetheless so you have to acknowledge their presence, ,and it's even worse if they are like really far away but both of you have locked eyes on each other,but since you don't want to be creating a scene by shouting across the mall, you just keep walking straight and smiling awkwardly at each other until finally you reach each other close enough to actually talk to each other and then all you say to each other is "Hi.What are you doing here ?" and then "Okay. Bye." after hearing the obvious answer "Oh, just here to skin my cat so I can turn her fur into hair extensions."



So that's what I think dining at the restaurant I work at would be like, with all my ex-colleagues walking around collecting orders as they pass my table. So I settled for Hoshino Coffee.




Had their coffee and baked rice, really wanted to eat the pancake though because I have been preparing the exact same dish so many times I have lost count, alas my stomach couldn't take it anymore so I had to give it a miss, plus it was super expensive. 2 meals, me and my sister, who ordered a pasta, with 2 cups of ice coffee that was already heavily discounted, total cost was $45, if I had ordered the dessert and the drinks that I originally wanted to get, the price would have been $65.

IKEA lied.

During my job hunting last month, I thought it would be a good idea to have a career with only the most popular Furniture store in the world, IKEA.




It was actually my first choice after I left my job as a Pastry Cook, to work in IKEA, because that's how much of an underachiever I am. Why work in a Interior Design firm where you can learn so much more things when you can just work in IKEA, look at their furniture all day long and predict which ones will last less than a year when someone actually sits on it and break both the furniture and possibly their tailbone if the furniture doesn't rupture their anus first.




So I send in my resume and a pathetic excuse for a cover letter, waiting to get a response because their website stated...

So when they stated that they will keep me posted, I was under the assumption that someone from the HR department will look through my resume and get back to me... but instead I got an automated email....

During my initial read through, I actually thought it was send by an actual person because I thought they had misspelled "Hi"... so I checked my keyboard and realized that the letters were too far apart away from each other for it to be a misspell and I doubt they would hire someone who suffers from Alien Hand Syndrome to write emails for them..  Turns out "Hej" was Swedish for Hello


But despite the fact that it was an automated email, I was still quite optimistic about the entire thing because they did state at the end that they will get back to me within 30 days.



AND ~ It's almost been 40 days and I still haven't got back any response. Seriously IKEA, what the hell is wrong with you, if you have no intention of getting back to the people who aren't selected for the position, don't tell them to "Kick back and relax" and "expect to hear from us within 30 days".



For the first 20 days or so, I was actually expecting to get a response from IKEA, apart from the automated email. Kinda had a feeling that I was probably not going to be selected when I realized I probably screwed up their "Personality Test", I am really slow like that, so it takes a while for my brain to actually register the fact that I will probably not be getting the job after not getting any response from the company in the second half of the week.



The personality test probably helped painted a picture of me as a loner who occasionally slits his wrist to feel alive every once in a while to IKEA. I don't like this Personality Test bullshit, meet me in person and you will realize I am not a loner who slits his wrist, I am actually someone who stutters and flop sweat when he is being interviewed. So that's my whole IKEA experience, there goes my dream of having Swedish Meatballs that are allegedly made from horse meat for lunch everyday.




Speaking of flop sweat, I flopped sweat when I went for my job interview yesterday... but one good thing about the interview was that I didn't actually stutter as much as I thought I would have. I always stutter and flop sweat when I get interviewed, the back of my shirt will get a tone darker and I can't speak without sounding like I have been crying for the past hour in the toilet.... I didn't cry, didn't have time for that, I was in the air conditioned bus marking my territory by leaving my back sweat on the bus seats.





The interview went well, need to go back for a trial run, like a second interview sort of thing, except he won't be asking me what "my strength and weaknesses are" but actually put my skills to the test by making me do space planning and 3D renderings, the former I am relatively confident in but the latter is probably gonna be so fucked.  Hope everything goes well and by go well I mean not having the software crash on me while I am rendering. Has happened many times on my Acer before and I did not appreciate it.

Happy Single Awareness Day

Facebook was filled with so many messages of couples yesterday proclaiming their love for one another because it was Valentines Day, and with that post will be a picture of either a bouquet of roses or a picture of 2 of them kissing each other accompanying it.




It's like when it's Chinese New Year, my Instagram will be filled with pictures of people wearing brand new clothes with #ootd and then they will stand and post in an empty void deck, probably belonging their relative's HDB flat, or during Christmas when people take pictures of their Christmas Trees because their presents are probably too lousy for an Instagram post.




"Mum and Dad got me a Notepad from Popular Bookstore for Christmas! #wtf #discountedshit #seriously"




Valentines Day is the day when couples find the need to proclaim their love for one another out loud, it's like how when Sunday comes, people who believe in Jesus starts becoming Christians but when Monday arrives, they start using the God's name in vain. So seeing pictures of people making out on my feed during Valentines Day is understandable because it's the one day I won't judge someone for their heavy petting Instagram videos.





What I find a bit irksome are couples who proclaim their love for each other on their Instagram page or Facebook page everyday... simply because it reminds me and Heidi and Spencer from The Hills, whose behaviors are really attention seeking you sometimes question if it's really love or just 2 attention seeking whores sponging fame off their shamelessness at PDA-ing in front of paparazzi for the public to see. I actually came across one Instagram user, a Singaporean, who kinda reminded me of Heidi and Spencer, except her outlet is Instagram and not Paparazzis and tabloid magazines.



It's not as bad as Heidi and Spencer and bit of PDA is great for a relationship, but when you have a video of yourself and your boyfriend playing in a pool, back hugging each other and stuff, and then have someone film it, I find that to be a bit disturbing... especially because they have a huge following of like 40k followers, maybe like 10% of it are spam accounts but still, it's a pretty big group of strangers to be sharing such an intimate moment with....

"Hey World! Here's me with my boyfriend happily playing in the pool! We are so in love. And we even asked someone to film us having fun just so we could show you guys, most of whom we have never met before in real life and probably never will."

I mean you never know, Samantha_Loves who followed you yesterday on Instagram could be a 50 year old hillbilly who also happens to be a pedophile, TeddyStickers who liked all your pictures could be a 30 year old necrophile and RandyKnox who left a comment in a foreign language might have been using those PDA photos to jerk himself off at night.... those are the last people you want updated on your love life.



I wonder how a normal date of theirs without their photographer would be like...

"You are in the way of our love". Really need to proof read a picture before saving it as a JPEG and deleting the original file permanently. 

My photoshop skills are a bit lacking and my illustrator skills are non-existent, but the punchline is "Sorry but the restaurant is closed." when they finish taking their photo and are about to enter the restaurant. And I have no idea why the first picture has a grayish background.


I think that's what happens when they go out on a date, must capture the perfect shot even if it means using up 80% of their date timing to do it.



I don't really believe they are faking their relationship, but her constantly parading her Caucasian boyfriend on Instagram makes her look like someone who has Pinkerton Syndrome.


UPDATE : Apparently there really is someone who's actually following them around and taking picture of them making out and acting all lovey dovey. Sounds like the start to a porn film, honestly though, how romantic can a date be if there's a third wheel constantly following you around like a paparazzi, taking pictures of you and your date every time you two are making out.

Truth to be told, the reason why I am bashing her so much is because she looks like someone I didn't like that I used to work with in that infamous design firm I keep talking shit about. It's really just my biased opinion of her because she just happens to look like someone I don't like. I know it's horrible but I can't help it! I have issues worse than her alleged Pinkerton Syndrome.