Flu!

I've been very sick this week. I started feeling really lethargic last week, but I thought it was just the usual me, until my dad told me that I had the flu. But that was just that, I just went around feeling really tired and lazy. And then on Sunday, I woke up from my afternoon nap and felt different. Something didn't feel right. For one, my nose was feeling really itchy and sneezy-like, and my eyes were somewhat watery. Then there was the strange headache. But I went out anyway, and had dinner with some friends and ended up at tHe Spring. It was there, while sitting at one of the tables at Secret Recipe downing my slice of New York Cheese Cake, that I started feeling really cold. By the time my dad came to pick me up from triSh and Viv's house, we had to make a stop at the nearest 7-Eleven to pick up some Panadol Soluble. That very night, my throat started feeling scratchy.

I skipped class on Monday morning. I remember waking up in a daze and stumbling around, taking Panadol after Panadol. And to make matters worse, I had to sit for an exam that night. I skipped class on Tuesday too. I would have stayed at home this morning too, if not for this other exam I had. And tomorrow, I really don't feel like going, I'm still ill, but for the sake of an assignment, yeah I'll drag/drive my way up to Unimas. Maybe I'll just skip the Friday class. Oooohhh... But then there's the exam on Saturday, and the few assignments that are due next week, and oh yes don't forget the exam on Monday too.

It's just not the best time to get sick.

This time last week

Time has passed really fast. At about this time last week, I was getting really excited about the next day. Why? Because last Tuesday, at approximately 1.30 in the afternoon, I was getting ready to cook a big pasta feast for a little party of 10 girls. I know. The first thought that's probably crossing your mind right at this very instant is: "Esther can cook?" And my answer is really very simple.

Yes. Esther can cook.

It's just a matter of who she chooses to grace her cooking talents with, and whether you're lucky enough to get a bite of whatever it is she's decided to cook.

But yes, I can cook. So below, just to prove that I can cook, I've included some pictures (what little of it) that I've managed to capture during the cooking process.

Here is a snap of some of the ingredients that triSh and I went shopping for. Of course, we didn't have all the money to buy everything, so triSh managed to get everyone to chip in a few bucks to cover the costs.



Here's a close-up of the ingredients. You can see all 3 cans of button mushrooms, all sliced/chopped/butchered up real nicely. You can see the instant pasta (I personally think the San Remo's brand is the best there is). You can also see the chopped up onions and garlic. The others you can scrutinize for yourself. Like, press your nose against the computer screen and squint.



Just a few snaps of all the pasta we cooked up:



Looks scary I know. But hey, we're hungry people. And below! Check it out, people! My special culinary concoction: creamy mushroom ala carbonara! Looks really good, even if I do say so myself. I can't wait to whip this up again.



We also cooked one whole potful of bolognese sauce (my version lar!), but unfortunately I don't have any shots of it "in the making". You'll see the end product soon though. Here in the pics below you can see what triSh and I did when we realised we had an extra 2 hours plus to waste. Cookies! I used a knife to cut out the shapes. Notice how they're all shaped like the letter E? E is for Esther, heehee! I'm afraid it wasn't really very edible, but really it was just a trial and error kinda thing. A mere experiment that failed quite miserably. But at least we had fun.



Here's a snap of the entire end product, after nearly 4 hours of slaving over a hot stove. A pot of creamy mushroom carbonara sauce, a pot of bolognese sauce, and 3 packets worth of cooked pasta.



This was just a funny idea that crawled into our brains. Slice up some mandarin oranges (in abundance during the Chinese New Year period), freeze them until they're basically blocks of ice, and pop them into a cup of Sprite. I can't say I'm a big fan of it though. In the background, you can see a plate of the cookies we whipped up (in the microwave, no less!), which look good, but are quite capable of breaking windows.



There was about a whole pot of pasta left over, so I took some home. The two pictures below show what I had at midnight that night - my carbonara sauce with a twist. I added a raw egg to it, which is why the pasta looks kinda shiny. It was an interesting taste. I liked it.



And the next morning, we even had enough for breakfast! Yummy! Nothing like pasta for dinner, supper, and breakfast to put a great big smile on my face!



And to wrap this blogpost up, here's a snap of my cookies again. Don't they look really pretty?



So you see? I can cook! I sure had a great time cooking up a storm that day. I'm looking forward to the next time... Anyone care to take that hint? Cheers you all!

My holidays end tomorrow.

S-A-D.

The wonders of Astro

It finally arrived last night. After hours (days!) of waiting on the couch and staring at the blank screen, the beautiful, vibrant colours finally made it to our beloved television screen. To hear those unfamiliar sounds, all those different accents, the lilts of the various voices... It's almost as if we never had normal TV* at all.

And for the first time in a long, long while, I couldn't even decide what I wanted to watch.

One of the first channels I flipped to was the AXN channel. This was at approximately 10 pm. Imagine my surprise when I saw that CSI:NY was up next. Then I hit the TV guide button, and it told me that the next programme after CSI:NY was CSI:Miami. Apparently it was CSI Supreme, where they have all three CSIs on back to back, only on Sundays. But no. I didn't stick to this channel. The temptations of the other channels were just too much.

So we scrolled through the channels and landed on the Asian Food Channel. Food! At night! It kinda took me about 10 minutes to snap myself out of staring at the screen. What are they trying to do? Don't they realize that showing food shows at night is just so wrong? Don't they realize how close I'm sitting to the kitchen?

So when 11 pm came around, I switched back to AXN, to watch CSI:Miami. All that food was just too much.

During one of the commercial breaks (so relatively short and rare as compared to normal TV), I decided to check out what other channels we had. Imagine my glee when I found the Star World channel. At long last! English sitcoms and serials the whole day long!

Imagine, also, the near-hysterical laughing I went into when I found the Animax channel. Cartoons 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! Here's your chance to spoil your inner child! The whole night sorta passed in a big blur of glee and amazement. I remember laughing so hard (I thought I sounded a bit like a mad scientist cum maniac) at one point when they showed the ads for Slam Dunk. And to think I actually wanted to buy the complete DVD boxset when I was in KL. Phew! No need for that, now there's Astro!

And at about 1 in the morning, I decided to watch the E! channel. All the entertainment news! Now I don't even need to spend a single sen on those rip-off entertainment magazines (outdated ones, might I add) you find at the news stands. It's all here, on Astro! What are they trying to do to me? Make me forget my assignments? Slack off and fail my exams? Stop blogging?

Aaaaaaaaarggghhhh! I think there's a conspiracy to make me fail my exams. Just too many things to watch! Too many channels, I just can't keep track! So I'm stopping my blogpost here. I've gotta go surf the Astro website and print out the programme listings.

Cheers from an ecstatic Couch Potato!

*Normal TV: From here on out, this phrase is used to refer to my pre-Astro days.

I'm back!

Hello, everybody... Missed me? Muahahaha! I've been pretty busy these past 3 weeks, so I haven't been able to come online at all. That's right. No checking my emails, no Friendster-ing or Facebook-ing, certainly no blogging. But now I'm back (at least in the blogging world). I've got a little extra time on my hands now, what with Chinese New Year just around the corner. But it's not gonna be all bliss and laughter this hols - I've gotta work on some assignments. And I'm quite nervous about my teaching practice posting. For those of you unsure of the concept, it's basically an 'internship' thingy for all teacher trainees, where we get dumped into some school for a couple of months and see how well we can survive. Or something along those lines. We've all handed in our applications to our 'school of choice', and the results for those going to Sabah and Miri are already out, but not so for those in the Kuching and Sibu area. Probably too many students applying, so the workload is doubled and all.

And we have Astro in our house now. The decoder thingy is sitting there beside the TV, and I've been told that the satellite receiver disc thingy is somewhere up on the roof. We're still waiting for the programmes to come on though. Apparently we've got to wait a while for something or other to happen. I'm not sure what that something is. We're just randomly sitting in front of the blank screen from time to time, wondering when the Astro programmes will pop up.

Well, I better go. I'll be hanging out with triSh and Vivian tonight. Dinner, I think. And triSh, I've updated my blog. You happy now? It was your urgent insistence/pleading/threats that was one of the reasons I blogged this blogpost.

Teehee everyone!