quiet thoughts

the great british pickle

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:05:54 -0600

An article in kitchn about cheese and onion sarnie led to another one about ploughman's lunch. According to the people at AT, a ploughman's consists of:

Branston pickle
a few pieces of your choice of English cheeses; Cotswold, Huntsman, Stilton, Shropshire Blue, English Cheddar, etc.
a hunk of crusty bread
a pint of good English ale
(optional) cold cuts or pâté
(optional) apples
(optional) hard boiled eggs or pickled eggs

I would normally not eat the pickled onions and no, the apple isn't optional.

And now I have a craving for branston, even though I didn't usually have it even in London. Sigh. It's available in the US from amazon and other online british food places. What I find interesting is the "other customers also bought" bit which shows: HP sauce, marmite, golden syrup, piccalilli and ribena. Double, triple, quadrupole sigh. Major homesickness about to hit in 3, 2, 1....

p.s. Brits -- did the packaging on the branston change? it's different from before.

the magic of tron

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:44:41 -0600

youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P78pl1FUXfA

Perfect timing, Jeff Bridges wins this year's Oscar, and the first trailer for Tron Legacy comes out.

I was the absolute right age for the original Tron. I loved, loved, loved it. Who didn't? Even almost 30 years later, it doesn't look its age. There was something magical about the film that's hard to describe.

Man, December seems soooooo far away.

b

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:23:24 -0600

Numerically it's less than last year's but everybody's is down. Mine's not as much reduced comparatively so I'm okay about it.

how to design a book cover

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:01:10 -0600

youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoDCiTsS7dU

If/when I become published I want to design my own covers. I won't be able to paint or draw them since I'm an awful painter, but I can photoshop and I have definite ideas about what visual elements I want in my book covers.

I have a long way to go and much to learn though. This time lapse video from Lauren Panepinto, the creative director of orbit books shows the amount of skill needed, condensing 6 hours of work into 2 minutes. There's even a brief interview about her approach. My awe of designers just went into orbit (pun intended).

Comments at bb rightly pointed out how effective this was as a marketing tool for the book. I must admit I am not bought into video trailers for books but based on this particular video, I can see myself checking out the book (due out Sept 2010 and is part of a series). Of course it helps that it's steampunk and has vampires in it.

doodle jump 3 million sales

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:38:32 -0600

I got my niece hooked on doodlejump and now it's reached 3 million in sales. It's very addictive.

#30: 26 things in red

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:21:53 -0600

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

26 things for feb 2010:

structure
follow
covet
triple
hands
eye
fancy
time
rainbow
sadness
stack
line up
wheels
an insect
into the air
direction
new
half
set up
10 mins away
in my mailbox
sometimes
bottle
behind the scenes
corner
a door

In the middle of all the holiday eating, meeting with people, shopping stuff, I decided to do this month's 26things in HK and completing another 101.1001 task, which is to use a colour theme. It wasn't hard to decide on red. Click on each pic for brief notes. Link to full set: here

running

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:00:48 -0600

6.26km 41.38min 6.39min/km

The sun was out today, about time I went for a run. It has been a while. My legs felt heavy and sore, so the time is only average. Time to start training.

Standchart results are in. As expected my time was 1:14:59. Within my class I came in 132/243. Overall for the 10k challenge I was 3914/5144. The winner of my class completed in 38.37, very impressive. Like I said, time to start training. I'm now confirmed for the rock and roll half in August.

google picnik

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:18:30 -0600

Mixed in with the thousands of articles in my greader is news that google has bought picnik. Heh, this feels like writely 2.0, yet another hidden gem that's been snapped up by the google monster. I hope they keep what's good about picnik, how easy it is to use, how convenient. It's no match for full blown photoshop (although it may be a photoshop.com competitor, I don't know I don't use ps.com), for quick edits I prefer it.

chicago deep dish pizza

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:52:40 -0600

We had a visitor from the london office this week, and my nice colleagues took her out for chicago style deep dish pizza. I tagged along to Lou Malnati's, which according to some people, has the best deep dish pizza in town.

The pizza itself was pretty good. We had two: the Lou's which is spinach, mushroom and sliced tomato; and the sausage. Personally I prefer the vegetarian one, the sausagemeat was a whole layer spread on the crust which was too much for me. Man, the slices were thick and the crust as crunchy as expected.

What I can say is that the pizza is the best thing at the place, possibly the only good thing. Service was mediocre, on the slow side. Initially they placed us in a desolate upstairs area when downstairs wasn't even full. We had to ask to be moved downstairs to better surroundings. The pinot noir we ordered with the pizza wasn't bad. Compared with Giordano's I probably prefer the latter.

back to routine

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:11:20 -0600

I spent most of today with a parade of people in and out of my office. If they are to be believed, I was missed at work. That's so nice of them to say so. I'm jetlagged so just able to function. Easing back to routine slowly.

home errands

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:48:12 -0600

I took today off, it wasn't practical to get home so late and go straight to work the next day. Supermarket, vacuum, make lunch for the rest of the week, the day went by really quickly.

Links to pics for the trip: shunde | hong kong general | eating out start here

home leave day 18 | flight

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:35:36 -0600

Long day today, because of the flight. Parents booked the taxi to take us to the airport, I was at the lounge for about 1 hour. Now that I'm "only" at gold level I don't get upgraded, but I absolutely cannot complain. Food was good, watched The Blindside and lots of Deadliest Catch. Up in the Air was also on, and I guess we could have not gone to see it, cos mm is also on a plane today, to London. Nah, it was worth it to go with her.

Layover at LAX was 2 hours. I was worried. You never know what's gonna happen at US airports, they're the epitome of what airports should not be -- unpredictable, crowded, disorganised, bad. I was one of the first off the plane, immigration was fast, but my luggage got mixed in with the regular luggage. X-ray check was painless, so I got lucky. Was able to check my suitcases right outside the exit, and then something surprised me -- 2 staff members were on hand to ask where I was going and to help direct me to my next terminal. Wow. Well impressed.

The American terminal is just around the corner from the international, 2mins walk, no big deal. Security was decent, and I got into the first class lounge for some odd reason. Much needed 45mins rest, and to have some food.

Flight to ORD was full. Long walk to taxi stand. Home at 10.30pm. Door to door, over 21hrs. The snow that I had to drive through 3 weeks ago is still here, looks like they kept it cold for me.

home leave day 17 | marathon

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:25:39 -0600

I set the alarm for 4.15am but I was up before then. Excitement. I didn't wake mm up, got all my running gear and was out of the door at around 4.40am.

It's marathon day. Okay, I'm only on the 10k challenge, may be next year I'll do the half. It was dark when I started, I stupidly signed up for the first race at 5.15am. In hindsight, it turned out to be a good decision. 91% humidity made for terrible running conditions. I had my camera with me, so I took my time. I'd wanted to try to break 1hr, and in those conditions I didn't even try. I think my time was around 1:15, it doesn't matter.

The later races were still going on when I got back to mm's. Because of the traffic, she didn't make it to mass, and we stole an hour or so more together time. I tried hard not to cry when we said goodbye. We've spent a lot of time in different countries throughout our relationship, it's nothing new. I just don't know what to do with our future.

Met parents, sis and niece for lunch. While parents went off to do their own things, I went ice skating with sis and niece. I was pretty out of practice, there were too many kids, I was done after half an hour. Tired from the running anyway.

I really didn't want to go out for dinner, so home food it was. Thanks, Mum.

home leave day 16 | bbmm

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:18:40 -0600

Time is running out to spend with mm. Originally wanted to meet for lunch, but she was tired so I said let's meet in the afternoon. A few more hours lost. We'll have time, some other time.

Saw Up in the Air. Although I'll never get millions of miles like the George Clooney character, there were a few similarities especially when I was travelling so much a few years ago, not least that I recognise that all admiral's club lounges look the same. There was some serious product placement in that film -- AA and Hilton and Hertz stand out. mm said she never wants me to become like that, I know she always worried whenever I travel.

Dinner at our usual korean place. We didn't even need to discuss -- korean for lunch and dinner were 2 different places, and it was automatic.

She showed me a couple of iphone games she's been playing, and we eventually fell asleep at 1am.

home leave day 15 | sc ak

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:07:19 -0600

Lunch at city hall with ubs people. Then an afternoon of errands. Long overdue haircut, massage, last minute shopping.

Dinner with SC and AK. Jap food, naturally. Highlight was fresh sashimi from the fish, then the bones were made into soup. Nice.