Rant 1177 / Liking Italian Antipasto

Just tried Trattoria Italian Kitchen. Found this voucher for 2 sets of fish and chips with delivery for just $28 net on Deal.com.sg and so I decided to try it out.

In addition to the fish and chips, I added an appetizer platter (antipasto della casa) for $24.35 net. That turned out to be the best thing I've ordered in a long time.

Having almost no experience with Italian cuisine outside of pasta and pizzas, and I've never liked tomatoes other than as something to add flavour to other dishes, I was so pleasantly surprised by how nice the caprese was and how un-tomato-like the bruschetta was.

The caprese, or insalata caprese, is just a slice of tomato with a slice of fresh, soft, mozarella, with a little mixture of basil, salt and olive oil. So simple, yet such a good, light way to appreciate the cheese and tomato.

The bruschetta is another simple appetizer of cubed tomatoes on a french loaf. Apparently, the tomato cubes are mixed with olive oil, chopped garlic, basil, salt and pepper. So easy to make, I can probably do it myself next time!

 

Bruschetta (left) with some kind of candied walnuts (right top) and gorgonzola cheese cubes (right bottom)

From left to right: rock melon wrapped in parma ham, some lettuce, caprese, mildy pickled cucumbers (in smaller container)

Clockwise, starting top left: gorgonzola, cucumbers, walnuts

The best were the gorgonzola cheese, caprese and bruschetta. Before you make any judgement, let me just say that I've never tried any of these except for parma ham (but not with melon), walnuts and lettuce.


The fish and chips weren't that interesting though. No wonder it was going at 2 for $28 with delivery. They were just some regular unsalted fries I can find at MCD, although the fish was quite good.

I may order from this restaurant again but I will try something other than fish and chips next time.

Regardless of the bad online reviews for this restaurant, this meal has been a very good experience, taught me a lot.























Underhell is an incredibly fleshed out Half Life 2 mod. After watching a stream of it for several hours, I'm impressed by all the content it has. True, the graphics are rather dated since it's a HL2 mod, but there's so much talk in the game and all conversations are voiced out by amateurs.

I personally wouldn't play the game but it's just crazy how much effort those guys put in to make a free game. I said "game" because it's got so much content, it's pretty much a full-fledged game instead of just a mod, just that it requires HL2 to run.
























Steam is going into the console market and it's about time they revealed it! I've been waiting for so long for some real news on this.

Rant 1176 / Bloody Printers

Right now on Kickstarter, there is this very novel 3D printer that doesn't use metal frames and plastics. Instead, it floats and prints in UV-cured resins.

http://kck.st/15bSJCZ

Because it doesn't need metal rods to move, it technically has no print volume limit. The real limit is time and that is subjective because given enough time, it can build a house.

Using UV beams, it is able to harden the liquid resin, ie cure it, in both X and Y axes. To deal with the Z axis, it uses a microphone to detect the drops and calculate the resultant rise in level.



Although the printer is incredibly cheap at only a hundred Canadian dollars, the resin is far more expensive and harder to find than any plastic filaments used by conventional 3D printers.

UV-cured liquid resins cannot be found on Aliexpress, so I deduced that this stuff can't be found at any hardware store. The developer of this printer recommends Makerjuice which sells it at US$40/litre for the cheaper resin meant for tiny print volumes, and $45/litre for the better resin. Shipping is charged separately, starting at $31 for the first litre.

This is crazy but because of the lack of sellers of small volumes of such resins, the prices make sense.

Moreover, they aren't plastics, so there is no worry about fumes.

In the end, I pledged 120CAD for a printer plus shipping, and this comes with a complimentary bottle of 100ml of resin.

I can also add $70 for a whole litre but later decided this is really not worth the money. Not only is the resin expensive, I'll also have to learn to use a new software to be able to printwith it. However, I really like the idea so I'm keeping the pledge, but I don't expect to use it at all.



















Stopped watching Corpse Party Let's Play videos because I can't take the overreaction and the frustration I get from all the illogical choices the characters made, like how Naomi didn't try to save Seiko anymore after seeing her dead even though she had the bucket to use as a foothold. She could have at least tried to free her and give her CPR!

The last straw was when the teacher was killed by the evil spirit. No matter what she said, the spirit just would not believe her. I mean, she was dying! Why on earth would she lie with her final breaths?? That's so stupid!

I really like the music though.



The good music and the interesting commentary by Aesthetic Gamer makes me want to keep watching, so maybe I'll go back later.

...


Finished watching the whole game, all 22 videos by that guy.

Interesting story but the ending is so sad :(

Not that it was unexpected but still, who really likes sad endings anyway.

Now I feel like watching the other Corpse Party games. This one was the remake, Blood Covered, and there are several others. Wonder if they ever save the soul of the girl in any of the games though.















So I just noticed that one of the members of my alliance in Age of War is the son of an Egyptian football star, Mohd Aboutrika. Never knew about this despite the fact that he used his full name as his in-game nick until I checked his Line profile and saw lots of photos of him with his siblings and his father.

Lots of photos of his dad playing football and finally I found a portrait photo of Aboutrika with his full name captioned, so I googled the name.

It's entirely possible that it's an elaborate fake but quite unlikely since he has never tried to make us understand what the name meant. He's just very friendly.

For those who are unfamiliar with the name as I was, Mohammed Aboutrika is one of the biggest name in African football and one of the three top scorers in the FIFA World Cup with 4 goals, with the other 2 being Messi and Denilson.

Rant 1175 / Behind Every Horror Story Lies A Horrifying Mind

Tried my first cup of coffee made with the new french press. Not bad. Better than using the drip method. More troublesome though, because I have to warm it up with the warm water while I'm boiling it, and it's glass so I have to be careful not to knock it accidentally.



















Holy crap! JEM's so fugged lately. Two fires and now a ceiling collapse! Heads are so going to roll again.




















Corpse Party. Why is it popular?

Scary yes.

But all those cute little girls. Why them?

They could have made them look less cute, more adult.

Yet the developers chose to kill little girls.

So twisted.

So much overreaction. So many things I wouldn't do if I were in those situations.

















I must have annoyed someone over at MCD because the delivery guy asked me to check the food before he left.

Rant 1174 / Internet Shopping And Games

Did quite a bit of online shopping.

Yesterday I bought this Marcellotino suit jacket for S$75.00, a Kezco shirt for S$20 and a simple cufflink for $10 from Singsale.

The suit is suspiciously cheap so I'm expecting major issues and a visit to my neighbourhood tailor.

But if all goes well, this may possibly the most incredible find I've ever encountered this year!

$75 for a suit! SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS! In USD, that's $60!

The shirt is not bad, not the cheap sort I'd buy, but I don't have a black shirt and it's still way cheaper than the Apollo shirts I got from KS. The cufflink was bought because I don't have a pair at all.

Moreover, after getting the shirt and jacket, the delivery for everything else I ordered in the following order would be waived, so the cufflink is getting $8 waived.

The way Singsale worked was that it would have multiple sales going on at the same time, each sale featuring one or more brands of the same products, eg shoes, or business attire.

The sale that the jacket and shirt were in was separate from the one featuring the cufflink, so if I hadn't bought it then, I would have had to pay an extra $8 delivery fee later.






Then from Groupon, I bought this set of french press with 4 glasses. I generally don't buy glassware or anything that can shatter into tiny sharp pieces, but I've always wanted a cheap french press. S$20 for the set was pretty good to me. Thin glass though, so I will have to warm it up a bit before pouring almost boiling water into it. Maybe will microwave some water to do it.

My bro had already gotten me some whole coffee bean from Cold Storage the other day which I had started using since yesterday, so now I can use these beans with the press.

Previously, I'd been using the drip method with my mug, a sieve and a paper filter, so now I want to see what the french press can do.


















Game of War is far more interesting because there is so much more activity there compared to Spartan Wars.

A lot of politics too, which I try to avoid.

But we're getting so friendly here in my alliance (aka guild or clan) we even set up a Line chat group.

What I don't like is that I got promoted to one of the six generals in my alliance. I had repeated multiple times that I don't want any responsibilities but the leader just made me one anyway. The six generals are basically the guys in charge when she's not around. Moreover, I'm also the only admin of the alliance chat, the rank just below hers and above the mods, so that's even more responsibilities.

Otherwise, this game is pretty nice because of the alliances. People are active and mine have lots of girls, including one who claims to be one of the extras in Ah Boys to Men. Not sure which one but doesn't matter.

The money being pumped into this game is still staggering to me. In Kingdom 20 (K20), one of the latest to be opened, some guy has already become more powerful than anyone in my kingdom, K2, even though mine's over 2 months old while K20 is less than a month old. That guy must have spent thousands of dollars in that short timespan.

Now I want to invest in these game companies. Damn the money is good!

Rant 1173 / Too Late! Too Much?

I need a better pan, an anodized one.





































So yesterday I had a pretty bad order from McDelivery. The guy arrived 20 minutes late, the bags were a little crushes (especially the one with the fries), the coffee was placed together with a Coke in the same bag and all the fries were unsalted.

Immediately after the order arrived, I sent a feedback at the main MCD website about all of the above except for the fries since I hadn't discovered it at that point.

This morning, someone called me back to apologize and promised me a waiver of delivery charges for my next order. When I mentioned that I hadn't included the fries issue in the feedback, the person promised me free fries too!

Woot!




















So I ordered a small french press online and my bro got me a bag of whole beans from Cold Storage. There are cheaper beans in the market but like I mentioned before, for some reason they don't sell them whole.

Now I can't wait for the press to arrive because despite the bag being sealed, I can totally smell the beans. On one hand, that means it's leaking! On the other hand, it's making me want to open it and get myself some real coffee instead of the instant stuff I've been drinking recently.

Maybe I'll try to use the paper filters I still have.

Rant 1172 / Japanese Curry With Minced Pork

This is so fugged up. After worrying about the bigger sizes of this batch of jackets I had mentioned in the previous rant, now I realize none of the colours will last.

I'm looking at the eventuality that the design will be sold out before the peak period.

On one hand, I'm so happy that I have a design that can sell that quickly but on the other hand, this means I'll have little to sell when the most people are shopping for jackets.

Right now, I'm looking at the best-selling colour going out of stock a week after I started releasing the design. Seriously, in my storage area I only have 1 piece of size L and 6 size XL left for that colour. I'm so fugged, so happily fugged.

The next time one of the shops ask me to restock, I might as well tell them the colour's totally out.

This is notable because this is the only item I'm having this problem with. I've already ordered a second batch but since this is custom-made and the supplier has no stock ready, there will be a long period of time during which the shops will keep nagging me about it.




















Failed again in the sauce. Added sugar a few times but was still too "herbal" in aroma. Diluted it and added sugar again only to realize there was too much garlic and the new mix was smelling like bak kut teh instead.

Another pot down the drain.

I think maybe I'll just stick with the pre-made stuff from supermarkets.

But first, I'll try another packet. And before that, I'll try again using the undiluted half a pot's worth of the sauce I had kept frozen. Maybe this still can be saved.

Rant 1171 / Lard Sauce

Now I'm not sure about the problem about my second attempt.

This time less soy sauce was added but it now tastes a lot more "herbal" and not very salty. I think it doesn't have enough soy sauce, yet it's also getting close to bitter and I'm not sure if more soy sauce will solve this problem.

Maybe I need to dilute this further. Will do more testing tomorrow by taking a ladle of it and adding water and soy sauce.





















Myanmar. At first I was interested but after reading up on it, I realized that they're looking for investors to invest in factories, not the stuff produced by their factories.

And there I was thinking maybe I can find cheaper suppliers there. Nope.




















Chicken Up sucks. It's no different from Nene Chicken except it doesn't give free sides like Nene Chicken. The best thing about it seems to be that it has found a way to offer island-wide delivery while Nene is still limited to my neighbourhood.

I was actually trying to order another restaurant's chicken but despite the deal voucher I had ordered, the restaurant had discontinued the item, so the delivery service company offered Chicken Up's chickens of almost the same value in exchange.

I'm satisfied with the delivery company's service, but not the restaurant's food. If I want Korean fried chicken in the future, I'm sticking with Nene Chicken.



















I am so short-sighted. There is certainly a need for me to look at things more carefully when I order stuff.

My latest batch of jackets had sizes between S-4XL, yet I had ordered the same amount as I usually do, even though my norm is to order from S to 2XL. This caused the number of jackets per size to be much smaller in this batch, so suddenly, I'm running out of a few sizes of some of the colours.

This is a ridiculously bad oversight.

Rant 1170 / Custom-made Sauce

Attack on Titan must be one of the most confusing manga I've ever read. I've just gone through 48 chapters only to find out... that I don't even know who the villains were - if they existed at all in the first place.

Not the titans; the titans were simply a symptom. The other titan problems? We don't even know for sure which side they harmed!

So not only has the manga artist(s) failed to show us a villain, he/they has/have yet to show us a root of the titan problem. C'mon, even if there's going to be a great twist, you have to throw us a decoy first, right?

In any case, is this manga exciting? Sure. Is it interesting? Definitely.

Yet in truth, after reading the whole series so far, I feel as if the artist(s) has/have just produced 48 chapters of prologue and counting.

On the other hand, you've got to hand it to him/them for creating 48 exciting chapters without producing a real problem since, after all, all plots are about problems.

...

Okay, on second thought, there was the problem of the titan invasion. Yet in a way, I feel that this, too, was just a symptom or a complication of the symptom that was the presence of titans.

Bought this packet of spices today. Went around at the wet market asking for ready-made bottles of the "lu shui"

but nobody was selling it. I guess only supermarkets have those.

But when I asked the vendor I was the most familiar with, the one selling fishballs (since I always buy a lot), they tried to tell me the recipe... except the mother (they were mother and daughter) who knew the recipe couldn't give me the names in mandarin and I can't speak Hokkien that well.

In the end, they gave up and pointed me to the traditional Chinese pharmacy. It didn't really make sense to me that I would go to a pharmacy to ask for food recipes but it does make some sense since they sell herbs and spices.

Turned out that elderly pharmacist not only knew the recipe but also sold most of the ingredients. The only things he didn't sell was the dark soy sauce and garlic, but those were extremely easy to find anyway.

That's the packet he gave me. Packed all the spices, of which I could only recognize by sight and smell the star anises, and ground them for me before sealing them in the filter bag. Awesome guy. Bought some chrysanthemum and rock sugar from him too.

The stuff is so strong, just touching the bag makes my finger smell of star anise.

Now I'm all prepared for this new pot. Even bought a piece of fatty pork for $5, 20 of the largest eggs available ($3 for 10) and 4 whole chicken legs. All I need to do now is melt and reboil the old pot of lu shui (still with eggs inside) and keep it in my reusable containers, and then I'll be able to start a new pot.

Probably not going to wash the pot in between.


...


Failed badly. Today I learnt that sugar can only reduce saltiness to a small degree. When the saltiness has reached the point where "overwhelming" becomes a suitable description, adding more sugar only makes it a very salty and sweet mixture.

It was definitely not a happy experience to pour everything away but there was no way I could have saved it. Adding more water would only have diluted the spices till it became merely a dark brine.

Tomorrow I'll get another packet from the pharmacy. Maybe also ask him to put in slightly less star anise.