Buzz Off

If you thought BuzzFeed was cancer, then its offshoot videos created by people who've quit BuzzFeed only to create more content like it are Ebola. 
It's maddening sort of tripe that is steadily infecting youtube.
Videos like 'I tried fruitarian diet for a week', 'I tried 80's workout for a week', 'I cooked Jamie Oliver recipe's for a week', 'I dressed like Kylie Jenner for a week', etc are specially designed to slowly torture brain cells before killing them.
I mean if Bf wasn't enough, there's more content like it everywhere, and who even wants to know if you tried pop cultural phenomenon's for a week; apparently everyone does, because the number of viewers and subscribers these videos and their creators rake in are staggering.
And this isn't the end of my issues with these videos. I hate how peripheral they are in their content. If you're doing something and being hardcore religious about it for a week then show me in minutest details the all of everything. Hell, I want to see it properly. I want to totally get into the nitty-gritty of what you're doing to emulate the odd fantasy for a week, but most of the minutia is ignored, blanketed with the person doing these random things trying to be funny or making clever remarks of whatever it is that they're pursuing.

I mean if you're doing 80's workout then show me the bloody workout and how you're going about it instead of a few some snippets of the workout videos and the workout in question.
The content is rather lacking and no surprises there, but everyone seems to lap it up.
I on my part like to downvote these videos so YouTube stops recommending them to me. 

I mean every time I talk about food and workouts on this blog my recommendations are bombarded with workout and food videos and goddamit I feel like living under a rock is really the better way to be. I needs crawl out every once in a while to send virtual love and go back into hibernate and stay away from the contagion that is BuzzFeed like content.

For moments when only chocolate will do

Feed me

Because what am I if not in love with noodle soups.
A bowl of fiery red kimchi gochujang broth with pork and tofu noodles punctured with calming jade cubes of mellow avocado to offset the feisty fierceness of spices with a cooling balm of welcoming bland.

Phew on the double

Just finished with a spot of writing in the most unlikely circumstances with five kinds of assorted noises bathing my ears, from children screaming to television blaring and can I just say it was a Herculean achievement, but what am I if not persistent.
So yes I finished a spot of writing and now I need to die in a corner.

Cabbaged

Revenge of the kimchi kraken

˚∆˙

Just happened to see the sidebar of this blog and noticed that I wrote 1082 posts last year.
Those might be just posts to any neophyte, when in fact that each post denotes the number of times I have missed and thought and even that is not accurate, perhaps a measurement in words would be more precise. 

music finds

This just came in recommendations, and I can't thank my recommendations enough today.

I mean the artwork and the name made me think it'd be a sort of psychedelic instrumental post-rock kind of business but the second it started I knew it meant business. 

Beautiful riffs, old school raspy vocals, grungy heaviness lined with drum beats as they should be and terrific basslines. 

the kind of rock/metal that makes you yearn for that time when music was uncomplicated.

Give it a listen. It wants to make you groove and headbang at the same time. 

Ward off pangs

Gluttonous version of oddball taco. Something of an 80's pile up, except in food.
Cured Harbin sausages, in a heaping mound with celery, onions, spinach and tomato with spicy seasonings, rolled in a multi grain roti in lieu of a taco proper.

Tuesday tittle

I usually tread carefully on Tuesday's because they have a tendency to snap under my feet in spiky shards.
Something akin a bear trap that randomly shuts, locking, even slicing at your ankle, throwing you off balance, wrecking the entire bearings of the day on your head.
Tuesday's are not for me. If anything has to go wrong it will go wrong on a Tuesday.
Murphy, I believe, picks out people like me and dances over their fate with hob nailed boots.

Case in point this morning.
When my alarm rang with the cacophony of slaughtering pigs, or so I thought as it melted into my dreams.
I turned it off and went back to sleep, without waking up at my designated time; in fact I woke up much later. T'was almost 7:30 and much too late.
Grumbling with some sort of anger left in my head because of residual dreams, I was a portrait of irritable snaps, and I feared a meltdown in the morning just walking into the kitchen.
Something inside me incited me to fling cutlery at unsuspecting people, and it was with great restraint that I held back my recently sharpened knife from plunging into a torso.
I'm loathe to admit that I shovelled leftovers in a tiffin box and called it lunch and didn't even bother fixing breakfast.
I don't know what it was but I was in one of the worst moods I've seen myself.
Was there a reason to it?

No..just a couple odd dreams, manifesting some odd desires that I've never much thought of, ones that aren't impossible but not feasible either, not least because I do not much care for them, but once you see them projected in such vivid 3D, you begin second guessing yourself.
And the thing with dreams is that they are a jumble of fantasies and regrets, and there was one frame where I faced rejection, a feeling I'm mostly novice to, and it was with that dream I woke up and forgot to thread it from reality of the day.

It's almost 11:30 and I contemplate on my to do list for the day.
Everything takes a backseat to the finishing of the story I have going, and I have a few chores to run which I will with haste, but knowing that it's Tuesday perhaps I should tread that much more carefully.
You never know which corner misfortune sits ready to pounce on me today.

Blossom days

For when a day needs a bit of botoxing.
I feel flowers, leaves, greens, twigs, anything you can buy, find or forage outside to add a bit of pop to your everyday house adds to an uplifting mood and cheer.
It brings about a sense of newness and makes you want to beautify things around.
I found these plum blossoms at a nearby flower shop at almost throwaway prices and instead of buying usual lilies and other flowers, just bought these in copious quantities and strewed them about in corners.
I've never been the one to buy vases, using instead up cycled jam jars, perfume and wine bottles etc..
But yes, about adding a bit of woohoo to an everyday ugh, just stuffing something into jars and making them peep out against any odd backdrop adds to that welcome unfamiliarity.

Internet fisticuffs

If ever there were a dead snail I was resuscitating back to life then it would be my Internet today, because it has taken to being in a coma and doesn't seem to load any page.
I mean here I am, trying to upload some words on a blog via laptop and the page won't even refresh.
It's so slow that it keeps telling me there is no internet connection when In fact there is, but all websites are taking too long to respond, and I'm halfway between tearing out my hair and flinging the machine outside the window, neither of which I'm going to do, but I can contemplate so while sipping on coffee.
I'm half way through the day. A couple more hours and I'll be in a dinner zone and it's pissing me off that the day went whoosh past by me, not least because I spent half the day zombified in a state of delirious agitation.
Nothing alarming..
And now as I sit, trying to upload a thousand words worth of last legs of my story, the Internet won't cooperate.
Gah!

What’s with the hunger?

Power bowl of daily nourishment. Courtesy strawberries and banana sprinkled with cinnamon, doused in soy milk and topped with a nut and dry fruit crunch.

Brunch beats

Homemade olive bread sandwich with bacon, tomato and cheddar cheese with a side of assorted mushrooms sautéed in balsamic vinegar and some spinach, because what are meals if not a celebration?
Sometimes I like them austere sometimes a bit extravagant but never boring, at least I try.

Moanday

Day 7: not a drop of sun to be found. I can feel the bitterness burgeon within me, sloshing about the teeth, ready to spill out In bilious rants of hard truths.
I shall refrain though and curse the skies for keeping the warmth away.
Finally it has ceased raining/snowing and the trees stand bare, raising their arms to the gods; beseeching light that hasn't seen fit to let itself shine.
Say one things about depression, say it animates itself most vigorously on somber days of cold gloom.
I'm not the one to always yearn for sunshine and sun rays, but a bit of light is in order when the winds are dreary and winters a frostbite.
There's something about welcoming the gloomy tint of crepuscular greys in hot summers, but deathly dark winters are not nearly as acceptable, are they?
Contradictions are lovely especially in weathers.
Today isn't one of those days.

Grrr coughee

This is a rant against people who keep sitting inside of coffee shops like Starbucks, costa and coffee bean with nothing apparent to do except just sit and occupy seats meant for two people, flip pages of books, type gibberish on laptops and nurse a cup of long finished drinks.
I have a problem with said people who're just sitting there for no reason, pretending like they've got work, peering inside their phones seeing photos and just whiling away time because they're aimless and and have nothing going on in their lives.
These are people studding these shops in droves making it impossible for those who actually want to sit inside for a cup of coffee and leave.
I have a problem with these people who sit on those long benches, sitting with strangers at close quarters and listening to music on their phones with their headphones, chatting on WeChat, and ever so often peeping inside their laptops to turn off the screensaver.
It's because of these people who're not drinking anything, who're not leaving those seats, who're not ready to come to terms with the fact that they're bored with few options to kill time and are only pretending to look busy when they're actually dead inside but wish to be someplace that's known to be lively just so they could believe otherwise that stepping inside these shops feels like a punishment.
I mean all I wanted was to grab some coffee and sit while drinking the said drink but the fact that there wasn't any place unoccupied made this small task an impossibility.
Worst was the fact that most seats meant for two people were occupied with only one person who had all their junk on the table and there must be at least half a dozen such seats that were occupied by just one person uninterested in the book they pretended to read with not a drink on the table.
I wanted to yank these people out of the chairs and fling them out, instead I silently grumbled and resolved that I'm not the one to drink coffee standing up.
I mean if I'm looking for a comfortable few minutes to myself I'm not going to compromise on the quality of it even if it means going back home for the coffee and that's exactly what I did and currently I'm seething at those people.

If I ever drink coffee then it'll only be in local coffee shop chains and never ever in one of these fancy shitty places cuz I can't stand the people who throng these shops.

Today in pictures

Cold hearts

For when there's a dearth of hearts and you have to make do with those on your sweater

Ice love

What are Saturday's if not a collection of follies.
It's snowing like monsoons on cocaine and I'm contemplating a bit of walk and a lazy brunch after (outdoors of course)

The big question arises in such matters though is what shoes should I wear?
Not the leather boots, not the suede shoes, not the snow boots either (they're clunky and ugly), anything made of cloth material is an invitation to wet feet, wellingtons or sneakers?
Uh. Ok.
I'm not a huge fan of wearing sport shoes into a world outside if I'm not jogging, but I have few options now.
I mean why am I even discussing this, simply because I'm thinking aloud, and everything I barely even think goes here..
Hearts.

Edible seashells

And another
Perle d' oceán by Guylian

t'day

Ugh. poeple are home.
I need a few moments to myself because it's difficult to deal with humans. 
It's weird but I'd rather have pets than people around.

So it goes. Sigh on the double. 
I so need to see..
to hear..
to love..
be loved..

do you know? of course you do. 

Early morning and now

More meal

And lunch.
More like breakfast for lunch but what of it?
Amped up upma with carrots, beans, mung bean sprouts and roasted peanuts.

Edible paints

Nothing too arduous.

A light snack post workout because I was hungry and couldn't wait to prepare lunch.
Chopped apples, macerated banana and a rain of cinnamon drowned in homemade soy milk, bejeweled with a ruby crown of plump strawberries.

Fresh fall

It's been snowing and I wanted to capture the fat flakes but apparently the camera cannot see what the eyes can.

Chatty nighttime’s

And so it is decided.
If the cat wakes me up at four, then that's the time I'm up for the day.

First order of business.
-make bread dough.

And life begins after that.
It hasn't stopped snowing and I don't think I'd want to step out for a walk tomorrow morning.
These morning walks are not as consistent as I'd like them to be, but then again they were a replacement for the time I was on ice for my shoulder muscle injury, now that I'm back to working out, these walks have little meaning, but I like being out that early, not least because the cold crispness warms you up because the shivering is cardio enough, but also cuz there are so many old men by the river practicing Tai chi and it's absorbing to watch them do those kung fu exercises in slow motion. It's a lot of practice and an art most elegant and difficult. achieved through years of hard work and training.
The way each leg is lifted in harmony with the movement of waving hands..like a dance and oh so beautiful.

But the way cold has been beating down, one wonders if these walks are that big a necessity.
I mean people do run about, going on their morning running/jogging circuits and those are people who do not miss irrespective of the weather; I am not those people.

And there are many I see daily who never miss because they have a dog, and taking out mutts for walks morn and evening to have them take care of their business is most important..but then I have a cat, who has one way or another pushed odd daily schedules on me, and it's because of that I might end up waking earlier than norm.

Am I displeased? Hell yes.

Would I rather have a cat who isn't nocturnal? Oh yes.

I also see people who leave for long morning walks in morning and evening, and it's a lovely habit to have, though it can only be fit into schedules that aren't nearly as taxing. Not that mine is taxing but I keep immoderately busy.

Right, so if I'm up earlier than early I shall update but I don't think I'll be in a good mood.

Suggestions

Um..uh..okay.
Am I supposed to wash it and keep it my bag after using it?

The one thing if nothing

I've come to this conclusion, and bear with me, that one can dedicate oneself to just the one task at one time. (At least when it comes to me)

Case in point story writing.

I had decided yesterday that today I'd do a bit of bread baking and I'd promised myself that I'd begin kneading the dough sometime before noon so by the time it was evening I could just bung it in the oven and hey presto bread!
I have run out of bread and it was important that I make one.
Right, noon got busy with something else and then it was lunch time after which I sat down to write this story that will probably end this week and then it was evening and no bread.

Now I'm wondering where did that time go, seeing how all my work was done in short bursts of activity throughout the day, there was sometime to get the kneading done, but hey, apparently there wasn't.

That leaves me with mornings to finish such tasks.

Baking bread isn't a big deal, absolutely not, but it's time consuming, in that there's kneading, deflating, proofing etc involved and I don't understand why I couldn't take the time out to do it.
Now I feel horrible thinking about it.

But that's the thing. If I'd gone ahead with the whole baking I wouldn't have had enough time to write on time. I mean I'd still be writing, when in fact I'm already done with dinner.

It's either the case of compartmentalizing my day too stringently, because if it had been fluid I'd not been bothered about anything else other than tasks I'd allotted myself.

But I feel like this happens to me whenever I'm stuck in an activity.
When I'm drawing, then that's all I'm doing. Is difficult to write (stories etc) or involve myself in other activities.

It could be said that one can partake in other activities during breaks, but how does one do that?
I mean I could after a few hours, but I get so desperately fidgety needing to return to whatever I was doing that breaks feel difficult to sit through.

So yes, no bread today.
Will it happen tomorrow?
I'll have to wait and find out.

Engrish

Okay.

amen ice

That it's freezing today, would be a rather restraining way of saying that it's like living inside an iceberg, because currently as I write Shanghai is experiencing something called snow showers and temperatures are going to dip further down, effectively putting an end to all socializing for the moment.
I keep myself cosy with some favourite words and living furs.

hush hush

Days devoid of thought and will. When the existential conundrum drowns you in a bucket of questioning tears. 
The anger, the resentment manifesting itself clear yet saddled with a murky film, because you don't know what aches swell from within.

No reason why you suddenly clutch the corner of a bedsheet and seat yourself down, wrapped in a towel from a bath, sink your face in your palms, crying for no reason at all.
Watching hesitant droplets fall slow on a warm carpet draped around the floor, leaving a little spot where you glide a recently painted toe
and cover up the small moment of inner fragility
to keep yourself from knowing your excessive vulnerability that suddenly walked in this morning to tread over your life, and snatched whatever smile you felt you wanted to hide.

On deficient days of odd invalidity when you find reasons to breathe when isolation is what you seek, yet not even that in finality.

Munch meh

Uninspired lunch, for when you're in no mood for faffing about in the kitchen.
A veggie scramble of 4 egg whites, mushrooms, capsicum, spinach, potato and a small bread, doused liberally with sriracha.

My lunches have seen better days, but then haven't we all?

Little truths

To wake up with a lingering headache that comes not from migraine but tattered sleep.
Half way through the day and I feel the hovering thrum on my head, like a lightweight kraken trying to engulf a boat.

Not that I'm making excuses but it's the cat to blame.
He develops singular eccentric habits every now and then and varies his affliction of nocturnal cruelties on hapless humans.

He'd taken to sleeping each night for the same number of hours without disturbing a soul the past few weeks, but this has decidedly changed because now he's up and about at 4:00 wanting food, after which he wants to play or go out.
The problem is that this little fur fiend likes to do these activities in batches and I keep waking up every few minutes after being cozy, to resolve his needs.
It could be said that I shouldn't listen to him, but he makes it hard not to. From scratching the bed post to walking all over me, to stealing his paw inside the duvet to wake me up.
The only way out for me is to change my wake up timings so I don't have to feel miserable about waking up every small interval.
Instead of being up at 5:45 I should now change my sleep cycle to be up at 4:00 because that's the time after which I find it impossible to get a symmetrical sleep.

I know I know it's ridiculous but I don't see a way out and it doesn't look like it's about to stop anytime soon.
This has been going on for almost ten days now and I can't keep popping in and out of my covers half a dozen times to answer for his meowing.

I mean I locked the bedroom door and let him stay out, but the sorrowful little tiny voices that he emanated from his little person made me feel like a demon.

Sometimes I absolutely hate not being alone.

Hearts

They say ultraviolet is the color of the year.

Cleopatra

Now now cat
is there any reason to look nonchalantly sad?
Do you know it suits you fine
This little forlorn look
That goes perfectly well with mine

Troll days

One of those days when I found myself peeling away from the computer because somehow I couldn't find myself typing on it any longer.
500 words in and my eyes brimmed with tears because today's isn't happening, not by a long stretch.
What day is it even?
Ah Tuesday.
I should've known better.

humph

Is there anything remotely as alluring as procrastination?
Ah, the luxury of not doing all the things one has to do. Something to be said about finding deliverance in the most mundane of things just to keep from doing what really needs to be done.

Today is cancelled. I can't.

agony in cramps, happiness bizarre

You know that cautionary voice? One which whispers from within, often from a cognitive part of your brain telling you not do certain things; like a word of Providence, a foresight.. that voice which was singularly amiss today as I decided to crank up my workout and add pilates to HIIT.

The reasoning was simple. That I needed some extra burnout rounds and do lower body workout slightly different from the usual resistance training and so I hopped on to the Pilates parade, because it's the one form of exercise that slowly burns and tires me in that sneaky way that pilates usually tend to, and I love the results it has to offer, so why not?

I included it to my workout in an AB AB format, where the former being pilates followed by the latter HIIT two times over, and dear gods, each time I'd haul myself off the mat to jump or kill myself in similar ways I'd feel the torture.

It came to a point where I'd developed a very special relationship with the mat and I'd to literally speak my self out of sticking to the floor. Like an inner monologue of reproachful cusses.

I've never known 30 seconds to be so long as when you're doing pulses, it feels like this might be it. This will be the day my hip socket will launch a rebellion..and here's the funny thing about exercising. That once you're done with it and finished a long stretch and cool down, you feel like maybe the workout wasn't as strenuous, of course, the soreness that comes after a while and mostly next day is enough to make you feel silly for such overreaching thoughts.

That cautionary voice does tend to take some time off, usually when I'm making bad decisions.
Will I resort to this workout again?
I think I will. It felt much better than the usual HIIT routines and I like to think I added a bit of variation, but perhaps I won't be jumping into it this week, in fact I might not jump at all this week.

Edible hearts

For when nutrition is just an excuse to indulge.
A bit of a protein overload, with soy soused tofu, like a crisp crown of soft topaz on a bed of fried rice with eggs, oyster mushrooms and peppers .

juggernaut hunger

A low carb diet usually results in feeling hungry all the time, also instrumental in desperate binges and unhealthy grazing.
If restricting carbs then probably go for high volume foods that can fill you up for longer, like having a big bowl of soup/dal apart from the regular meals of vegetables and proteins, or including vegetables in curry style recipe to increase the amount of volume of food per meal.

Making fruit smoothies is also a great way of increasing the volume of food than just having a plate of some fruits, especially for breakfast; this will increase the number of fruits you ingest in one go. Adding a banana with another easily blendable fruit to a plate of papaya or adding some peanut butter to the smoothie can also help in feeling fuller for longer.

There's nothing tailor-made about these recipes, but just upping the portion of meals by adding another (protein) element can help in better satiation.

Ω

There are moments of self-imposed silence that help keep you from venting idiocy as sometimes can be the case with most people, as was certainly the case with me.

To restrict a slew of undesirable phrenetic declamations and irrationally odious tirade that wouldn't be recited in that sweetly acerbic sarcastic spiel you know me for, I felt best to stay sheltered under shadows of calming solitude, that though trivially assuaging the odd hurt that came from within did remarkably well to singularly uplift the rationale I occasionally keep flinging into the abyss.

It was mindless anger, more like ridiculous exasperation at not being able to disassociate desires from certain inescapable truths and the guilt of deceptively tunnelling through those realities, turning a blind eye to the verity of it all.

I am only human after all, with limited unhoned abilities to disembody certain facts from hopeful fiction, and there are moments of weakness that range from silent whispers to robust compulsions that often derail me from a predetermined resolution. 

Yes, there's pain. It flares and ebbs. gets forgotten and stays, but it's fine because it's mine and I'm okay with that.

Lunch hunch

It might not win any awards at a beauty contest but if we talk strictly taste then this bowl of sweet potato noodles draped in tofu, oyster mushrooms and vegetable broth is a titillating manna of post workout meals, not least because it's low in fat and sodium but also because it's up there in umami flavours that mingle to form a savory marriage of balanced flavours.

It’s not you it’s me.

But when you're scattered everywhere it's hard not to..

Snack attack

Afternoon snacks and caffeine love.
Bowlful of succulent cherries, blushing strawberries and a few dates with a small cup of steaming coffee.

self love and stupidity.

There's been a sort of surge for self-love theory, almost a deluge with the evolution of internet and youtube videos.

In a way, it's great to always love yourself to keep away from the negativity or self-harm and feeling isolated. Often times we tend to blame ourselves for a lot of wrongs in life and to be able to love yourself keeps you from feeling like a stigma one wrongly interprets themselves to be, and I'm not talking about that part at all. 

This post is about the different sort of loving yourself that is promoted heavily through Instagrams and youtube videos of people either differently abled or those who come in different shapes and sizes.

People who're especially called 'fat' and made fun of (apparently) and who've come out with a vengeance with this message to 'love yourself' no matter what. 

Now here's the thing about always loving yourself and being okay with whatever you are and making peace with yourself and the skin you're in and that is it will always keep you from working hard towards your goals if it lets you make goals in the first place that is.
  
I'm not saying that it keeps you from getting successful, of course not because that has nothing to do with the shape of your body, but say, you're unable to function full well in social settings and are afraid to make certain leaps in your life that keep you from achieving life goals and yet you feel that it's alright, and it's more important to love yourself rather than make that leap towards success, then you need a brain check because you're deluding yourself.

The same thing applies to all facets of life, even if it's as small as making lifestyle changes to get in a better, fitter shape. 
I mean this in no bad way, but most women promoting this theory are ones that are morbidly obese and with makeup channels.
They talk about how they've always been called fat and ugly and that now they've made peace with themselves, all the time while shellacking pots of makeup on their face, resulting in a face that looks nothing like their real selves.
One could argue that if you love yourself so much then there's no need to hide behind a kabuki mask of makeup, but then again it could be argued that it's their hobby and helps them feel confident etc., and now my gripe with this. 

If only you could lessen with the self-love and begin berating yourself every now and then you could make remarkable changes to yourself. 

You don't always have to be encouraged to do something, but sometimes need a bit of self-criticism to help you go that extra step which you otherwise wouldn't in a self-pamper session. And I don't say this just in terms of getting fit, but for almost everything you try to do with your life.

It's okay to be lazy, but never alright to give up, because that is defeating yourself.

Instead of telling yourself that it's okay to give up, you need to find a way to slap that thought, rebuke your idiotic thinking and carry one with whatever it is that you were /are doing. 

Self-love is fine as long as you're taking out time to blister your vanity and break the thin walls of excuses you've built around yourself.

π

Whenever someone's playing dead in a movie I closely stare at their chest and abdomen and watch for their signs of breathing.
Bit of a bummer thing to do, but can one help it?

arghh

Why do kids feel the need to poop minuted after coming into my house?
I mean do your business in your house. considering your house is just next door. I mean what?

And how many times do I have to tell them to flush once they're done and wash their hands?
goddamit!! I don't love kids.

¶

Who me?
I'm a refresh monster.
currently hungry, starving even..

nod to noodles and Monday rants

A recent jaunt to a Thai restaurant left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Not least because the food was only average and the services below par but also because they managed to botch an all-time favourite and Thai essential 'pad thai noodles', and my absolute lovely 'pad see ew' and dear oh dear how they ruined it.
Needless to say, the entire experience was rather unsatisfactory and I have blacklisted that restaurant, and never again shall I enliven their doors with my presence again; the story, however, doesn't end there.
I decided to give my own spin on these noodles with my own rendition, seeing how I had these noodles and almost all ingredients to make up for the bad taste, and today, for lunch I readied myself with the ingredients.
I'm no novice to noodles. Having cooked all shapes and forms of almost all types of noodles I didn't think cooking these flat rice noodles would be a challenge, when in fact I have cooked similar flat rice noodles before.
So I set about with my cooking paraphernalia. Boiling water and what not and here's the thing, after I'd submerged the said noodles in the pot of boiling water I checked on them after a few minutes, only to find them a hard as a spine, and most odd this. So anyway I let them cook for a few minutes more, and there wasn't much change in their texture.
Needless to say, I had to cook those babies for almost 40 minutes to get the required soft chewy consistency and texture that is most desirable in pad thai noodles.
Now, here's why I was so surprised because these noodles take hardly any time to cook. I mean I don't have to let them boil for over 3-4 minutes and yet these particular ones seemed adamant about exhausting my patience reserve.
How disconcerting.

I don't know what the reason was but the end result was satisfactory, to say the least.
I ate a rather big bowl of pad see ew but not once did I stop wondering about these noodles that took forever to cook.
Perhaps they were a different brand? in fact, they came in a clear plastic bag with no name, so really they didn't belong to any brand as such.
Maybe they were a different form of rice noodles, or maybe they were a local version that didn't adhere to regular rice noodle norms.

Next time when I cook them, I'd perhaps try soaking them in water a few hours before cooking.

With/without

Translator thug

What on earth is that exactly?

Morning shades

Now here's the thing about sleeping late..that you wake up late and not that it's a problem on weekends but when there're just the two days of relaxation you want to grab every second of it.
For some reason I've always found myself waking up early on weekends without the clamoring ache that plagues me on waking up early on weekdays.
Right, so I slept late. How late?
Around 1:00am and woke up around 9:00am gasps!

I don't know why I ended up watching Scarface and watched it regaling in every scene like it was the first time I ever saw that movie.
So yeah, that and I ended up sleeping oh so late and waking up oh so late.
I sped up with the morning routines like a tape on fast forward.
Cleaning, dusting, vacuuming, mopping, polishing and now I sit here, contemplating bath and lunch.

I'll tell you what I don't feel like doing right now and that is cooking something because I haven't stopped working ever since I woke up and now I look at kitchen like the enemy that it isn't, but sometimes does take on a rather inimical hue.
Oh yes, I also baked bread this morning, so add that to the list of madness I suffered through.

Now I'm tired, just three hours after being awake. No, not really tired, but just jaded.

Dinner diner

Pizza because Friday because why not?
homemade of course, because always.

Enzymatic cleaner