Coleslaw and Carnivorous Me.

I love eating (who doesn't?) and I am a passable cook myself. Usually I prepare food for myself and seldom cook for others. This is because I hate to listen people criticizing my dishes. My friends who had the fortune to taste my food know to keep the comments to themselves (I am infamous for being brutal to unwanted critics). Hey, I never said I am an amazing chef! That's why humbly I admit I am only passable. 

Maybe because I am more interested in easy food preparations. Can't understand why we need to slave hours at the stove and oven. It's hot over there!

 I cannot say I love western food that much. But once in a while I made coleslaw out of scratch. The one in KFC is rather good and I was inspired to make it better by adding more stuff that I like. White cabbage, carrots and mayo might be the usual ingredients, but I added bellpepper, cherry tomatoes and onion. I also substituted the regular mayo with the Japanese one (Japanese soy sauce and mayo taste a lot better than regular, try them).

So that's why my coleslaw looks way more colourful. Once I tried purple cabbage, and found out while the stuff is more expensive, the taste remains the same. So why bother? 

 I love meat. I could have it with everything (except cakes, that would be silly). Beef, veal, mutton, lamb, buffalo, yum! (I don't do pork or any of its derivatives because I am a Muslim). 

Every month I'd buy a huge hunk of meat from Tesco, and sometimes snatch some bargained portions too, and these usually would be cooked the same day. I'd cut the huge piece of meat into portions that I can cook later and freeze them. 

Slowcook, soup, stirfry, with veges, with pasta, in chilli, (Not roasted though, because amazingly I don't have an oven) I put meat in anything I fancy. I do love my meat to be a bit raw, because that's the second point I like about meat, other than the taste - its texture. (So I am so perplexed WHY people overcooked their meat till the meat falls off the bone / butter-soft / fork-tender?!! Why don't you just put it in the blender and obliterate it to mush instead?)

I love my carbs to be overcooked though.

Anyway, the pieces of meat above were drenched in lime juice. I read it somewhere that this is a way to preserve without refrigeration, and tenderize the meat a bit. Before cooking, I have to wash the pieces of meat or they will taste bitter. [Anyway, it does work. The acidity in the lime stop microorganisms dead] 

And this artery clogging meal above is actually a rarity. I had some lamb in the freezer and decided to have a fry up. I added some sliced raw onion and a huge dollop of the coleslaw I made. From the crusts in the pan, I made some gravy with black pepper. 

Notice the black steak knife. I have it for several years and even bring it whenever I try steaks outside. (I was never satisfied with the knives provided, they are either dull or just flimsy. Once I got a butter knife to eat my steak with! Steaks are still new in the food scene here).

p.s. - I am not very adventurous with my food, and prefer to stick to the same dishes, even when ordering in restaurants. Maybe because most of the time when I tried something new, I was a bit disappointed with the taste. Yes, i am judgemental, and i don't want people to judge my food too. Hahahahaha!

Discipline and A Hair Cut

Being a discipline teacher means you must be extra vigilant and more fierce than the rest of the teachers. Who ever heard of a KIND and LOVING discipline teacher? I strongly believe discipline and academic success go side by side. A trained mind can achieve almost anything it focuses on.

Before this, I taught at a regular secondary school some 20 km away from my house. There, the students came from all walks of life and the near distance of the school to town made many students rowdier than most. It was quite hard to uphold the law when lawlessness was an easier and more fun. 

(Un)fortunately I was born evil. And my deepest desire is always to dominate, to control people, making they obey and accept their station. You can call me ultra bossy. But the thing is... I don't like being the boss, I just like to control people.

And that made me a VERY good discipline teacher. I enjoy the mind games with these convicts, I mean students. I use negative reinforcement strategy to cause fear, and psychology is so much fun! 

Yes, that may sound disturbing for parents. But nobody ever said teaching and working with people is easy. I came from a boarding school with iron rules. I obeyed them and I acknowledged its results. Spare the rod, and we shall expect you to have a spawn of hell soon (in many cases I witnessed). Cancer must be nipped at its bud etc etc.

Anyway, I single-handedly reduced the number of discipline cases by more than half when I was there, even though I was not even a discipline teacher  (the actual discipline teacher was an attention seeking woman who held the position just because of the title).

So here I am now, after more than a year in a better school (the crime rate was so low, I was a bit bored because of no challenge). These photos was taken yesterday during an inspection of the students hair. There were about 20 students with hair a bit longer than the approved length and I snipped their hair with a pair of scissors.

The woman next to me is the school counselor and we do have a lot of talk regarding how to improve the overall discipline of the students.  

If you ask if a bit of hair is enough? You haven't seen what I did to the extremely long ones, I actually shaved parts of their head only! A school is a place to study, if they wanna do high fashion they can join any modelling agency.

p.s. - I was brutal, even to a discipline teacher standard. But many teachers are still surprised that students flocked around me during free time. Maybe the love oozed through? I can only assume they are attracted to the fascination which is me :P

Tuberculosis, Duck Faces and Mega Coffee

It has been sometime I lost contact with a good friend of mine who lives in the next state (two months I think). And last week I found out that he had been admitted into the hospital because of tuberculosis, that severe lung infection. With the school recently open, I was unable to set some time to meet him (I would be too tired to drive far after a tiring day at work).

Today, a few friends and I promised to give him a visit.

A couple of my friends who spent the night in my living room. I have a guest room, with a spare bed at the back of my house, but they prefer to sleep in the front. Witness how my teddy bear was choked during sleep. This is already 8 a.m. in the morning.  

 I was surprised when my sick friend instructed us to wear masks when in the same room as him. Then I remembered that tuberculosis (T.B) is a highly infectious disease. So everybody wears a mask. See the masks... they looked like duck beaks! I wore mine for five minutes and took it off because I could not breathe easily. My friends kept wearing theirs though... 

 This is my sick friend. He was very very ill before, and is way better now. In fact, days ago he was unconscious and in a very bad place. We are very happy that he is recovering well. At the time we arrived, he was about to start eating his hospital lunch, which is rather unappetizing for me (boiled vegetables and a boiled egg with some gravy). 

 We bought him some sweetened bread and he said he cannot eat them. So I took half of them back. We left after an hour an a half, me still not wearing the mask. We were required to wash our hands with soap or disinfectants outside his room.

I am so sorry that we cannot come much earlier. I am so sad that a friend had to be too ill to contact his loved ones. Hope you recover soon Noorfairul Faizal :)

We will walk and talk together soon.

I have to include this picture of the biggest cup I ever seen and bought. On our way back, we stopped at a food court and I saw a small stall selling hazelnut coffee milk. While my other friends had their lunch, I only have this to sip / drink / quaff. This cup is almost 4 times bigger than Starbucks' and 3 times cheaper! Yay to enterprising new businesses!! 

And a friend is generous enough to give us 28 grams of Calvisius caviar to take home. We finished the entire stuff in one seating, with rice! Hahaha!

p.s. - I don't post pics of my own face this time because there were none that are worth posting. pity me :(

New Year New Sinks! Yay!

I have some minor renovations around my house at the end of 2015. I have been living in this house since 2009 (even though I had it much earlier) and I thought it was high time to do something to the house. FYI, my house and the one next to me are the only houses untouched by renovations. (I consider when you renovate a house, you either enlarge it or do something drastic to its appearance). Changing a sink is NOT a major renovation in my book.

 I love cooking, and the two housemates I am living with now can cook too (usually when I ask them to). Our kitchen is not that large and look at the original sink, which is attached to the wall with strong adhesive. I want a bigger, shinier sink and I bought the one you see on the floor next to the yellow shirt fellow (he is the boss of this outfit, I got him from my mom, who had MAJOR renovations made for her three houses). Yes, THREE, be amazed folks!

 They had some steel rods installed, made some makeshift moulds and poured concrete and cement... The place was rather dusty because of the initial drilling. And the noise! Talking about someone drilling indoors! With you inside.  

 When the cement was drier, its time for the tiles. The man was nice enough to find brown marble to match my floor and walls, WITHOUT consulting me. Oh well, as he and his crew are courteous enough, I don't really mind as long as the work finished on time, and of high quality. 

And this is the finished counter and sinks! I am not apologizing for the clutter because my mom told me a messy kitchen is a working kitchen, and not for show.

(She is rather spot on. A few times long before this, I sighed looking at the mess around my house. And lo and behold, an epiphany struck me! God gave me enough money to buy stuff, a lot of stuff. So why and what am I being ungrateful for?)

Moral of the story; be thankful when you have a mess, because you CAN afford it :)