Songs On High Rotation At The Mo...

Mooncakes, Mooncakes and More Mooncakes...

It's Mid Autumn Festival tonight, one of me favourite Chinese festivals. Why? Because I love me some mooncakes.. in this case lots of mooncakes.. nom nom nom... my waistline is expanding fast because mooncakes are made with yummilicious lard.

First up, I had the "snow-skin" taro paste mooncake... snow skin because it's eaten cold and the pastry is not baked...

Innards shot with the rich salty egg yolk... this was alright, the taro was fragrant.

Next up, I had the traditional baked pastry with red bean filling.. Yum, I can never say no to red bean. An oldie but definitely a goodie. Probably my favourite out of the lot. What can I say? Deep down, I'm a girl with simple tastes.... deep deeeeeeeep down.

My boss's dad makes mooncakes so he's been bringing them to work to share with us. Check out my favourite cup at work in the background. I pretend I'm drinking beer far far away from work when I drink out of this cup. Not that I drink beer in real life. Fantasy, people!

Pastry was a bit too crunchy for mooncakes but it's a DIY mooncake so I was happy enough chomping down on it.

This was your run-of-the-mill baked pastry lotus filling mooncake with a single egg yolk. Way too oily. Didn't like it at all. It came in a cute little box though as you can kinda see in the background.

Now you might ask yourself, What happened to the obligatory sliver on the side of the mooncake? I'll tell you what. After dinner I said to Viv, hey shall we cut open the Japanese potato snow skin mooncake with custard? She then confessed that she had already had some earlier that day!! To add insult to injury, she cut it really messily so it looked darn unattractive... sigh. Anyway, I've decided I'm really not a fan of snow skin. I prefer more traditional mooncakes. The custard lent a really European dessert feel to the mooncake. Me no likey.

This was Raspberry and Blueberry Snowskin mooncake. I was going to cut into this tomorrow but then I thought I better do it now while it was still perfect... or Viv might decide to cut into it while she was sitting at home tomorrow... bahahaha... this was nice.

Last but not least, Viv went on a rampage today and bought 12 mooncakes today as they've gone on sale and Jenn asked her to get some. This was the durian snowskin mooncake.

Smelt disgusting. Viv's fiance scoffed them down.

That's all for now.

When I Say Jump, You Say How High?

Funny story that happened the other day...

Both of my older sisters have an unhealthy obsession with Sid Dicken tiles... not just any Sid Dicken tiles either, retired ones thank you very much. Apparently, there's some very obscure investment value in them. Hey whatever works. That's what I tell myself too when I hand over my credit card to buy designer handbags. Haha.

Anyhoo, Monica emailed me and said SD has retired some of his tiles and to inform her if Smithys has a sale because they stock SD. Now amazingly enough, there was a cardholders' VIP 20% off that night. I replied and said nah no sale sorry. Background : Monica lives in Melbourne. Anytime she sends instructions to help her buy stuff is bad news for my arm muscles when it comes time to travel to Melbourne. But damn my conscience, I confessed an hour later. So she sent me a list of 6 tiles to buy.

I printed off the email complete with printshots of what the tiles look like and battled peak hour traffic and a front the size of Australia which was passing through NZ to get to Smithy in time to buy these frivolous tiles. Monica gave me these explicit instructions - make sure they are perfect or get new ones ordered in. Now SD tiles all have that antiquey broken look to them so how am I supposed to know if that is a flaw or deliberate? The salesgirl went off to find the remaining 3 while leaving me 3 to inspect. I decided they all looked the same to me and frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. Haha.

The saleslady came back and told me she'll have to order the other 3 as they don't have them in stock. I said to her, would you mind terribly ordering all 6? These are for my sister and she is super picky. The saleslady immediately pointed to the sender's email address on the piece of paper and said "Is this her?". I said yes. She said oh I know her (with this stricken and fearful look on her face.. ok I kid), ok ok I'll order them in.

To be fair, i think she is thinking of Mel as Monica has the same initials as Mel. Haha.. Dr Hii's fearful reputation precedes her once again.

PS: Lin and Here, is the pic above the equivalent of porn for the two of you? heheh...

Things I Would Swap My Left Kidney For...

Phillip Lim Heels

Alexander McQueen Heels

Yves Saint Laurent Strappy Suede and Elastic Ankle Boots

Dsquared Nappa Spine Heel Ankle Boots

Yves Saint Laurent Tribtoo Printed Calf Hair Pumps

Sigh, shoe porn is the best! Hang on... no, food porn is the best. No, shoe porn.. food, shoe, food, shoe. Decisions, decisions.

Devour, Wellington On A Plate 2010

Went to Wellington for their food festival, Wellington On A Plate in August. This is a 3 week long event where many restaurants took part and offer 2 or 3 courses for $35 or thereabouts + wine. I went to the opening night event with a mate and it was great. Maybe not exactly worthy of the price it charged but still good nonetheless. There was a table there where the people had serious photography equipment. I wondered if one of them is the blogger whose food blog i read everyday. Sure enough, she was. I can't do the photos justice the way she can or be arsed to wax lyrical about the night like she does so do me a favour and go read her entry here and pretend that I wrote it heheh www.grabyourfork.blogspot.com/2010/09/devour-wellington-on-plate.html.

I will post some photos of the night and a video of the tenors singing later on. I didn't take that many photos because I was frustrated with the fairy lights and I wasn't using manual mode on my camera then. Oh and a few amusing stories of the (stranger) dude that sat next to me on the night.

Who's A Clever Bunny Then?

Aucklanders have been very crabby lately because of the big hoopla over the number of fines being issued to motorists who accidentally turned into Grafton Bridge and/or jumped into the bus lanes too quickly to make a legitimate left turn. NZ Herald jumped in and stirred the pot some more with allegations of revenue gathering, police not doing their jobs of catching crooks but instead focussing on moolah, etc etc.

Anyhoo, Mum and Dad were visiting a couple of months back when this was going on. Can you guess where this is going? Dad accidentally drove into Grafton Bridge because he didn't know anything about the new bylaws. So they got their photo taken by the &$&&*( parking attendant who was waiting in the bushes. I had to listen to Mum and Dad for days about whose fault it was that they copped a $150 parking ticket.

The ticket came in the mail and I was going to write a letter to try to get out of it but then it mysteriously disappeared. I texted Fiona and she had taken it to be paid! Whaaaat... hold your horses there. So I wrote a (nice) letter to council explaining that Dad is a perfectly good driver who knows NZ laws well but he lives overseas so does not know about the new law re the bridge. I didn't hear anything back and rung them up on the day the ticket needed to be paid. The lady said the matter was "on hold".

Today, I got an email asking for Dad's overseas address so that they can consider the request for cancellation of the ticket. So I supplied them with Dad's office address in Sibu. I also said c/- his law firm. Oooops I thought, what if they decide that Dad should cop it since he's a lawyer and ignorance is definitely not an excuse.

Anyway, I got a reply pretty much straight away saying the ticket has been cancelled. Wohooo who rocks the most?? I do. And I didn't even have to pull out the "I'm Dr Hii and I'm not happy" routine, Mel. Hohoho. Hey Mum, that $150 will now be called "22's Shopping Fund".

Photography Class

So I bought a new camera a few months ago because the old Sony point and shoot died a slow and agonising death. I bought a Canon G11 which is a lot more complex and have just been taking photos using the automatic modes. This kinda defeats the purpose of upgrading to a better camera so I decided to attend one of those photography night classes. Twas excellent. I now shoot manually and without flash 100% of the time. Impressed, much?

So basically we just go around the high school where the classes took place and try to take photos while applying the theory the dude has taught us that night.

Ahhh high school toilets.. doesn't this bring back memories? Hands up if you were nosy and read the scribbles on cubicle walls. For a good time, call XXX ??

We were told to incorporate lines into photographs where possible as it leads the eye somewhere. I like this shot.

This was taken in near darkness and without flash. Even I am impressed.

Here I'm trying to focus on the background while shooting through steel bars.. the blurry effect of the foreground was pretty cool I thought.

The teacher wanted us to catch motion in our photographs so he had to keep running past our cameras... haha I felt like paparazzi. This was the only one out of the ten or so I took where I managed to get him completely in the frame.

This was pretty cool too... blurry motion is captured while an object is totally in focus, ie the camera. Completely by accident though.

Took lots of pictures to practice my new found skills and this is one I really like. The big ring in the foreground is special to me. Mum bought it when she was pregnant with me in London. I stole it off her after having had my eye on it for as long as I can remember haha. Mum and Dad were dirt poor in London and Mum became pregnant with me!! She then found 80 pounds on the ground somewhere which was a fortune 33 years ago. What did she do with the money? Bought bling of course!! Like mother like daughter!

Went food shopping today and I found blood oranges in the new asian vege shop I went to. I was so impressed! Anyway what better way to show my excitement than with a blog entry?? Here I'm trying to blur the foreground while keeping the background in focus... yay I finally did it..

And the opposite.... poor orange has very bad pores.

The bloody innards...

Money well spent, methinks. One of Mel's friends expressed admiration for my photography skills at Andrew's dinner last week. Hohooo I rock.