Day 304 - 'Just because' flowers

I always laugh when the mailroom guys call me to say "Sammie, there's a very urgent delivery here for you in the mailroom. Can you come and collect it as soon as you can", because that's their way of saying "You got flowers".

From time to time Brett likes to send me 'just because' flowers that are accompanied with a note that usually reads along the lines of "I hope these bring a smile to your face". Thanks babe - you made today's post a super easy one!

Day 303 - The lightsaber laser pointer

I bought a new laser pointer for Snowflake today as she has exhausted the batteries of all 3 laser pointers I have around the apartment, and for some reason I can never find coin cell batteries...?!

But looking at the illustrations on the side of the box the laser pointer came in, I was almost confused that I had bought a lightsaber instead.

I mean, clearly the pictures are illustrating that you can use the laser pointer like a lightsaber to:

1. Get rid of cobwebs, especially when unexpected guests drop by
2. Fight clone troopers
3. Look cool at a rave party
4. Poke people in the colon


5. Give to your baby to fight off those sneaky floating pagodas
6. .....Poke big hard rocks while wearing your flowy robe? Or to cast spells on cave squatters while wearing your flowy robe??? 
7. ...Fight... bushfires?
8. Attack those pesky upside down monorails (they exist!)

Day 302 - Coffee, fatty bacon, poorly photoshopped cat wrapping paper, job title: rock star, some stage of Project Home

On this beautiful sunny Sunday I...

...let out a heavy sigh. Oh coffee how I love you so, don't ever leave me.

...had a healthy dose of mushrooms and fatty bacon. ALL THAT TASTY CRISPY BACON FAT OMG

...giggled hysterically at this wrapping paper of a bunch of poorly photoshopped kittens that all look very sad to be put together. (Of course I bought it, it was only $1!!!)

...laughed and wished that I could put down 'rock star' as my job title.

...completed stage err I don't know 30? 500?! of Project Home. Yay!

Day 301 - Kawa

Kawa (chicken skin that is charcoal grilled until crispy) at Maedaya. This is the kinda stuff I dream about.

Day 299 - Snowflake the ninja

Snowflake sleeps with one eye open like a ninja!

Day 298 - My second fried rice is even better

So following my first surprisingly successful attempt at fried rice, I decided to give fried rice a second go. I'm now convinced that fried rice is the best method of making sure I'm eating between 3 to a gazillion types of vegetables. This time I threw in green beans, mushrooms, corn, carrots, potato and peas.

Before I cooked up a batch large enough to serve a village of starving children tonight, I actually caught up with Chan over a drink after work. At the mention of fried rice (our conversational topics range from Rihanna's vajayjay to fried rice to The Notebook), he started dropping fried rice cooking tips like it's hot. He gasped when I took him through my previous fried rice cooking process, and felt he had to share these - leave the wok for a good few minutes to heat up so that it gets really really hot before adding in the oil (but he felt inclined that he had to tell me to not leave it for so long that I am sure I can see the wok smoking, fearing that I will follow his instructions to a tee and get the house burned down); cook the eggs in the same wok, no need to cook them in a separate pan and then slice them up (he shook his head at the mention of this - "Why Sammie why???").

So I took on his advice, and you know what... my second fried is even better than the first! The eggs were so fluffy!


Thanks Chan. My parents would be so proud that their little girl can now cook fried rice.

And to go with my fried rice, I whipped up the wickedest, most fiery and spicy batch of sambal belacan I ever did whip. I'm talking hot today, diarrhoea tomorrow kinda spicy.

Sambal belacan has a very special place in my heart. The start to finish of it - from the solid slab of pungent belacan that smells like salty smelly shoes (or like prawns have been swimming in your smelly running shoes), to the charry aroma it fills the house with when you toast it in a pan, to how mouth-wateringly delicious the belacan becomes when it meets with pieces of fiery, juicy chillies in the mortar and pestle. A touch of sugar and a light squeeze of lime and SWOON. The flavours are unreservedly Penang. Sambal belacan IS Penang. To me, along with assam laksa and hokkien mee and char koay teow, sambal belacan is home.

And yeah, it's goddamn spicy and the heat does something batshit crazy to you, but that's the best part. I sweat like a pig on heat, my eyes water, my face turns red and pale at the same time, I pant and make a strange groan after each bite, my lips feel like they're on fire and I get the WORST chilli burns all over my hands.

And after all this - at the end of the meal, you'll always hear us spice-lovers go, "Oh my god that was so hot but sooo good!"

I think Anthony Bourdain summed it up best by describing it as "a wonderfully sadomasochistic interplay between pleasure and pain".

Day 297 - My hungry rice cooker

I don't know how I've never noticed this until today, but my rice cooker has a face?! And it looks hungry!

Day 292 - Reason #4 why I love Snowflake

Sometimes she likes to pretend to be a decorative object.

Day 291 - Sheep alpaca, nice email, cute stuff at Daiso, Frankie's 50th issue and being catnapped on

Here are a few things that made my heart sing today:

1. Hahahahaha this kills me.



2. Getting this in an email from someone lovely at work just about made my day too.
   


3. Daiso, you and your abundance of cute stuff kill me.

I mean, you can buy chair socks here. Chair socks!!



4. Wooooooooow I wish I had taken the plastic wrapper off my Frankie magazine sooner, their cover for their 50th issue is INCREDIBLE and easily the most amazing cover I've ever seen. It looks stitched - it feels stitched - but it's not stitched. I can't stop touching it!
   


5. Shhhh Snowflake's sleeping. She pinned me down to make sure I couldn't go anywhere awww.
   

Day 289 - "I'm going home now" and smiling cucumber and bag

1. Felix Baumgartner, Austrian skydiver and BASE jumper, broke several world records today by free falling from an altitude of about 39 kilometres. It takes a certain kind of crazy, stubborn and brave character to achieve this incredible feat - I love that he said "I'm going home now" right before leaping off the capsule. As he said, "When you stand up there on top of the world, you become so humble. It’s not about breaking records any more. It’s not about getting scientific data. It’s all about coming home." Watch the video of the jump and read more about it on Gizmodo.


2. This is really silly, but my friend Becky posted this photo with the caption "THE CUCUMBER IS SMILING" on Facebook and it just about made my day.
   
   Then I saw this in an email.
   
   THE BAG IS SMILING.

Day 288 - Special delivery of macarons

Joanne dropped by unexpectedly tonight with some macarons from Adelaide's The Mac Factory.

My friends make me fat, but I love them for it!

Day 285 - Ice cream on a bad day

There's no way to sugar-coat this - today was a shit day.

It all started when I woke up feeling unsettled, unrested, annoyed and exhausted. Then hours later I got a call from a cunning elderly woman who wanted to sell me income protection. I know I probably brought this onto myself due to my stupidity as I usually politely answer a few questions when I get these calls as I somehow feel bad for them, but man this woman was a sly old coyote.. after answering a gazillion questions, before I knew it, she was asking me for my credit card details?!

That was when I cracked it. I lost my shit. I don't lose my shit very often and I don't like it when I do - it's like I'm possessed! My crazy angry eyes take over, my tone hardens, it feels like my heart's caught in my throat, I get light headed and I lose control over what I say, heck most of the time I don't even know what I hurl out of my mouth, but usually it's along the lines of "now you listen to me...". But it seemed to do the trick. She thanked me for my time. Goddammit I need to remember to hang up straight away next time.

The rest of the day didn't get any better. There was so much work to do, and a work colleague was being so snarky, condescending and self-righteous that I was so close to losing my shit again. But I managed to hold it together this time. I couldn't wait to get home so that I could give Snowflake a hug (which I did when I saw her sitting by the door waiting for me, and during a melodramatic moment I asked her to never leave me).

So on a crappy day like today, how do I cheer myself up?

Sometimes I indulge in some retail therapy, usually on ridiculously priced clothing or random crap I don't need. Sometimes I buy flowers for myself. Other times I crank up some music and dance and shimmy the badness away.

And sometimes I eat ice cream. Lots of ice cream.

It worked a treat!

Day 283 - My first fried rice

This may come as a surprise because err I'm Asian, but I have never made fried rice before... until today!

I've always thought of fried rice as one of those dishes that requires way too much effort to cook due to all the chopping up, and is too cheap and easy just to buy from the shops. And as sad as this sounds, I've also secretly been intimidated by fried rice (of all things!) - supposedly anyone can make fried rice, but to make really good fried rice apparently involves more than just chucking a bunch of stuff into a wok, and actually requires some skill (gasp).

But I thought I should at least try to be a real Asian and give it a go, plus I had Michelle's home-grown snow peas I had to use up, so I made an 8-veggie (snow peas, mushrooms, green beans, corn, carrots, peas, zucchini and celery) fried rice with bacon (to balance out the veggies). It actually turned out surprisingly well!

I also prepared some sambal belacan to accompany it..

Because everything tastes even more awesome with sambal!

Day 282 - It didn't rain

I checked the weather forecast this morning, and it was supposedly going to rain in Melbourne this afternoon. In fact, it was looking to be a rainy week ahead. On my way to work I counted 6 other people carrying umbrellas.

But it didn't rain. Instead, it was sunny, 18 degrees and beautiful.

I think Snowflake was expecting rain as well!

Day 280 - Sleeping in, Sambag x Lynette Wills ballet flats and salted egg crab at Omah's

Here are a few things that put a smile on my dial today:

1. Being able to sleep in! Oh gosh it's been many, many weeks since I've been able to sleep in. The simple act of not having to set the alarm, not having to check for time and to be able to blissfully continue lying in bed knowing you don't need to be somewhere - moments like these need to be appreciated more often. 


2. These gorgeous ivory and black french lace Sambag ballet flats designed by Lynette Wills, former principal artist of the Australian Ballet, part of the limited edition Swan Lake Collection. Love!



3. Salted egg crab and a fresh coconut at Omah's is always a winner.

Day 279 - Bibs and hysterics

I love..

...bibs. I wish every place would give out bibs!

...how serious conversations can end with me in a fit of uncontrollable laughing. We were walking down the street as Brett tried to explain how he hadn't been able to sleep for the past few nights. Somewhere amongst his reenactment of the screaming woman next door that was either having lots of fun or being murdered, the crazy possums outside his window that sounded like Predator (complete with 'clicking' sounds) and made him think aliens were invading, to his projectile vomiting from bad pasta, I lost it and was in hysterics!

Day 278 - Melbourne's quirkiness

Jon and I got another amazing coffee this morning from our now favourite haunt (yes we are coffee whores), The League of Honest Coffee. Generally, these guys make pretty awesome coffee. But when they have a really good coffee day like Tuesday and today, one sip and my knees goes weak! Oh my!

Steps away from The League's doorstep, we spotted a face. Yay!

But then a few more steps away from there, we came across this. No-yay! This is some sick shit right here. It's hard to see from this photo, but dangling off each handle bar is a baby doll's arm. Seriously disturbingly creepy. It looks possessed. And why are there cushions?!

But today was a lovely sunny day that reached a top of 29 degrees. We haven't had such warm weather for as long as I can remember, and when the weather's this nice it's easy to forget about disturbing bicycles with dismembered doll parts sticking out, but embrace it as part of Melbourne's quirkiness, along with its great coffee, many hidden faces in places, and bipolar weather that draws throngs of girls out in short shorts when it decides to shower us with some sunshine.

Day 277 - Why I love Snowflake reason #12

Reason #12 why I love Snowflake:

She gets herself into strange spots like in between my back and my chair's back, and pretends to look comfortable in awkward positions.

Day 276 - Kitten lost in a husky and gadgets with faces

I started my day right when Soon Yang sent me this keyuuuuute picture:

Source: 9GAG

Then Brett sent me the article of 19 Gadgets With Happy and Sad Faces that just made my day!! My favourite is:

Source: plindberg

I love that there are so many crazies out there that derive so much joy from faces in places!

Day 275 - Guy carrying a giant rilakkuma

How often do you see a dude carrying a huge rilakkuma down the street?!