Yay! I'm going to watch Avenue Q.Can't wait. Hope it won't be a disappointment. Now I'm all stoked up to go watch another musical that's coming to SF: Billy Elliot. I hope campus life is going to organise a group to go see it together. I suspect they have a broadway thing once every term.

I shifted back to my dorm yesterday. Sigh...I'm going to miss Ingleside. I came back to the city and straight away was greeted by noise pollution from the traffic and shouting drunkards. Plus homeless people at every traffic light when you are waiting to cross the street. And my apartment is like a miniature version of the Ingleside house. Hopefully I can find somewhere there to stay in Summer onwards when my contract with the dorm expires. What I like particularly about Ingleside is that you can walk to the beach, or park (there are many) and can see the sunrise and sunset.

Sunrise. Sometimes I purposely wake up early to catch it.
Lake Merced. Good for jogging around.
And after passing Lake Merced, I can go to Fort Funston. It's this area with natural scrub and the seashore next to it. Lots of people bring their dogs to play there. I've seen some crazy people surfing there as well although it's considered dangerous because of the strong currents and cold water.


There is a mixture of white and black sand on the beach. I was wondering what that was, but after putting my camera case on the ground, I think I found out. The black sand is probably some kind of metallic material.

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Here are some pictures of new recipes I've tried.
Mushroom soup. Made from scratch. I used milk instead of heavy cream. Not too happy after I found mysterious fatty clumps in the soup, I suspect it's got something to do with the mushroom water (which had some sort of acid preservative) interacting badly with some other ingredient...probably either the butter or the milk. But other than that I think the taste was not bad considering I've never tried making mushroom soup before and I substituted some ingredients. Frying mushrooms make them smell and taste really good :D
Mushroom and potato curry. I bought too much mushrooms and was thinking of as many recipes as I could to finish them up. I just remembered I'm not too big a fan of coconut milk, eventhough I miss Malaysian food. Coconut milk only tastes good in small amounts and in nasi lemak.

Cinnamon (mini) pancakes topped with yogurt and mixed fruits. I dunno if I'm weird, but I like making my pancakes small.

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Sigh...so tomorrow classes begin. 2 computer classes(organic modeling, advance texturing and lighting) on Monday and 1 sculpting class(ecorche) on Wednesday. I feel kind of intimidated by this term's schedule. Hope I didn't bite off more than I can chew by substituting an easy traditional art subject for an advanced computer subject. I'm just hoping it'll be ok since the animation director allowed me to take the subject in the first place. And I was further intimidated just now when I found out I mistook the time for one of my Monday classes (I think I've got it right now, so I don't have to wake up early tomorrow) and that one of the lecturers just got swapped.

Gah...make some friends. Keep a positive mindset. Everything will be ok. Om.........*yoga pose*

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Oh yeah...besides that, I finally managed to keep up to date with what campus life and recreation is organising this term. 2 things I'm excited about. #1, they are forming a group to go see Avenue Q at the Orpheum, and tickets are only $20 eventhough it's for opening night and they are orchestra seats. So I think I have to rush to buy it tomorrow morning. I think a lot of people will be interested in that.

#2, they are also organising a 3 day trip to Yosemite park, which is $80(accomodation, entry fee, transport and 4 meals). Still have to think about that, but it sounds fun, and this time I'm actually free on those 3 days, so it's still plausible that I can join them.

Milk carton says "yes" to Earth Hour. What about you?

Pledge your support by clicking on the light switch up at the top of this page. It's more than being about saving 1 hour worth of electricity, its a worldwide performance to send an environmental message to the policy makers of the world.

*ps: don't use candles or go driving around your neighbourhood instead, that's counter productive. Use your imagination and have a little energy free celebration with your friends and family instead. And please avoid dark alleys.

Went to Napa Valley last Saturday. It's well known as an area that mainly has vineyards, so Mandy, Chad, Justin and myself went there for wine tasting and to enjoy the view. It's around 1 1/2 hours drive away. First stop, Robert Mondavi Winery. In the end it was the only stop where we tasted wine. Tastings are not free, so after Mandy had bought her wine here and went past her budget, the guys weren't eager to do anymore tastings.

The view here is really good,plus Robert Mondavi Winery's architecture has a really pretty rustic style.

Pity it's winter, so we don't actually get to see grapes growing.
Next stop, Plump Jack Winery. Much smaller than the first one. But it would be a nice place to stay, much quieter than the city.

Last stop, I can't remember the name of this winery, but it has a small museum with antique parlour toys which are like the ancestors of movies(zoetropes, antique projector-like devices called magic lanterns, etc.).
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Well, Ok, now for a small side story, since this freaked me out a bit. I found a blood orange among the pile of regular oranges that I bought. At first I thought it was spoilt or something, but after a bit of research online, I ate it and I still feel ok. I haven't eaten blood oranges before, but it tastes a little bit different than the regular types.

Decided to do some research on Coca Cola and read for myself if the myths about it are true; the myths that it used to have cocaine in it, and the myth that they invented Santa Claus.

So based on what I read from Wikipedia,

1) Yes, it did use to contain cocaine. Coca:coca leaf(cocaine), cola: kola nuts, that gives it caffeine. Coke used to contain 9 milligrams of cocaine in a glass, but the drug was removed in 1903. Nowadays, only the leaf extract is used as a flavour.

2)They didn't invent St Claus per se, but they did use the red and white image we are familiar with in an advertising campaign illustrated by Haddon Sundblom. Apparently the red and white suit was already popular at the time.

and now time for somemore fun facts:

3) Coke was originally intended to be sold as a patent medicine (substance of questionable medical value, snake oil, etc) because carbonated water was believed to be good for your health. It was 1886 after all. Amongst the illnesses that it was supposed to be able to cure was morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia,headache, and impotence. I'm not very much in the know, but perhaps cocaine addiction and diabetes were preferable?

4) Here are some fun competitors from other countries:

Coca Colla, from Bolivia. Same main ingredient, same brand colour, but it's an energy drink!

Mecca Cola. Launched in France, based in Dubai. A pro-Muslim alternative if you don't support the US.
And my favourite:from Iran, Zam Zam Cola, the unofficial soft drink of the Haj! (I didn't make that up, it's on Wikipedia)

The trend now is for Malaysian food, or anything that resembles it. Here's the packet of bak kut teh I bought the other day, and how it looks inside. The brand my mom uses back home doesn't have the black sauce sachet, I dunno if it's normal to have that. But I suspect it's just soy sauce.

Plus foo chook,mushrooms, garlic and pork ribs. When I ran out of soup,I reboiled the paper sachets and added regular soy sauce, and it tasted ok to me.
Tang yuan. This is my first try, haven't made it even in Malaysia, but it's fun to try something new now and then. The colour of the balls are because I used the water from boiling the red beans for the filling, I don't think they look particularly appetizing. But I didn't like the idea of using food colouring either, after all I wasn't wanting to impress anyone, so I made it the healthier way. For the soup, I used ginger for the first round, then decided to use up the leftover red beans to make red bean soup instead. I'm not a big fan of ginger, although it did taste better after refrigeration.
Pisang goreng. Or goreng pisang, I forgot. Even after years of drilling at BM class. Me and Mandy made this morsel Monday morning. Actually I think it was Saturday evening, but that doesn't sound fun. Now I feel like experimenting with making tempura. Maybe after a few days of eating oats.
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And this is an experiment making a burrito after something I tried in a cafe. Basically you can put anything inside the tortilla, it's like chap fan. But for this I put in lettuce, carrots, pork, pumpkin, corn in mayo,rice, avocado and thai chili sauce. You should eat it with tabasco sauce though.
I learnt from the cafe that the neatest way to eat something as sloppy as this is to wrap it tightly in foil/cling wrap.

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Here are some pictures from my shopping adventures.
The stuff at Flax is so ridiculously overpriced, but they did have a massive discount on the paper that I bought. It's a good place to go if you like scrapbooking or crafts and don't mind paying through the nose. They have a lot of pretty paper, greeting cards, and other accessories.
A new type of hoodie that they were selling at Old Navy. It has earplugs built in to the hood drawstrings, which is pretty unique, but otherwise useless, since your MP3 player would have earplugs in the first place.

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Started my online classes for Winter on Monday. So far so good.I'm taking Ideology of the 20th century, so lots of heavy reading about philosophical stuff.Wonder how the ESL students manage it, I have to use a dictionary quite frequently myself, and a lot of the information is so abstract. The first day was a marathon from 11am until midnight, on and off, since I was so busy absorbing all the other technical stuff like class rules, classmates' profiles, etc. Today was 6 hours on and off, but the thing about online classes is that you have to check back on the discussion boards and leave comments on your classmates' entries if you want higher marks. The minimum is 2 entries. It's pretty hectic for some students in other time zones because while people in SF have a full 24 hours to do their stuff, they have only a certain number of hours to complete theirs, and most of the interesting discussion entries are posted 10pm onwards in SF (last minute students with a burst of inspiration) while they are probably deep in slumber.

Marks are based primarily on discussions (so think hard, lecturers don't appreciate answers that just say that you agree, you need to write a paragraph about why you agree), then there are quizzes for every module (everyday) and 2 assignments. I wasn't expecting any assignments, but I have my Wacom and a few basic art materials, so I think that should be enough.

Recently I watched an animation of Beauty and the Beast, which was different from the one done by Disney. I think it was probably done by a small new company(the quality was terrible, bad continuation, bad storyboarding, shallow character design, cheap sound design, excusable animation, but that was outsourced to China )(ps:this was not even the Thai version, how many rip offs can one story get?)

But my grief aside, the story seemed to be more loyal to the original version of the fairytale, which got me interested in finding the original version online and having a read. The good thing about these fairy and folktales is that they are so old that there's no longer any copyright on them, you can just get them legally online. While looking for it, I stumbled upon a collection of really good illustrations for the story, done by an early 20th century French guy called Edmund Dulac.

He went for a Middle Eastern treatment of the illustrations, which is really interesting to me.
Art noveau +watercolour=genius.

I like it when I see artists with a strong stylization, but yet you can see that they have a really strong command of their medium(Some artists actually have really great skills, but because of their style, all their work looks like it's been scrawled by a 3 year old, which is a waste)


Still on Beauty and the Beast, up till here.

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And here are some illustrations for Hans Christian Andersen,Edgar Allan Poe and some Middle Eastern poems and folktales
The Little Mermaid
The Snow Queen (wow...it's been so long, feels good to read it again)

The Nightingale.It's more obvious in some of the other pictures, but there's a stronger influence of traditional Chinese paintings in this series, in the stylization of the plants, the facial features, colour scheme and composition.

I've heard before that one major difference between Chinese paintings and Western is that Western paintings place a big importance on the humans;the characters are the main subject of the picture(exp: a painting of someone's face). Whereas in Chinese paintings the humans are only part of the background, everything is of equal importance.(exp: a painting of a mountain, and there's a shepherd drawn in small, at the bottom)
Incidentally, Japanese art had a very strong influence on Art Noveau, that was the time when trading brought more exposure of Asian art and culture to the west, and became a sort of fashion.Apparently some artists were fascinated by the scrap Japanese prints used to wrap china bowls or something like that if I remember correctly, next thing you know, the who's who of the art world from Toulouse Lautrec to Mucha have peacock feathers and kimonos decorating their houses. I like that.