OK, rounding off my food eating diary right now. This is my last chance to gloat to people who are already overseas, before joining them in food purgatory (more specifically the world of dorm living , stale pizza and semi successful one-pot meals)

Bytheway, I'm leaving tomorrow morning for San Fran. My flight leaves at 10.25am, so I believe I will be leaving for the airport at 7am.

My food eating trip to Melaka with the office people. Well, I dunno if there was enough bingeing to call it a food-eating trip, but we did cover sate celup and chicken rice balls. These pictures sing to me. The fact that the sate celup sauce might or might not have been kept in that pot for the past 20 years is besides the point.
Oh yeah, and Thai coconut. I like that, but haven't mastered the art of eating all the flesh before feeling a bit sick.
Indian rojak from ss15. I heard that the rojak guy doesn't have as many fans as a few years back though. Last time he'd open his stall at 11am, and you'd have sworn that people jumped out of bushes to be first in line to buy his rojak.
Indian rotis:Roti pisang, thosai paper, and roti bom (is that correct?) Thanks to Yen Kaye and Sook's teamwork I could have a bit of each, even after super sweet desserts at Delicious just before that.
And this morning's food, chee cheong fun.

Time to binge on Malaysian food before it's too late. I found out a few places that sell kuih, so I decided to systematically demolish a list of them, since you can't eat too many of them in one go or you'll feel sick.(disclaimer:The next few pictures were not taken by me, just gleaned from google)

Last week: Ang koo, kuih koci and pulut panggang. This week, kuih kaya and onde-onde.BTW I didn't know half of those names until recently, I just know them as the blue thing, or the thing with coconut on top. And the odd thing is that I don't usually eat this stuff, but I'm pretty sure I will miss it the moment I can't have any. I think I will continue the list the next chance I get.

And also, the food that I will miss the most: Cholesterol laden mamak food.

Nasi lemak sotong. Glorious. Actually the regular place I get mine from is run by a Chinese couple in Sungei Way market, but I think it's the best so far. Its the chicken curry that makes it fabulous. And I know most people don't like the nuts and ikan bilis in the rice, but that's my favourite part. As a consolation, my sister found a recipe for chili sotong that matches the nasi lemak one quite well, if only I can find the ingredients and my roommates don't mind the smell.
Murtabak. My mouth actually watered when I was looking for this picture.
White fungus and longan soup. My mom made some today.
Char siu pau. I was looking for vegetarian pau, as in the one made with turnip, but its pretty hard to get them, what I got instead was vegetarian char siu pau...conned in that sense, but it tastes pretty good anyway.
Hmm...what have I missed out...mamak mixed rice, currypuff, rojak, various Indian rotis. I hope there will be a culinary school near mine with many Indian students, but I don't think that's likely.

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On a side note, I just found out today that the luggage allowance to the US is 2 bags, 23kgs each, which means 46 kgs altogether. Usually that would mean a heck lot of extra packing space, but there's also the issue of the bags having to be within a certain size, so for me it just means I have to buy another bag, and I get to check in all my luggage. I may even handcarry a pillow over, since they don't provide those in the dorms.

Finally finished packing my bags for San Francisco. I have an innocent looking piece of check in

luggage that actually weighs 25kg, so I'm just hoping that if I check in my bag early,the people at check in will be generous and let me go with a few extra kgs. Better start practicing my 'pathetic expression' now.

At first the luggage weighted 28 kgs, but with a little expertise(it's called shifting the heavy stuff to the hand luggage)its down to 25. And then I remember that I haven't packed in my toiletries bag. Damn...I really don't want to pay extra for luggage, I've a suspicion that it will cost something like USD60 per extra kg.

How I managed to even fit my pile of belongings into those bags amazes me. I've got, among other things, a rice cooker, a frying pan, bedsheets and a fleece blanket in there. Most people say I should have just bought them there, but my parents prefered buying here since most probably they'll be even more expensive in US. And in that process, I wasn't able to pack in a whole lot of stuff. Mostly clothes(Its a 4 season country, how is a girl supposed to pack enough clothes to look fabulous all year round, in 23kilos?), and then there were some food containers, my violin (my roommates will be thankful for that...or should i just sling it onto my back and hope I won't break any bones?) and Maggi Mee!! Ish...they better sell asam laksa, freshly cooked or dried noodles, I don't care, in SF.Quite too much to hope for, I think, especially if I'm looking for reasonably priced, authentic tasting asam laksa. My tongue might have an emotional breakdown these next 3 years. Attempting to cook it by myself doesn't sound as if it will turn out successful either.

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Ok, next, here are some photos:

A luggage tag Sook made for me. Thanks!

The Indian bangles I bought from Batu Caves recently.Kind of fragile though.

And finally,I dunno if I posted this picture before, but its a Venetian mask my sister bought me awhile back.

At last, I got to watch Inception. Those posts on Facebook from people who have watched it (and some for the 2nd or 3rd time) was driving me nuts.So I'm happy that I went in with high expectations, and still wasn't disappointed. Yes, it is a movie that makes you think(and Sook was right about the feel-good factor when you understand the plot)but also it comes across as a movie very well planned and researched on. The special effects was...i dunno, a bit more stylish that usual somehow, although i was surprised that some scenes were real footage, not CG, like the anti-gravity hotel(they custom built a hallway in a rotateable barrel, while the camera is outside)and the exploding boxes outside the cafe

For those that have already watched the movie, here's someone's take on analysing the characters in Inception: here

And I kind of believe what was written about was purposely added to the storyline too.Now that's planning.

Ahh...here are some pictures of what I've been doing these past few days.

1) handmade pasta.I made pasta verde(spinach pasta) ravioli, but the sauce is just the usual 'chinese style' pasta sauce i have at home. Turned out ok(the spinach doesn't add to the flavour anyway, just for colour)only thing that it's quite difficult to roll out, since i don't have a pasta machine. So it was a bit thick.And I ran out of meat halfway, so some pasta was just cut into(pretty fat) strands

2 and 3)When there's not much spare time of if I've already eaten, I make drinks instead. So far I've tried Chrysanthemum and Ginseng drink(I swear you can't taste ginseng).Basically it's chrysanthemum flowers boiled with ginseng roots in water and rock sugar to taste. The second drink is ice blended orange juice that I tried at at restaurant and wanted to try making at home as well. The unique thing about it is that they added crushed bits of those flat red coin shaped chinese sweets (my mom says its called san char peng) and some grated lemon peel. Didn't subject my blender to ice crushing torment, so I just half froze a cup of juice and gave it a stir instead.

4) Well, this one's not really done by me. My mom's planting some spring onions in a spare pot we have on the balcony.Orange peel courtesy of me though. Sort of like small scale composting. My mom doesn't allow animal parts, oily vegetables waste and banana peel in those pots because of the smell and fruit flies.Orange peel looks kind of festive to me. And smells nice, eventhough it's rotting . lol...

Tried some out today, cooked in a soup. Their small compared to spring onion bought at the stores, but they are organic, so it's to be expected. I remember my sister and I tried planting corn before, and we got only 1 small cob out of 3 plants. So that shows there must be a lot of hidden chemicals in mass production farms.
5) Batu Caves. Yeah, I live in Selangor and have never gone to Batu Caves before. So when ktm extended their line from Sentul to Batu Caves, i used the opportunity. Usually other people will not bother to purposely drive there, especially if it's not Thaipusam.
Tried observing the sculptures and using The Powers Of My South East Asian Art Knowledge to interpret them, but mostly failed.
Lots of monkeys. Just thankful none of them attacked me and made me fall down all 272 steps(I wonder if that's happened before).The babies are quite cute actually.Lots of pigeons too, I kept imagining picking one of them up and using it as a cannonball, their not scared of the visitors at all.
Stairs up to the main temple. FYI Malaysian Nature Society organises cave explorations to see the things that live in the caves. Like gigantic spiders and such, if you like that.
The spear shaped opening of the cave
One of the small shrines in the cave.This one is a Ganesha statue. right?Oh Criccy, you're such a genius...

Also got myself some Indian bangles, which I've been looking for for ages. I don't think they even sell them at Pasar Seni. BTW beware of fleecing, I saw some stalls that sold the bangles for RM45 whereas I got mine for RM10, and even then I wonder if I should have bargained the price down.

Here's some stuff I'm working on at the moment.It's work in progress, just got some feedback about it just now.

A more realistic version, but I'm not going to further develop this version.
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And just for fun: My new alarm clock. Love the bronze colour.

Here's something I made quite a while ago: Sock Monkeys.(see,I did it)

Introducing the 3 siblings(from left): Roosskii, Saru-Biru and Tsar

Tsar is supposed to be based on the guy swinging about on your right, but I couldn't find peach socks, so I substituted with black. Also, while making Tsar, I decided she was more of a female monkey.
Roosskii(Rice monkey)-the red striped one- was the first one I made. He's stuffed with rice and cotton(because if I used only rice he would be too heavy, and socks stretch over time) So I can microwave him and hug to sleep if I feel cold.

Saru-Biru-the blue one- is the second one I made, stuffed with only cotton, but he feels the nicest. Roosskii is too heavily to stand on his own and Tsar is lumpy.

Tsar-the white monkey- was the last one, which I stuffed with shredded old clothes. Maybe there's a better technique than what I used, which explains the lumpiness. But nevermind, that makes Tsar the greenest of all 3 monkeys.

In the beginning I wanted to just make one for fun, but making monkeys is addictive, once you start buying different socks and mixing and matching them together and designing new ones, giving different personalities and names to them, it's the same kind of fun people get out of collecting cards or toys.
I gave Saru-Biru to Sook though. Hope he has a good new home.Here's the packaging I made to match.