Looking back, moving forward...
And once again, it is already the end of the year. The Mayans and Hollywood were wrong...the world doesn't end in 2012. Not that I believed them for a second.
Anyways, it's a habit of mine to blog about my year - whether this is a good practice or bad habit, I'm not too sure. Last year, I rambled mostly on the dramas I watched...but I'll do things slightly differently this year. Yes, I'll mumble on about what I watched, but I think my life in 2012 does deserve its own post, no matter how boring it was. It is like writing a journal anyway, most people write everything down, not just the interesting bits. ^^
Soooooooo....2012 was a year of high highs and low lows, kind of like a roller-coaster of emotions. Lest people think that I've got bipolar disorder, I better explain myself. Heh. Basically, whenever I'm walking close to God, everything seems good and manageable; but whenever I'm faraway from God, the same things seem so impossible and bleak. It's during those times when I feel the most lost and unsure about what-the-heck I'm doing with my life. Like am I really meant to be studying this? Or...is there really no way of restoring friendships back to the way it was? I still don't know the answers to these 'life questions', but this I know: That GOD is in charge of it all and He is faithful and true, so we can believe His promises written for us in the bible.
That's about all I'll talk about the low lows.
As for stuff that happened in 2012, honestly, nothing much happened in reality. Hahahahaha... I finished 3rd year of uni and decided to take the extra year to get an additional BSc (i.e. bachelor of science) degree. So far so good, I quite enjoy the research process and I've eliminated certain specialties that I don't wanna go into. During summer, I went back to Sg (as usual), did my electives there and had LOTS OF FUN hanging out with people, eating and shopping. Plus, I finally went to Universal Studios (before I get too old and scared of theme park rides), Gardens by the Bay, Sentosa Cove...and 3 weddings (好羡慕他们啊!!). Back in the UK for the new school year, I continued being pretty involved in church stuff and school stuff...but there's always time to play and do other stuff to relax!! Started experimenting more in the kitchen, like baking cookies, making desserts and trying out new dinner recipes. Also went on spontaneous trips to see live performances, like going to Edinburgh to see Phantom of the Opera AND going to London for the One-Night-Only CN BLUE CONCERT!!! (which reminds me--must finish writing part 2 of that post.)
Moving forward, fingers crossed about 2013 being a good year. Someone once said that if we fail to plan, we plan to fail...so here's a couple of goals for 2013:
- Pass the freaking driving test and get that elusive license
- Reach the ideal weight target and be healthier
- Get at least a 2nd upper this year
- Revise anat & physio to be prepared to tackle Y4
- Spend at least an hr a day in QT and continue to be active in church stuff
- Get outta the house and engage with people more
Looks like another mountain to climb for 2013...xD
POSTED BY mysticmalady AT 8:47 AM |
The Red Bean Experiment....
School's out and I've got a week to go before I leave for my Aunt's place! What better way to
waste use this free time than to try new recipes! Recently, I've been following a couple of cooking channels on youtube and saw a couple of red bean dessert recipes there. Omo...you have no idea what watching cooking videos in the middle of the night does to my tummy and brain...especially when you can see it but can't eat it. TT_TT Anyhow, I've been dying to try to make them for myself, especially since they are actually quite easy to make!
Step 1: Buy them red beans!! I got a little confused at the chinese supermarket as to which type to buy. Is it the small green-bean like one? Or is it the big one? At least I knew that it's not the skinnier 赤小豆 which is used more commonly in Cantonese/herbal soups (my grandma and mum used them before...i think). Luckily, there is something called Google, so I think I bought the right one. For the record, it's the big one which goes by the scientific name Vigna angularis, but foodies will probably know it better as the Azuki bean.
Step 2: Soak the beans!! I didn't want to wait 3h in the morning for it to finish soaking them...so I soaked them overnight in cold water. After washing them, of course. I'd much rather sleep in and wake up to pre-soaked beans that are ready for me to experiment on =D
Step 3: EXPERIMENT TIME!!!!
Red bean paste
Since all the desserts I wanted to try called for red bean paste, I had to make the paste first. Basically that means...boil 2 cups of beans in 3+6cups of water, mash beans and add 3/4 cup sugar + a pinch of salt.
1. Add water (i used ~3cups) to 2cups of pre-soaked red beans.
2. Bring mixture to a boil and continue boiling on high heat for 5 minutes.
3. Drain the beans and discard the water (supposedly to get rid of whatever 'junk' there is on the beans).
4. Add water to the boiled beans and allow them to simmer for 1-2h at low heat. As the water evaporates, gradually add some more water to prevent beans from going dry. I didn't feel like checking on them so often so I left the lid half open and put more water in the beginning (~5cups). I probably used about 6cups of water in total and I added the peel of half a clementine towards the end coz I like the citrusy taste it gives
(I'm fibbing, it's just coz i was hungry and ate a clementine).
5. The beans are ready when you can squish them apart easily! Blend them or mash them through a sieve to get a smooth paste.
6. Return red bean paste to the pot and heat it at low heat. Add 3/4cup castor sugar and 1/4 teaspoon salt, mixing the paste till bubbles start to appear.
And there you have it! A LOT of Red bean paste to experiment with. =)
Red bean soup
It's such a waste to throw away the water that the red beans were boiled in...so I made red bean soup out of it. Perfect for the cold UK weather.
1. Boil the water that the red beans were boiled in. Add some of the red bean paste made previously for a better texture and taste.
2. Add the desired amount of sugar, depending on your taste.
(I only boiled about 2 cups of water and the red bean paste is already sweetened, so I only added a tablespoon more of sugar.)
3. Allow red bean soup to simmer and reduce till the desired consistency.
Tadah! Red bean soup. Would have preferred having sago in there, but I don't have sago at home...
Red bean mochi
This looked easy on the video...it only seemed to involve mixing, microwaving and simple manipulation of the mochi 'dough'. Goodness. It turned out to the most biggest fail of the day. *sigh* I'm not sure what went wrong but it was soooooooooooo sticky that I couldn't do much with it, let along wrap a ball of sweet red bean paste in it.
Here's the recipe I followed anyway, I'll be really grateful if someone could point out what I was doing wrong...
1. Combine 1cup glutinous rice flour, pinch of salt and 3 tablespoons sugar. Stir well.
2. Add 1cup water slowly to mix the flour and sugar.
3. Microwave the mixture at the highest setting. I needed about 3.5min on the highest setting, but I think that's still not long enough.
4. Use a fork to mix the microwaved paste for at least 3min.
5. Coat a chopping board with lots of cornflour before putting the microwaved paste on it. Roll paste into a long 16in tube and chop it equally for each ball of red bean paste
6. Flatten out each mochi piece and put the red bean paste in it. Then fold mochi in to get a ball with the red bean paste in it.
As you can see, I probably did not set aside enough mochi for each red bean paste ball and I can't get the mochi to cover the paste....so I just placed the mochi at the bottom. -.- Tastes ok, looks not so ok...
Red bean ice-cream (without spending 50quid on a machine)
I've always loved ice-cream, but I can't find one of my favourite flavours here in UK - Black sesame. Since I've got red bean paste, I might as well experiment with red bean ice cream first before graduating to black sesame ^^ The youtube video I was watching made red bean ice lolly instead, so I had to combine a couple of videos/recipes to come up with the recipe below. It's a strange combination using the ingredients from a walnut ice-cream recipe (replacing walnut with red bean paste) and the methods in coffee ice-cream recipe that was made without using an ice-cream maker. Thankfully, the mixture tasted promising enough before I froze it...and it came out ok. It wasn't smooth enough but I think it's coz the ice crystals formed were too big. Which means I need to break up the ice crystals more or something....
1. Add 300ml of full cream milk into a pot and simmer on low heat
2. Dissolve 1/2cup of white/castor sugar into the milk (add more if you have a very sweet tooth).
3. Mix in 1 egg yolk and 2/3cup red bean paste.
(honestly, I just added whatever amount I defrosted without measuring it out...heh. It's about a third of the total red bean paste I made...)
4. When everything in the red bean milk mixture has dissolved and mixed well, turn off the fire and leave it to cool.
5. Whisk 300ml whipping/heavy cream on an ice bath until it forms stiff peaks.
(you can use a mixer, blender or if you really want to train them muscles...do it by hand...)
6. Add cooled red bean milked mixture into the whipped cream in 3 batches and fold it in well.
7. Pour the whole mixture into the container you want to store it in, put the lid on and place in the freezer.
8. Check the mixture every hour as it freezes, using a whisk/fork/spatula to mix up the mixture until it is fully frozen.
There you have it: Ice cream!! I think I've come a looooooooong way since the time I put half a cup of semi-skimmed milk into the freezer when I was in primary school, hoping for ice cream but getting weird, disgusting frozen milk instead....
Red bean pancakes (Dorayaki)
Doraemon's favourite snack!! And now I know why he likes it so much...it's the easiest to make among all the recipes. It's basically red bean paste sandwiched between 2 pancakes. I did a 'test run' first (see the 'by-products below...) before filling the pancakes with red bean paste. =9 This recipe makes about 8 dorayakis, i.e. 16 pancakes in total. I could totally eat the pancakes on their own without filling them with anything ^^
1. Combine 4eggs, 2/3cup white/castor sugar & 2 tablespoons of honey. Whisk well till the mixture is pale and fluffy.
2. Sift in 1cup of all-purpose flour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder. Mix well and allow mixture to rest in the fridge for 15min.
3. After 15min, take the mixture out of the fridge and mix in water (1/2 teaspoon at a time) till the mixture is slightly thicker than pancake batter
4. Heat a pan to medium heat and oil it, using a paper towel to get rid of excess oil.
5. Ladle mixture onto the heated pan to form a round pancake
(about 3inch diameter? I just went by the size of dorayakis I've eaten before in MG canteen...)
6. Flip the pancakes over when bubbles start to form on the pancake. Remove flipped pancakes from pan after 20seconds.
7. Take 2 pancakes, spread the filling between them and you get dorayaki! The recipe said to wrap each dorayaki in cling film to help it keep its shape, so I did that. =D
On top of the normal red bean one, I made peanut and nutella flavoured ones too. Good for breakfast ^^
The non-red bean by-product: Muahchee
Since I've been taught not to waste food, I had to find a way to make the 1st (fail) batch of extremely sticky mochi into something slightly more palatable...hence the idea of making muahchee. All I did was crush a bag of peanuts, then added some roasted sesame seeds and sugar. That's it. Just add some to coat the failed mochi 'dough' and you've got muahchee. LOL. I tried to use the blender to crush the peanuts, but I got something that looks more like the Jollibean peanut pancake filling, so I filled my dorayakis with that instead. Teehee...don't waste food mah!
And that's about all I experimented on for the past few days. Probably ruined my diet and study plans but it sure was fun!!
POSTED BY mysticmalady AT 5:43 AM |
Vampires + idols
This is terrible....I basically watched 50 episodes of a brainless sitcom over the weekend instead of studying for the 'mock' exam. WHAT THE
헐 (heol)! "Luckily" each episode is only about 25min long...though that still means that I spent 1 whole day watching it. *sigh*
So what's this rubbish that I've got an obsession over? It's called VAMPIRE IDOL. I know that it sounds like a potential trainwreck or an evil scheme to scam crazy fans into following some incredibly cheesy daily sitcom, but it actually is pretty well thought out. In fact, I feel more invested in the characters as compared to other shows with better ratings (e.g. A Gentlemen's Dignity). Too bad there are no English subs available, so I watched it with Chinese subs. The other sad thing about this drama was that it was suddenly cut from a 120-episode drama to one with 79-episodes, so the ending is a bit abrupt and only gives clues as to how the writers had intended the series to go. AND THAT IS WHAT MAKES ME SO ANNOYED WITH THE BROADCASTING CHANNEL!!! HMPH.
Premise
The background of this sitcom is pretty simple. Take 4 vampires from outer space (including their girl-group crazy princeling), leave them stranded on Earth and train them into an idol group. This is so cheesy and camp that it's actually freaking hilarious to see them adjust to life on Earth. The Princeling probably suffers from the biggest 'culture shock' as he finds out that he's considered ugly on this planet, while his 3 'ugly' bodyguards/minions /BFFs are the pretty boys on this planet.
Anyways, Princeling (more affectionately known as Baba on their planet Vampirutus) and his 3 friends travel on a spaceship to Earth to watch the concert of his favourite girl group Girls Girls. But the spaceship malfunctions and they can't get back.
Thankfully, they meet their tour guide (who just so happens to be the Girls Girls manager and fellow vampire) who lets them stay and train as idol trainees in the same company as Girls Girls. Oh the hijinks that follow.....
Characters
There are not that many characters but the main ones would be the princeling Baba and his F4-esque troupe of vampires. And there's the girls from Girls Girls. Not to forget the other artiste in their company, the managers and other company staff. As this is a sitcom, they go by their actual/stage names in the show too!
First up, there's Baba, played by Lee Jung. The running joke in this sitcom would be his actual vampire name which is so long that even he runs out of breath trying to say it. I mean, what sort of name is "Vampirutus Panyera Twilight Walakia Kunyaris Romania Blarantua
Transylvania New Moooooooooooooooooooooon Tenios Bellanluci Breaking Dawn Draculu Oolala
Eclipse Apalidia"??? Show, I see what you did there with all the 'subtle' vampire references! He's childish, relies on his 3 lackeys for everything but it's still abit sad seeing him having to adjust to life on Earth and getting rejected by the girl of his dreams, the leader of Girls Girls.
Then there's Baba's right-hand-man, Mukkadil (played by and also known on Earth as Lee Soo-hyuk). He's the top warrior on Vampire planet, but he's really protective of Baba and just wants him to be happy ^^ I don't totally ship him with Min-Kyung (another manager in the company), but I guess they are both really hard-working and have similar personalities. Again, due to that evil episode cut, I'll never know what really happens to this couple.
Next, there's resident geek Galileo (played by Hong Jong-hyun) with his IQ of 790 that he's so proud of. Totally smart and inquisitive...socially...a little awkward. Everyone around him just spaces out and asks him to keep quiet when he goes into his looooong nerdy explanation of how things work...so he ends up having to compliment himself when he works out something (which no one else understands anyway). I totally love how Mi-nah (the 'dumbest' member in Girls Girls) brings out the illogical side in him, especially in the episode when he is randomly roped in to take care of her 'child' in a video game and they start squabbling like real parents. Kekekeke....
And rounding up the vampire F4 clan is Gabrielis (played by Kim Woo-bin) as the Earth-loving vampire! He has super-hearing (which means he is often called on to eavesdrop on others) but all he really wants to do is to hang out with the ones he loves and eat popcorn all the time. I totally SHIP his pairing with the Bunny/Yoo-bi, but more on that later! I'm also soooooooo grateful that he changed his hairstyle from that gelled up 8:2 parting to his more natural fringey hairstyle. And Woo-bin ah, don't get typecast to play the resident school-bully k!!
I can't choose which vampire I like more!!! But it's definitely a toss-up between the nerdy Jong-hyun or the food-loving 4D Woo-bin =D
As for the girl group, there's the cute but slightly dim lead singer Min-ah (who is actually from the REAL girl-group, Girl's Day), lover-of-all-things-vampire-related Yoo-bi, fashionista Soo-yeon and charismatic leader Woon-hee.
I ADORE Yoo-bi and love her transformation from the shy girl who hides under her hoodie and communicates through texts...to the cute, bubbly 4D rapper! I totally didn't expect her to be so chatty and it's soooo hilarious everytime she tries to act like the vampires that she keeps reading about in her books.
Min-ah is also really cute in a daft way (kind of like a persistent little puppy) and her obsession with eating bread gives her the nickname Bbang-Minah. She does have a really good voice though, no wonder she is also the lead singer in the real girl group that she is in.
The rest of the people aren't that memorable for me.
Kwanghee makes me cringe with his over-acting and cries of "TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE". Urgh, just make him stop speaking English here and on WGM!! It's really (to quote him) terrible and horrible!
Min-kyung plays a delivery girl who somehow gets roped into being Kwanghee's manager (more like slave) after a series of not-so-fortunate events. Poor her, even if she does get paired up with Soo-hyuk in the end.
Girls Girls manager is Shin Dong-yup who is a vampire that has lived on the Earth for 2000 years. He falls in love with a human (played by veteran actress Kim Soo-mi) but now they have to pretend to be mother-and-son since he doesn't age, while she does. A mature actress doing aegyo....is not my thing. Dong-yup occasionally gets on my nerves too...
The company is run by the father of Girls Girls leader (Woon-hee) who later passes the management over to his sister. There's also some random woman called Dongdong who's some rich, cultured lady...but I have honestly no idea how she is connected to them in anyway
My favourite bits....and how the story should end
I love all the fish-out-of-water experiences the vampires have...even those with alot of toilet humour. Heh.
As for the coupling, I adore the loveline between Woobin and Yoo-bi the most! Woobin falls in love with a girl in a bunny costume, who just happens to be Yoo-bi inside.
As the series progresses, Yoo-bi also likes Woobin but she's afraid to tell him that she's actually the bunny girl coz she's afraid he'll reject her. Ahhh...pains my heart to see this storyline dragged out and I keep willing him to find out that she's the bunny. Of course, with 1 lie, comes many subsequent lies to cover up the initial one and Woo-bin is seriously mad when he finds out the truth.
But, they do get together in the end...*swoon*
As for the ending, it's kind of open-ended since the series was cut before the planned 120 episodes. The writer does give some clues as to how it should end though! (spoilers below!!!)
So in the last 2 episodes, nerdy vamp Jonghyun invents a time-slip machine so that he can go back in time and see what went wrong with the spaceship in the first place. However, he ends up going into the future...which is probably where the writer puts in the ideas he/she had for the rest of the series. Anyway, Jonghyun sees that Shin Dong-yup dies, even though he is a vampire and that he will take Min-ah's DNA back to Vampirutus to experiment how to let her live a vampire lifespan. Shin Dong-yup also sees his death, but that there is another copy of him out there....who is the ultimate evil vampire with the red gloves that the show has hinted at for a while (In fact, that evil vampire kidnaps Soo-yeon and disappears through some portal to...i don't know where). Right-hand vamp Soo-hyuk sees that Princeling Baba will leave the girl of his dreams, Woonhee (even though she finally likes him back), for Minkyung. Soo-hyuk also sees himself fighting with the big bad vampire and that 1000years from now, they will be remembered in a museum back in Vampirutus. But...there's only Baba and 2 OF HIS BFFs. NOT 3, BUT 2. And it freaking endssssssssss =(
As Javabeans says, it's like the writer gave a big fat eff-you at the broadcast station for cutting the drama. At least Woobin kinda proposed to Yoo-bi and was gonna tell her that he's actually a vampire. Still...URGH at the ending.
So the rest of the series is totally open to personal interpretation. Honestly, I think that Shin Dong-yup has an evil twin who has been planning to takeover Vampirutus for thousands of years, but never got a chance to. That's why he sent his good (but not so smart) twin to Earth away so he can do the planning in peace. Thus, when the opportunity comes to get rid of the Princeling, he acted on it and sent him to Earth, under the care of Shin Dong-yup. In the last episode, we see that the evil twin has stolen the Princeling's magic red diamond and all his powers, so he is able to kill off Shin Dong-yup and pretend to be him.
In the last episode, we also see that Minkyung has the lifespan of a vampire rather than an adult. We also know that not much is known about her family...so maybe she's also a secret vampire, just that she suffered from amnesia. It's a Korean drama anyway, amnesia is their go-to plot device when something can't be explained. She might possibly be related to the evil Shin Dong-yup twin, but she decided to turn good due to her love for right-hand vamp Soo-hyuk. I think Soo-hyuk would die in order to kill the evil Shin Dong-yup twin and protect Princeling Baba, so in return, Baba decides to take care of Minkyung and bring her back to Vampirutus.
And yes, I do believe that they will find a way to return to Vampirutus...and it would be through the dimension-slip thingy under the stairs that has been hinted at throughout the series. Not one of Jonghyun's inventions. I think brainy Jonghyun would find a way to communicate with Vampirutus again and they would find out that the place is in turmoil and that Soo-yeon has been kidnapped there by the Evil Shin Dong-yup twin. Then they will remember about the dimension-slip thing that was discussed earlier, find it and travel there. They will rescue Soo-yeon (but of course she won't remember any of this happening...it's a k-drama after all and they'll erase her memory) and somehow stop the evil Shin Dong-yup's plot to overthrow the king. The reigning king and queen (i.e. Baba's parents) will beg him to come back, but Baba and his 3 lackeys will decide to come back to earth to settle 'unresolved issues'. That's where the scenes that Jonghyun fore-saw would happen. However, evil Shin Dong-yup twin is not so weak and he comes back to life to seek revenge...and that's when the scenes that Soo-hyuk and the good Shin Dong-yup would occur.
In the end, I think that the 2 lackeys in the picture in the Vampirutus museum are Jonghyun and Woobin. It'll most probably be taken during Woobin's wedding with Yoo-bi since all the vampires are so well-dressed in the future sequences. Soo-hyuk would have died/vanished by then after fighting off the evil Shin Dong-yup twin...it'll make a good story to tell to future generations of vampires too. As for who goes back to Vampirutus....I think only Baba, Jonghyun and Minkyung would go back. Woobin would stay behind on Earth with Yoo-bi who totally embraces the fact that he is a vampire. I honestly don't think Woobin would go back, especially after an earlier episode where he refused to go back even when given a chance to. Princeling Baba would go back to reign in Vampirutus and he'll take Min-kyung along to provide for her in the place of Soo-hyuk. Baba still loves Woonhee, but he knows that he can't stay on Earth because of his princely duties, so he has no choice but to tell her that they should break up. As for Jonghyun, he wants to go back to his lab in Vampirutus so that he can invent a way for Min-ah to live as long as a vampire...and then come back for her.
That...would be the most feasible way to end this sitcom.
And it also reminds me that I should take up writing fanfics as a hobby....or just become a scriptwriter instead. Hahaha....time to return to reality and memorising the prostate + src presentation script ^^
Labels: Drama ramblings
POSTED BY mysticmalady AT 6:50 AM |
◄ Older posts
Newer posts ►
Back to the top
0 Comments
