Saturday, December 31, 2005

In 55 minutes

In 55 minutes, the year will be over and all the brouhaha will start. Have to remember to date cheques as 2006.  I have just opened a dozen oyters, panfried prawns in onions, tomato and olive oil, steamed a kilo’s worth of clams and now settling with a cold Californian Rose out in the deck. It’s been a hot day. 42 degC... the house still steams. My neighbour John has organised a three piece jazz band. The music is cool. The air outside the deck is purer, cooler... I write this on my laptop by candlelight. Something dichomtomous about this, but heck... not going to think about it too much.

So ... hello. Theres a very cold sparkling shiraz waiting for me and a non-vintage Chandon in the fridge. The kids have been told they’ll be eating next year (and hence begin all the “next year” jokes).  I’ve worked hard, but not worked proud.  Maybe next year.  

This Beringer Rose is rather appetizing. Going to have a shower and at some point in time, eat drink and be merry.... and also swat some mosquitoes.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Digress 2

3 more days to Christmas, 2 more days to Christmas eve. 2 more episodes to write. I got my plot written up but something’s missing, something is not feeling right. My heart is pumping rather fast. Must stop drinking coffee. A storm is breaking ... no, make that a storm broke.  I can see the light. Who left the toilet light on?!!!!

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Never Been Kissed

Friday is the day. My daughter meets this guy somewhere in an inner suburb. “He’s going to teach me how to kiss”.  So what? Is it one of those demonstrations you do with a mirror or with the palm of your hand. “Oh man!  He’s showing me with his lips” . So he’s actually going to kiss her. Euyewwww!   If you want to kiss someone, you must make sure you have clean teeth and drink lots of water. “I’ve never been kissed before... and I know I’m a bad kisser”. The important thing is to have clean and fresh breath.  I fear ... for the guy. My daughter is not known to brush her teeth. “You don’t mind?”  Of course not.! “Cool!  and oh...by the way, he’s a Goth”.    That’s fine I said.  And oh... let me tell you about herpes....

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

I Know What you did last Sunday

It was rainy. The sun popped up to say hello. I was driving. I needed coffee. Sunday in Caulfield is pretty quiet. Caulfield is a jewish ghetto. You’d think there would be a decent cafe latte the first day of the week. No way.  Macdonald’s was on the wrong side of the street. I did a right, drop the daughter at Helenslea Drive, did a U and ordered a large latte at Maccas’s.   Wrong move. Should have ordered small. Proceeded to Clayton where my son plays with the Greek soccer team. He’s no greek, but a great midfielder Then headed back to Caulfield, picked up Hannah and went back home.  That was 4 days ago.... today I asked my daughter what we did on Sunday. She couldn’t recall. “I stayed home” – why??  Then it all came flowing back. There was no guilt. There was the usual defensive  “How do I know??!!! That was AGES ago!”  You can figure she’s a teennager.  You can’t imagine how close she came to be physically maimed for life.  

Anyway, this blog is for a friend whom I know is reading because she’s a blog reader and she needs regular sex.  But hey... who am I to comment. A good blog is hard to find.

So how did it all flow for my daughter?  How did she suddenly remember what she did last Sunday?  I must say it was a stroke of brilliance. I told her to start using her brain to take pictures. Picture it and all will be revealed.

Tesla, one of my most admired inventors of the 20th century could imagine his inventions.  My heart bleeds for Tesla because he actually invented the radio but didn’t get round to the patent office fast enough (probably didn’t have the dough) and that Marconi dared to lay claim to the fame.  If there’s one person you’ve not discovered in your life and should know more, may I recommend Tesla.  He is googlable.

So what has it got to do with the blog-reading friend?  Same-o same-o. Picture it. Imagine yourself. Do  a walter mitty.... all will be revealed.  The best things happen to people who see it in their minds.  I am sure, for my daughter, she is re-living Sunday in Caulflield and how on the following Wednesday evening, a flying frying pan - launched by a parent,  missed her head by 2 centimetres.    

Sunday, October 9, 2005

Two Laps Talking

Two Laps Talking

Scenario: One old laptop and One middle aged laptop.

Old Laptop has got lots of information. But hasn’t got all the things that can bring all that information into the next generation. I.e. it has no CD burner, no modem, no usb port, its printer port lost its teeth somewhere in the early 2000s and its only portable disk is floppy.

So I bought a null modem to connect old laptop to middle aged laptop. Duh... too hard, and the pins are missing in the printer port.

Then an inner light told me...what is this little window here. It’s an infrared! How it’s like suddenly discovering the old laptop has psychic powers. The middle aged laptop also has an infrared. It’s working fine and waiting to receive...it’s waiting, still waiting...

Old laptop can’t fire up its psychic powers. Too much cigarettes and alcohol...  Then I realised I never initiated the darn thing in the first place. It’s like waiting for years and years to reach puberty only to be denied it because parents never thought there is something called teenage years, so you go through life wearing kids clothes to the dying day. And then, ah ha... on your deathbed you discover you had those hormones... a little too late now...

Hope springs eternal... (or something like that)

I couldn’t activate it because it never had the infrared icon or whatever it needed on its control panel. So I googled through and discovered there is something called a windows driver for infrared devices...it’s at microsoft.com... and the file is something called Win95ir... downloaded it onto a floppy and fed it to the old lap.

Now it has the works...an infrared icon, a monitor, nice lights and a dialogue box telling me it can’t establish connection even when middle aged lap is waiting and shining its light!  

to be continued    

Update: 12 October 2005

Unfortunately I’ve pushed and shoved and now Old Lap is in the intensive care unit.  I’ve messed with the registry and I can’t restore Windows because the OEM CD I was given didn’t have a setup.exe file!  I’ve been ripped off but too late. The company that sold me the laptop folded about 2 years ago!

Forget IR technology. Let me take a stroll down DOS and see what can be done.

to be continued
update 20 october

taking a stroll down DOS is not as easy as I thought it would be: so much to learn, so much to do. Here are some useful websites for future reference

bootdisk.com

digressed; lots of interesting DOS games

dos commands

lots of MSDos software

dos drivers for reading and editing NTFS files  

list of MSDos commands

dos links – not comprehensive but they’ll lead you somewhere

Wednesday, October 5, 2005

Listening to Advice

Listening to Advice...hmmm

If you are the cautious type, you’d read all kinds of advice...the do’s and don’ts... but then you come to a major standstill.... It sounds too difficult, don’t do it. I put off networking my computer because it looked too hard...naming IPs, SSID, and CIDs... etc ad naseum etc...

I couldn’t stand it anymore   I needed to print, I couldnt get my teenager off the internet, so I took the plunge


.......................



Using XP, just go the printer task and browse for printer. I am on a wireless networking system, with printer attached to the desktop. I work off my lap.

Hey presto... a printed page.  Now I need to buy ink.

Cleaning Up

Cleaning Up

About 7 years ago I bought my first laptop. A Twinhead Slimnote 9 with active matrix screen.... that means if you stood upside down, you still see clearly.  It was state of the art, had an infrared port, TV out jack, printer port, a fast speed 8x CD rom drive, 32mb Ram and 1.5g harddrive, pcmcia card with fast speed modem and a lot of other dooheekies.  And it was relatively lightweight 5.6kg.   I worked with it, rather well until it started burning a hole in my lap, and then I upgraded to another Twinhead (what can I say... it’s a barebones system and the service guy is only a phone call away) Efio 12KT.

Then came the inevitable.

I put it off until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Everyday my daughter says the same prayer before she goes to bed: “when are you going to give me that old laptop”.  Today I decided to go through the documents, and transfer them to my new laptop.

Uh oh...

New laptop (henceforth New) has no floppy drive, no parallel ports, no serial ports, one modem, one wireless ethernet and couple of RJ45s... and a few more USB2 and a spunky DVD burner.

Old laptop (henceforth Old) has no USB, there is a PCMCIA card slot with no card modem.

So how is the transfer between OLD and NEW ever going to happen?    I thought about it, I bought a huge bunch of gadgets, none of which worked...what I thought was a serial port on NEW     turned out to be a VGA out.  So, as a resort I am now saving old files onto the reliable floppy... and eventually will burn these floppies onto CD via my desktop (henceforth Desk) which fortunately does have a floppy AND a CD burner.

But gosh isn’t it interesting.... looking at the old files. By old, I mean 7 years ago, in the last century – it’s like take a stroll through your attic.  All those subscriptions and hey...wait a minute, I’ve posted notes to myself that I’ve hung things on the internet through my websites (and these are free websites) and they don’t exist anymore!    I’ve been ripped off.... where are my documents?  

You know how they say that data is no more than on and off electrical pulses... like 1 is on and 0 is off (or is it vice versa).   Do deleted data just die or do they reinvent themselves as something else?  I would like to think that they are just floating around, happily somewhere in the universe ... creating another lifeform perhaps... there could even be another universe, “peopled” by deleted data... a brave new world of bits and bytes – my deleted folder on Boy Mechanic would surely prove useful.

Sunday spring

what does it mean when a bird strolls into your living room

sunday 2 october 2005

it’s sunday... afternoon. spring. most people are out in the garden.  I stay indoors beccause I have hayfever. I used Telfast... ya right...

A kind of Mynah strolls into the living room. “Look...a bird”  exclaimed my son. He rarely exclaims, so this must be special.  “No big deal...it’s only a Mynah bird – wait for something Major”  Funny. I’m pissed

Bird strolls out. I continue my cleaning. Day ends. Debussy does a rather special cake walk on MPBS.

end of blog

Tuesday, October 4, 2005

From now on it's pure thoughts

Get the feeling that everyone is doing everything right and you're the only one getting it wrong? I get that feeling everytime I stare down my compost heap. Last month's roast dinner stares back at me.    

Friday, February 25, 2005

Food - PUTU

I'm going to start tying the world together through food.

PUTU
This is Indian origin. Which part of India? Not quite sure - might be south because the term permeates throughout southeast asia and features in Malay and Peranakan cuisines. Putu means a kind of steamed muffin or unleavened bread. But there are so many varieties - sweet and savoury, filled and fried. Some examples:
Putu Piring (steamed pancake height filled with chopped gula melaka); a variation in Singapore is Kueh Tutu (it's filled with coconut or chopped peanuts).
Putu Bamboo(Bambu) which is steamed in tall bamboo cylinders and accompanies curries.
Putu Tegar which is Peranakan cake with bananas, coconut, gula melaka.
Putu Mayam, used to be sold in the streets of Singapore. It's lacy in texture - looks like a bundle of vermicelli, steamed and pressed into a pancake and eaten cold with chopped brown sugar and fresh dessicated coconut.
Putu Ayu is a two coloured cake
Kueh Putu is the Indonesian way of calling the cylindrical putu that is stuffed with gula melaka inside.

Some interesting websites on Putu. Stay tuned.

Etymology
The term Puttu is Tamil in origin. It is a generic term that refers to a number of cakes. This site has detailed glossary of other word-borrowings from Tamil in the Malay language.
http://members.aol.com/wignesh/TAMILINFLUENCEMALAY.htm

This site shows that it's something from Kerala, Tamil Nadu and explains how it's eaten at breakfast.
http://www.ernakulam.com/html/ek000cu.htm

In South Africa, the term is a Zulu adaptation of the Dutch word Botjie which is a cast iron pot.
http://abw.netfirms.com/commando_cuisine.htm

Pondicherry comes from Putu (which means New in Tamil Nadu) and Ceri (village). http://geography.about.com/library/misc/ucpondicherry.htm
Do they have Putu in Pondicherry?

South Africa
Putu refers to a mealie meal porridge.
http://southafrica.narod.ru/engels/safoodterms.htm
has a good glossary of southafrican food terms

Philippines
Putu means rice cake. But according to these researchers, the term indicates Malaysian links in the island of Luzon.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/4059/K-Malay.htm

It's eaten with hot chocolate in the morning or accompanies hot stews.
http://www.ochef.com/r202.htm

Malaysia
The Chittys (Straits Indians) of Malacca have a rite of passage around the feast of Putu. The dish is made with coconut, gula melaka, cardamon, fried green peas (mung?).
http://202.186.86.35/kuali/recipes/04rnis0301.html
It has an interesting photo of Putu preparation

The Putu Bamboo recipe is given in this book written by Kunjamma Matthew. Here's a PDF of the contents page. The links will lead you to ordering the book.
http://www.anindianinexile.com/An%20Indian%20in%20Exile.pdf

Putu made the traditional way - as a kind of mealie meal.
http://www.kuali.com/news/story.asp?file=/2004/9/24/eatingout/8849144&sec=eatingout

Singapore
Apparently putu piring and kueh tutu are not the same thing. It's a matter of how big it is and what's inside. The bigger one and filled only with gula melaka is piring. The other is tutu.
http://pachome2.pacific.net.sg/~willows5/singlish_P.htm

The best putu mayam and putu piring outlets.
http://www.sbestfood.com/Food%20Choice/putumayam.htm

A beautiful picture of putu piring all steaming in a row. But I think this is more kueh tutu than putu piring
http://www.betelbox.com/gallery/pic.asp?iCat=31&iPic=67

Also shots of putu bamboo
http://www.betelbox.com/gallery/cat.asp?iCat=31

Words and pictures of putu piring man (and other vanishing trades)
http://www.the-inncrowd.com/joochiat.htm

Indonesia
This woman speaks of the Putu Man of Bali island, Indonesia
http://www.aiaa.org.au/news/news12/cynthia.html
Interesting. In Singapore the man who sells Putu Mayam is called the Otah Man because besides Putu Mayam, he sells a lot of nice sweets and snacks including Otah Otah. This was in the past. Nowadays you can only source Putu Mayam from sweet stalls, not street vendors. Most of the Putus are factory made.

Internet Forum
nice site to chat on kueh/kuih and putus
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=44433


Recipes
This site has a recipe for Putu Mayam
http://www.knp-housebrand.com/recipes_files/recipes.html#IDIYAPPAM%20(PUTU%20MAYAM)

The Putu Mayam is also known as Idliyappam. This makes sense because the Putu Mayam has a similar shape to an Apom/Appam.

Putu Ayu
http://www.mail-archive.com/milis-sedap@news.gramedia-majalah.com/msg00106.html
http://www.tabloidnova.com/articles.asp?id=5930
(both sites in Malay)
and nice photo
http://www.dwikarya.nl/images/wisma_hilda_putu_ayu.jpg

Gluten-free Putu
http://www.ochef.com/r202.htm

Putu Pap (South African)
http://www.bushveldonline.co.za/recipes/braai/braai1.htm

Saturday, January 1, 2005

Crash

I was warned. Mercury in retrograde from Dec 1 to 20. Did I heed the advice? Sure. I decided to clean the PC. Long story. Deleted the NTLR Dr by mistake. So I need to reinstall Windows. Didn't know how, had to learn it the hard way, and in the course of which made major enemies with an uptight vendor who has hurled curses along my way. So left without its maker, the PC had to fend with its user. I then realise how strange it is that many of us know not what goes into the computer. I pour my heart into it and yet I know not what it is made of, what drives it. Sort of like talking to a shrink not knowing that he is going through a divorce and possibly trying to reconcile his many egos and identities while he/she/it listens to my troubles. I am now the wiser. I know what drives my PC and I realise that although I had the system custom made to last minute technology 2 years ago, it's now almost antiquated.