Pointless

Today was a weird day. My sister got us tickets to be part of the audience of a game show called Pointless at the bbc studio in London. I've been dying to go to the city for ages so I thought, excellent! I can spend the day roaming around my favourite places and meet up with my sisters and bro-in-law in the evening for the show.

Wrong.
I had to stay at home and wait for a delivery guy to collect something I needed to return and also for my sister's new laptop to be delivered. We missed one delivery already so she would kill me if we missed it again. So I wasn't able to shower and get ready until it arrived which was pretty annoying. More annoying was that I had planned to sleep in but for some reason I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep.
 Finally, at 2'O clock the laptop came and I rushed and got ready in time to go at least one place before the show and pick some dinner up too. I ended up in trocadero first because I wanted to check out the anime shop. I was also dying to pee :-p but when I got there I saw they charge £1 to use the toilet! WTH! So I decided to go after at Mcdonalds.
The anime shop was lovely! I wish I had more money to waste. There was almost an entire wall dedicated to Totoro and his little friends (from the studio ghibli movie My Neighbour Totoro). Not only plush toys but bags, keyrings, wall hangings and even slippers and gloves! In the end I bought a little Ponyo model and a little chibi L (from the excellent anime Death Note) and a floral watch. I actually wanted the Nightmare Before Christmas watch but it had an ugly strap.
Even after loitering in the shop for ages I still had about 20 minutes to grab some dinner on the way so I decided to go to Queensway and get a takeaway from Noodle Oodle!
 It was very strange to go back to that area on my own when before I was always with friends. Plus, it had gotten dark. It made the whole place seem to take on a strange unfriendly hostile feel rather than the magical feeling I'd usually get when I went there. It's odd how the same place can seem so opposite in different circumstances. It's like the memories are flitting passed you like ghosts and the town is all dead.
 The weird feel seemed to be chock full of bad luck as well. It took me at least 10 minutes just to walk to the restaurant from the station which was worrying as I was counting every minute so as not to be late. When I got there I couldn't decide what to eat! I was flicking through the menu trying to find something quick to eat and something with chicken veg and rice.
After ages I finally found a dish and asked if I could have chicken instead of prawns. They agreed. Then told me the minimum spend to use a debit card was £8 and my dish came to £6.30. I didn't want to order more things because it would just take more time. So I rushed outside looking about for a cash machine but it's down by the station and I'd wasted enough time already. I wouldn't have time to get money out then rush back and then rush to the station again so I decided to go to Subway instead. I also needed to pee and Subway didn't have toilets.
So I went into the Mcdonalds and the toilets were disgusting. And one of them wouldn't even flush. I had to clean the other one before I used it and then when I washed my hands, the hand dryer wouldn't stay on more than 5 seconds and it was so slow that blowing on my hands would have dried them quicker. I was in such a rush and so worried about being late that in the end I quickly took money out, grabbed a steak and veg wrap from subway then legged it to the station.
Managed to get to the bbc at the exact time I meant to in the first place and munched my wrap in the queue.
The show itself was fun to watch. I'd watched a few clips on youtube but they didn't seem all that. But seeing it live was a lot better. Maybe the contestants were more entertaining than the ones I saw or maybe it was because the guy who explained stuff to us about what we had to do was so funny. He was funnier than the host actually. There were times when the hosts were trying to make jokes and not quite getting there.
What was really fun though was being involved and seeing the contestants right in front of you so you can completely sympathise with them. It makes you want to root for them more.
It wasn't my first time as an audience member. Once in Whiteleys, a lady asked me and my sister if we wanted to join the audience of the Deadly Knowledge Show. That one had a much smaller studio and seemed more staged. It also had a rehearsal before filming of the whole thing to help the contestants get the hang of it. For Pointless, we did a few practices of things we had to do but then we went straight into filming which made me a little nervous even though we weren't really on camera. I had butterflies in my stomach just sitting in the audience, I can't imagine how the contestants must feel. I really admire how well they kept their cool and joked about.
Next time we are hoping to try and see a dance competition show. I'll remember to bring a drink though, was so thirsty during Pointless, the filming went on for hours. I also must remember to find the show on the Sky planner and put it on record. We didn't have sky plus in the old days so I never did see the episode of Deadly Knowledge Show on television.
Oh, I also got a chance to finally wear a choker I bought from etsy.com. I was so worried I hadn't tied it properly and it would fall off somewhere and be lost. But it stayed on all night. Would love to buy more.
Here's the shop I bought it from:
Hide and Stitch by MsMRDate All the pieces are one of a kind so it's not on sale any more. But it's the one the shop owner's wearing in the profile pic. I also bought the batman earrings which are awesome!

Howzat?

I made my cricket cake today :-) and it did cheer me up. Especially making the ganache (whipped cream, a little butter and lots of chocolate melted together) yummy! I could have eaten the whole bowl :-p.

Cricket Cake

The cake was a three layered chocolate sponge. The bottom half was sandwiched together with chocolate butter-cream and the other half with ganache. I also spread ganache all over the top and sides then dusted the top with cocoa powder.
The cricket ball is also chocolate cake that I made in a bowl but covered with coloured ready to roll icing and the stitching is in white chocolate. The stitching was going to be perfect, I was going to use my ultra thin piping bag to make the line's thin and accurate. But I made the chocolate too thick at first and it got stuck in the damn nozzle :@ my bad luck is still hanging round it seems. I just couldn't wash it out or anything. So in the end had to use a toothpick to make the thin lines of chocolate. Didn't want to use my regular piping bag because then the lines would have been too thick.
Anyway, I used the thickened chocolate to make the cricket bats and used sugar-paste for the handles. And then of course, stuck chocolate fingers all round the edges. 
Was the most chocolatey yummy cake I've ever made. I'm going to experiment with using two fillings for one cake more often.
Though with all that chocolate, butter, sugar and cream that one slice is probably 1000 calories :-p. Good thing I don't like eating cake all that much.
Plus, I had a lovely afternoon with the family and had fun playing Just Dance 2 on the wii with my 5 year old nephew :-)


Just in case you're interested, here's the recipe for super yummy ganache:


275g chocolate
250ml double cream
50g unsalted butter


Put chocolate and butter in a bowl. Put the double cream in a pan and bring to the boil. Then pour over the chocolate and butter and stir gently until it's all melted and blended. Try not to make bubbles. Then put in the fridge to cool and thicken. Then try not to eat it all before you put it on your cake :-p

Sucky Week

I thought last week was the suckiest ever; work was hard and the people I had to deal with were a nightmare and I couldn't find anyone to go to Chinese New Year with, which just reminded me that all my friends are miles and miles away and my life is depressingly lonely.
But this week was the ultimate.

Monday:
Went to the doctor before work because I noticed a lump inside my lower eyelid and it hurt and itched like hell. Found out I have an inflamed tear gland (there's a technical term for it but I can't remember, it begins with a B :-p) which has probably resulted from an ultra depressing event in January. So doctor prescribes me an ointment to apply to it 4 times a day and tells me I need to wipe the eye with warm salty water before each time. Of course the pharmacy can't give me the ointment for ages so I have to collect it after work. Work was surprisingly not so bad. But I was seriously pissed that the place was a mess because last week me and my colleague sorted/tidied/cleaned everything. I hate lazy messy gits. So I get my ointment after work and it's nigh impossible to stick in my eye because it's like vaseline and won't drop off the damn tube. Awesome. I've got the hang of it now, 4 days later. Was so tired when I got home but had to make dinner and sort out my uniform etc.

Tuesday:
My most difficult crèche with several crying kids and babies that need to be settled and I end up having to carry them about. Got home completely emotionally and physically drained. But I had to make dinner. Tuesday night, around midnight, a sharp pain in my eye woke me up. Incredibly annoying because I have to get to work at 8:30am on Wednesday, which means 7:30am catch the bus and wake up at 6:30am.

Wednesday:
My eye is red like darth maul so I wash my eye, put in some eyedrops and try to sleep. An hour later I still can't sleep, it's getting painful so I go to wash it again and see that the membrane is gone, my eye looks exposed and my eyeball has swollen to a weird shape. Looking left or right hurts even more, I can see my iris trying to move through the doughy white of my eyeball, making it crease. But it's like my eyeball is too swollen to move properly. I could literally see my iris as a separate thing to the white of my eye. I bet you're loving this awesome gruesome description :-p sorry but only after hearing it can you fully appreciate how completely freaked out I was.
But it was too late to go to the doctors and too late to wake anyone up to drive me to A&E. The last time something similar happened it was an allergic reaction to my cat.  She's started sneaking into my room to sleep on my bed of late so I took an allergy tablet and went to bed. I get to sleep some time after 2.
7:30 and the eye still hurts and is swollen but the membrane seems to be back. I texted my boss and stayed home from work. Eventually the pills start to take effect and I rest my eyes in the evening and they get back to almost normal. I stressed so much about the allergic eye I almost forgot about the other one.

Thursday:
Wake up for work and what do you know, the tiny screw holding my glasses together falls out and is lost and my lens falls out. With my eyes so messed up I can't wear my contacts. Great. So I decide to go to the opticians before work and get it fixed. It's pouring with rain but luckily I have my new wellies to keep my feet dry. I wait for the bus to the opticians which is in the opposite direction to the one for work. 20 minutes later there's no bus so I decide to swap sides and go to work or I'll probably be late. I get the bus to work (first bus anyway) and just to make life easier, the bus driver kicks off all the passengers one stop before my stop! Awesome, and it's still raining. And I have to walk 5 minutes from my regular stop to get my 2nd bus anyway, so now I'm walking about 20 minutes in the rain without my glasses so everything's blurry. A song comes on my ipod that reminds me of what had been depressing me since January and I end up walking to the stop in the rain with tears running down my face, too depressed to even open my umbrella. Pathetic, I know.
I get to work finally 40 minutes early! I could have gone to the opticians after all  but it's too late now. So I skip that stop and stop by a shop for a milkshake and walk back to work from there in the rain. At work I realise I remembered my eye ointment but forgot my allergy pills.
Luckily, work was a lot calmer than the week before and things go fine. I sellotape my glasses so that I can at least see. On the way home was expecting to be picked up but mum said she can't come and can I bring some coriander on the way. So I take a detour on my way to the opticians and get my eyebrows threaded too (ouch). This involves more wonderful walking in the rain. When I get my glasses sorted I go to pick up my inhalers from the pharmacy. Of course, they aren't there. And the shitty doctors surgery is closed so I can't even complain to them about it...until tomorrow.
3 buses later, I'm finally home with glasses fixed but eyes feeling sore again. I go in the kitchen to get my salty water for my eye and decide to wash the rice cooker. As I carry it to the sink, I slip in a puddle, the lid goes flying into to the sink and turns on the tap, the pan flies across the floor dropping rice all over and I land on my wrist and bruise my leg. I also somehow pulled a muscle in my shoulder. Awesome.

Tomorrow I have a long day at work that I don't even want to think about at the moment. Saturday I am going to make a cake for my cousin's 18th. Hopefully that will cheer me up a bit. Then Sunday it's his party at Nandos, that should cheer me up too :-p. I seriously need something good to happen, especially with bloody Valentines Day coming.

More X-files

Remember my post about the X-files and how glad I was that they were showing it on 2 channels, 3 different season? Well what do you know, soon afterwards they stopped showing it on all the channels every season.

 A few weeks later I found out why. There's a new channel on cable called Sky Atlantic and they are showing The X-files from the beginning. Great timing, as I already bought the first two seasons on dvd :-p. I don't mind though, buying the dvd saves me the hassle of setting up the dvd recorder. 

 It's fun reliving the series because it has been so long since I first saw these episodes, I barely remember them. If I had I would have realised that Nicholas Lea who appears as Agent Alex Krycek in season 2, first appeared in a season 1 episode called Gender Bender as a man called Michael, the final victim of the episode's killer.

 I also discovered that the actor who played Dr Ivanov (Ken Kramer) in one of my favourite episodes ever (War of the Coprophages -  the cockroach episode) appeared in the last episode of season 1 (The Erlenmeyer Flask) as Dr Terrance Berube. 

In my favourite episode Ice, I recognised a very young and pretty Felicity Huffman as Dr. Nancy Da Silva.

Who should play a superhero?

I used to love watching the old Wonder Woman series with Lynda Carter when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure that watching Wonder Woman along with She-ra, Thundercats, X-men and Visionaries has contributed to my dream of being a kickass superhero vigilante and also  the strong belief I've had growing up that a girl can do everything a boy can.
 And although I'm only a superhero vigilante in my novels and I only kick ass in Street fighter :-p, I think that having these strong female role models from a young age (despite the swimming costume outfits) has made me a strong woman.
 What's the point of this random delve into my personality? My utter horror at the idea of the new wonder woman being played by someone like Megan Fox or Katy Perry (wtf?). I think the perfect person to play Wonder Woman would be Sarah Lancaster (Ellie from Chuck).

She's tall and amazon-ish, beautiful without looking skanky, looks intelligent and comes across as an overall good person. She did annoy me a bit in Everwood but I think she's great in Chuck. Brunette suits her so much better than blonde.

What do you think? Anyone else agree that Wonder Woman should be classy not trashy?

James Franco & Topher Grace

I know Spiderman came out ages ago but this has been preying on my mind for 3 years. I think Topher Grace should have played Spiderman instead of blander than bland Tobey Maguire. It says something when an actor who has done movies since childhood is dwarfed by a TV actor in his own big superhero movie.
I was truly surprised by Topher's screen presence in Spiderman 3, he did such an awesome job! He's such a smart-alecy kinda geeky guy, he would have been a perfect Spiderman and those three movies could have been soooooo much better. Ah well. There were only two good things in Spiderman 3 and they both got killed off by the end. Actually Sandman was alright too.
Not that I don't think Tobey Maguire is a good actor, I've liked a lot of his movies. He just really didn't suit as Spiderman.

A new year and a new cake!

Wow, January's been a really busy time for me when it comes to birthdays and anniversaries. That of course means, lots of cake! So at least one of my new years resolutions isn't going so well :-p. But I did manage to try out a cake design I've wanted to do for ages. Handbag! 

One of my best friends moved to the country a few years ago but somehow or other I never got a chance to make her a birthday cake. Either I was out of the country or she was. So this year I wanted to make her something really special that she'd love to make up for it, which is why I decided on the handbag cake. After hours of searching online for design ideas and tips I decided on the look. I opted against a standing up handbag (which I saw a lot of online) because I know my cakes are too soft to stand up like that without getting completely ruined. I think a cake should look nice but it should also be edible :-p. So anyway, I was super proud of the results, even though I couldn't get the zip quite right and I'm so glad I bought those glitter icing tubes because they worked excellently as eye-shadows.

 Turns out, a handbag cake isn't as hard as I'd led myself to believe. As long as I'm prepared and have all the ingredients and enough time I can make a cake just the way I want it. I also finally figured out how to make carnations!

 Anyway, here it is :-D handbag cake with make-up.

Handbag Cake

Happy 2011!

Happy New Year everyone! I know I'm late but have been busy with work and writing.

My new years party went off ok :-) had a lot of fun. I didn't get time to do the Mario themed food I was planning to make so I just did the cupcakes:

Toadstool cupcakes

I couldn't get the butter-cream red enough though. I also made coloured pacman ice cubes for the punch and mario themed deocorations:

pacman ice-cubes

me with an Aku-aku mask (from Crash Bandicoot)

some of the decorations

I put chocolate coins on them but they kept falling off

I also attempted to cook one of my favourite restaurant dishes "Chilli Chips" served at Chawalla restaurant in Green Street. They have delicious vegetarian Indian food there and unlike a lot of the restaurants on Green Street it's pretty nice inside.
I have never managed to recreate Chilli Chips exactly because I can't quite pinpoint the spices they put in it, but the dish consists of chips, (of course) stir fried in spices with mixed peppers, chilli and spring onion. Hot and delicious. I didn't get the spices quite right this time either but it was pretty close and much better than when I tried chaat masala. I used SHAN jalfrezi mix (that comes in a box) and a little red chilli powder and soya sauce. Here is the result.

Chilli Chips

Well there was more but I took the pic after we'd started eating. As a result of eating like a pig and living in a cocoon without moving all through the snow days and xmas holidays, I've managed to gain the exact amount of weight I was planning to lose :-p so now have to lose twice as much.
Therefore, it's top of my to-do list this year:

1. lose 10 pounds
2. get my drivers license before my provisional runs out in September
3. Finish all my half-written stories
4. Get at least one novel sent off to a literary agent

So today I got the exercise bike out of the shed. Digging it out of the shed, dragging it across the garden, down the steps through the kitchen and finally to my room was a work out in itself and now I need a rest :-p. But I do plan to bike later on and that's my first step done.

For the last few days I've been making myself write at least a few pages or even just a scene for the superhero story I'm writing in the hope of getting it finished soon. I also spend much of the day sorting the plot out in my head and watching related programs, reading etc with it always in mind. It's actually going well and I really think I could finish it soon. Although I already feel a little stuck...

As for driving, well I've been saving up because my work is so random, I don't want to spend all my money on lessons and then be in debt for the next few months because I haven't been paid enough to cover it (like I did last year :-p). But now my driving... well...drive is gone so I think I should at least get the theory test done. Only problem is will have to buy another driving test CD rom because the one I bought last year isn't compatible with the windows 7 laptop I bought afterwards. I've been putting off buying a new cd out of sheer laziness coupled with a reluctance to drive a car.

I also don't want to own a car. As far as I can tell, a car is just a leech on your assets what with the cost, insurance, road tax blah blah blah, I can't be bothered. I'd rather have a horse. But I guess that just isn't feasible in this day and age.

Oh well. Now I think it's time for a little X-files to cheer me up.