pre-clubbing

at the entrance with amy

L-R: jian, cheng choo, adelle, amy, myself and yi jing

lalala~

dunkin donuts + lantern candles = hahahhahhahahha

hoho this time we're the sentra showgirls

all pictures' credits to amy's camera.

----

these are random. one night i suddenly felt so grateful to be able to eat home-cooked food.

fried fu-chuk in thai chilli sauce

salmon with lemon juice

and most importantly i will gawp everytime i see this:

fried lala!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i don't know what ingredients my grandma used to cook them but it was really tasty! and besides those are not small lalas. don't know where my mom bought them from, those lalas (clams) are big, fat and succulent!

*drools

kthxbye.

seriously, i really didn't know TGIF actually stands for thank god it's friday. so anyway, yeah adelle treated us at tgif a day before her birthday.

cheryl, adelle and jian.

chee wei, cheng choo, myself and cat. (pardon my hair, i didn't bother to blow dry it)

food & drinks!

three-for-all: buffalo wings, fried mozarella and stuffed potato skins.

fried mac-n-cheese.

jack daniels burger.

two barbarians.

actually there's another sizzling sauteed chicken but forgot to take a picture of it.

a toast with our fries.

view from the other side.

birthday girl's jumbo-sized margarita

jian's super-duper thick chocolate milkshake. see it's so thick the straw could stand straight.

cheng choo's ice cream sandwich.

acting barbaric again. =D

cheryl's antibiotic-like drink. can't remember what was it but it sure did taste very much like antibiotic. or at least, cough syrup. ugh. as if the taste wasn't bad enough, it was jumbo-sized, just like adelle's margarita. the glass was as big as my face.

my fruit smoothie. can't remember its name. what it tasted like to me was a combination of pineapple and banana. super nice! cos i love pineapples and bananas =D

a toast again, this time with our drinks.

mocha mud pie. sinfully good.

birthday girl with birthday cake. if you look closely, the cake actually slided to one side a little from the middle where the two slices of cake was parted with the feelings. i guess it was a result from the excessive bumps in my car when i drove all the way from home at klang to pj.

as usual, the tgif crew did their version of celebrating birthdays. birthday girl on top of a chair holding something as a microphone, giving speeches and talking nonesense, then the tgif's version of birthday song and funny ways of blowing off the candle. adelle had to blow off the candles while she was stood up on her chair and the cake was about half a metre away from her.

and after blowing the candle, i thought it was all over until i got a little startled when the tgif people brought lots and lots of serviettes. one of them pulled the cake nearer to her and another kept opening up serviettes and putting it onto her shoulder and chest intending to cover her clothes.

i went like "fuck are they gonna smash her face onto the cake? the fucking peanut butter chocolate cake i made? omg omg omg gagagagagagag"

and then they started singing something really loud and fast which i dunno why made me even more scared and made my heart beat faster cos the moment it felt as if they're finishing the song i thought my cake's gonna die and adelle will have a hard time cleaning that chocolate frosting on her face.

see see, when they sing until one point when it was the loudest and yelled the last "HEY" at adelle's ears, they walked off.

-____- |||

they were pretending lah.

phew i was so so so fucking scared that'll be the end of my satan's food cake cos everything was so real and close and i didn't even know how to react but to smile and scream "omg". go figure.

so anyway, nothing did happened and the cake was safe and sound in one piece when adelle cut it and everyone ate.

damn sinful.

then we gave her our present which made her "OH MY GOSH" with eyes wide opened and she practically shrieked when she saw it.

we got her this brown knitted angora coat from giordano which she has been eyeing and wanting and whining about since weeks ago. she's been telling the world how she fell in love with that coat and how she really really wants it but couldn't buy it and how she twist her face and show us the very sad face when she tries on it. sad cos she thought she couldn't have it.

so we got it for her.

pictures do no justice at all, it's actually brown and looks far nicer than this picture actually shows.

the birthday girl and myself.

cheng choo, the one who went all the way to sungai wang with me to get the coat. (pardon the eyebags and yadda yadda i was not bothered to apply makeup)

and lastly, a group picture;

L-R: jian, cheng choo, chee wei, cheryl, adelle, myself and cat.

toodles.

because i have not been baking for a very long time since i can remember, and because i was too free after all the submissions and examinations, i decided to make the birthday girl a cake instead of getting one.

you see, few things good about baking a cake is, you decide what you wanna make. you don't have to go through the hassle of considering the budget, guessing which flavor she'll like, and contemplating to get a whole cake or just a slice.

so i decided to make something chocolate. went to the hypermarket days earlier and got this;

Pilsbury's Moist Supreme Cake Mix Devi's Food

cake mix like this saves a lot of time on making the perfect cake layers. besides, who wouldn't like devil's food cake? as in super rich and moist chocolate cake?

oh yeah do you even know there is a thing called angel food cake? yup angel food cake's an opposite to devil's food cake. angel's food cake is supposed to be healthy. it's made out of egg whites instead of whole eggs and the texture is light and cream colored. it's supposed to be a healthy cake. whereas devil's food cake is supposed to be the... devil lah. unhealthy. super rich in fats, carbs, sugar and whatever that's not good. but it's sinfully tasty. so people still eat the devil's food wtf right?

initially i only thought of making a very simple cake from the mix and slap on some ready-made frosting. then suddenly i felt like eating peanut butter. so i went online and search the net for some peanut butter chocolate cake recipe and found one.

i followed exactly from the recipe but improvised a little; i added some stuff. here's a step by step to it.

(ingredients in green are optional cos i added them into the recipe)

ingredients:

frosting;
1 cup of whipping cream
1 cup of semi sweet chocolate chips

filling;
4 ounces of softened cream cheese
1/4 cup of creamy peanut butter
2 tbsps of confectioner's sugar
1 cup of whipped topping*
extra creamy peanut butter for spreading

cake;
1 devil's food cake mix
3 handfuls of semi sweet chocolate chips**

method:

preheat oven to 160 celcius degrees. prepare a greased and lined baking pan. (i used an approximately 6" by 6" pan, thickness is around 1.5")***

frosting;

boil whipping cream, then stir in semi sweet chocolate chips till they melt under low heat.

be sure to whisk till all the chocolate chips are all melted and no bits around. leave it to chill in the fridge while making the cake. this shall be the frosting.

cake;

prepare the batter for the devil's food cake as directed from the pack. lastly before pouring into the prepared baking pan, stir in the chocolate chips and mix thoroughly. i added chocolate chips to make the chocolate cake even richer. wah like this not devil anymore. satan's food cake wtf.

** amount is according to preferance.

pour into the prepared pan, level, and bake for around 1 hour, or until the skewer comes out clean.

*** the size of pan may vary but this will determine the baking duration. if a bigger pan was used the batter will be spreaded out more and the thickness of cake will become lesser thus, the duration of baking should be reduced. if the baking temperature is put too high the outside of the cake will be cooked up faster than the inside and they might be more crusty. keeping the temperature lower allows the cake to be cooked properly inside out and it is ok to slightly overbake cos it will not cause the cake to be too dry nor hard.

filling;

prepare 1 cup of whipped topping. note: 1 cup of already whipped topping, not whip up 1 cup of topping. i made a mistake by whipping 1 cup of topping and ended up having too much, as shown in the picture. put it aside.

* whipped topping is different from whipping cream. whipping cream is normally UHT and slightly yellowish and it's more watery than topping. topping is normally off white and goes really stiff when whipped up. whipping 1 cup of topping will end up with a few cups of whipped topping cos the thing sort of expands as when you whip, bubbles fill up the cream that's why it expands. in this recipe, it calls for 1 cup of stiff, already whipped topping but not 1 cup of liquid topping.

softened cream cheese. to make it soft, before beginning to make anything, take it out from the fridge and leave it aside to room temperature.

creamy peanut butter.

beat the cream cheese till soft and creamy.

mix in the peanut butter and sugar and beat till well blended.

then fold in the whipped topping slowly. do not use the electric mixer as it will break the bubbles in the cream. use a spatula or big spoon to fold in the cream into the cream cheese mixture.

let the cake cool off for 10 minutes in the pan before transferring it onto a wire rack to cool off completely.

to speed up the cooling process, slice it into half. as seen in the picture, i also trimmed off the extra "mountain" to make 2 flat slices of cake. if you see in the picture before this, the cake risen till it cracked. if i were to put frosting the surface wouldn't be even so i trimmed it off and make the top surface of the cake flat and even. unless you don't mind frosting the cake with that "mountain".

be sure that the cake is cooled off completely because if the filling is spread onto a hot cake, it will melt. before spreading the fillings, transfer cake onto the board/plate/whatever you wish to present it with.

spread a layer of peanut butter on the cake. amount is according to preference. i added this cos i wanted a heavier taste of peanut butter.

then spread all the cream cheese mixture on top of the peanut butter layer. it should come up to about this thick if you finish up all the mixture.

because i whipped up extra topping, i used some of it here. spreading a thin layer on top of the cream cheese layer. i didn't put much cos it'll taste weird later having too many layers of different fillings. so this cream layer is optional.

after spreading the fillings, top it with the other slice of cake. trim off the sides to make them even. but this is optional.

remember at the beginning of the recipe there's the whipping cream and melted chocolate chips mixture which was left in the fridge? it should already be a little hardened, really thick and spreadable when it's chilled.

spread it onto the whole cake. because it's really thick, it was really difficult to spread and the end reasult was really messy and... ugly. =(

but nevermind. after spreading, i piped wordings. for the wordings i used the remaining extra whipped topping and added pink colouring to it. spoon some into a small plastic bag, squeeze it to the corner of the plastic bag and snip off the corner to make a very tiny hole, big enough to pipe out the wordings. do not snip off too much otherwise the pink cream will be oozing out too much. after snipping, try piping it out somewhere but the cake and look at the thickness of the words and adjust according to preference.

after piping the words, decorate the cake as you like. i ran out of decorative stuffs so i used some leftover chocolate chips.

Ah Diao = Adelle

hhahahaah it was an inside joke. anyway, pardon the ugliness. it was my first time piping words.

after that i went out to get a box to keep it. and i bought some star sugar to decorate the cake.

nice right!

the result.

looks really ugly but it tasted ok. i'm not gonna praise it i'll leave it to those who has tasted it but all i can say is, it's edible.

=D

ok will continue on the celebration next. there're  also pictures in loft but i can't seem to upload them.

later.

i don't know bout others but i have this thing with songs where i get really nostalgic when i listen to certain songs. they simply convey a certain kind of sentiment.

i was listening to my ipod when this song came. it was "higher" by creed. it instantly reminded me about a major crush i had when i was in high school. it was as fresh as the sea water when i reminisced about it. i remember it very clearly, i was still in form 2 when i took the school bus to and back from school. there's this particular guy which i had a huge crush on and i remember very clearly the adjective i gave him when my friends asked me how's he like. "gorgeous" and i smiled shyly. it was a one sided thing cos all i did was gaze at his back and admire his hair, how it was so soft and smooth when the wind blew. everytime i boarded the bus i will secretly take a glimpse at him and that'll make my day. why the song "higher" by creed? cos back then my house was kinda far from school, by the time the uncle sends me home the bus will only be left with less than 5 of us; of course one of them was him and creed's "higher" was a hit during those days. most of the nights when we were both in the bus, "higher" was the song which accompanied my little feelings. you know la, hitz.fm always play the same song over and over again one.

he was by far the longest crush i have ever had. for 2 years. then i stopped taking the bus already cos i shifted from my old home back at a little neighbourhood called batu belah to my current one. 7 years already.

one thing which i might and probably will do before i die was to let him know about my feelings for him back then. well, not to hope for anything but i don't wanna die regretting things like this.

aaahhh i think i'm unconscious. why am i even talking about the past? right now i have already found the perfect love of my life for donkey years and more to come.

blame deprivation of sleep. slept only one hour last night because i was rushing to finish up this fucking assignment where i have to key in a bloody full orchestra in a computer software. as if 10 pages is not enough, halfway doing it the fucking thing went "not responding". i swear if my housemate wasn't still awake at 5 am in the morning playing stupid dota or whatever, i would have screamed my lungs out. luckily i managed to save but in the end the file was kinda corrupted it'll hang whenever i open it. so in the end i had to redo a small portion of it. and because my group members were so busy i had to compile everything. a fucking full orchestra of 29 pages altogether. macibai can die man.

oh yeah went to loft on wednesday. pictures later cos i... need... to....

zzz.....

Since I've never mentioned much about the music examination syllabuses in UM, here's it. These are what I should be preparing for semester 3 for my practical examination.

Mostly are standard keys for a standard Grade 8. Urm, but I would say a little slightly higher than Grade 8.

1. Scales, Arpeggios, Dominant 7ths & Diminished 7ths in the keys of D, Eb and F Major and minor 3 octaves - Separate bow and slurred 3 octaves to a bow.

2. Chromatics in the keys of B and C, 3 octaves - Separate bow and slurred one octave to a bow.

3. Double stops; octaves in the keys of Bb and C Major and minor 2 octaves - Separate bow and slurred 2 notes to a bow.

4. There'll be a sight reading too.

As for repertoires, we are supposed to prepare a study (by Kreutzer or Dont), a Baroque/Romantic piece/concerto movement and a Classical/20th Century piece/concerto movement. 

Here's what I'm doing:

1. Kreutzer Study No. 6
2. Vivaldi Violin Concerto in A minor 3rd movement
3. Beethoven Sonata in F Major "Spring Sonata" 1st movement

Out of that 3 repertoires, the 3rd one is most well known. I still didn't manage to video myself playing it yet, couldn't find a suitable time and place to rehearse it with my pianist Ms. Amy Foong and also I'm not polished enough yet. But I promise I'll post up one soon. Right now, it's killing me cos it's so beautiful, it's so difficult to be interpreted and expressed. The reason I have to play it with my pianist because it's a piano and violin sonata; it's written for both piano and violin, not either one accompanying each other. Both piano and violin are equally important so I can't play the violin parts solo cos it'll sound odd and uninteresting.

Here're a few versions of it if you're interested to listen to the sonata and wait a few minutes tor loading:

By Anne Sophie Mutter - Very very very very expressive but I don't like. Cos the way she plays makes me feel really lousy wtf              (-_-'') No la really, her playing too much improvisation and her own interpretation like ritenuto (held back, immediately slower) when Beethoven's works are supposed to be very technical and precise, everything is according to what's written. She played it in a more romantic way. In a way, it makes it her style.

By Henryk Szeryng - The recording I've been referring to as I practise. Very direct interpretation. I like. Cos easy to follow mah wtf. But nevertheless, still beautiful. Oh if you're wondering why just a picture but not live playing, it's because he's dead already wtf. I'm serious. See the picture black and white also know it's a few decades ago lah.

By Razvan Stoica - One of my favourites also. It's nothing really impressive but the way he plays it - very relaxed and pleasing. And yet, the sound was good. Also, that facial expression shows he really enjoys playing it. But it sounded more like a violin solo and piano accompanying than a violin and a piano sonata to me.

As for the Vivaldi, I couldn't find any proper video from youtube. There are some recordings but they aren't really nice, I didn't really like the way they play it. Probably it's because I'm used to my style of playing. Will post a video of it also, soon.

Kreutzer study don't need to find. Nobody plays studies and perform one so couldn't find any video also. Anyway, this study I'm playing not that interesting. Very boring, the whole study is in martelé (a type of bow stroke). Super tiring and boring. I'll post up a video of another study (not by Kreutzer) which I quite like next time.