Cooking Experiments: Creamy Curry Pasta

Over the weekend I bought some cooking cream in the hopes of trying my hand at carbonara (my fav which causes fatty ass but I probably need some adipose there!). When I got home and started googling for a recipe, to my surprise most of the recipes only used eggs and no cooking cream! A moment of enlightenment for me.

So over to today's lunch. The lunch gang decided that Friday is a splurge day after the crazy week we've had. And so we drove out to the nearby New Chapter by The Owls Cafe. Going into CCC reminded me of the Sponsor a Brick from many many years ago and now I was a stranger entering.

Creamy curry pasta - New Chapter (left) & homemade (right)

Disruption to the Ordinary

Perhaps it's the routine nature of my job but whenever I need to attend an external training, funny things just tend to happen. Yesterday wasn't a fruitful day in terms of knowledge acquisition, but it WAS an interesting day.

Reading and Reflecting

Recently I've somewhat got back into reading - perhaps with the realisation that pretty soon I may not have the luxury of reading for pleasure anymore. Although what I read are from the fiction genre, with every book there is a certain realness when I'm immersed in it and it is inevitable that the mind starts drawing parallels with real life.

Don't understand the words

Today seemed to have passed by so quickly. I'd slept at 3am reviewing the Limits of Authority, which was supposedly due last Friday. I kept thinking why does the LOA come under us when we aren't the operations or finance team. So my comments were purely based on my logic and what I imagine of the possible operational scenario. Having to think it from the standpoint of a separate entity from the group made everything complicated. Couldn't help being legalistic, what with borrowing manpower from the group and shouldn't there be a management agreement for provision of the shared services functions? What about professional indemnity for the decisions we make as employees from a separate entity? Seems like I'm thinking of more ways to spend money than saving resources. Anyway I quit the ouroboros before it was branded in my brain and I'm just glad I submitted it by 10am.

Also quite happy that my appraisal is done and my feedback on my team member is completed. In fact I managed to close quite a few tasks today as opposed to last week's scramble to clear backlog. Got some pats on the back too.

I may have been a bit light headed from lack of sleep but when I was driving back, I had to switch radio channels because BFM had a football commentary programme, and I ended up with one of the popular stations. For some reason I just couldn't catch what the lyrics were for three consecutive pop songs. The tunes were alright but the words were some lagg-ey gibberish. I don't know if it's a new trend of singing style or I'm just too used to the classic stuffs.

Pretty worrying I'd say, soon I won't be able to understand the youngsters' talk. Somewhat like Newspeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four. 😂

Health & Wellness week

I knew it was not a good idea to have a toffee nut latte after dinner and this is the consequence - a wee hour post.

The good thing about smaller organisations is that corporate initiatives can be done in a more intimate setting. We had our Health & Wellness week a couple of weeks back. I for one, was quite excited to see how the plans would pan out after hearing the first mention of this in management meetings and then seeing the proposal papers come through. The objective was for us as an organisation to walk the talk as well as to reduce our medical claims.

Weekend Jog and Reading

After working a full week, the weekends tend to be a time to sleep in and do nothing; or to carry out the non-work routines. Life (or at least mine) tend to revolve around routines and little blips of irregularities from time to time.

Nexus 5 hot and not powering up [Solved]

I thought I could rest on my medical leave but while I was clearing my Nexus 5's memory to accommodate the software updates, the phone suddenly wouldn't turn on when the standby button was pressed. I tried to boot the phone but it didn't work too.

Nexus 5 surgery - I sick you also sick!

Long Day

Sometimes there are days where my brain just feels so exhausted although there wasn't any particularly stressed situation. The feeling is inexplicable. Today was such a day.

I skipped BSF to read up the 200-odd pages meeting papers for tomorrow's management meeting. However, as usual, it was difficult to start the process. And on top of that there was a need to discuss our accommodation bookings for the trip.

I looked through so many hotels that my brain was literally in pain (although I don't know how that was possible since the brain does not have pain receptors). I was so confused and anything and everything looked fine to me.

What saved me was turning on Casting Crowns on Spotify. Praise God! My headache ebbed away and I was able to start my reading assignment plus finalise the bookings.

Stocktake of 2016

It's October - past the mid-year review of my goals for this year. Initially I was thinking that I had not achieved much so far. But when I look back at the experiences I've had this year, I think I am on track! This year's resolution was to have as many firsts and yes, I have been having many firsts! Some of my 'mini achievements of firsts' thus far, in no particular order:-

Baking Experiments: Blackout Brownies, Roasted Vegetables, Baked Eggs, Berries with Yoghurt, Pizza & Salted Caramel Chocolate Tarts

For the past few months I have been experimenting whenever time permitted. The success rate was somewhat mixed but I am just happy that I completed them and eventually someone ate them up.