Kev walker's Raven Guild Master

This is an older piece by Kev. Smaller than the gardener i've got. Doesnt look that much in the picture, but for something so small (6x7 inch) he has drawn on a lot of details. Yeah! one more piece to my collection.

Shelton Bryant

Finishing the thesis means that i have nothing to do, while i search for a job and wait for my thesis to be marked. So for the last two weeks (before working with Carl), i've been on the net... a lot! Looking at pretty Comic, Magic and Fantasy art and finding out how expensive art from famous artist cost. The other thing i found was Shelton Bryant. I dont know much about him, except that he paints one hell of a Batman. Shelton has been interviewed featured in Silverbullet about some of his work. He also has two online galleries for viewing, one on Comic Fan art and DeviantArt. I think his style is really interesting, and mailed him about 2 commission, it was at a reasonable price, i think. Anyway, here is the first one.

In case people dont know who they are, the man is suppose to be Dream (Sandman, Neil Gaiman), I know he might not look like it, but i think the lady on the corner confirms his identity. I love how the shadows and the painting is done. I have no idea the right words to describe art. But i know i like this. So... let me know what you think.

Things in life.... mine

It has been a while since my last update. I guess most of you would know i was busy writing my thesis, and happy to say that all that shit is over. Well, at least i managed to compile my 4 years worth of work into a book of 283 pages. Now i wait for the markers.... sigh.......3 months.....

The months of on and off job search has not landed me any postdoc job so far. Guess that's what i get for not being well published. Yep! No one wants me. :o(
Anyway, i have agreed to work in my old lab for a while, with Carl, while i search for a postdoc position.

After addressing the important stuff in my life, i guess it is time to talk about my current little/HUGE obsession. ART! Not classic art, but fantastic comtemporary art, which includes, fantasy, science fiction and comic art. Ranging from oil painting to digital painting. So here i present one of my favourite artist Kev Walker. An english artist who started with painting in 2000AD programs and in Magic the gathering card game illustrations. He is one of those artists who are too busy to maintain a website, thus making him and his art rather hard to get hold of. His paintings are all rather small in size, but very detailed. I'm not an expert, so according to other artists, he uses watercolour and sometimes acrylic. But no one knows for sure. When i was desperately trying to find any source of his art, i finally came around one person who actually possess about 30 pieces from the card game art (Kamigawa-japanese themed block). And yeah! i bought my first piece of original art.

This piece is the "Budoka Gardener/Dokai Life Weaver". It is a piece that can be viewed in two ways. According to design, the one on the left is an inexperienced monk who attained enough power and became the older/wiser monk on the right, who is calling/conjuring a tree elemental. It is sitting in my living room at the moment, and sigh..... love it.

Just another party

This was pretty much Mr. AK's party, so for more pictures you probably wanna go to his blog. I think this is the first official drinking meet of the PRAHA drinking team which consists of the president (Dez-left), the secretary (Tina-right) and the only member (Alan-center). This is the before eveyone got very very happy. The main spread of the day are the drinks! i think there was enough variety to make enough different cocktails. Tammy made Pimms, dont know what's in it, but has lots of fruits.

Well, alan made is hot mexican chilli dip with nachos. For the mains, from the italian bible cookbook (silverspoon) the Pork loin in grape juice. One of the sides, which was fantastic was the marinated eggplant. very very nice. the zucchini salad which we forgot and remade with buffalo mozzarella turned out fantastic too. Alan made three deserts, Grand marnier frozen souffle (which turned out bad), tirami su and apple cake.

It was a very short 8 hour drinking session, we've had apple, water melon margaritas, cosmopolitan blended and shaken, lots of other drinks which i have no idea what names they were. And i guess the highlight was the uniCUM thanks to tina....

And just a quick, after everyone has drank too much, shot.

Great to have everyone over.

RISE to the occasion

The restaurant RISE has been having a promotion on their degustation menu. Seven course dinner at 30% discount. So $42 for the course. Great price. It is a japanese fusion restaurant in Darlinghurst. There was a 2 hour limit on the time for dinner, so we went for the early one, at six. There was already people there and all of them were asian. More than half were people from Hongkong. Anyway, back to the food. Here is the menu for the day:

First Dish: Entree- Chicken and tofu with miso and sesame sauce

Soup: Tofu stuffed with mince calamari (there was also sago in the soup which was quite interesting)

Sashimi: Raw oyster (i think with soy and grated raddish) , Kingfish (Some soury sauce) and Trout (with Soy and wasabi) No we did not SHOT the Sashimi

Mixed Plate: Salmon with spiced mayo (curry spice), Soft-shell crab sushi and Tuna tartare in wanton. Thought this was interesting mix of flavour.

Pasta: Scallop on rice noodles and papaya salad [a little like thai]

Main: Steamed Fish (cant remember what fish) with tempura zucchini flower with the option of rice. This wasnt too impressive, but was still good.

Desert: Panacotta with plum granita (need i say more?) yumm...... always too small

Overall ok. Some interesting mixes/fusion. But without the discount, i think it is a little steep. And that's that.

Oh GOSH! Dinner!

Went to des and tam's place for dinner today. Didnt cook anything for dinner, but help make a souffle and screwed up a little of the stuff. This lemon souffle with almond on top. We added two less egg whites cos we ran out of eggs, the texture was a little harder than expected, probably because of the egg whites, but it wasnt too bad. Will keep people posted when we try to make it again.

Brought the desert over with a 5L keg of beer. Des cooked the whole day and made a spanish seafood paella. It was great! Squid, mussels, Chorizo, Prawns, Chicken..... Yumm... Very very filling too. And to go with it.... Sangria, homemade. Very nice too. Very very fruity. :o)

Des made a desert. Orange cake. hehe. He didnt buy enough cheese, so it was a little thin and full of cookie base. But taste wise, was still ok. We'll have to get him to try to make it again.

After dinner, we watched Napoleon Dynamite. Though i have seen this show sit on the civic store for the last few years, i have not rented it. But it turned out to be quite funny......" Oh! Gosh!"......

Thanks for dinner Dez+Tam

Pan's Labyrinth

Went to watch Pan's Labyrinth on Sat. at Dendy's newtown. This is written and directed by Guillermo del Toro (Director of Hellboy, mimic etc). The story went straight into the fantasy world with the little girl (Ofelia) and her mom. I was a little angry with the dendy there, when the entire movie did not fit the screen. The top part of the movie was outside the screen and when Alan went to complain about it, they said that they could not do anything about it. Ergg.... but oddly, it became ok later, so that was good. Anyway, I wont go into the story, but just that i liked it, not expecting that much violence (but was ok), hoped that there was more fantasy element in it, but loved the characters. If you are undecided about the movie, you can go have a look at the Pan's Labyrinth website. But definitely worth going. Just look at the awards and nominations the movie's got.

Peanuts

One of my favourite desert is the peanut cookie, the chinese style, or maybe more the nyonya type. And here in OZ, you can get those only at some of the oriental shops which are not very good at all (but i still buy them). So i got Alan to get some nicer ones when he went back to singapore this time from Bengawan Solo (one of the most popular cake branches in singapore). The ones he got wasnt too bad, but not good enough, so i went online to search for the recipes to make some, but it was a little complicated, since everyone calls it different things, peanut melts etc. But alan found one to try out.

This is what they looked like before they are cooked. Basically, its peanuts, lots of sugar and lots of fat (Butter) and a bit of baking soda.

And here they are all cooked, together with his little man which acquired a ball of sorts during the bake.

They look really nice, but were different from the ones they have in singapore.... sigh.... so back to the internet to find more sources. Then i came by a blog from a malaysian lady (i think) who has a food blog with recipes, emailed her and she sent me the recipe she uses, and here it is: PERFECT!

Yeah! Now i dont have to buy anymore of the crappy ones from the supermarket. Yeah!

For those who are interested and can find time to make these: here is a link to the original site where i got the recipe from: teckiee

Y: the last man

What will you do if all the men in the world died suddenly except for one man? What if you are the last man alive? I think this is the question many of you girls would have thought about at some point in your life. Brian K Vaughan's graphic novel series. Y: the last man, has given some possibilities to what will happen to the world if all men died except for one.

This novel series was an impulse buy. My Kino membership discount is coming to an end, and the next renewal will cost me $15. So i decided to spend more money to get save more money (i know it doesnt sound right, but that is my logic). Anyway, bought the first 2 volumes of the graphic novel and found that they were more interesting than expected.

So anything on earth with the Y-chromosome died one fine day except for an amateur escape artist, Yorick Brown, and his monkey. He travelled everywhere in search of his mom first, then his sister, ultimately trying to find a way to Australia to find the girlfriend. The women started forming different groups trying to organise the world again, including daughters of Amazons, who burnt off one of their breasts, and tries to kill the last man alive.

Well, i will have to get the rest of the series to know what has happened and is going to happen. I am really excited about this now. Very interesting......

The Gifts and Tree

Ya.. we have a little tree at one of the corners of the house, and according to Tina, a hideous curtain that goes with the whole x-mas tree and present designs. Thanks to Tina and jeff, there are a lot more presents next to the tree. See the sock, jeff bought presents for the doggys.

Yep, both the doggys are reindeers this year.

Thanks Jeff and Tina for the gifts

X-mas EVE

Lunch

So it is the time of the year again for all the eating and drinking, and this year, Tina suggested that we do a full-day eating and drinking from lunch til dinner. So a bunch of us did. The plan was for people to start coming over to my place at about 2pm in the afternoon and we can all start cooking together the stuff we planned to do. Two rain drenched people rocked up a little late. But hey there is plenty of time for food, 2 pm til 12 am. Naturally, we started with a little chips and dips. Then for the first main, Chinese Cabbage Parcels (I made from jamie olver's recipe).

there is chicken coriander and other stuff in it. Easy to make which turned out pretty yummy.

Up next we had raw oysters we got from the fish market yesterday, then Tina did her very very spicy (literally choking) grilled prawns. Of course she blames me for telling her to put the spice on generously. But i though they were very good, i am sure alan would have loved them if he was here. Next, contributed by jeff, a abalone which he dug out from his fridge at home. Butter and peppered abalone. Well, not everyone liked it, cause it was a little chewy. But i liked it. After we finished those stuff, it was half time. And all the cooking and eating (and drinking in jeff's case) was so tiring that some people had to take a nap.

Dinner

After the afternoon nap the sleepy heads woke up and we started having dinner. I made a tuna carpaccio which looked nice, but taste..... meh. probably too much parsley in the sauce. Tracy made a great salad which i do not have pictures of, and my lamb with mint sauce, which did not turn out the way i had hoped but tasted good.

After the mains, my tummy went a little weird, probably too much food for the whole day. So the rest of them carried on with the prawns and started making desert. Jeff made his raspberry tarts and Tina her chocolate fondants.

so this is what we had for x-mas eve. i think we did pretty well.

Merry Christmas Everyone

X-mas Chocolates

Got some pretty chocolates for X-mas, and i just decided to put the mushroom and peanut ones up. They were yummy.

Dinner at the POWER house

A couple of us got invited to dinner at Carl's place last friday. And due to popular demand, Carl made his very famous greek chicken pie. There are few people in the laboratory who have had the chance to try the pie.

History of Carl's Pie

Carl baked the pie three years ago at our X-mas party at Pam's place. Everyone loved it and at least three people asked if we can take the left overs home. But there was only a quarter left and there was only one winner who took all the pie home, and she will remain annoymous. So since then we have not had a chance to have the pie again.

POWER Continued

So when Carl asked us to come over for dinner, i think someone requested that he make his pie, and so he did. So we all went on a friday evening all anticipating the fabulous pie. Other than the pie, Carl also made some very nice spicy BBQ chicken wings, lovely pesto rice, and a green salad which i could not fit in anymore after all the other food. Anyway, time to show the pie. I thought it looked really interesting close-up. So i'll show everyone a close-up of the pie. And just to clarify, the pie looks and taste heaps better, just that my phone camera sucks. here it goes

hehe.... it looks like a tummy close-up doesnt it :o)

Well, better show the whole pie now.

Yeah! that's it. the delicious Greek Chicken Pie

that is the slice i had with baked potato.

After dinner, Carl made home-made Vanilla ice-cream. Not with real vanilla pods, but a vanilla essence from mexico (suppose to be 50x stronger than normal essence), which was fantastic. Not very sweet, creamy and vanilla-y. We also had the sweets Melinda made for X-mas, blueberry truffles, white choc fudge, and others i cant remember the name of. But they were all fantastic. Dinner was excellent, thank you Carl and Melinda.

Pebble is FOUR

Pebble is getting old...

I cant believe Pebble is already four! She still behaves like a puppy, jumping, hopping ... Ahhh.... she is just too adorable. I know... i love my dog... I went to get the chicken just for her. She didnt get to finish the whole chicken, but it was just for her.