Happy Lunar/Chinese New Year 2006!
Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year everyone! I've been looking forward to this long holiday for awhile now. It's rare you have a public holiday that's 2 days, and Monday-Tuesday too.
Anyway, i redid a favourite song yesterday, Stronger. Basically re-recorded it and enhanced/tweaked the music. It sounds alot better now, with my new equipment. I'm pretty sure you can hear the difference. Check it out at the winterealm site, or just get the link
here . The file you download will be a .mpx file, you gotta rename it to mp3 after you've downloaded it.
Have a good one, and keep collectin' em' angbaos! ;)
Stomach woes
Been having stomach/gastric related problems..... i actually went to the docs last week to have it checked, coz my stomach was really bloated and was causing much discomfort and a little pain.
I realized it had been like this for awhile now... a long while, and i had thought i simply was fat. But apparently, it does'nt seem like fat.... seems like something inside is bloating out, making me look somewhat pregnant.....
But anyways, the doc gave me some meds for 2 weeks.
Things were going pretty ok until today. Might be something i ate in the morning, i started having gastric pains, and was feeling a little bloated. But i still went on with lunch anyway, and had chicken cutlet. After that, i was seriously bloated, and in pain. Until an hour or 2 later (now) did i start to feel better.
I'm seriously getting freaked out. I should write as much music as i can before i die or something.
Things are back up
Hey fellas....
Sorry for the lack of updates..... have been busy dealing with my fucked up family crisis, and fixing up my 2 computers once and for all.... Yes, certain problems with both comps came to view, and i had to fix them up, which included reformatting both computers.
So, it was quite a chore re-installing all the software, considering the fact that i had already gone through that process about 5 times this month.
BUT, everything is good now..... It's allllll good..... temperatures are cool, noise level is silent, audio system all up and working.
I'm ready to make some music over the weekend. This major computer breakdown has been a blessing in disguise really... it had made me upgrade some of my gear, which i would'nt have done so if the computers had not failed.
Now, my studio is alot closer to a professional home recording studio. :)
I'm actually open to projects and recordings .. If you need a cozy studio to record some vocals or have some music done, or have some1 produce a demo/personal CD,
email me.
Expect some music from me very soon.
And, i may be doing a podcast show soon, a special request for a few of my japanese friensd in FF, so it will have some japanese content. lol.
Damned computer
Still bloody hell trying to get my new computer in full perfect working condition. Still experiencing bugs with it. Thankfully, last night i managed to fix
one anomaly..... now i just hope i can fix the frequesnt
freezing.
Will be busy working on changes and additions to "Closer to Your Heart" , the musical i'm working on. They'll be doing casting near the end of Jan.
Anyone interested in singing for a musical during the arts festival, with people like Dick Lee and Iskandar Ismail part of the project, please let me know.
The story sums up to a tragic and complicated family coping with death and their personal sibling rivalry and such.
I also havn't been attending my vocal lessons. Can't cope financially for now. This will only delay my big plans though. Darn it.
Do continue to check and support my music at
http://www.Winterealm.com. I havn't given up on music, just that i've been caught up with certain mishaps in my family and computer recently. That's all for now.
Japanese Curry
I cooked up a wicked japanese curry which i ate for 3 days on Monday. Will put up pictures of it tonight. I've been terribly broke, and dad's in Hong Kong, so i have no means of getting any financial reimbursements. SO, i figured the best way to survive this episode, would be to spend the remaining amount of money i had, well to be exact, $10 , buy a bag of carrots, onions and potatoes.
Together with some frozen meats in the fridge, and a packet of Japanese Curry mix which i bought sometime back, i cooked all my meals.
This cooking spree began last Friday, with my risotto attempt. I ate that for 2 meals. Followed by some soup made with the stock, with rice and 'pickled radish' omlette. (aka chai pu dan).
Monday, i decided to make something more tasty, and made the vegetarian curry.
It consisted of 1 whole onion, finely diced, 4 carrots chopped into bitesizes, 1 red bell pepper, and 4-5 potatoes. The potatoes are peeled and cut in halves, and then boiled in salted water until you can pierce a chopstick right through w/o much resistance. Then the water is drained, and they're left to cool.
Sautee the vegetables in some oil until they're soft, bell pepper is cooked last, add some of that lovely frozen vegetable stock i had made on Friday with some water, let it all simmer and thicken abit, then add the pack of curry mix.
It was the first time i handled a pack of japanese curry mix, and i was pretty surprised.
Usually, curry comes in the form of
powder. The japanese curry mix came in a solid form. It felt and behaved like a chunk of plastecine. Smelt great though.
Nevertheless, i broke it up into smaller chunks, and dumped it all into the pan.
It melted and thickened like crazy. Upon which, i panicked a little bit. I quickly added water to the pan to de-glaze it, and after several additions, it became thinner, and upon testing, tasted
just nice. Potatoes are added, and simmer for awhile for flavour to go into t
he potatoes, and then its ready to be served over rice.
You can then accompany the curry rice with almost any side. It was pretty late that night, so i jsut fried an omlette to go with it. A popular way of eating this curry is to accompany it with various deep fried meats.
Risotto Attempt #1 - Success!!
I had been looking forward to come home all day, coz i had planned to cook a lovely dinner to welcome the weekend tonight. I was going to make Risotto. And make it i did. My first attempt at cooking the italian rice dish was a success, even though i didn't exactly stayed true to it's style.
I used chinese ingredients, and cooked the risotto the italian way.
I used pork belly stewed with chinese mushrooms and a quarter of a bell pepper. It stewed for over an hour, until the meat was very tender, and the initial broth was reduced to a thick sauce.
To stew the meat and cook the risotto, i used a home made broth i prepared the moment i arrived home.
It consisted of some pork bones, 3 carrots, 2 onions, half a bell pepper, some black peppercorn, and a few cloves of garlic. It was left to slow boil for like an hour+ before i allowed it to be used. The rest was let to boil for another 2hr+, for another day. :)
I enjoy cooking so much, i think my blog is going to become a foodblog! Anyway, here's the lovely picture.
It's been fun..
You know... i realize i've been wasting time worrying and doing this podcast shit. So, i've decided to stop doing it. I would probably post up some 'impromptu' recordings from time to time, but the files will only be put up temporarily.
The main reason for discontinuing it is because i realized i've been my main priorities, writing and singing original music!
I simply have no time to slack anymore... as each day passes, i grow 1 day older, and effectively, have less chance of becoming a singer (coz of age).
Well other than that, there are so many things i need to take care of and work on... such as grooming, and continuing to work on the voice..... eventually dancing...
So it's time to focus. I'll be writing songs. Check the winterealm.com site.
I'll still blog. But, no more weekly podcast. Was fun while it lasted.
All is well once again
Hooray! I took half day yesterday, to go buy my computer.
Borrowed a twap of cash from my Dad to get a new computer.
So far, everything has gone well, Thank God. I managed to get all the parts i want, and everything went below budget.
Spent the whole of last night setting things up though. I'll be spending tonight setting up the music production softwares, and if i can, i'll record a little podcast for ya'll.
I'm so happy! Coz the new computer looks SWEET, and performs excellently.
Happy New Year.... not quite....
First up, i'd like to wish everyone a happy new year. New year has'nt been too happy for me however. My main computer went down, the powerhouse computer for making music and stuff. Apparently, the motherboard/cpu has given way, and it calls for a replacement, which essentially means getting a new computer on the whole. Which, is kinda fucked up. I'm cussin', coz i'm really saddened and frustrated about this. I spent most of my remaining savings this month to get stuff to fix a fault in the computer, and it ended up dying. It does'nt help that i have a musical to finalize over the next 2 weeks. Sigh. I'm gonna have to tap my reserves. Which pisses me off immensely. AGRH.
And because of this financial crisis, i've been forced to stayed at home the whole weekend, through the holidays. I avoided buying any meals, and cooked my meals from whatever was available at home.
I thought a couple of my humble home-made meals were pretty and colorful, so i took some pictures. Hope you like em'.
This is a simple little omlette packed with rice in it, with 4 pieces of grilled luncheon meat, topped with some tomato ketchup.
2 packs of Myojo's Spicy Mee-Pok Goreng, with 2 sunny side ups over it. 1 Yoke was burst in my mouth, while 1 was burst all over half the remaining noodles and mixed together with the noodles. :)
That's all for now. I hope i can get my new computer up soon. Going to do a shitload of research so i can get the best for the best price, and not have to go through another fuckin' heartbreak. All my life's work is contained and produced by my computer. It means so much to me. :(
