A night out with a notebook salesman. Have you ever?

I have been mentioning this to A (will address husband with his initial starting now) many times,

"I need to buy a notebook for my lab reports."

"And I want the Daiso's one, please.."

I love to shop for Daiso stuff at this one huge Daiso nearby the university. Actually, I could just buy the notebook at the coop. But I always choose Daiso because..they are fancy. Need you more explanation? Daiso is very dangerous I tell you. You will always come out of the shop with all the plastic inventions you never thought you need them until...you see them. But they are just brilliant plastic inventions! I know, right? Girls? Sigh.. The bigger the Daiso you get yourself into, the lost/gain (husband and wife see it differently) will be bigger.

I am well known to be one of the loudest depratment members here. It wasn't just how I backing up my findings/ideas, but it is me as a whole. How I dress myself, my pens, my bags and even my report books. Mine and myself has been the most popped out out of the crowd. I tried to tone down a bit along the years though. I remember my first formal event I attended to, I was wearing a very shiny purple lacey dress while the others are wearing a plain, black everything. hahaha xp. Next one, I came in a pink fuchsia maxi dress. Gila kan? ahaha. I don't know whether to feel regret or what!

Here are the characteristics of the notebook I looked for:

1) Kawaii (Cute)

Period.

I am blessed with the most caring husband ever. He is one husband who never show that he listened, but he listened. In fact, he listened attentively that it is dangerous if you didn't say you are just exaggerating. When I said I want a notebook, he made it his business to get me the best notebook in the market. He even made time for a hunt of the best notebook ever! Sigh...I just want a cute notebook. From Daiso !_!

So, last night he brought me to a proper book/stationary store, which I occasionally enter because I cannot see the point of buying from this store when Daiso sells everything this store sells for just 100yen. Right? I kept nagging him to just bring me to Daiso. But he dragged me to a store name Futaba. Sigh..

So, we arrived at a shelf where many not-so-fancy-non-flowery notebook were displayed. Suddenly he transformed into a notebook salesman. He even taught me the principles on choosing the best notebook while I tried to pick one I like (based on color. That's the least I could do given how plain they are all look). He always find flaws on each of them that I couldn't defend. I feel like we are doing that all night and I just had to let him choose T_T OMG!!So much thinking and debate just for a notebook T_T

I'm helping you here guys. Tips to choose the best notebook ever is: (1) smaller than A4 (I'm not sure it was because I insisted to get the A4 size). (2) It has to be non-ring for easy stacking and keeping (he even showed me what he meant). (3) and because of that, buy one made in Japan (or else the sheets would be easily detached). (4) buy enough pages for your project.
So, I only had the privilege to choose the color. Pink it is.

After all the freedom he gave me, he took away my right to choose a notebook T_T lol xp
But, he asked me to marry him. I must be the shiniest diamond he has ever seen (metaphorically..and I'm not good at creating one. Get me?) #selfcomforting

Canned-tuna Laksa Johor

My first ever laksa Johor. I'm loving it :)

On one evening when I just came back from work, I feel so tired, but I still need to cook dinner. I look at husband..he really has problems of eating in small portion. Reminds me to bring him for leptin check later on. ahaha xp. Seriously, why men eat so much @_@ or is it only him?@_@ I requested a big fridge when we move because I dreamed of becoming a domestic goddess who can fill the kitchen with food everywhere. So far, my refrigerator only contains the shelf, and so does my dry food shelf, where I have prepared nice container to stock up biscuits, cookies, buns, etc. All empty. Looks like I married to a food processor or something. ahahaha xp. 

In regards to this 'problem', I feel obliged to cook something healthy every time. I try. One effort I try to put now is to make sure he gets variety of nutrition in one week. It is such a struggle still, given that when I am home, the energy left is just to cook.haha xp. Still working on it. 

So on that evening, all I can find in my kitchen was a stack of canned tuna which I carried with me from Hiroshima to Nagoya, now back to Hiroshima @_@ and a whole lot of pasta @_@. I feel the urge to use them right away. Then a bulb of idea popped out, I see Aim's face. 

She said, "now is the time for you to try my laksa Johor"! 

And I was like...why not?! Let`s do it!

Laksa Johor from canned tuna (courtesy of The Daily Muses)

Ingredients

A pack of spaghetti

6x80g of canned mackerel flakes

200ml of coconut cream/coconut milk

2 red onions**

3 cloves of garlic**

an inch of ginger**

3 pcs of lemongrass**

3 tbsp of blended chili**

1/2 cup of dried shrimp**

3 tbsp of curry powder (for fish)

Vietnamese mint (daun kesum)- I don't have this one. 

Directions:

1. Boil a packet of spaghetti.

2. Blend all the ingredients marked "**".

3. Heat oil and saute the blended ingredients.

*Put in vietnamese mint if you have some

4. Mix curry powder with water a bit and pour it in the pan. 

5. Keep on stirring until the sambal cooked thoroughly. (I cooked until 'naik minyak')

6. Add in fish flakes and pour coconut cream into the pan.

7. Season with salt accordingly.

8. Let boil.

9. Serve your laksa with sliced onion, taugeh, lettuce, cucmber, sambal belacan and etc. 

So simple right? But believe me, it turned out so sedap and fulfilling. My husband is not a fan of laksa but he likes this one and you guessed it right..I had problems stopping him that night T_T

Well, I guess the 'How to make Malaysian dishes from canned-tuna' series end here. For now. hahaha xp

Canned-tuna keropok lekor

Yours truly is not a fan of keropok lekor. If in KL, I had always prefer pisang goreng stall every single time. But le husband loves keropok lekor though. Maybe because of his darah pantai timur or he just loves any fried food. Anyway, I had once tried making keropok lekor from the scratch. From cleaning the fish and so on. I failed that. The keropok turns out so hard like seriously can make hole when you throw it to the wall. And very salty too..Yea, cause the recipe I followed wasn't giving me proper measurement, thus I can't know how it looks like or feels like at every stage. This isn't helping when I never see uncooked keropok lekor.

Moving on, one day in the year in which I was so busy that testing a recipe is not an option, one of my favorite blogger The Daily Muses posted on her blog on how to make keropok lekor from canned-tuna. I always believe in her recipe. I immediately saved it on my iPad in a "must keep forever" folder. hahaha. Only recently I get to try making them and mashaAllah it was so easy and I love how soft the keropok lekor turned out. My keropok lekor turns out like the losong one and the non-losong one (I don't know its name) mixed! Isn't it great? I love losong for its softness to the teeth and doesn't fill my tummy much. But doesn't like how it is easily melt in the puddle of sauce. Meanwhile, the non-losong one is just to me, too hard to the teeth. ahaha xp. 

Another thing is, it is from the canned-tuna??How can I not try that??Because I just hate the process that you need to extract the fish flesh, yadda2..omg..traditional keropok lekor making is so tedious. Tapi sedap kan..haruslah tabah. 

Canned-tuna keropok lekor made in Japan :D

Here is the recipe (taken from The Daily Muses) and altered according the things you can find in Japan:

6 x 80g tuna flakes in oil or water (it is okay because you will drain the liquid later)

Just a bit of cold water (since your tuna already in flakes)

1.5 cups of tapioca flour (I only know this flour exist in Japan, as for sago, can anybody tell me what it is called?sighhh..)

1.25 cups of plain flour (just standby a bowl more for shaping purposes)

salt to taste 

Directions:

1) Drain the tuna flakes.

2) Mash the tuna flakes a bit more by adding the cold water. No need to flood the fish. Just enough to make the flakes blend well.

3) Add in the flour and salt and mix them together.

4) Boil a pot of water.

5) Roll the dough to the shape you desired. lol xp It would be really sticky and fragile. So, what I did was I roll them on a puddle of plain floor, and immediately dump them into the boiling water.

6) Dump them into the boiling water. Let boil.

7) Recover those who already floated.

8) Store in the freezer or can immediately fry them.

Now everybody can make keropok lekor ^_^

Selamat mencuba :D

Home made rusk

Do you have left overs loaf at home? 

Why don't you turn it into a rusk. 

Here's how ^_^

1) Pre-heat your oven at 200 degree celcius.

2) Spread butter and sugar on top.

Spread lots of butter and sprinkle some sugar (according to the sweetness level you desired) on it.

 3) Arrange bite-sized loaf on baking pan and baked for 20 minutes or until the top turned golden.

Cut the loaf to a bite size or just leave it like that. How ever you would prefer. I love the bite size:) Susun on a baking pan.

 4) Let it cool at room temperature.

When it first came out of the oven, expect rusk to be a little bit soft. When it is cool, it will become hard and officially turned to rusk ^_^

My kind of snack:) A bottle of rusk to accompany me watching baseball on TV tonight:)

Well, here are some tips I would like to share with you to get a better rusk. I write this according to my experience of making rusk for years!

1) Use butter, not margarine. Of course if you dislike the strong taste of milk, then you should use margarine.

2) Use thinner bread/loaf. I usually make rusk out of leftover loaf, so mine usually aren't perfect because most of the loaf here are thick.

3) The best kind of bread to make rusk in my opinion is baguette. The bread is already dry, so it will come out so crispy and not that tanned-looking (which I would prefer).

Feel free to add more, dear experience rusk-makers!

Yamaguchi Taikai

My husband is all about sports. One of the activity he is very fond of is the football taikai, which will be organized once or twice a year? I'm not sure because I feel like there are 10s each year >,<

I remember end of last year, there was a taikai I can't remember where but it took about 7 hours journey by car. He was then just came back from 3 months posting in Thailand that time. He arrived home in the afternoon and left me again that night for that 7 hour journey! @_@ Later when he returned, he fell ill due to over-exhaustion (I guess). Sigh.. So, that's how I concluded that football is his first wife. Let's see how they breed. bahahaha xp

Although he is now turning 30..a veteran age for a taikai, his excitement did not reduce a bit. He is still so semangats to play and doesn't really care if he brings back medal. He already get tons of it that I have problems keeping them actually. But, who comes all the way to lose right? Being me, I don't mind another medal to worry of. ahahaha xp.

Last week was his first time playing with Hiroshima FC. Er...I'm not sure if I'm right, because there's a comment on my facebook photo hinting that he had played for Hiroshima FC before. That is possible since he had been living here years before. This year, the event was held at Yamaguchi. About 1.5hour from our home. The view was just breathtaking all the way that I didn't really feel the time passed. 

We left home at 6.30am, grabbed a cup of coffee from my favorite convenience store (yes, that's a thing) and hit the road. After I feel like 70x of play and re-playing 'From this moment' of Shania Twain, we arrived at 8.15am at a park (I couldn't remember the exact name, but it was so modern-looking kind of science park). The place where the taikai was held was located just by the beach, so no complaint for the girls ^_~

Anyway, here's some of the pictures taken during the taikai.

Our tent. 

The tough midfielder who also scored 3 goals!

Sigh..If I need to choose again, I would probably choose him. ahaha xp. I never pay attention to his playing before. But this time, the girls are so into football and the vibes were that infectious that I started checking his every move. I have to say, my son would be proud of his father later.

We eat, hang out in the middle of the field, having a bit of sun-tanning, and shout!

Hiroshimaians who came to play and to support. Otsukaresamadeshita!! well done boys!

Didn't I tell you that we win? Although it was for the 2nd place, but for me they have won tremendously. They fought very hard, it just that they didn't have luck for the last penalty shoot to determine the final winner. They were really good though.

And while other chose to have post-dinner at an Indian restaurant in Yamaguchi, we chose to stop by the Miyajima and indulge the famou, big-fat oysters. I was so hungry but one oyster already made me full. It was that big guys..

I have to say, trip to taikai this time is my most favourite so far! Looking forward for more. Make it a little bit more farther please..I would love to make a longer 'concert' on the way! hihi.

Fun April is over..

I really want to write in here more often. But every time I want to start, the guilt feeling come like..wani..you haven't do this and that, and I have to settle those first. You know, the rule of priorities.

My working nature at the moment is something which rarely have dead lines. Only at certain time I will be very busy and require to stay longer at the workplace. What I hate the most is ambiguity in time management a.k.a waiting. Gaahhh!!I wish my tolerant to waiting will improve by time. 

I like this job. I get the freedom to be domestic goddess (sigh.. still trying) and still get to enjoy my life every day. I get to come to the office at any time I want and having the freedom to decide what I would do. The most important part of the job is to produce new knowledge for the world. Yes, that is what academician is supposed to do. Since I don't like things that are routine, I guess this job is the second most suitable for me! (the first one is still a secret. bahaha xp oh, if a full time stay-at-home mom counts, academician falls to number 3! xp)

Ever since day 1 in here, my mind has been constantly at home.  For your information, he was on a month holiday in the past month and really had fun every day in a very cool way and that got me jealous and had the urge to go home when the clock just strikes 3!ahaha xp. So I was home when it was just 3 most of the days. sigh...Yang lebih parah, I secretly wished the cells don't grow or the mice died so that I don't have to work long hours or even to receive calls from the students. It became so scary that so far all that wishes got granted??It's like the universe listen to me, a girl with a simple wish; i.e. to spend more time with his husband (and they are living together under the same roof, and the house is small). For that, I need husband to start working as soon as possible. 

A month has passed and most of the evenings has been filled with activities which we really enjoyed doing. For me, of course doing some 'research' at the malls, and for him was watching baseball games at the stadium. My 'research' at the malls has been really interesting nowadays given that I now have 'chauffeur' and a 'banker', in short husband. lol xp To repay husband's time and willingness to follow my kerenah, I learn how to be interested to watch games. Our house is located just 10 minutes (by bicycle) to a baseball stadium. So, he is taking this opportunity to watch it live whenever he can. I support this hobby of his as he rarely had time to do this when he was living in Nagoya and working 24/7. I have to accompany him doing what he likes doing until...I give birth to his junior, then I can stay at home and sew. hahaha xp 

Little that I know, watching games live is so much fun. And my name means fun too #kidding. So, this is apparently my thing. Just realized it when I'm about to enter 30. Still young, still young. I love how it could be nerve-wrecking at some points and immediately change to a rush of endorphins! We love it too much it is has become our weekly activity. I would prepare bentou (packed lunch/dinner) for us during the games (everybody is like having picnic in the stadium) and he will pay for the tickets. bahaha xp. He is so semangats, he bought each of us the props and the highest quality jersey. lol xp. I think the main factor of our excitement is due to the fact that Hiroshima baseball team is on the lead. Go #Hiroshimacarp . Yes, carp is a fish. #dontask .

Here are some of the photos to share!

It was so hot I can't open my eyes. Hence..oh, and I wish Mazda would upgrade the stadium to a dome. Baru tak panas. 

This was during the night's game. An aunty sat next to me handed me balloons so that we can join the lucky 7 cheer. 

I was so amazed the Carp actually spells Hiroshima. Only visible when the balloon is expanded. And before the 7th set started for Hiroshima team, all the supporter will release the balloon to the air..and your 300yen gone with the wind. The easiest balloon business ever, don't you think? ahaha xp

By the way, today is finally the day! Husband's first day at work. Now, I can focus on my work and not thinking to go home at 5 minutes past 9 (in the morning). bahaha xp

To husband, happy working and your life of 'playing golf everyday' has over. That day will come again maybe when you are 60 years old. ahahaha!!

Paging..Domestic Goddess!

How did you ladies do it?!

I feel like "pengantin baru" now. Although have been married for four years, we just started living together for a month now. ahahaha xp. There are so many things to figure out. Living abroad means that you..domestic goddess wouldn't have the privilege to look like goddess AT ALL at the end of the day. 

Let me share with you my daily schedule:

8 a.m - 8.30 a.m - Prepare breakfast and have breakfast with him. I decided to be sturdy on this one because he is not used to have proper breakfast. As a man who could get 'pregnant' so easily, it is important to make sure he get good diet and his metabolism is kicking as soon as the day started. By the way, that is my secret to be 40kg since forever.

9 a.m- To work

11.30 a.m- I usually turned to hungry godzilla at this time..without fail. ahaha..If puasa, this is the time I scared the most. I will get cranky and turning to somebody else. So, I will go home for lunch. Didn't I tell you that husband is still in his 1 month holiday? So, this month, I made a proper lunch almost everyday. I just want him to enjoy his holiday :)

1.00 p.m - Going back to work

6.00 - 6.30 p.m - Go home and usually stop at the market to buy stuff for dinner. 

7.00 - 8.30 p.m - Cook dinner and have dinner together

9.00 p.m - Taking care of other house chores. e.g. Fold laundries, etc.

10.00 p.m - Breath and eating chips on the sofa while making the movie watch me.

Oh my gosh ladies!!How did you do this with kids some more?! I seriously need more exercise. 

I choose to live here, so I have to be stronger to do this alone, without expecting help from anybody. 

I even cheated a little. From here you can see that..I only cook and fold laundries for house chores. lol xp. I just realized it when husband highlight it for me. ahaha.

One day I was feeling so tired and I said,

"I can't do this alone. I think we need to delegate the house chores."

"Ok." He said calmly.

"Ok, who does laundry?"I asked.

"So far, I did since we moved." He said while his attention was at the TV.

"Ok, I'm not cleaning the toilet, the shower room and the sink." That has been his job since forever, by the way.

After a few more chores listed, I realized..

I only do cooking and..folding laundry..just because he is terrible at those two T_T

Of course I changed the subject as soon as I realized it.

That night, I made him a full course Kenny Rogers chicken.