….and most of it is not even mine!!!!

I have been frantically shopping for clothes that would fit my completely bloated big fat body and not disgust everyone that I met. Not easy searching for summer clothes smack in the middle of January, and no sight of bikinis other than leftovers from summer. So no new bikini for samui,thank god the black one I bought for ibiza still fits..:D.

Jeans+underwear+shoes+makeup+toileteries are not even in yet. More than half my bag is filled with Jacob’s cream crackers - apparently my granma is addicted to them, along with other members of my hugeass extended family. PJs for the godson, lippie for dreybee and I haven’t even bought a whole ham for my mom yet. And not to mention I have eyed a lovely dress at miss selfridges. Funnily enough, I think it looks like dresses that my mom used to sew for me when I was a toddler.

I will now need to raid bacon’s bag when he’s packed and replace his clothes with mine…..Wish me luck!

all he does all day is poke,poke, poke on his tablet……wish he’ll put the poking to better use…

I welcome Krispy Kreme to the North of England. Full fledged with the hot sign and conveyor belt and all! It’s now on bacon’s way to work (when he does go into work) and so I put in an order today. It is also, incidentaly, on the way to Manchester airport, so anyone wanting to place an order of KK can do so - but would need to pick me up from KLIA late next Sunday as I would be leaving KL on Monday. takers???

but bacon finished half a dozen before I even saw it….thus is the addiction to kk..:)

A couple have been accused of being freaks in a town near me, and bus drivers have been less than receptive of their patronage. In one of the ‘Only in UK’ stories, Dani Graves from Dewsbury have taken to walking his fiancee Tasha Maltby around in public on a leash. Gives a different spin to the term on a short leash innit?

Incesed that bus drivers have been either chasing them out of the buses or just not stopping for them, this lovely couple had taken to complain about the bus drivers’ attitute. One bus driver had insist that they were not allowed in his bus because the company have a “No dogs allowed” policy, with exceptions made on guide dogs only. Understandable no? Since Ms Maltby is only human she really should be allowed…

Quoting the 19 year old girl:

It is definitely discrimination, almost like a hate crime. I am a pet, I generally act animal like and I lead a really easy life. I don’t cook or clean and I don’t go anywhere without Dani. It might seem strange but it makes us both happy. It’s my culture and my choice. It isn’t hurting anyone.

But would YOU allow this anywhere near you?

For the complete article see the Daily Mail

As sourrain.com prepares to welcome the year of the Rat, here’s my home decoration (not decorating my own house this year) a rip off from 5xmom’s falling flowers. Many thanks to Guru Moo for uploading it

The flowers seem to dissapear when i scroll down to the next page - anyone having the same issues?

As much as I was reluctant about bacon’s new job, it does come with its perks..

Like a brand new IBM tablet laptop,(RRP £1,803!!!!) complete with fingerprint login and touchscreen feature. And revolving screen makes a nice touch

And sourrain.com takeaway courtesy of the BlackBerry. Now bacon can RSS me!!

I’m sure he took the job because of all the cool gadgets that comes with it..:). And it’s so wonderful to have a fresh out of the box laptop with practically no blocked sites. Let the geekery begin!!!!!

PS: See you next year when I get bored of playing with bacon’s tools of the trade

I had always been very adventerous in exploring new foods - and growing up in KL with its plethora of foreign cuisines definately helped. It is very rare to find a type of cuisine unrepresented in KL, I daresay most cuisines are represented in some shape or form in twin tower land. There is, however, a missing piece in the great KL food puzzle - West Indies food.

No, not Western India. More like Jamaican, Bahamian and the likes. The soul food of Bob Marley. I had tentatively heard of the existence of such food, but had not come across it before. So I was pleasantly suprised when I discovered it nearly two years ago at the V Festival, then again at the Notting Hill Carnival and then Glastonbury

Today, we both woke up in the morning and suddenly decided that we were craving for Carribean cuisine. Yes, we read minds and we are extremely greedy. We have no idea of any Carribean restaurants in Leeds, but a rough idea of the ghetto where there might be West Indian restaurants. So we went a-searching.

We drove around for about 15 minutes in Roundhay/Chapeltown ghetto where alot of immigrants had made their home; Indian, Polish, West Indians, Jewish ect. After nearly giving up, we spotted Maureen’s

A sight for sore eyes.

A small checklist on carribean cuisine:

Ackee & Saltfish: Salt cod is sautéed with ackee (Ackee is a fruit from a tree that bears bright orange/red fruit), onions, peppers, tomatoes, herbs, and may be garnished with crisp bacon and fresh tomatoes
Curried Goat : Curry made with goat, carrots, potatoes. Slightly like the mamak kurma
Rice & Peas: A misnomer, this means rice cooked with red kidney beans - a staple like white rice is to chinese food. Coconut milk is used as well, making it slightly like nasi lemak without the pandan smell.
Jerk meat : Chicken, pork or beef rubbed with a spicy spice mix made of peppers and allspice and grilled.
Plantins : Huge mostly tasteless bananas, grilled, deepfried or stewed
Festival: a slightly sweet, deep fried dumpling stick, eaten with jerk.
Patty: Made from a slightly crusty, pastry dough formed into a semi-circle envelope/turnover and filled with hot and spicy ground meat filling. Like curry puff and eaten everywhere
Cow Foot: Erm…soup made out of cow’s feet. Recipie here
Blue Drawers/ Tie Leaf: Boiled green banana pudding
Gumbo: Like the Creoles make it, but not as spicy and thicker.

It’s all seriously weird and wonderful isn’t it?? Even the guy inside Maureen’s looked like he was stoned out of his head …and of course I had the pleasure of being the only yellow person there and bacon the only white one. How exciting. However, as we had not have Carribean cuisine since Glastonbury in June, so instead of picking some adventerous unknown item, we went with what we love and missed -

Bacon had Jerk chicken with rice and peas. Comes with macaroni and cheese as well which is slightly weirdly American. And a side salad. £5.50 for a large

My curried goat with rice and peas as well. Can you believe this is the small version at £4.50. Large version comes with boiled cabbage

erm….fried chicken. Heheh. I really wanted some fried chicken, and this was 1/4 of a huge chicken. So much nicer than KFC.£1.80

When we went to pay, bacon calculated that the total came up to £12.45. The stoned looking cashier said, “Around £12 man”. So we paid £12. Hilarious. And not to stick to the stereotype, but all they listened to inside the small cafe was reggae and more reggae. Not many pictures due to me forgetting cameras of any kind, so this was taken with bacon’s phone. Being the only yellow and white in the scene did not help as the endless trail of customers stared at us whilst waiting for their food.

Well, we definately don’t belong there. But love it we did, and return we shall. The next time we return we will go for all the weird and wonderful sounding food - no more jerk chicken or curried goat even though it was so beautiful….symphony…sighh…And next time, when I am off my antibiotics, we shall have lashings of carribean rum punch as well.

Maureens West Indian Restaurant
105 Roundhay Rd ,
Leeds, LS8 5AJ

One of my personal resolutions was to get back to blogging 5 days a week like what I used to before I got distracted. Obviously the past week have been empty…and I am seriously not making up excuses, but I was terribly ill.

We went out last saturday night, and when I woke up on Sunday I felt the onslaught of the flu…which is extremely annoying as I had my flu shot just before New Year. Nevermind, I thought it might be something minor. So Monday I felt a little worse for wear but still went to work. Monday night I was feeling worse, but as we were discussing my workload for 2008 I had to turn up on Tuesday. Wednesday saw my snot building up so I skipped work…and Thursday saw me losing my voice completely. So I got bacon to ring the doctors, but they had no appointments till next week. Bastards. This is what happens to socialist countries that nationalise healthcare - there is no private doctors in clinics like the rest of the world. Unless you need a hospital, you do not have a choice of private medical care

So anyway, he called the NHS direct, which is the national call centre for health queries - apparently this minimises the need for people to turn up at doctors if they can get meds from pharmacist. Bacon rattled down the list of my symptoms, including me croaking instead of speaking. When the nurse on the other line insist on speaking to me, bacon told them that they might not understand me (obviously due to me croaking instead of speaking)…and that damned nurse asked if they need an intrepreter! Damnit..you would think her brains would tell her that if I can only croak she won’t understand me.

Lovely nurse still insisted to speaking to me irregardless of the croaking, so I did. She went down some checklist, and if I can still breathe and painfully swallow, I do not need the doctor. Instead, she asked me to go to the pharmacist. Bastards. I hate healthcare here,unless you are dying or dead, they would refuse to entertain you. She did not believe that I had laryngitist, and encouraged my Strepstil OD…even though I said that Strepstils and my cold/flu meds have not been working.

Honestly, I bloody pay for the national healthcare and I demand some sort of bloody service. So on Friday bacon rang the doctors again, and they had an open appointment, which I grabbed immediately. Even with me just saying hello, the doctor told me that he could tell from my croakings that I had laryngitist. And the stupid nurse actually recommended me to stick with my Strepstils??? She even mentioned that there is no point me going to the doctors because he would not prescribe me any antibiotics, only paracetemol. So I am now on a course of penicillin, AS PRESCRIBED BY THE DOCTOR.

Slightly better now, even managed to go out yesterday - admittedly I was drinking non-stop water instead of my usual whiskey. I just need to finish my course of penicillin and I should be ok. Just getting slightly hoarse at the moment, good for bacon as I can’t shout at him like usual. I may completely lose my voice if I listened to the damn nurse who asked me to stick with strepstils.

I sometimes think that the NHS (National Healthcare System) is trying to kill me. Bastards. Bastard Labour Government trying to create a communist country with equal healthcare crap.

my mountain of snot…

When I see this at 4pm, I know that the dark nites are slowly but surely comming to an end.

I am adverse to early darkening of skies. Growing up in Malaysia, the sun sets around 7-7.30pm daily. With sunset comes dinner - my regular dinner time for as long as I can remember had been when the chinese serial starts at 7pm. During my first winter in CA, I had dinner at 5pm (watching Simpsons) in Nov & Dec - my body clock tricking my mind that its late. The problem with having dinner that early is that I am hungry again by 10pm!

The past two months or so in the UK had seen the daylight savings timing enforced, which means the sun have been setting just before 4 each day. It doesn’t really matter as most of the time its gloomy and grey here anyway. But I know from experience that when the skies starts to look blue at 4pm, longer days are on their way.

Incidentaly, it had actually been getting colder with typhoon-like winds lately…don’t let the skies fool you. So yours truly is sick now - I had a flu jab this year and was hoping I won’t be sick. I don’t think I’m sick with flu though, it looks like I’ve missed the main part of the flu and skipped straight to the sorethroat-cough part. Hmmm.

In other news, it is now 30 days to Chinese New Year…:D. I hope cookies are currently being prepared on anticipation of my return…I am partial to home made choc chips - failing which I am VERY partial to Famous Amos freshly baked cookies. Yummm. And KFC mashed potato. Or Ramly Burger Special with ketchup.

That we have been married for two WHOLE years? Happy aniversary bacon…..It sure feels like it’s been 20 years! Tonight we’re having dinner at where we wanted to have the wedding initially. Or Mcdonalds, where we actually ate during the big day - how romantic

Oh, and a very Happy Birthday to Mommy too!!

I must say that this is probably the first time I was actually caught in falling snow for at least 6 years - since Shaver Lake @ California anyway. Even though it was freezing, uncomfortable and the snow tends to melt away like, well, snow and leave wet patches on your coat, it was still really fun. As much fun as walking into work is.

Contrary to popular belief, it does not snow often here which adds to the magical child-like amusement. You’d be lucky if you get three days worth of snow in a year. Which is probably a good thing, I would not be amused if I was constantly wading through snow and sluice. It is amazingly slippery when the snow melts, and I nearly fell twice in my 5 minute walk.

Pixs to be uploaded later, although I must say there is not much to see as it only started snowing this morning therefore it has not settled for that snow topped leaves look.

Walking to the bus stop - in case the snow stops and there’s no more!!

Snowstorm @ leeds - looks more like flecks of dust dont it?

Snowflake on my glove - no, it does not come in pretty lacey patterns

Just getting into work after trampling my way through the pelting snow