Hello!!

I seemed to have mitosis-ed on myself – you can now find me at eatwithsticks for my cooking/recipe related stuff and notabrownbag for all my bento-related stuff. These links are linked to each other, but not linked here. Pretty special huh .

So yes, if you follow me for food-related tweets and happenings, please re-point to either one of the sites above .

****cross posted from notabrownbag***

As part of our ongoing efforts for bento4Japan (please read my post on why am I doing this) ,there is also a fundraising page on JustGiving to raise money for the disaster relief efforts. Our nominated charity is the British Red Cross, which is rallying resources to help the people in Japan.

If you are a UK taxpayer,JustGiving will reclaim 28% of your total donation and the Red Cross will end up with 123% of what you donated. JustGiving & FirstGiving takes 5% off all donations to help pay for continuous innovation in online fundraising to help more charities raise funds online. This is the most effective way of donating as the charities gets 23% more than what you donate!

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To try and boost our JustGiving collections slightly and make it easy for people in the UK and the rest of EU who want to participate; me and my friend karaimame have joined forces to set up a teeny raffle! We have four items up for grabs for anyone who donates, no matter how small. The raffle prizes are….drumroll please….

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Set 1

> – 1 onigiri mold, Pikachu shape
> – onigiri mold set : faces ( bear, girl and boy)
> – oshibori and case (little towel with a case)
> – small forks
> – small spoons
> – Chinese Zodiac animals picks
> – Animal themed baran
> – 2 sauce containers, pig shaped

(all of the above are NEW and have been sent directly from Japan)

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> – a Thermal bento set! It consists of two inner containers, the bigger holds 300ml and the other 220ml. The smaller one has a permanent compartment division. This is a very popular option for those who prefers a hot lunch.

(the box was opened for photo purposes. It is new and unused.

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Set 2

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> – 1 double-layer bento box (cars design)
> – 1 pack of oversized picks
> – 3 nori punches – bunny, car & bear shape
> – 3 sauce containers – pig-shape,bottle-shape & tomato cover
> – 1 mini-cutter – butterfly
> – 2 blue silicon food cups – heart and star

(all of the above are NEW and have been sourced by me on a variety of bentogear shopping trips)

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Bonus prize (x2)

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Oversized food picks

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Anyone can donate, you only need a debit or credit card to do so – or paypal account. We will randomly select the recipient (using http://www.random.org/) from the list of people who donate on bento4Japan‘s Justgiving site before 3 April 2011 (2359h GMT). We will select four people, the first person can choose between my set or karaimame’s; the second will get the other set and the third and fourth person will receive a packet of picks each.

I hope that this will boost numbers a little and make the event worthwhile. We will announce the winners here and also on bento4Japan HQ – and obviously email the winners as well.

Please note that whilst I am not allowed to publicise this raffle on my JustGiving page (as I am bound by terms and conditions), anyone who donates on bento4Japan’s JustGiving page, with a valid email address, will be eligible for this raffle. In order for us to contact you, please make sure you make your email address available to us on the JustGiving fundraising page.

Thank you for your help and please dig deep and give as much as you can. Please also spread the word around, the success of this fundraising event relies on our collective effort.

P/S: The fundraising page will be active till 2016, but only donors who contributed to this page before 3rd April 2011 (2359h GMT) will be considered for the raffle. I am doing this because I am trying to encourage as many people to donate soon as the relief efforts are ongoing and urgently needed. Please donate here! If you want to find out more about why are we doing this or if you want to help, please visit our bento4Japan HQ.

Wow. This shows how long have I been off blogging and literally the face of the earth. Skipps tagging me on a meme?!?! Oops. The problem with getting off blogging is that it is just so much harder to get back on it – but once I’ve actually completed two paragraphs, I started to remember why I blogged in the first place.

And besides, it’s been ageeeees since I did a meme!!

So here goes, my response to Skipps‘ meme :

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1. How many countries have you traveled to? ( Travel to means at least an overnight stay. Does not have to be exact.)
I had been through many countries and not stayed overnight, and stayed on border towns on a couple of others, so my list is probably wrong-ish. I stayed overnight in Japan, but probably saw more in Mexico even though I stayed in San Diego. And is China = Hong Kong? My list should be about 20 – 25-ish countries?

2. What is the best place you ever visited?
It depends. I sort of half-moved to San Francisco, and would love to move there permanently. Or Hong Kong. Or Sydney.

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3. What was the worst place you have ever been-and would you go back?
Egypt. Extremely rude, leering men, horrendous food, rip-off culture (even the coppers ask for money and offer camel rides) and total disrespect for the underwater world. I never thought I would ever on earth hate somewhere as much as I hate Egypt. The endless sunshine and rainless weather did not even help at all, I much rather had been stuck in the UK in the cold rain. Hated it so much so that I never even blogged about it – I took two weeks after that just recovering.

4. If you could change one thing, and only one thing, in the world to make it a better place, what would it be?
This is a hard one and oddly resembles a Miss Universe question. I don’t really know, but I would say more greenery to help combat the global warming thingy.

5. Who would you rather sleep with? Men: Tonya Harding or Nancy Kerrigan? (When they were in their figure skating battle). Women: Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert? Explain.
I don’t know either one, and I have a sneaky suspicion that I probably got myself off the hook lightly on this by not knowing!

6. What is the worst thing to happen to the country you hold a passport for in the last 50 years?
Political turnmoil, affimitive bloody action and blatant disrespect for natural resources.

7. Do you view someone that you know, or know of as a “hero”? If so, what makes this individual so special?
Not really. If we’re talking make-believe then I would say Edward from Twilight just based on his endless need to save the world and himself. Yes you can start laughing now.

8. If you could be born again would choose to be a different sex to what you are?
Hmm. Another hard one. I would probably want to be born male just for the heck of it.

9. What is your favorite alcoholic drink? If you say, ”I don’t drink”-STOP NOW. Just hang your head in shame.
I DONT DRINK. Hahaha . I’m a whiskey sort of girl – I can drink it neat, dilluted with water, with green tea or diet coke. I’m also partial to champagne and a good cool glass of Semillion. Yums.

10. What is your favorite magazine?
I don’t particularly read magazines, I find the mindless chatter annoying and much prefer to spend on a good book. And in terms of book, my answer to no.7 would probably give it away – I am addicted to the phenomenan that is Stephenie Meyer.

Wow, that was much harder than I thought it would be!

….its been so unbelievably busy the past few weeks – I am sorting out my AU posting in bulk (having MAJOR issues uploading pictures to flickr without doing it singly!!) , but thought this cross-posting from my other blog would explain why have I been so busy…

Plus the fact that I’m off to NYC this weekend of course..

Heehee

*crossposted from http://notabrownbag.wordpress.com

I’ve been slacking off the bento making front (edit: and most definately blogging front too!) , only producing super-quick bentos that consists of slopped together leftovers with some pieces of fruit. Work have been snowing me under mindlessly and I’ve been doing long hours = tiredness setting in = no brainpower left for creative endevours. However, last Friday I did it at last … I QUIT!!

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It was exhillirating to say it out loud. I’ve been plotting my departure since before Easter, and last Friday I did it at last. I rang my boss (she was working from home) to inform her that I was leaving, and she asked for something officially written. Fair enough. I had never written a resignation letter before, having always just sat down with my ex bosses and told them that I was leaving. So I initially wrote her an email, but it strike me that she would probably want something in a proper letter because *she is just like that*. So I started again, and googled for a resignation letter – seeing that the last one I wrote was in uni during Business Communications 110. Sigh. So yeah, there I go, ripping off a template from google and filling it in with all my details…including her full name and business address…everything. I sent it off as an attachment in an email, and then went to the washroom.

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When I came back less than 5 mins later, there was a missed call on my phone. It was my boss, telling me that my resignation letter was “not good enough”. Then I checked my email. It was my boss again, telling me that my letter was not good enough, and I need to specify exactly how many days holidays would they need to pay me. All within the time it took for me to walk to the washroom and back. Seriously…like say what?? I’ve quit, and a good use of my time would be to get me to REWRITE my resignation letter?? So I googled some more, and came up with a better ‘example’….which passed her quality test.

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I’ve been thinking about that whole incident all weekend, and really wished that I could’ve resigned in style – and what better way to resign that via a bento!!! I would have loved to resign with this bento – can you imagine the boss’ face if I present her with this bento during lunch? Heehee…Today’s bento contain some mock-risotto made from orzo that I copied from Sheri - utterly delicious! I substituted the veggie stock with chicken, and popped in some peas once it’s cooked. Yum yum. I’ve used my two sectioned bento box so I can microwave it separately from the other half.

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Mock mushroom orzo risotto with cut-out cheese letters (I used alphabet cutters for the words and cut out the smiley face features freehand using the toothpick method) , strawberries and tomatoes on a bed of mixed salad leaves – strawberries eaten with rocket leaves is so beautiful! Padded out with snap peas. And a smiley quitting giraffe too; hiding in the forest of the peas

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Oh, and I found out something amazing…if you freeze cheese cut outs before placing them on the bento, it is just so much easier to handle! Well, most people probably already know this..hehe.

Oaky. I have had enough.

I have been running this blog for longer than I care to remember, and what I enjoy the most is the interaction with my readers, from real-life friends to blog readers turned friends. I am a comment-whore not for fame or fortune, but the engagement from my blog readers whom I consider my friends.

I had tried to put this off as long as I possibly can…but I will be moderating comments from now onwards. You will notice that there have been a stupidly huge amount of spam comments on this blog for the past year or two, which I had been actively combating by deleting them as and when I came across them. It had come to a point where this is no longer feasible; I am getting spam comments from bloody idiots that cannot spell to save their goddamed life a few times a day.

So yes. I am sorry. But I will NOT have spammers in my blog!