This is one of the reasons why I play Magic

The latest expansion set to Magic: The Gathering, Shards of Alara goes on sale this Friday, 3rd of October. Hundreds of Malaysians took the opportunity to be some of the earliest players in the world to get their hands on and play with the newest set cards of cards over the weekend.

Most of you visiting Kristine's blog probably don't give much of a care about the game, but I'm pretty sure most of you would appreciate great art.


Naya Battlemage - Art by Steve Argyle

I was really excited about this new set for one very decisive reason - the art is just so stunningly amazing.

If you'd like to know more about the game, visit PlayMagic.com or MagicTheGathering.com


Ajani Vengeant - Art by Wayne Reynolds

Or, if you're a kind friend, or a frequent magic player yourself, please do visit my Magic blog at MagicMalaysia.blogspot.com

Mmmm.... I've run out of things to say. Enjoy the rest of the art without my incessant ramblings. ;)


Hellkite Overlord - Art by Justin Sweet


Empyrial Archangel - Art by Greg Staples


Master of Etherium - Art by Matt Cavotta


Windwright Mage - Art by Chippy


Clarion Ultimatum - Art by Michael Komarck


Predator Dragon - Art by Raymond Swanland

All artwork and trademarks referenced herein are the properties of their respective owners - © 1995-2008 Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

On questioning decisions openly in media..

Someone cant decide if its actually okay, or not okay, for ministers to question other ministry OPENLY in media. Here's a perfect example:

Extracted from 2 articles from The Star online

Syed Hamid said Malaysia would be in a crisis if every minister with his own stand started questioning another minister’s decisions openly in the media.

-Syed Hamid commenting on Datuk Zaid Ibrahim's statement over ISA issue

then

Murugiah added that Syed Hamid should talk to him directly instead of making comments publicly.

-Murugiah slamming Syed Hamid for asking his Public Complain Bureau to not interfere in his ministry

LOL?

OH WAIT..There's more!


He also cant decide, if its allright for other ministers to do their duty.

"If one Cabinet member carries out his duty and another one openly criticises it, I don’t know where we will go or what will happen.”

-Syed Hamid on Datuk Zaid Ibrahim's comment that judicial laws should have been used instead of the ISA over the 3 ISA arrests.

And then again..

Murugiah said he was surprised to hear such comments from a senior minister because he was merely doing his duty -- attending to complaints and solving problems.

- Murugiah on Syed Hamid's comment for asking him not to “interfere” in his ministry

Someone's gotta eat his own words.

Chew on that, minister. Selamat berbuka puasa.

Sigh

Freakin bored+kinda lonely while desperately need to get assignments off my mind! 2 more to go...1 of them's easy. Just troublesome to get it done...another...well..we'll see what we can do about it tmr...kekeke....

My PC's more...stable now after I did minor maintenance and stuff....its not unbearably laggy (spike) anymore but I think I'm still gonna reformat it. Bloody programs screwed my PC up....

Spent most of Saturday 'lepaking' in the house. Made croquettes for lunch (tea) and had awesome plate of grilled lamb+side dishes (cook myself la...cost 1/3 what it would cost outside :D ..and Razz even asked where I buy the set from...LOL!) while watching I Am Legend....movie wasn't bad as I expected :P

Gave the house a good thorough mopping that it had so badly needed. Now its squeaky clean again :D....happy happy~

Did some lab report+assignment till wee hours in the morning then fainted in my cozy cozy bed. Woke up around 2 feeling dizzy and aching all over (mopping? >.<) and terribly hungry. Fixed myself some late lunch while making dinner at the same time. Made bakuteh~ :P ...Sorry Amran if it disturbed u with the smell since you're fasting >.< ......

Bakuteh was nice! Prolly cuz I didn't add too much water this time like I used to. Wish you were here, dear. Would have been so much nicer to eat it with someone....

COME BACK SOON! Miss you >.<

Do you want to uninstall VMware?

OMG YES! Stupid application has been causing my PC to lag like hell! ARGH! /uninstalls all the other hacking softwares as well

Been working on a lot of softwares lately, mainly to do penetration testing on a virtual machine for my assignment. I'd say it turned out much better than I expected, so I'm really happy.

Bye bye VMware...muahaha!

Old photos

Ok not that old...just 2005.

These were pics taken during my Alpha year here in MMU..during a trip to Genting with Mun and Lisa..haha...yeah for the lack of new pics here, so I'm posting up some old ones I found in my folder instead...



That's me...(my hair damn short then...
...and scruffy >.< ...such a ball of mess!)


That's me with Lisa


..and that's me with Loo Mun


Aaa we all look so damn different now..haha

Now excuse me while I go find someplace to hide before Mun picks up a fork and stabs me where it hurts....hahaha!

Picture courtesy of Lisa, I think...Hotel room bunking courtesy of Mun's family XD

And there I was...

...worrying my ass off that I can't do my part for the group assignment...worried that I'd contribute too little...

..when majority of my group member hardly did a thing on the current phase of the assignment. My group leader has his FYP presentation this Wed so he cant commit till then...ok fine..that I understand.....but that bastard...he has some nerves to tell me he hasn't even finished downloading the virtual machine (the very first step of this phase of the assignment)...

DUDE!! You could have asked from your classmates! And even after you've downloaded the damn software then what? Sit and wait for us to feed you the solutions? There's tonnes of tools to download still you know? And even after you downloaded them, you still need to figure out how the hell to use them...and what to do with them...you need time to get familiar with all those softwares! Its barely a week before dateline and at the rate you're crawling....I think you'd only be done with your share of work next year...and you dun even have FYP to worry about!

DON'T you bloody dare tell me you're sick yesterday...I was working my ass off on the assignment whole weekend. I did not celebrate Mid Autumn Festival....no playing with lanterns watever (when you STILL had time for those)...Sick so what? It doesnt take much for you to turn on the PC and start the download with your browser. Sick noneed points for ur assignment ade la hor? Zzzzzzz

I'm gonna go ask my lect for tips tmr. Good luck with your part of the assignment. I hope he'll ask you how you 'did' your part for the group during the presentation and you have no idea how to demonstrate it.

Idiot.

Monkey and their passion for maggi

WTF is with monkeys and maggi!?? I can't recall the number of time monkeys (and cats!) have sneaked into my house....and steal food from cupboard/table...and the rubbish bin! Argh...

And those monkeys..the first thing they reach for (every single time I catch them!)...is the noodle shelf! WTF! What is it with them?

Previously was bread. Then Amran and myself started hiding our bread in room/inside oven/fridge and now its noodles? Keep your hands off my tomyam noodle dammit!

/contemplates whether or not I should poison a packet of noodles and let them eat

We're all "pendatang"

Yes, truth is...we're all pendatangs. So STFU and stop saying stupid things and think before you say something like that. Some leader you are, giving such a 'good' example for your underlings (sarcasm).

"Bagi saya, hampir 90 peratus rakyat Malaysia, khususnya di Semenanjung, adalah pendatang dan kita semua sebenarnya menumpang hidup di bumi Allah. Kita bukan pemilik kekal tetapi hanya menumpang.........

....Kita semua adalah rakyat Malaysia."

- Syed Imran (http://kudaranggi.blogspot.com)

No one could have said it better than him.

Seriously...why the fuss? Why need to point out the difference between us? I've plenty of Malay/Indian friends, some that I'm very warm with...and it never bothered us the difference of our race...so why is it then that the issue of race does not matter to us kids, but it bothers the hell out of those old geezers? 'Grow up' will ya?

Nintendo DS Lite: My Chinese Coach

Yes, I'm a banana.

Banana: Chinese who don't speak chinese. Well in my case, I guess you could say its half ripe cause I can actually speak chinese (I have no problem with hokkien and even kanto, thx to TVB dramas...mandarin's a bit challenging)...but when it comes to writing...i'm pretty hopeless. Thankfully I still know how to write my name so...its still cool.

QJ and a few other friends got me a DS Lite for my birthday last March. Been a lovely companion during journeys back home as well as times when I don't have my PC to use :D . Games aside, I've been using it as an ebook, mp3 player, I can even watch movies with it but quality kinda sucks compared to PSP (of course).

Last week while I was surfing for new games for my DS Lite, I found this interesting 'game' by Ubisoft: My Chinese Coach.

This is not the first language coaching game. My Coach series include French, Spanish, word coach, life coach and even weight loss coach (ok I gotta check this out XD )

So far I've only tried the Chinese one. And I find it kinda great. I don't know how long I'm able to stick to this lessons (I've taken chinese lessons before..but that was kinda long ago :P ) but I'm gonna give it a shot since its free lesson for me.

How do they teach you? After going through a placement test, I started off with lesson 3. Most words were taught in romanized (pingyin) form. Audio sample of the pinyin's pronunciation is also available and what's nice, you can also record your own pronunciation of the words and compare it with the sample provided.

One of the games that I really really enjoy is the Fading Character game. They'll show you how to write some words in chinese, with the strokes in the correct order. After that, you're required to trace the strokes in the correct order and correct number of strokes. In the last frame, they will only show the word briefly and you're required to re-write them from memory. Something I've been looking forward to have on the NDS.

Another game that I've unlocked so far requires the player to match the pinyin/word to the english word given, or the audio sample provided. There's also a lesson that teaches you the 4 different tones in pinyin. I found this sentence very interesting: Mama(1) ma(4) ma(3)...means Mum scolds the horse...pretty much like phonetics :P ...just pronounced in different tones.

Too bad this game relies heavily on the audio...otherwise it'd be nice to play during clas- whoops! XD

My Japanese Coach will be released on 14th October 2008 for $29.99. Will definately get my hands on the program then :D

New header!

I changed my blog header :D

Never really liked it. Didn't know what else to do then cuz hardly worked with images in indexed mode before....Loved this one so much more :D Flowers were from Fraser's btw.

Oh yeah. I'm removing the tag-box too. Cuz it's causing an advert popup in my site. Sux. So hopefully you guys will leave comments in the comments section now instead of using the tag box. ALSO, I've rearranged my links alphabetically. So much more neater now.

Initially wanted to change the whole layout but I still love this layout's style so..just tweaked a bit of it.

So..what you guys think?

Putting some pictures here...

...cuz blog looks too 'wordy' and plain. Haven't posted pics here in awhile...

Posting something I've taken back in June...nothing new for now as my camera's with Quj now...hope there's sumthing new to post this weekend :D



Fifi my cutie pie.


Fifi will be my model for the day.








"Can I get off the swing now?"





Strawberries from Tesco! Bad lighting x.x


Peacock flower from the garden


I...dunno what this is. A type of cacti.


Love my garden. Aunt's hard work.

Obstacle Course

Going to (and back from) campus is a bit of an obstacle course if you live near my place.

Why? Well the slope, for one. But that's actually a breeze when you go to campus. The worse thing recently....is the dog poop around the area.

The goddamned dogs have taken the liberty, to make it more challenging for the ppl here to get their butts to campus. The back alley is randomly 'marked' with a small pile of dog poop. So if you're not alert enough or careful enough or you suck in maneuvering your bike, you get 'tagged'. With shit.

Wish the municipal council will do sumthing about these wild dogs. They never seem to be able to get rid of them all. Those sneaky 4-legs will always somehow manage to survive. Most probably by seeking refuge in MMU itself. Zzzz.....

And just today...there's a new obstacle: diapers. OMG SO BLOODY DISGUSTING...ARGH.....

So yea...watch your steps if you wanna come my place...heh.

Replacement classes...bah.

So much for the 'combo-holiday' last weekend. Thanks to that, lecturers been loading the 'replacement' gun and shooting it at us.

Tonight: Comp security replacement (9.00-10.30pm)
Tmr nite: PowerE replacement (8.00-10.00pm) ...tho he did cancel 1 hour of his evening class -.-
Sat morn: Math3 replacement (9.00-11.00am)

.....GAH!

Apple Pie Recipe

Hello dead blog. Hope I have more time to update you now that I'm not playing WoW anymore. Nyek.

I made apple pie again! :D This time in Malacca with limited equiptment (hmmm...actually we're quite 'geared' here, thanks to Amran and myself keep having cooking projects..lol) and no aunt to help...haha...but still the results were satisfying... :D

So here's the recipe, taken from Joy Of Baking and modified slightly according to my methods.


Apple Filling

1.1 kg apples (about 6 large) peeled, cored, and sliced 1/4 inch thick
1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated white sugar
1/4 cup (55 grams) light brown sugar
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (optional, since I cant find it :P )
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp lemon juice

2 tablespoons (28 grams) unsalted butter
1 1/2 tbsp (15 grams) cornstarch (corn flour)

**you may use green apples (more crunchier) or red apples (nicer taste) or mix both. I used green ones.

Method
1. Measure and mix the white sugar, brown sugar, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg and salt until they are well combined.
2. Place sliced apples into a container and pour in the lemon and sugar mixture. Stir until evenly coated. Leave the apple to macerate for about 2 hours in the refridgerator. (Original recipe suggests room temperature but its Malaysia here so I'd think its better to leave it in the fridge)
3. Place the apples into a strainer and drain away the juice for 15-30 minutes or until you have 1/2 cup of juice.
4. Mix in 2 tbsp butter and heat up the drained juice until you have 1/3 cup of juice that's slighly caramelized. You can either do this using microwave or heat it up over a saucepan. Its adviced to do this right before baking the pie, as the heated juice will harden once it cools down.


Short Crust Pastry (Pate Brisee):

2 1/2 cups (350 grams) all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp (30 grams) granulated white sugar
1 cup (226 grams) unsalted butter, chilled, and cut into 1 inch (2.54 cm) pieces
1/4 to 1/2 cup (60 - 120 ml) ice water
1 egg yolk for glazing

Method:
1. Using a meat blender (make sure its well cleaned and dried), process the flour, salt, sugar and butter in small batches until mixture resembles coarse meal.
2. Pour mixture into a mixing bowl. Gradually add ice water while mixing the mixture until dough just holds together when pinched. Do not add too much water as it will be messy later.

Alternatively, if you're using a food processor, place the flour, salt, and sugar and process until combined. Add the butter and process until the mixture resembles coarse meal (about 15 seconds). Pour 1/4 cup (60 ml) water in a slow, steady stream, through the feed tube until the dough just holds together when pinched. If necessary, add more water. Do not process more than 30 seconds.

3. Divide the dough into 2 and form into a ball (I usually leave more dough for the bottom crust). Using plastic sheets (you may use cling wrap, but I find it a bit too soft. I use the plastic sheets that ppl usually use to wrap nasi lemak), wrap the dough and place them into the freezer for about an hour.
4. Remove bottom crust dough from the freezer. Placing it between 2 sheets of plastic, roll it out until it fits your pie pan (recommended to use 9inch pan). Remove the top sheet of plactic, and slowly guide the crust into the pie pan. Press the pie crust to fit the pie pan snugly (while still having the plastic sheet on. This makes things a lot easier and less messy). Remove plastic sheet.
5. Add 1 1/2 tbsp cornflour into the drained apples and mix well. Arrange apple slices so that it stacks evenly and even thickness. Pour the caramelized apple juice over the apple slices.
6. Bring out the 2nd ball of dough and roll it out in similar method. Moisten the edge of the bottom pie crust and place the top crust over the apples. Tuck any access pastry under the bottom crust or remove them. Pinch the edges together.
7. Glaze the top of the pie with egg yolk and make 1cm slits from the centre to the edge of the pie to allow steam to escape.
8. Bake at 220°C for 45 minutes. Make sure to cover pie with aluminium foil to prevent over-browning of the top crust.

Leave pie to cool for 3-4 hours before cutting. Serve warm, and best with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.