some pics i took on the bus while travelling to toa payoh, trying out black & white with high iso setting..

here's the italian bread that we have made, quite nice eh.. taste good too..

baking bread

attended a 2-night course on home bread-baking with my girlfriend recently..
did our own practical yesterday, with just one dough recipe we made three different kinds of bread: italian bread with spices, man tou (chinese bun with no fillings), and tibetian bread..
the breads came out really nice, but the man tous were a tad dry and small, couldn't understand how they didn't proof well..
not that hard, as i thought it would be, just some muscling to make the dough, but at least its much healthier than the ones you get commercially outside, like the bread shop whose breads can talk, they had out much other additives which i think is rather healthy, just visually attractive that's all..
some pics..
after we perfected this variant, we would venture into other kinds as well, like ciabatta bread..
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razortv goes undercover on mrt

an interesting video about how the razortv went undercover on the mrt to see how singaporeans fare when in need to give up their seats for others.. ugly..


seems like the 20 odd years of courtesy campaign by our "beloved" government has not seep through the tough and ignorant skulls of alot singaporeans.. i agree that not all behaved like that, but there are always black sheeps bleeping out there..
pretty soon, i would not have to see them anymore i hope, in one way or another..
like what the commentator said: "the quality of the people can be an indication of how developed a country is," i feel we still have a mighty long way to go..
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sweetness threshold

i don't know if there's anything called sweetness threshold, but i have had a similar experience of such two sundays ago..
my girlfriend and i were having desserts with my old schoolfriend jian xiong at breeks in causeway point - the idea of having desserts after meal had a long and intricate history which i shall not bore anyone with - and i ordered hot hazelnut chocolate for her and chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream for myself..
my girlfriend's got a peculiar sense of sight, she can tell something about the food just by looking at them! serious! i was rather suspicious about it, i mean how can you know anything about the food if you have not tasted it? well, she can and she hits the jackpot most of the time - 99% actually.. she said that the brownie looks too sweet, but because it was heated up prior serving to us, it would be less sweet, and the vanilla, being a mild flavour, would dampen the sweetness as well, which is a good thing.. the hot chocolate looks fine too, but really, looks can be deceiving. because on top of the chocolate drink, there's a generous serving of unmelted sweet chocolate cached in the cup, unknown to us until much later..
all seemed fine but as we ate, i found myself forcing myself to finish the brownie as it seemed somehow the brownie became sweeter and sweeter.. to a point near the end, i found the sweetness so overbearing that i felt nauseous once i put it in my mouth.. my girlfriend had the same feeling when drinking the chocolate.. i wonder if the desserts are too sweet for its good, of our sweetness threshold are not that high..
oh well, perhaps we were quite full already, and the feeling of fullness triggers the throwing up mechanism.. but i would not put my stomach at risk to go through the same unpleasantness again..
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