crispy "oysters"

Note the quotation marks. What I mean by "oysters" is oyster mushroom or Pleorotus ostreatus (betul ga Cy, nama latinnya?), one of common mushrooms that people normally consume as food or drugs (CMIIW). Anyway, I went to KLCC yesterday to buy a book in Kinokuniya. During my way home, I intended to buy some cemilan to accompany me working on my assignment or watching TV. So before I headed to LRT station, I went to a supermarket there and I ran into this mushroom when I'm wandering in the vegetables section. Suddenly I remember that I used to eat this kind of mushroom as a soup or snacks back then, and it was really nice. So I thought the instant way to process this mushroom. I can't cook this as a soup, it's too tedious for me. How about snacks? Suddenly this fried-crispy-oyster-mushroom idea came across my mind. Yup, that's it. It's very simple and all I had to do is to buy the instant crispy flour which is normally used to cook fried chicken.

The following is how I simply did it:

• Prepare 2 plates for egg and flour to be put on, respectively, and off course, the mushrooms.
• Break the egg and put it on a plate, and then shake it.
• Put the crispy flour on the other plate.
  
• Heat the cooking oil with medium flame. We can also add a teaspoon of margarine into the cooking oil, just to make it taste juicy and greasy.
• Dip the mushrooms into the egg until it's totally covered, then dip them in to the flour until it's totally covered as well.
• Deep fry the flour-covered mushrooms until they turn brown.

It tastes nice, but with a little bit bitter taste. Hmmm, probably I should've boiled the mushrooms first... hehehe

no money, no talk!

Today is my mom's 54th birthday. I made a phone call to her this morning, and guess what... her bank was giving her privilege as a credit card user to enjoy the meals with half price off in a fancy restaurant named 'Bebek Bali' (literally means: balinese duck) in Taman Ria Senayan, Jakarta. So today she has treated not only my dad and my brother, but also all of her siblings and some siblings in laws, together with their children, which are my cousins, to have lunch there... well, she considered it as a family gathering or 'arisan' kind of thing.

The good thing of being credit card holder is, we can have some privileges given by the issuer bank in many different places. For example, every month the bank always sends us offers to enjoy at least 10% discount in fancy restaurants, spas, boutiques, executive lounge in airports, even 5-star hotels. If u're having a birthday, the discounts can be up to 50%, like my mom had. One time my mom got a one-night stay voucher for two at Hilton hotel. Instead of asking my dad, she asked me to spend the weekend there. Beside, my dad would definitely refuse that, and in fact he said that we don't have sense of crisis, there are lots of starving children out there, and many other humanity speech came out from him, after knowing that we decided to stay over there. Oh c'mon dad, it's not that we paid for this, rite? Evenso, my dad was still generous to send us to the hotel. It happened around 8-9 years ago, when Indonesia just got hit by severe economic crisis.

Of course the banks don't do those kind of things without reason. It's all for customer loyalty. Loyalty is everything for all kind of business. But often credit card holders are always trapped into consumerism. And the next thing will happen is, they tend to delay the payments, interest is getting higher, they can't afford to pay, and finally the debt collectors always chase after them. My brother works in a bank, and once he told us that the collection division guys are the kings of swearings. Those 'kebun binatang' swearings are often heard when the guys who work there are making the phone calls to poor customers who haven't paid the bills.

Well, the conclusion is, banks are nice to us, as long as we're 'nice' to them. It's just 'take and give' kind of situation.

No money, no talk!

................

Lie to me, say that you need me

That's what I wanna hear

That is what, what makes me happy

Hoping you'll be near

All this time, how could I know

Within these walls, I can feel you

...... (Another Day - Lene Marlin)

Her video tells us about unspoken love in a very sweet way, when one feels happy only by looking at the loved one. It's so................. me!

sleepy & daydreaming

This week is totally sleepy week. Almost everyday in this week I fell asleep or at least nodded off during lectures. The lectures were fine, in fact, I was looking forward to these lecture series. The lecturer is also OK, and is a very nice guy. He's a senior physicist in radiotherapy department of Royal Perth Hospital, and is currently teaching us radiotherapy physics until the end of next week. But eventhough these lectures are interesting, my eyes always reject to cooperate during every lecture. Unlike other lectures (oops), I was trying so hard to stay awake. Moving my body around, asking something to the lecturer, - doesn't matter if it's a silly question-, writing notes, were some of my way in overcoming this damn sleepy disease. Normally I don't drink coffee, but one day I purposedly drank 2 glasses of coffee before the lecture. What happened next? I still nodded off many times. I should've known that coffee somehow won't affect my metabolism at all, and I don't know why. And no matter how hard I try, my fellas always find me falling asleep during lectures.. uhhh! Once they saw me sleeping like a baby during research method course last September. In that case, I admit that I didn't even try to stay awake. The speaker's voice was like a lullaby, I sat on a cozy seat and the air-con was perfect. And they laughed at me...

This week has also raised me hope. Hope of the future. At the first lecture last Monday, the lecturer informed us that the hospital he works for is offering PhD projects in radiotherapy physics. The next day, I had this opportunity to have lunch with him and other fellas. I asked him about the projects and the possibility to get the scholarship. He replied positively and promised me to give the projects list. Yesterday he gave me the list and the names of supervisors in charge of each projects. One of the projects involves BEAM code which I find very interesting because I used that code to do Monte Carlo simulation in my undergraduate final project.

OK.... I'm dreaming too much! I haven't started writing my master dissertation and now I'm daydreaming about taking PhD in Perth??? Get real Fadil!!!