Steamed Silver Perch

Have prepared:

• 1 fresh snapper, dressed
• 1 teaspoon shredded ginger root
• 1 green onion shredded fine (white section)

Place fish on a thin platter, and over it, spread evenly:

• Shredded ginger root
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 whole green onion

Place platter on a trivet in a steamer, making sure water is boiling. Cover and steam for 15 minutes. Test with fork. Fish should be removed before it has a chance to become overdone.

When fish is steaming, heat:

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil

When fish is done, drain and place on platter. Discard whole green onion, then pour over the fish:

• Hot vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup soy sauce

Garnish silver perch with the shredded green onion and serve steaming hot with fried or steamed rice.

Bundeena Kayaking

Temasek Club's activity for the month is kayaking at Bundeena. My sister wants to try her hand at kayaking; GF is happy enough to go anywhere; me, I just want to take pictures. It's a pleasant one-hour morning drive to Bundeena. Once you enter the Royal National Park, just follow the long winding road through Maianbar, then to Bundeena. After a nice breakfast of crispy pancakes at The Fringe, we checked out the Horderns Beach. Once the group is complete, we drove to the nearby Port Hacking. While everybody else went kayaking, GF and I walked along the banks of the Simpsons Bay. After 2 and a half hours, the guys paddled back. Passed by Centro Roselands on our way back and had late lunchearly dinner at the food court.

The Great Assembly of Lotus Flowers

It was really by chance that we got to know of this Buddhist event being organized by a group called Voices of Wisdom. Learned about the event by way of a bookmark that my Mom picked up. We're not really sure what it's about, but since it's free and my parents has never been inside the Opera House we decided to go.

The event was held at the Utzon Room from 11am till 4pm. We got there around noon, and there's already a long queue snaking around the box office. Nothing like a free gift to bring out the crowds. After half an hour, one of the organizers came out of the room and announced the unfortunately, they ran out of free gifts. In time, we reached the room.

In the center of the room, there's a small table with three Buddhist statues. Underneath the table is portable CD/cassette player repeating a Buddhist chant. There are markings on the floor forming a big circle around the table. People are supposed to enter the circle at one point, go around the statues three times while chanting, and come out at another part of the circle. At the exit, you'll be given a gift voucher, which you can exchange for a free gift.

At least that's how it's supposed to work. What saddens me is that I've seen people walk around the circle just once - without even chanting, come out of the circle, and immediately ask for their free gift. Some even bring along their kids, and insist that they, too, be given the gift vouchers. Worse, I believe some parties even did the routine twice to get more free gifts. You can argue that, hey, the organizers are giving away the gifts - you'd be foolish not to take it. Still, there's something to be said about taking only what you need.

Port Stephens Tour

It was a good day for a tour; it was a bad day for a tour. It was the long Easter weekend. Too bad it had been raining the past few days.

GF and I met up at Central station around 6:45am, then walked to the Sydney Entertainment Centre where the NCT bus was supposed to leave at 7am. From the city centre, we went to Chatswood to pick up more people.

Programme for the day is as follows:

• Australian Reptile Park (Gosford) - $22.00
• Divers Luck Winery (Port Stephens) - $3.00
• Dolphin Watch Cruise (Nelson Bay) - $19.50
• Seafood Lunchbox - $12.50
• Four-Wheel Drive (Anna Bay) - 19.00
• Sandboarding (Anna Bay) - free

The morning was pretty uneventful, except for the fact that our tour guide kept forgetting that GF and I had already paid our expenses in full. Turns out when we gave him our payment, he marked the wrong person's entry. And now the other person is claiming that he had also paid. I'm pretty sure we had already paid, so I'm not budging. After a while, the tour guide came back to our seats, and wanted to confirm that I'm not lying to him. Geez, as if I'd lie in front of GF.

After about an hour or so of driving, we arrived at the Australian Reptile Park. GF and I didn't join the tour anymore as we're not really into reptiles. Killed time at the lobby and the souvenir shop. It drizzled a bit; hopefully it stops by the time we get to Anna Bay. Next stop is the Divers Luck Winery, supposedly the first and only winery in Port Stephens. One of the staff gave us a short overview of how they make their botique wines. Three dollars gives us a sampling of two white wines, two red wines, and port. Felt a bit tipsy after all that drinking. That's actually not good because next up is our noontime dolphin-watching cruise at Nelson Bay. The weather's not cooperating, too, as the winds are pretty strong, resulting in some choppy waves, adding to my seasickness. I went below deck to pick up our seafood lunchboxes. Again, the tour guide asks me if I have really paid for the expenses. Unbelievable. I had to look around to see if there's a hidden camera somewhere. The seafood lunchbox is no good. At $12.50, I really expected better. After sailing here and there for an hour, our skipper gave up sighting dolphins and brought the ship back to port.

Now, for the highlight of the day. After more driving, we got to Anna Bay. I'm quite surprised with the change of landscape. On one side is the Birubi Beach. On the other side is desert as far as the eyes can see. Undulating sand dunes with clumps of vegetation here and there. There are even camels that you can hire to take you around. In our case, we used a 4WD coach to bring us to the sand hills for sandboarding. The hills are about 30 meters high, and the slopes are pretty steep. If that's too much, you can try the gentler slopes at the side. There are boards littered about. You pick one up, sit on it, and off you go. My first run down the slopes is quite fast and exhilarating. The good thing is that you can slow down your speed by using your hands as brakes. It gets a bit tiring after a few tries because you have to climb all the way to the top. GF was content to just watch and take pictures from the sidelines.

Three hours and some Bee Gees and Teresa Teng concerts later, we're back at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. Late dinner at Ramen Kan to finish the day.

Shrimp Balls

Chop finely:

• 1/2 pound fresh cleaned prawns
• 1/4 cup bamboo shoots
• 1/4 cup canned button mushrooms
• 1 whole green onion
• Add:
• pepper
• salt
• few drops sesame seed oil

Place in mixing bowl and add:

• white of one egg

Mix together until fluffy. Leave the bamboo shoots and mushrooms till last. Form into small balls the size of marbles. Add cornstarch if mixture too wet.

Dip balls in batter of:

• 1 beaten egg
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 teaspoon oil
• Sufficient water to make smooth batter of pancake consistency

Fry until golden brown.

Blog Revamp

It's been a long time coming, but I finally switched from the classic Blogger template to widget-style editing. Most of the template came out intact, but I lost some of my customized HTML code - some handcrafted sidebar elements, links to reddit, digg, del.icio.us, etc.

What I liked about the widgets-based template is that it makes formatting the page very easy. Integrating new apps is as easy as opening a widget window and pasting in some Javascript code. I managed to port over Radioblog, Google Search, Snap's mini previews, Statcounter, and Google Analytics. Instead of the Flickr Badge, which only displays the latest pictures, I uploaded 800+ of my photos, and used Google's Picasa slideshow.

Nybble 2008.03.17

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2008.03.17 Issue No. 198

I have just about given up trying to educate my friends as to what is
scam/spam/chain emails and what is not. There's only so many times you
can explain why it's impossible for Ericsson to give away free phones
to everyone. There's no way AOL and Microsoft will be able to track
how many times you have forwarded a piece of email. And there's no
such thing as a virus that will crash your whole computer by
overwriting your boot sector. Frankly, my dear, CNN and McAfee don't
give a hoot even if such a virus exists.

Before, I used to write short dissertations as to why a particular
hoax email can't be true. Then, I started replying with a link to the
appropriate Snopes article. Nowadays, I simply delete the offending
emails. It's like fighting a losing battle. Given that the use of
email is now almost universal, I reckon its proper use, including
email etiquette, should be taught in schools.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the email newbies
about it. Thanks.

_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Self-Healing Rubber
* Cheap High-Speed GiFi Chip
* Robot Gas Attendant
* Unlimited Free Music Downloads to LG Mobiles
* Self-Cleaning Clothes
* Harvesting Energy from Clothes
* Speedcabling as a Sport
* Sperm from Bone Marrow
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh

_________SELF-HEALING RUBBER_________
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13354

Polymer chemists at the Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher
Educational Institution (ESPCI) in Paris, France have developed a
self-healing rubber that binds back together after being snapped or
punctured. When the material melds together again, under gentle
compression at room temperature, it has just as much strength as it
had before. The material could eventually make it a cinch to repair
holes in shoes, snapped fan belts and punctured kitchen gloves. It
might also make strange new products possible, for instance bags that
can be ripped open and then resealed.

Regular rubber gets its strength from the fact that long chains of
polymer molecules are coupled, or "crosslinked," in three different
ways: through covalent, ionic, and hydrogen bonding between molecules.
Of these three bond types, only the hydrogen bonds can be remade once
a material is fractured, although normally there are not enough
hydrogen bonds for the rubber to re-couple in this way. The solution,
therefore, is to simply get rid of the ionic and covalent bonds, and
let only the hydrogen bonds perform the crosslinking. The material is
synthesised from fatty acids and urea, which are cheap and renewable.
The only downside is that the material is weaker than regular rubber.

_________CHEAP HIGH-SPEEP GIFI CHIP_________
http://snurl.com/21x75

After almost a decade of R&D, Professor Stan Skafidas and his team at
the Melbourne University-based laboratories of NICTA, the national
information and communications technology research centre, unveils the
"GiFi" chip. The tiny five-millimetre-a-side chip can transmit data
through a wireless connection at a breakthrough five gigabits per
second over distances of up to 10 metres, and is predicted to
revolutionise the way household gadgets like televisions, phones and
DVD players talk to each other. For example, an entire high-definition
movie from a video shop kiosk could be transmitted to a mobile phone
in a few seconds, and the phone could then upload the movie to a home
computer or screen at the same speed.

The team is the first to demonstrate a working transceiver-on-a-chip
that uses CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) technology -
the cheap, ubiquitous technique that prints silicon chips. The chip
uses only a tiny one-millimetre-wide antenna and less than two watts
of power, and would cost less than $10 to manufacture. It uses the
unoccupied 60GHz "millimetre wave" spectrum to transmit the data,
which gives it an advantage over WiFi (wireless internet).

The high-powered team included 10 PhDs students from the University of
Melbourne and collaborated with companies such as computer giant IBM
during the research.

_________ROBOT GAS ATTENDANT________
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL0448185920080204

After seeing a robot milking a cow, petrol station operator Nico van
Staveren had a eureka moment - why not get robots to fill a car tank?
No messy hands or smell of petrol anymore. So with the help of some
Dutch inventors, they recently unveiled a 75,000 euro (US$111,100)
car-fuelling robot called "Tankpitstop". The first of its kind, it
works by registering the car on arrival at the filling station and
matching it to a database of fuel cap designs and fuel types. A
robotic arm fitted with multiple sensors extends from a regular gas
pump, carefully opens the car's flap, unscrews the cap, picks up the
fuel nozzle and directs it towards the tank opening, much as a human
arm would, and as efficiently.

Nico van Staveren hopes to introduce the "Tankpitstop" robot in a
handful of Dutch stations by the end of the year. It works for any car
whose tank can be opened without a key, and whose contours and
dimensions have been recorded to avoid scratching.

_________UNLIMITED FREE MUSIC DOWNLOADS TO LG MOBILES_________
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/digitalmusic/0,39029432,49295528,00.htm?fullread

London-based Omnifone announced the launch of MusicStation Max -- a
worldwide mobile music download service that offers 'free' unlimited
downloads of music from the four major labels (Sony BMG, Universal,
EMI and Warner), directly to mobile phones over the air. In the UK,
Omnifone will offer a catalogue of 1.5 million tracks.

The service will launch in the first half of this year with handsets
manufactured by LG. Participating mobile networks will offer the
special MusicStation Max phones, and will offer service plans that
include an unlimited data plan to be used for music downloads. This
lets users download, listen to and store an unlimited number of tracks
from all four major music labels, on their mobile phone. Each
MusicStation Max phone comes with PC and Mac software that's connected
to the phone contract. Every time a song is downloaded to your phone,
the same song is downloaded to your computer for playback through your
PC speakers. It's DRMed, so no transferring to iPods, CDs or other
handsets. After the phone's contract is up, users can continue to play
songs downloaded to their handsets and computers already, or purchase
a new handset in order to continue accessing new music.

_________SELF-CLEANING CLOTHES_________
http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/20306/

Researchers at Monash University, in Victoria, Australia, have found a
way to coat fibers with titanium dioxide nanocrystals, which break
down food and dirt in sunlight. The researchers, led by organic
chemist and nanomaterials researcher Walid Daoud, have made natural
fibers such as wool, silk, and hemp that will automatically remove
food, grime, and even red-wine stains when exposed to sunlight.

Titanium dioxide, which is used in sunscreens, toothpaste, and paint,
is a strong photocatalyst: in the presence of ultraviolet light and
water vapor, it forms hydroxyl radicals, which oxidize, or decompose,
organic matter. However, these nanocrystals cannot decompose wool and
are harmless to skin. Moreover, the coating does not change the look
and feel of the fabric. Titanium dioxide can also destroy pathogens
such as bacteria in the presence of sunlight by breaking down the cell
walls of the microorganisms. This should make self-cleaning fabrics
especially useful in hospitals and other medical settings.

To make self-cleaning wool, Daoud and his colleagues use nanocrystals
of titanium dioxide that are four to five nanometers in size. The
researchers chemically modify the surface of wool fibers, adding
chemical groups called carboxylic groups, which strongly attract
titanium dioxide. Then they dip the fibers in a titanium dioxide
nanocrystal solution. In experiments involving red-wine stains,
Titanium-dioxide-coated wool shows almost no sign of the red stain
after 20 hours of exposure to simulated sunlight, while the untreated
wool remains boldly stained. Other stains disappear faster: coffee
stains fade away in two hours, while blue-ink stains disappear in
seventeen hours.

Daoud expects self-cleaning wools to be available in the market within
two years, once sufficient laboratory and industrial trials have been
completed.

_________HARVESTING ENERGY FROM CLOTHES_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7241040.stm

Scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed
novel brush-like fibres that generate electrical energy from movement.
Weaving them into a material could allow designers to create "smart"
clothes which harness body movement to power portable electronic
gadgets. The team says that the materials could also be used in tents
or other structures to harness wind energy.

The nano-generators, as the technology is known, consist of pairs of
fibres that look similar to tiny, bendable bottle-brushes. At the core
of each fibre is a Kevlar stalk. On the surface, nanowires made of
zinc oxide are grown in solution. One of the bristled fibres is also
dipped in gold to act as an electrode. When the pair is scrubbed
together they create a small amount of electrical energy. Experiments
with the prototypes showed that two 1cm-long fibres could generate a
current of four nanoamperes and an output voltage of about four
millivolts. The team is optimistic they can optimise the design we can
get up to 80 milliwatts per square metre of fabric - that could
potentially power an iPod.

The technology could also find a use in healthcare - powering tiny
medical devices like a true cochlear implant or heart pacemaker, or a
delivery mechanism for subcutaneous drug delivery implants or
antibiotic drug reservoirs for preventing infection in retinal implants.

_________SPEEDCABLING AS A SPORT_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7240939.stm

A new "sport" based around unraveling the mass of wires that can
typically be found beneath computer desks the world over is taking off
in the western US. The first "speedcabling" competition took place in
an art gallery in Los Angeles and was won by LA-based web developer
Matthew Howell.

The challenge was devised by IT professional Steven Schkolne. The idea
came to him two years ago when he started wondering if others shared
both his skill and his passion for detangling cables. Contestants are
faced with a tangled mass of six Ethernet cables of various lengths.
Their task is simply to separate them in the fastest time. To get them
to replicate the conditions of the wires found snaking and choking
their way around hard drive units, monitors and printers in offices
worldwide, Schkolne first started by tangling them in a figure eight.
Then he threw the bundles in a clothes dryer for three minutes - no
longer attached to any computer unit, naturally. After untangling the
Ethernet cables, the contestant is supposed to hold the full cable
above his head. Crucially, the cables also have to be able to carry a
network signal after detangling.

The prize? A $50 gift certificate for dinner at a local Italian
restaurant.

_________SPERM FROM BONE MARROW_________
http://snurl.com/21x76

British scientists are ready to turn female bone marrow into sperm,
cutting men out of the process of creating life. The breakthrough
paves the way for lesbian couples to have children that are
biologically their own. Gay men could follow suit by using the
technique to make eggs from male bone marrow.

According to New Scientist magazine, the researchers at Newcastle upon
Tyne University want to take stem cells from a woman donor's bone
marrow and transform them into sperm through the use of special
chemicals and vitamins. Newcastle professor Karim Nayernia has applied
for permission to carry out the work and is ready to start the
experiments within two months. The biologist, who pioneered the
technique with mice, believes early-stage 'female sperm' could be
produced inside two years. Mature sperm capable of fertilising eggs
might take three more years. Early-stage sperm have already been
produced from male bone marrow.

The team say their technique will help lead to new treatments for
infertility, a little understood condition that affects one in six
couples. Scientists warn, however, that the research is still in its
infancy and any treatment is still many years away from use in
hospitals and clinics. There are also fears that children born from
artificial eggs and sperm will suffer severe health problems, like the
mice in the Newcastle experiments. Couples who have children from
artificial sperm created from women would be able to have girls only.
This is because the female sperm would lack the Y-chromosome needed
for boys. Critics also warn that it sidelines men and raises the
prospect of babies being born through entirely artificial means.

_________NYBBLETS_________
* Alcatel-Lucent researchers have recorded an optical transmission
record of 16.4 Tbps over 2,550 km in Villarceaux, France
* Tiny Alaskan village of Kivalina is suing a multitude of oil, power
and coal companies for contributing to global warming
* Canon plans to embed photographs with the user's iris metadata for
copyright protection
* Batteries using QuantumSphere's nanoparticle technology will have
5x more energy density and 3x more power than alkaline cells

_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
lrcDB
http://lrcdb.org/

vozMe
http://vozme.com/index.php?lang=en
Text to mp3

Google Reader Mobile
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/05/google-reader-mobile.html

net2ftp
http://www.net2ftp.com/
A web-based FTP client

_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Today I received an issue of Time Magazine dated next week! Have the
publishers of Time finally invented a form of "Time Travel"?

_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is
essential to your own.
~ Robert Heinlein ~

_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Which company was first in Silicon Valley?
The first "technology" corporation to move into California's Silicon
Valley was Hewlett-Packard, in 1938. Stanford University engineers
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started their company in a Palo Alto
garage with $1,538. Their first product was an audio oscillator bought
by Walt Disney Studios for use in the making of Fantasia.
Source: Arcamax Trivia

_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
The Washington Post had a contest wherein participants were asked to
tell the younger generation how much harder they had it "in the old days."
In my day, we couldn't afford shoes, so we went barefoot. In winter,
we had to wrap our feet with barbed wire for traction.
In my day, we didn't have rocks. We had to go down to the creek and
wash our clothes by beating them with our heads.
In my day, we didn't have hand-held calculators. We had to do addition
on our fingers. To subtract, we had to have some fingers amputated.
Back in my day, they hadn't invented electricity. We had to watch
television by candlelight.

_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
TipCamp
http://www.utipu.com/app/
Freeware screen recorder

KB Piano
http://gfsoftware.com/kbp_information.html
Virtual piano

Excel Password Remover 98
http://www.straxx.com/excel/password.html

That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

Chicken in Parchment

Combine in a large mixing bowl:

• 1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon Chinese parsley, minced
• 1 teasepoon spring onions, minced
• 1/2 teasepoon hoisin sauce
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 cup uncooked chicken fillets cut into 1-inch square thin slices

Mix thoroughly and marinate for an hour.
Wrap each piece of chicken in 3-inch square pieces of parchment paper securely with all lose corners tucked in.
Fry parchment chicken in deep, hot vegetable oil for 5 minutes.
Drain on absorbent paper toweling and serve immediately.

Poetry and Passion at Naremburn Park

Quite a busy day today - after the movies, it's off to the park we go. Took the train to St. Leonards station, then from there, took the Willoughby Council shuttle bus to Naremburn Park for the free open-air Poetry and Passion classical concert by the Willoughby Symphony Orchestra.

I do have a ticket to the special reserved area sitting. Since GF doesn't have one, we just sat on one of the benches at the fringe of the park. Given our distance to the stage and strong winds, we didn't get to hear much of the orchestra's performance. It started to get a bit cold in the night, so we had to get some hot tea. Back at Burwood, a quick dinner at Canton Noodle House rounded up the day nicely.

Movie 2008.03.16 - The Home Song Stories

The movie is told from the point of view of Tom, a Chinese-Australian writer, who reminisces about his childhood. In 1964, his foster father Bill brings his nightclub singer mom Rose (Joan Chen) with him and his sister May from Shanghai to Melbourne. It's pretty obvious that Rose only married Bill in order to get a spouse visa because just after seven days of arriving in Melbourne, she skips town and settles in Sydney (Chinatown, I guess). From here on, she takes on a string of Chinese guys, in search of Mr. Right. After seven years of fruitless searching, she decides to go back to Bill, who even picked them up from the station and never has a bad word to say. There's a Chinese saying which goes, "One who is in the company of good fortune does not know how fortunate he is." In just a matter of days, Rose is again like an ant on a hot pan. She goes to the local Chinese restaurant and befriends the owner and staff. She starts having an affair with the young chef Joe, eventually gets caught by Bill's mother-in-law, and gets ejected from the house.

Things all went downhill from there. The family holes up in this shack. Joe starts gambling. Rose becomes clingy and nagging. Joe focuses his attention to May, who's now turning into a woman. Rose attempts suicide. May follows her mom's example. Rose tries her hand again at suicide and this time she succeeds (to the relief of most of the audience). Again, it's up to Bill to pick up the pieces. Tom later grows up to become Tony Ayres who wrote and directed the movie.

Paolo Santos Live & Intimate Australian Tour at Basement Blacktown

Not really a big Paolo Santos fan. I kinda liked his breakout song Moonlight in Paris back in the early 90s because that's when I first heard the song. Then he started doing mostly covers of old songs - changing a few notes here and there. Never really liked his falsetto voice.

Anyway, he's here in Sydney to do a couple of shows. Am surprised he's still around, given that most of his contemporaries have come and gone. GF's brother-in-law sounds like a big fan, so we all went to Basement Blacktown to see him (Paolo) perform. Had I known earlier that Paolo Santos also has a show at Burwood RSL, I would've recommended that instead. Tickets costs $35 bucks - not too expensive considering he did two sets for the night, with each set consisting of 10 songs or more. Then again, the concert venue is not that nice. It's at the basement level of the building, way too many tables, only lighting is the plasma screens here and there, and insufficient ventilation. The food's not too bad though. Or is it because I haven't had Filipino food for a long time now?

Paolo was in his regulation T-shirt and jeans. He's got good rapport with the audience. (Not that difficult since most of the audience are fans anyway.) He sang the trademark Paolo Santos songs - mostly slow smooth ballads, easy to sing: Sailing, Overjoyed, Huwag na Lang Kaya, No Woman No Cry, Magasin, Roxanne, etc. It was getting late, so we left a little after the second set.

Salmon Patties

Ingredients:

• 300 g potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes
• 400 g can red salmon, drained and with bones and skin removed
• 2 spring onions, finely chopped
• 3 tablespoons chopped parsley
• 2 teaspoons sweet chili sauce
• 1 tablespoon lemon sauce
• plain flour for dusting
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup dry breadcrumbs
• oil, for shallow-frying

Preparation:
Cook the potato in boiling water until it is soft. Drain well, place it in a bowl and mash until smooth.
Add the salmon, spring onion, chopped parsley, sweet chili sauce and lemon juice, and mix to combine.
Divide the mixture into equal portions. Shape each portion into round patties with wet hands.
Coat the patties lightly with flour, then dip each one into the beaten egg and coat with the breadcrumbs. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour.
Heat about 1/2 inch oil in frying pan to moderately hot. Add 4 patties to the pan, cook for 4 minutes each side, or until golden brown.
Drain the patties on paper towels and keep them warm while you are cooking the remaining patties.

Opera on the Big Screen - Carmen

For the first time, Sydney Opera House is doing a live broadcast of Opera Australia's production of Carmen to big screens at The Forecourt, Federation Square in Melbourne, and to eight regional theaters across Australia.

Opera on the Big Screen is open to the public, with a limit of four tickets per person. I registered online for the event, and got four wristbands in the mail, which I gave to GF and my sister. This is actually my first time to watch an opera. For one, operas are relatively more expensive compared to regular plays and concerts. Two, I know some arias and selected songs from selected operas, but I don't know if I'll be able to sit through one complete opera. (This one runs for 2 hours and fifty minutes inclucing one twenty-minute interval). Thanks to the live broadcast, I now know I can - given the right price and the right company.

A short synopsis of the opera. Don Jose, a corporal of dragoons, was seduced by Carmen, a gypsy cigarette girl. She convinces him to let her escape when she was arrested for creating trouble. Later on, she manages to get him to desert the regiment and join the smugglers in the mountains. Don Jose is unhappy because Carmen is flirty and fickly, and she now has the hots for Escamillo the toreador. In the last act, Carmen goes to the arena to watch Escamillo perform. In a fit of anger and jealousy, Don Jose kills her with a knife.

While the cast were taking their bow on the big screen, most of the people outdoors got up and got ready to leave. But wait, there's more! The cast came out of the Opera House, went on stage, and took their bow again. Live relay, my foot. :-)

Movie 2008.03.10 - Flightplan

There's no doubt that Jodie Foster is one of the best drama actresses out there. Think Contact, Silence of the Lambs, Panic Room, etc. However, even she can't save a bad script. I mean, you bring your child to the airport, go though immigration with her, pass though the boarding area, surely you were greeting by a couple of stewardesses as you board the plane. You wake up three hours into the flight, and your girl vanishes into thin air (no pun intended). Yet the most intriguing part is, no one in the whole plane even remembers seeing the child with you. How incredible can that be?

So Jodie threatens and strong arms the flight crew into search the place from top to bottom, head to tail. She accuses a groups of Middle Eastern guys of kidnapping her daughter for blackmail. She sabotages the plane's control system to create a diversion, then crawls up the cargo hold in search for her daughter. She takes on the terrorists who are bent on blowing up the plane unless they get their money. Ah, all in a day's work for a Hollywood Mom.

Woy Woy Walk

Joined Temasek Club's Central Coast Coastal Bushwalk. The group met up at the Old Killcare Store at the corner of Araluen Drive and Killcare Road for breakfast. After everyone had their fill, we drove over to the nearby Bouddi National Park and started our 2.5-hour walk. From Putty Beach, we followed the coast all the way to Maitland Bay Beach, passing by Gerrin Point Lookout for sweeping views of the sea. Rested for a while at Maitland Beach, then retraced our steps back to Putty Beach.