Cracker and crackers

I learned something new recently.

Now I'm sure most people have heard of crackers. As in one cracker, two crackers, ... referring to the biscuit or snack.

And then there's crackers, in its plural form only. As in, "That guy is crackers." Meaning that he is crazy.

What I didn't know was that a cracker was also a slang to refer to white people, similar to how nigger is used to refer to black people.

It seems that this word was used in the southern United States because white people used to crack their whips over slaves or animals.

You can read more on Wikipedia. The article also says:

In reference to a native of Florida or Georgia, however, it is sometimes used in a neutral or positive context or self-descriptively with pride (see Florida cracker and Georgia cracker).

So it is not necessarily pejorative.

Anyway, I learned this while watching a quiz show. I never knew of this usage before, but very soon after that, I came across it in a book I was reading (Life Sentences by Laura Lippman). If I hadn't known the meaning, I would probably have thought they meant crazy people. This makes me wonder, have I misinterpreted any other usage of crackers before this?

Another vicious attack

My Totoro got attacked again.

The koala witnesses were so scared they almost fell off their perches (unfortunately I forgot to snap a picture before helping them back on, but you can see them here)

The kangaroo witness had fallen over on his side; probably shoved by the perpetrator. Maybe he hit his head and lost consciousness till morning. (also forgot to take a picture; you can see him here)

But the worst injured was still my fragile Totoro. Gotta make him stronger...

Jigglypuff was fine. (oh, maybe he sang Totoro to sleep, and consequently the kangaroo slept as well) Pikachu too. The red cow had a minor injury on her behind, being torn away from her "home" (see the red pin?)

The tiger on his high perch was unharmed. Nobody dares to mess with Kim Jong Kook! :P

저는김종국입니다
(I am Kim Jong Kook)

Actually some people had come to install some fixtures for us, so they knocked some stuff over. (let's leave it at that; I'm lazy to go into details) I could make another CSI case out of this, but I don't feel like writing so much at the moment.

The red animals were part of our CNY decorations. We were supposed to discard them after CNY but it felt like such a waste...so I adopted them. (there were others, supposed to be adopted by other people, but I'm not sure what happened to them)

Is that a cover?

I hate it when singers release covers of someone else's song when the original isn't even a decade old!

Like Boyce Avenue covering Justin Timberlake's Not a Bad Thing. (I heard it on the radio recently, which is what prompted this post)

Or someone covering Green Day's 21 Guns. The original was so powerful, and the cover was disappointing. AND... the radio loved playing it. :s

There was also Bruno Mars' song - what was it? - I can't remember but I would probably notice if I heard it again, because the cover is slightly different from the original. I didn't like the song that much anyway, and didn't care for the cover either.

You see, when a song is old, the current generation doesn't really know it, so making a cover is like a tribute to the original singer; you want to promote their song to the people of today. But when you cover a "rather new" song, you are basically taking over someone else's song. Or trying to show that you are better than them (or maybe lose... in some people's eyes - or ears). At least that's how it looks like to me.

Are people so desperate to release songs these days, they can't wait to write their own songs (or wait for songs to be written for them)?

Stopping the aging

Lite FM currently has a contest going on called "Stop the Music". It is a rather good concept actually; you listen to the beginning of a song and say "stop" when you feel you can guess the song and the artiste. The prize money starts off at a thousand ringgit, but goes down as the time ticks away.

I had heard the game being played a few times, but most of the time the person couldn't guess the song at all. Once they guessed the song, but got it wrong (correct artiste, wrong song, unfortunately). But yesterday I heard someone win a thousand ringgit! The song had started playing for only one or two seconds (basically I had heard nothing), and he said "stop". I didn't even catch his answer, but it turned out to be correct. He must be a really big fan of the song. :P I don't blame him... it's a great song, I like it too! (never knew who sang it, though)

So here's Forever Young, by Alphaville (never heard of them!)

Currently reading

I'm reading The Blue Handbag by Fiona Robyn at the moment. It's about a widower who found his deceased wife's old handbag, and something unexpected inside. So he goes on a journey of finding out things about his wife that he never knew about.

The synopsis caught my attention because it had the elements of a mystery in it. And true, there is a mystery in the book. But I feel that it is more of an emotional journey; the book describes the main character's thoughts and feelings very thoroughly. It makes the story's progress slow, but somehow I don't find it boring. I can put it down any time, but I do enjoy how the writer describes things.

One not-so-small flaw about this book, though, is that it has quite a number of grammar/typo errors. I have seen words missing from a sentence. I have seen mis-spellings (like stationary instead of stationery). I thought editors were supposed to catch all that? It's not like there are some in every page; it's more like one every few chapters. Doesn't really take the enjoyment out of reading, but a published book is supposed to have ZERO flaws, if you ask me.


By the way, right before this book, I read The Thief by Clive Cussler. One of the best books I've read. The plot was interesting, and the writing style suited me, too. What I don't quite understand is that he wrote it with someone... so whom does the writing style come from? Will other books written with other people (he has a few series with different lead characters, each written with a different person) have the same style?

Morning laughter

This is just too funny, I have to post it immediately.

This morning my colleague F suddenly exclaimed, Oh, you have a cute squirrel!

It's not a squirrel!

Then what is it? Is it a dog?

I'll give you a hint, it's from Australia.

Koala bear?

Are you doing this on purpose? (How can someone call this a koala bear?)

No, no! What was the name of that animal...

Then he asked for A/B/C choices, which I refused to give to him. I told him he could slowly think until he found it.

At that moment, A (another colleague) came by. So F asked her, what is this? The clever girl replied at once, It's a kangaroo!

F wouldn't believe it though... He said, This is a kangaroo? It's more like a donkey, or a rat...

My poor kangaroo... already two people at home identified it as a rabbit. :( Though that is more understandable, because it doesn't have a pouch, and plush rabbits are usually standing up. Even a squirrel is still okay, if you don't look at its tail. But a dog? A koala bear? A donkey or a rat?!?!! *pengsan*

To see a photo of the "mystery animal", you can check out my previous post here.

Edit (same day, at night): Okay, I decided to add this instead:

Please help me, I am having an identity crisis... What am I??

 

That's what I wanted to say!

WW came back from a buffet dinner (his boss's treat, ain't that nice?) I asked him where they ate, and he said he didn't really know the name; just that it was something like "vice-pres" (can't remember exactly how he said it, but that's not the point), and that it was some Italian place. I asked him if it was Via Pré (I had heard that name before), and he said, Yes, that's it! That's what I wanted to say!

Then I asked him what food there was. He showed me a photo of the buffet table. There were some flat quarter-circle things, and I asked him what they were. He said "nandos". I asked him, nachos? He said, That's what I wanted to say! You understand my language very well! He said he was going to tell me they were "biscuits with tomato sauce". I said, those are nachos with salsa!

That's not all... I next asked him about the pizza on the table. What pizza was it? He said it was "maggiata", and I asked him, margherita? Yes! That's what I wanted to say!

Actually I wouldn't have known about margherita pizza if I hadn't been to France. Even then, being a carnivore (like mentioned in a previous post :P ), I never bought it myself. But my Muslim friends bought the frozen ones very often (since it was the only halal flavour available). And I think almost every pizza shop had it on the menu. But I would never order it... vegetarian pizzas are not for me!

I did a quick search on margherita pizzas as I was writing this post, and it turns out that the pizza is supposed to contain the three colours of the Italian flag: red (tomatoes), green (basil) and white (mozzarella). There, did you learn something new today?

A sweet reunion

Remember a certain caramel candy that I raved about before?

I wouldn't be surprised if no one remembers; it was five years ago!

But I haven't forgotten it... and my current department works with Motorola Krakow (which is in Poland!) To cut a long story short, some people came over from Poland and brought this:

I was soooo happy (the number of "O"s does not do this candy justice, but I think it would be kinder towards you :P ) to see this. Just as wonderful as I remembered. This time I took a photo before eating it.

In my previous post, I said that this was called krowki (little cows). Turns out krowka is the singular form.

And this time there is an actual candy wrapper. The first time I had it, it was just a generic wrapper (probably had "Poland" written on it or just a pattern, I can't remember). Which was what made it so difficult to even find out what the candy was!

Trying new recipes

Last weekend, I found a perencah packet for nasi briyani in a mini-market. I was curious about how to use it, because to me nasi briyani is always a dish of rice plus chicken, which are cooked and served separately (though maybe on the same plate). So was the perencah to be used for the rice, or for the chicken? Or were there two separate packets inside?

Turns out that there is only one powdered mix, and it is to be used for both. The instructions were pretty simple; just stir-fry the paste with ghee, then stir in the uncooked rice and chicken before adding water and cooking, all done in a rice cooker.

So I decided to try it out. (this weekend!) Since the preparation steps were pretty simple, I decided to make acar timun to go with it (if the steps had been complicated, I would have just sliced up some cucumber instead :P ).

Here's the end result:

The briyani rice tasted really good. Just the right amount of spices, I guess. Not surprising since I used the same amount of rice as indicated in the packet. I didn't use ghee, though... I just used normal cooking oil. Seems that I need more oil than ghee... at first I put only two tablespoons (the amount of ghee indicated on the packet), but I couldn't even get the powder to mix in properly.

Oh, and I did all the stir-frying and mixing in a frying pan before pouring it into my rice cooker pot. Since my rice cooker is small, I think it would be easier that way...

That was yesterday... and today I made creamy chicken pasta.

Some time ago, I found a few one-pot pasta recipes. It basically involves putting all the ingredients into one pot, instead of cooking the pasta separately. I first tried a tomato-basil pasta (in which I substituted parsley for basil, and added chicken; because yeah, we're carnivores in this family). It turned out very well, so I decided to try creamy chicken pasta after that!

Basically you just cook the pasta in milk (plus water) and add a little flour to thicken the sauce. And in the end, right after it is done, you stir in some grated cheddar cheese (I used Chesdale slices which I hacked into small pieces; though not very small, actually, because they melt with the heat from the pasta anyway)

while cooking

serving!

And why not show you pictures of the tomato pasta as well...

while cooking

done, in the pot (I didn't take this photo for the creamy chicken one)

serving!

All the recipes are there; you can try it out too! Bon appétit!

Weekend plans

My weekends have been filled for a rather long time into the future. The only problem is to find enough free time to fill.

For one, I got a huge haul from this year's Big Bad Wolf sale.

Twenty-one books, of which two were bought for a friend (he wants to cultivate a reading habit... unlikely, but at least he might enjoy a few books in his lifetime :P )

The books for him are Jeffrey Archer (the thick book on top of the centre pile, which is actually a 2-in-1 combo, so it's not as scary as it looks) and Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. I had already read all three stories before; Jeffrey Archer's I already have, and I actually thought I had James and the Giant Peach, but turned out I don't. So I told him, I'll read it before passing it to you. And I did, in one weeknight. :P Loved it all over again. :D

To add on to all those books, I received a gift from my cousin as part of a Pay-It-Forward initiative. It's where each person who receives a gift (you ask for it, so it is voluntary) is supposed to give a gift to five other people, who each in turn gives a gift to five other people.... you get the idea.

I have never heard of Kalkitos before this. Never heard of such a "toy" (I suppose you would call it a toy?) before. But it looks interesting... even though I haven't opened the wrapper yet. :s I've got to find some time to actually open the wrapper and go through it. I don't want to open it and look at it halfway...

So there you go. Weekends filled for at least four to five months to come. (and don't forget the other two books I bought recently...)