Mee Goreng Instant Noodles Comparison

Instant noodles have always been a big part of our meals no matter whether we have extra spending money or not. It is the time-saving factor, ease of cooking and variety that always draw us back to these artificial-flavor-instant-noodles!

Hannah and I have always love the Indomie brand Mi goreng instant noodles. Last week, I noticed that a competitor brand, Triten launched a "copycat"! So after trying both mi goreng, here is my critic...

Triten definitely has a more attractive design packaging than Indomie. However, maybe beacause of the expensive design cost, the amount of noodles is actually lesser!. While the serving is lesser, the noodle texture is better than Indomie.. but we are talking about instant noodles here! (who cares about noodle texture!?)

The sweet sauce in the new comer, Triten is definitely a lot sweeter than old timer, Indomie. I always love the spiciness in Indomie mi goreng which is lacking in the Triten mi goreng.

In conclusion, I like Indomie because I love my noodles spicy. On the other hand, I can see Hannah liking the new Triten mi goreng more because she love sweet sauce.

Jet's stomach!

Items I found in Jet's vomit this morning - a lot of Kaly's fur, a hair band, rubber, pieces of cloth, mud, grass, small plastic bottle cap! Wonder what goes on in that tummy of his!

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day!

Yesterday was the shortest day in the year! It was a bit screwy staying in the Southern Hemisphere with Christmas in the summer (I think I mention this somewhere before!).... Hannah and I were thinking we should just celebrate our own "Northern Hemisphere" version of Christmas and Thanksgiving in the winter...

And since we are in the spirit of Christmas :P and Love Actually... enjoy the music video! I love Christmas, I really, really do.

Love ACTUALLY is all around

Every Christmas Hannah and I have this cheesy tradition - we watch the movie "Love Actually" starring Hugh Grant. We are not really a big fan of him, but that movie always stir up some emotions in us. It started years ago when I moved to NY alone. I caught this movie on the TV during 2004 Christmas. It was snowing outside, warm in the apartment. I miss my family. Years later, I shared the movie with Hannah, and now it somehow becomes our "tradition" to watch this movie every year.

"Love Actually" has one of the best opening monologues -

"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspision love actually is all around."

And this morning in the newspaper, once again, we proved that love is actually all around. Scott Jones was comforting his girlfriend, Alexandra Thomas after she was injured when they were overrun by a phalanx of riot police during the ice hockey final riot in Vancouver. This image of the couple kissing quickly spread around the globe!

If you look for it, Love actually is all around. :)

Thought over morning coffee

A thought came up while Hannah and I were having a conservation this morning over coffee....

Why University of Auckland has to right to all our research when we have to pay them to do research? Don't they have to pay us instead?

What a woman!

In order to be more efficient and save money, we usually cook an item to last us for at least a week, and bring it to school for lunch, have it for dinner and anything in between. For the last few weeks, we had American chilli, Penang curry and this week, Hannah cooked Beef stew with drop dumplings.

I have to admit I had my concern whether I would like the dumpling or not when I saw Hannah making it last night. In my mind, as a Chinese, I always envision the best dumpling as having thin skin wrapped around well marinated pork. So you can imagine my surprise when Hannah just prepared a huge bowl of dough and dropped a tablespoon full of dough into the beef stew and called it - dropped dumpling! I was skeptical but again, I was proven wrong! and I am glad!... It was not the most beautiful thing I see in a soup bowl, but it was deceptively delicious!...Beef stew with dropped dumpling - I would recommend you try it :)

And have I told you how amazing this woman is? Hannah is the only "ang-mo" I know who can differentiate the quality of a brand of rice just by looking at the texture and by smelling it! And she can put a few Asians to shame with her excellent skills in using the chopsticks!... well, she couldn't really make great Chinese stir-fry like me :P, but she can make a mean beef stew with dropped dumplings!

Fleas!

Kaly has been scratching for a while, and today we discovered fleas on her! Yikes!... The scratching also causes her to lose lots of her fur on her tail, and her hind.We rushed to the vet, got some flea prevention pills, Comfortis... and hopefully she should feel better now. We just have to wait to see if she stops scratching and let her fur grows back. Otherwise, you will get to see her wearing one of those radar-dish on her head :P