NWVA 3 - Stir Fried Vegetarian Udon

As you can see, I bought a lot of frozen endamame beans and corn. You will see these two ingredients pop up until I hemorrhage beans and corn or they run out.

I also cut apple slices and dumped in some really ugly grapes Vater bought.

NWVA 2 - Ang Mo Style Sushi Rolls

I made some hot dog rolls, sliced up some cheese sticks and my egg blew up in the hot water because I had just taken it from the fridge. Bad idea.

Veggies murdered for this cause:
endamame beans, baby tomatoes and corn.

Excellent Android Tutorial Sites

Last Updated on 27 Feb 2013
For Beginners:
How to set up Eclipse and Android (written by yours truly a very long time ago)
Google's App Inventor (you may need a phone for this, unless they changed the situation since I last logged in)
Errors when developing Android (weird stuff and other Android epic failures that I encounter, growing list)
Gingerbread Tutorial 

Media Player tutorial and others
Assist Screen Layout with DroidDraw Actually I prefer its xml widget guide
Learning the different Android Layouts
Android Common Tasks
Why Android
Android Colors (from Google). E.g. android:textColor="@android:color/black"
and of course The Developer Guide SDK reference at Google. Duh.
How to access your SQLite dB from command prompt

General Tutorials:
MobileTuts - tutorials for mobile development, not limited to Android
Robert Green - Dude behind Battery Powered Games LLC. He has a help forum.
Tutorial for Android- A blogger Almond Mendoza helping fellow Android coders 
Getting started in smartphone development (mostly books, can ignore)
The New Boston (including education?)

Tiny Tutorials:
Passing values between activities
Read and write to XML file
Write to XML file in SD card
How to do the iPhone flip
Horizontal progress bar

APIs:
Facebook SDK for Android (latest update)
Scoreninja
Peerdroid

Books:
Learn Android
Pro Android book

Examples for reference:
Timer Example
Multi-touch example
Project 2030

Publishing your app:
How to prepare your android app for publication
Adding EULA to Android app

Other useful sites:
Free sounds for applications
http://opengameart.org/

Physics 2D
- Tutorial for Box2D (useable for Android) Download Box2D.
- APE (not usable for Android, unless you grab the java version - for my own reference)
Flash tutorials 

Blogs & Forums:
Android Coding from Berlin
Cactus Apps
Show me the code!
RIAgora
Java Code Trips & Tips (excellent bug removal tips)
Reddit 

Projects:
http://replicaisland.blogspot.com/

Not Worshipping Veggies Anymore 1 - Veggie Bolognese

I used some leftover prepared Italian tomato paste (I forgot the name) as the base of my spaghetti sauce. To my horror, it was not as sharp as a lemon but twice as sour).

I also discovered I still hate baby carrots, blanching or no blanching.

The pasta was accompanied with some water chestnuts and papaya cubes. I remember reading somewhere that papaya is known as pawpaw in Australia. That is one disturbing name, if you consider the local Singaporean context.

This is Not JB

This is the sunset view from City Square... Mall's Sky Park.

There is a free shuttle bus to and from Toa Payoh and Novena as well as Lavender MRT stations.

Unparsed aapt error

So you played too much with your xml, and now you get a stupid "Unparsed aapt error" that blocks you from running your app.

Don't panic like I did.

1) Delete that error message.
2) Run your app again.
3) If you encounter a "Could not find [app name].apk", just make some lame change in your code or xml then run the app again.

Coropata for Dummies - Level 38 Solution

When I first saw this level, I was like wtf am I supposed to do...the idea is to bring out the violence in Himawari.

Android Struggle - Re-installation failed due to different application signatures

What do you do, when you encounter this?

Re-installation failed due to different application signatures.

You must perform a full uninstall of the application. WARNING: This will remove the application data!
Please execute 'adb uninstall [package name]' in a shell.
Launch canceled!

1) Open command prompt.
2) Go to [directory path]:\android-sdk-windows\tools
3) adb uninstall [package name]

Or you can always delete the app from the "Manage Applications" in your phone. Then install again.

And they say the Chinese don't like to state the Obvious

This is apparently the fertility rock in fort provintia (chih-kan lou) [source: Andre in Taiwan]. You are supposed to rub it(???) if you want a kid. Haha.

PS: Looks short.

Triplicate Backing up of Files does not always Pay

I watch movies where the nasty boss (almost always a government official) demands his workers to document in triplicates. "So inefficient", I would murmur, pinning this down as the reason why there are often long queues at the service counter.

The joke is on me now.

Initially when I first got my computer, a cumbersome laptop I named "Delli the Bitch" in honor of her creator, I was contented to cram all the movies and shows I downloaded from my university network into its now tiny 5GB harddisk. Later, driven desperate by the rapidly decreasing storage, I diversified into CDROMs which I would endeavor to categorise by different colors and designs (I am fussy that way). Ironically this drove my mother and I insane, staring at the piles of dusty CD cases in my room. It was one thing to have your daughter turn rapidly from a nerd to a computer geek, but it was another to accept that she was becoming a OCD hoarder as well.

So I increased my hard disk space by the 1000 times every other year, and double every year, especially now when I am armed with the monetary benefit from work. It wouldn't be so bad, having so many hdds, except my reckless nature has destroyed at least three harddisks (two removable), one of which would be my internal 500GB harddisk which was used to back up every important piece of work I had, plus my favourite shows, like Hogan's Heroes.

Now that particular piece has been killed by my running the pc into death every day, and cruel stuffing of four hard disks into one casing with no other means of cooling in my Singapore (i.e. hot and humid) room. Every other day recently, I curse its early demise and my stupidity, whenever I recall some show that I have stored inside and was now gone for eternity (or until I go through the hassle of downloading it again in some fortunate cases).

Goodbye to my old templates, my old blog backups, Hogan's Heroes and my extensive music collection, as well as other stuff I am only starting to remember then mourn the loss of. Therefore I can only try to assuage my pain by backing up everything into three hard disks now, one internal, two external in the hopes that something will remain...

In one particular case, it has come back to bite me in the arse. Encouraged by my friends' getting different models of Android phones, I have returned to my coding, after much cursing at the SDK download problems I had. Restoring the workspace I had backed up, I wondered to myself why I suddenly encountered three nullpointerexceptions in the game in my development environment which I was sure was working fine in my phone.

After much cursing and swearing at deprecated functions, I sat down to read my code one day, and discovered that I had backed up the WRONG WORKSPACE. As if a farmer digging for the tiny ears of unripe corn in a ravaged field already pillaged by hungry crows, I dug through all my backups of my project (turns out there were four, including that fucking hard disk) to discover I had unwittingly backed up four copies of the same wrong workspaces.

I almost chucked all the hard disks out the window.

Story of the Bored - Sudoku Puzzle Difficulty 3

Play here but please remember to clean up after you are finished. Answers will be out in a week!

Updated!!!
Answer

Breakfast Bentos - Simple Cheese Sandwiches

Faye Wong 王菲 《红豆》 Violin Score

[source: 中国小提琴网]

An Apple A Day keeps the Doctor Away

I read from adventuresofchibamom.blogspot.com"Gina Mommy's MIL that we must soak our apple slices in salt solution to prevent their yellowing (actually my own mommy also said that). Wasn't very successful because I was in a rush.

Still snivelling, nibblez.

Fish and Chips Recipe from Sunday Times

It seems that when one is ill, one loves to play with fire and eat Fish and Chips?

Excerpt from Sunday Times, April 11 2010

Recipe from Brian Cleere, Executive Chef of Grand Hyatt Singapore

Ingredients
BATTER
570ml water
225g plain flour
4 eggs
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
salt
pepper
a dash of paprika or turmeric powder for coloring (optional)
additional plain flour for dusting

6 fish fillets (cod or haddock), pin bones removed
6 russet potatoes peeled or unpeeled, cut into thick slices for chips
Malt vinegar to serve

METHOD
1. In a large bowl, combine water, flour, eggs, bicarbonate of soda and a dash of salt and pepper. Whisk till you get a smooth, thick batter. You may add some paprika or turmeric powder to color it. The thicker the batter, the crispier the fish will be.

2. On a plate or board, season some plain flour with salt and pepper. You need only enough flour to lightly dust six fish fillets.

3. Lightly coat the fish fillets with the flour mixture

4. Pour enough oil into an electric deep-fryer or a pot for the potatoes and fish fillets to be fully submersed. Heat the oil to 160 deg C.

5. When the oil has reached 160 deg C, add potatoes in small batches, cooking them for about three or four minutes at a go. Do not allow the chips to take any color. They should be soft and floppy.

6. Remove and set aside the partially cooked potatoes and increase the oil temperature to 190 deg C.

7. Working in batches, coat the flour-dusted fillets with the batter, and immediately place the fillets into the hot oil and cook for four to five minutes, until golden. Remove the fish and drain on paper towels.

8. Once the fish fillets have been cooked, re-fry the potato chips in the 190 deg C oil until golden and crispy. Remove from the oil, drain and season with salt and pepper.

9. This dish is traditionally served in a newspaper cone with malt vinegar sprinkled over both the chips and the fish.

Serves six.

Cold Remedy - Ginger Tea

The Americans have chicken noodle soup. The Chinese have Ginger Tea. Boil Ginger in water. When the lovely ginger smell comes out, dump sugar in. This is made by B1 cos I have a nasty cold...

(Same) Saturday Munchies 21 - Fryup Brunch

I feel full.

Saturday Munchies 20 - Pepper Steak

Mutter told me to pound the steaks. I was like,"but it will become holey and mushy. And I don't think they served it like that outside..."

Guess what? Mutter was right.

Coropata for Dummies - Level 37 Solution

Don't fall into the perverse trap. You don't have to use it just because it's there.

Latest Susan Boyle Sensation - Lin Yu Chun

Btw... he is a boy.

Coropata for Dummies - Level 35 Solution

Coropata for Dummies - Level 34 Solution

Planning Kota Tinggi + Pengerang Town Trip

With the success (???) of our crazy Pulau Ubin trip from Hell, the dudes wanted to extend the craziness to our neighbouring shores, this time Pengerang (Southeast side of Western Malaysia... in case you want to know, because I have been asked this five times today already). I saw the sign to Pengerang when we were waiting for our boat to Pulau Ubin at the Changi jetty that day. Pointed it out to the five guys but it seemed they were stone deaf and all ignored me. Until today, probably after they recovered their enthusiasm and also from the aches and pains from the trip, that they realised "hey, we can go there!!!"

I have been researching on what to do there. It turns out that Pengerang is a fantastic place to visit, with its indigenous creatures, ostrich farm, and affordable seafood. If accompanied with a side trip to Sungei Rengit (for seafood lunch) then to Desaru (beautiful beach) or Kota Tinggi (beautiful waterfall), it will be a completely exciting ride.

I have some doubts over cycling on roads, especially in Singapore where the drivers drive like they are wasted (and probably are. I have redoubtable faith on the power of Audi engines). But rural Malaysia? Hmm.

A few tips (from the websites I visited):

What you should bring
Passport
SGD and RM
Lots of drinking water if you are pedaling
Bikes (optional, bike surcharge on bumboat is S$2 one way)
Medical kit (if you are unlucky enough to fall down)
Bike repair kit (optional. Some sites recommend renting a van to follow you to your destination)

Getting there
Bumboats shuttle from Singapore's Changi Point Ferry Terminal to Tg Pengelih from 7 AM in the morning to 7 PM in the evening, operating on a first-come-first-served basis: once 12 people show up, the boat leaves. The journey takes about an hour and costs S$8 or RM 15 per person, plus S$2 for a bike (some sites say it is S$10, others say S$9). There are semi-scheduled departures in both directions at 7 AM and 1 PM, and the last boats back leave by 4 PM.



Coming back
1. if you are doing a day trip, remember to arrange with the bumboat uncle to meet you guys back at the jetty. If not, the jetty closes at 4, and there is no guarantee you can get the boat even if you reach there earlier.

2. To go back to SingapoUpdated!!!re, submit your passport at the first counter. The boat man will keep the passport for a while and when they collected enough passport, they will call you to collect your passport and every passenger will ask to queue up to pass through the immigration together.

The bumboat leaves when there are 12 passengers, sometimes they ask you to top up the fare so that the boat can leave earlier. Eg. The current boat fee is RM 15 per person if there are 12 passengers. If they are only 10 passengers, the boat man will ask everyone whether they are willing to pay RM 3 in extra, which is RM 18 per person, so that the boat can leave without waiting for another 2 more passengers.

3. There are at least one boat leaving from Singapore/Tanjung Pengelih to Tanjung Pengelih/Singapore at 7am and 1pm. The boat fee from Singapore is SGD 8 per person (some sites say it is S$10, others say S$9) and from Tanjung Pengelih is RM 15. But the fees from Tanjung Pengelih will become SGD 8 after 1pm. It means, the boat man will ask for Singapore dollars after 1pm.

4. The taxi fees from Sungai Rengit to Tanjung Pengelih is RM 20 per taxi or RM 5 per person. The taxi will move only when there are 4 passengers, or else you have to 'top up' the fare (包车).

If you missed the bumboat
1. Take the Merjdjan Ferry Services (tel. +60-7-8253333) speedboat service from Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal, which runs seven times a day every day except Tue and Wed departing from 7:50 AM to 3:50 PM, with the last return from Tg Pengelih at 7 PM. Taking only 20 minutes, this is much faster but also more expensive at S$28/38 one way/return.

2. Take the Sebana Cove ferry back to Singapore (4/5 services daily, last departure at 9 PM), but this is much more expensive (S$38 one-way) and you'll need to arrange a taxi to take you to Sebana Cove first.

So far, I have found some interesting reads, that I will share here:

Tristangroup (for booking dirt bikes, pit bikes, mountain bikes at Pengerang.

Sungei Renjit map (could be seriously outdated)

Pengerang blog (written by one of the locals) Talks about the wildlife, and how to access the village.

Rainforest Resort (according to VirtualTourist, RM20 for fireflies cruise, RM30 for buffet)

Pixel's blog entry

I also managed to find a map of interesting locations nearby.

Updated!!!

The Sungei Renjit map is not outdated. Good Luck Restaurant serves Lobster that sticks to the shell. Jade Garden not that much better. They serve expensive seafood and their other dishes are edible not excellent.

Book the boat before you go, especially on a holiday. Make sure you reach the Pengerang jetty before 2pm if you are coming back by boat.

Tristan Group service was good. They returned my careless colleague's watch, after he left it strapped to the bike, driving it back to the jetty for us. Their bikes are usable but have unfriendly seats.

Do not cycle unless you have racing bikes, or are too energetic. Rent a motorbike. 50.3 km to Desaru is no joke. No street lights. Nothing. Read post on Pengerang to Desaru.

I printed this map from Bikely.com. Route 90 has few trees. Bring lots of sun block. Book the Fireflies cruise before you go.

I am even more disturbed now

I didn't want to cycle up the steep slope past the Chinese cemetery because (1) I knew I couldn't get all the way up (2) I knew it was a dead end (3) there was a signboard that warned us that only authorised vehicles should go past the gated barricade.

Now there was another reason why.... turns out it was the place where that poor mommy died almost two years ago, when she and her daughter fell off their tandem coming down that slope. And also that is also where:

Excerpt from Residents call it "Cemetery Road", Pulau Ubin Stories, 12 September 2008

Longtime resident Ong Kim Cheng, 50, said he avoids cycling along that stretch because of stories about an old female ghost lurking there.

He said in Mandarin: 'I don't like to ride around this area because of the stories about this place being haunted. People say that they've seen a female ghost here while picking durians, so I am not surprised about the accidents.

'But the slope is really quite steep and can be quite dangerous if you're not careful.

'I've seen cyclists with scratches and bruises walking back to return their damaged bikes after falling along this slope.'

Superstition aside, the islanders agree that this is one of Ubin's most dangerous roads to cycle on.

It's called Jalan Wat Siam because there was previously a Thai temple there. It was relocated to Jalan Kayu last year.

Eating at a converted storeroom - Hai Liang Family Restaurant

There is nothing like Hunger and Seafood. By afternoon, I had pedaled half my guts out, thanks to our combined stupidity in allowing Teletubby who deliberately visits 鸟不生蛋狗不拉屎 (literally translated as "bird no lay egg, dog no shit", also otherwise known as 'ulu' in malay, or inaccessible in English) places when he travels, to take the lead in choosing the routes.

So we went to the eponymous Hai Liang Family Restaurant, the converted storeroom of the family home of the recently deceased last centenarian of Pulau Ubin. Now a thriving restaurant, we popped over for lunch after I bought a new pair of slippers at their provision shop. Facing a giant mousetrap at face level (what kind of rats do they have on the island?), I struggled to keep a straight face as I wondered if I should satisfy my fantasy of buying the inevitable local slippers with the unforgiving blue straps and white soles (I had been relating that fantasy to B1 just earlier as we sought shelter from the relentless rain and I was staring down at my useless sports shoes) when I chanced upon the more futuristic brown soled flip flops with poky bumps.

The Teletubby complained that he was hot, which was somewhat unbelievable, considering that rain continued to beat down on the white tarpaulin shelter that the family had set up to cover their guests as they guzzled down fresh seafood. He wanted to sit down in front of a fan under the dubious shelter of a big umbrella. The others were like, let's share with that family of three...

So we sat down to six dishes. Baby Kailan fried with garlic bits (it is very telling how carnivorous we were that HC and I did not take photos of that dish), Pork Ribs, Deep Fried Baby Squid, Prawn Balls, Fish Soup, and Mango Chicken (Interestingly they do not have the mainstay of all Chinese Restaurants in Singapore, Prawn Paste Chicken).

I consider that Mango Chicken to be the Pièce de résistance of the entire meal. It was served with julienned green mango, ala Thai style, which did an excellent job of masking the grease. Loved the dish. Fish soup came in a huge bowl, and was served first, Cantonese style. I supposed it was testament to good cooking that I was not too thirsty afterwards, (i.e. the cook did not cook as if MSG was the only condiment in the resturant) though I must say the ingredients were low in the bowl. I felt the rest of the dishes were comparable to the usual quality one gets in a decent Chinese restaurant, though B1 did say he liked the prawn balls (he said there was a bite-sized prawn bit in each ball). We couldn't be a fair judge of this seafood restaurant, because we did not order the more expensive Seafood items, like Chili Crabs. But I think that if a restaurant can deliver well on the cheaper, simpler dishes, he already rates high in my book. After all, simpler is harder to cook.





PS. All the images were taken from HC's camera. Mine were too blurry due to my eagerness to get at the dishes.

Six Steps to Your own iPhone App in Singapore

This blog is called nibblezware and yet it has been super long since I last posted anything techie. So sad...

Excerpt from The Sunday Times, April 4 2010

Six Steps to Your Own (iPhone) App
Some "app-stract" knowledge, like 'Objective-C' a software programming language, helps.

But it seems like anyone can be a iPhone developer these days. There are six steps:
1. Apply to be an Apple developer at developer.apple.com/programs/iphone. A fee of US$99 (S$139) a year is levied.

2. Download the free iPhone software kit from developer.apple.com/iphone/index.action

3. Start writing the prgramming code for your software application. In practice, a simple app can be finished in two days.

4. Submit your app with screenshots to Apple for approval. Apple does reject apps. If it happens, fix the problem and resubmit.

5. Once Apple approves the app, it will be posted to App Store as a free or paid app.

6. With more than 150,000 apps in the virtual marketplace, you have to get noticed. Build a buzz by engaging with other developers. Start a blog, produce screenshots and mail out press releases. In Singapore, send to IMerlion (imerlion.com)

Car Sticker 1 - Crayon ShinChan

Holiday Munchie - Picnic at Kranji Reservoir

You may be wondering what the hell is this?

It is the view from our newly bought tent, without the cover. We were bored waiting for the tide to recede to a lovely clam-digging friendly level, so we decided to pitch our tent for fun, since it did not come with instructions. We also learnt that our tent is pretty cheapo versus those pitched by the Malay families around us. Theirs could be lifted up easily and moved after pitching, because theirs come with little holders at the bottom (i.e. theirs could even sit upright on a concrete pavement), while ours have to be driven into the ground.

This is the second time we are at Kranji Reservoir. I am addicted to digging for clams. It is fun, brainless (quite a pun, considering that clams do not have brains), and I get to burn some energy. It's like digging for treasure. And best of all, it's free, unlike the stupid prawning, which you have to pay a lot of money to catch less than five prawns in two hours.

I made a curry bento, using leftover instant Japanese curry cubes. Yes, I admit that my recent reading of this blog, Life of an American Mommy in Japan, has somewhat put me in a Japanese curry frame of mind (I have read up to August 2006, currently), since I kept reading curry dinner (seems to be the author, Gina's #1 Japanese meal) posts in the blog. Not that I want to toot my own horn, but I feel that my octopus hotdogs are the best looking that I have ever done them.

A lot of the people were braver and went down into the sea, when it receded to calf level, to catch flower crabs with their bare hands(!!!). I consider flower crabs to be bad eating, since they don't really have much meat, and I don't like too many colors in my seafood (I also don't like eating Thilapia, and Red Snapper). So anyway we continued waiting until we could see patches of treasure trove land.

We dug out 70+ of clams and mussels each, on top of the 56 clams and 67 mussels we dug out the previous week. Quite a bountiful harvest, except that B1 only likes clams and I only like yanking the mussels as they struggle to get away. I did cook some clams in a miso soup last night after we came back from our Pulau Ubin Cycling trip from Hell but I was too exhausted to take a photo. After we started eating, we later realised that only one of the rare big clams we dug out, which is the giant one in the photo was the real Lala clams. We had no idea what was the species of the rest of the clams except that they were very bad eating, as they had a really nasty muddy taste, despite my soaking them in salt water for >24 hours.

Other Scenes from Kranji Reservoir

Teck Sing - A Must YumYum when you go JB

So haven't been blogging much lately. I have been consumed by 三分度 enthusiasm again and have been much distracted by a furore of activities and programmes that I am only starting to document down today.

Gave my friends my virgin experience.... of traveling by car to JB (trips done when I was shorter than 3 feet are hardly remembered). They took me to Teck Sing for lunch, famous for cheap yet delicious food, such as its pièce de résistance, 纸报鸡 (literally, paper wrapped chicken). It is the one of the most popular yumyums that Singaporeans love to visit when they pop over to our neighbouring shores, or so I am told. I personally find that the restaurant is cute in that it gives free watermelon... before the meal.

We ordered hot plate otah, fried sweet potato leaves, of course the paper wrapped chicken, and hot plate egg tofu . The gravy from the chicken was savory and lovely. I liked the hot plate otah. Unfortunately the rest of the meal was nice but not enough for 7 grown persons. Would have loved to order more, but that is one of my number #1 weaknesses, order too much and get stuffed to the gills. But I think, one dish more would have given a more filling experience.

Nonetheless I will still go there again, if opportunity knocks.






5, Jalan Sutera Satu, Taman Sentosa,
80150 Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia.