Test no featured

Again let's picture a disorganised kitchen.

Less messy this time because they cleaned as they cooked. But what's this? The dish rack. Everything in it is clean but it's disorganised, some items are turned upwards so water just pools... just not a good look. Not just the dish rack either.

Ever see those ads for tupperware?
The tubs neatly stacked like a translucent plastic tower?
The covers placed perfectly to the side, one tub filled with food to an appropriate height?
That never happens! Raise your hand if you have a box, drawer, or section of cupboard, filled with containers in disarray. Tubs with missing tops. Tops for missing containers. Take-out containers accumulated from all "last" times you'll get take-out for the year. This same box/drawer/cupboard might be the one you dread opening for fear of its contents spilling out. It doesn't have to be that way!

Stacking is the skill everyone should know! There's a 99% chance we learned this as children. Biggest thing at the bottom, then you add the next biggest and so on so it forms a pyramid of stability.

But Rob, how is that helpful for wet dishes? Won't water just pool at the bottom? Good question, that is why you INVERT it. Smallest item at the bottom, then you build your upside down pyramid where all the water drains away. If you can tilt all the items up to 90 degrees then it would be even better. That is the purpose of the slats on your dish rack, duh!

After an absence of 2 seasons, the Packers finally returned to the postseason. We were again in the NFC Championship Game, one win away from the Superbowl. And just like the last time, we were thoroughly outclassed by our opponent.

What happened? 2 years ago, the defense let us down in Atlanta. This time... well, the defense let us down in San Francisco. Last time it was Dom Capers. This time it was Mike Pettine. One defense allowed too many yards in the air (Capers), one defense allowed too many yards on the ground (Pettine.)

The 49ers passed less than 10 times for 77 yards. They ran for almost 300 yards. The good thing about a game like this is that they end relatively quickly, run plays means less clock stoppages. However, the bad thing about a game like this is everything else.

"When the offense gets going..." was a regular refrain from all fans over the season. Spoiler alert: they didn't. The offense continued to not get in a groove until we were down 3+ scores, with little hope for a comeback. Any attempt to get in a groove was disrupted by turnovers (Rodgers had 1 INT, and a fumbled snap, in the first half) or penalties. We did cut their lead down to 2 scores at one point. Then the 49ers imposed their will on us.

I might do more analysis on the actual game if I can bear to rewatch it, but the crux of the problem is that we lack the playmakers to make up for any coaching deficiencies. Good coaching will make up for lack of playmakers, and vice versa, but for some reason we just could not execute today even when we knew what they were going to do. Not good enough.

What's left to do in the offseason then? I think we should prioritise the Wide Receiver and Middle Linebacker positions. Blake Martinez is serviceable but we need a more dominant player in the middle that can go quickly from sideline to sideline, the 49ers killed us today running to the outside. Maybe we also need to get bigger in size, even in our base packages, it looked like the opposing offense were able to out-muscle our guys. Poor tackling didn't help.

Davante Adams was great this year but there is a significant gulf between him and the 2nd Wide Receiver. Perhaps Equaninmeous St. Brown will develop after being off for the year. Leaning on Adams and Aaron Jones has worked for the majority of the season, but that's clearly not good enough this time.

While this loss was disappointing, we've far exceeded my expectations for the year. Getting to the cusp of the Superbowl with a 1st year head coach, with a 12 year veteran QB learning a new system for the first time, was a pleasant surprise.

We obviously have a lot to work on in the off-season.

Picture a busy home kitchen. Did you think of a messy counter, splatter on the stove top, and a pile of pots in the sink? Maybe a flustered cook trying to stop everything from burning? Is that flustered cook you? It doesn't have to be that way!

In my 25 years of cooking, there is something I learned early on. I liked doing dishes. Yes, it's true. There's something about turning off my brain and going to town lathering, scrubbing, and rinsing the pileup in the sink. It's like a spa for my hands. However, after living in a few places with tiny sinks, my post meal manis weren't as enjoyable as they used to be. It became... a chore, gasp.

Rather than letting all the dirty bowls and pans build up to some mountainous task after eating, I started cleaning while I cooked. I know they don't give out the Nobel prize for information like this and it's not a new concept, but you'd be surprised how few people do this.

So how would you go about doing this? It's in the title duh, just clean while you cook, it's easy. What? Still don't get it? OK, here are some tips and pointers that you can use with this newfound power.

Unless it's a risotto or a very involved stir fry, there are many pockets of time to use for cleaning. Waiting for the oven to preheat, water to boil, pan to come to temperature, stuff to brown, etc. If you followed my tips, you can use these pockets of time to clean in between steps of your recipe.

Finished using your knife? Run it under water, quickly soap it with a sponge, rinse, and it's on your dish rack in less than 10 seconds. Sweating mirepoix? Wash the bowl those veg just came from, carrots and celery don't leave much residue, the onion bowl might need an extra wipe. Give your board and bowl a proper waste while browning meat.

You make more time for cleaning re-organising your cooking process. Many recipes want you to preheat your oven at the start, or get your pasta water started early. Don't. Leave that until you're halfway or near finished preparing your ingredients, This adds to overall cooking time but it reduces the amount of time you need to clean.

This is how I handle my cooking / cleaning process and it has resulted in many, many, clean kitchens while our meals are cooking. It is less of a chore, and I actually save a lot of time, I can enjoy my time with my family after eating, versus thinking about the dishes that need to be done.

If you've been paying attention, Hong Kong is in its 6th month of civil unrest. The protesters' beef with the government is... well, everything that they're doing, and not doing. Yes, it started off with the controversial extradition law amendment bill (ELAB), but there were many issues before, and since, that bill that continue to fuel the protests.

The latest in the never ending display of disasters for the Hong Kong Government is the New Year Countdown Draw website failing to operate normally. The Hong Kong Tourism Board opted not to do fireworks to ring in 2020, and decided to hold a Countdown Draw to give away prizes. You had to sign up, get confirmed, and get assigned a ballot number. That is how we do here, we draw ballots for a chance at buying a house to using a swimming pool.

The night of the draw with $4 million in cash and prizes to be given away, they allowed people to signup, and... surprise, the site failed to work as expected. Imagine launching a website in 2020 (almost), anticipating a large number of people accessing this site, and still failing to have it run properly.

Of course the server will be overloaded when a huge amount of people flood the website in such a short period of time

Francis Fong Po-kiu, the president of the Information Technology Federation

In the SCMP, the president of the IT Federation said that it was "totally expected" that the site "overloaded," and that the problem could have been avoided by allowing earlier signups. I agree that it could have been avoided with earlier signups, however I doubt that the site "overloaded" unless they were negligent in their estimates. He made a second point that I agreed with, that their mail server was sending out so much mail that network providers blacklisted the domain as spam, and I agree with this.

They reportedly got over 100,000 signups in the first hour, which is more than enough to trigger any ISPs spam detection software. The domain itself was only 12 days old at the time, another thing that would set off alarm bells.

The thing is that email blasting isn't a new thing in the world of IT, there are solutions for doing this already yet they somehow either didn't look at it or anticipate this problem. That is the problem with the HKGov's approach to many problems, they don't look at proven solutions from other places. At some point, you have to wonder if it's deliberate because the incompetence is astounding.

For example, the Food Truck Pilot scheme. Hong Kong has a great reputation of street food built on the backs of hawkers. Regulations have caused them to be pretty near extinct. Whether it was something Hong Kong should preserve or not is another argument, but the point is Hong Kong already knows street food, hawking, selling it on the street. The Food Truck scheme should have been a great and easy way to revive this part of near-extinct Hong Kong culture. What does the government do instead?

Basically they over-regulated it and made it unfeasible for entrepreneurs to take part. Even if they did not want to go back to the days of old, there already exists Food Truck programmes in many, many, cities around the world. Rather than study and adapt existing systems, they did their own thing and it is an utter failure.

How can you be so obtuse? ... Is it deliberate?

Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

Just another symptom in the overall problem with recent Government. Is it hubris? Or just lack of accountability? Or is it deliberate? Food trucks, New Year draws, housing, MTR shoddy works scandal, police brutality, handling of the extradition bill amendment... You'd have to really try really hard to fuck up so badly and so often.

This was originally written on 2018/03/06 and is a repost.

Japan. Nippon. 日本.

Japan has never really been a high priority for my list of must-visit countries in Asia -- don't get me wrong, I love their food and culture, I just assumed I would visit eventually so it would get done, kind of like house cleaning, or brushing our dogs.

We wanted to go on a trip after our wedding family and what better way to erase the resentments built up from the stress of planning a wedding than replacing it with resentments that come up from the stress of traveling? So myself, my wife, and my mom all went for a trip to Tokyo.

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The obligatory departure photo. Everyone makes fun of it, nobody likes it, yet everyone does it. Then watching the other planes line up for take off.

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Toilets in Japan have a certain charm that is lacking in other places. Toilets in Hong Kong generally match the decor of their building, however they rarely have character.

Quick Japanese lesson: "Where is the toilet?" is:
"toi-re wa doko desu ka."

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One of the highlights of our trip was Robot Restaurant. While they do serve food, it's not really a restaurant, however they really do have robots. This place was introduced to me by Anthony Bourdain in the Tokyo episode of Parts Unknown. He had his mind absolutely blown by the show there and so did I. I thought I was prepared for it but it completely overwhelmed me and my senses, it is a live action Power Rangers episode. Pure energy and pure cheese. I highly recommend it, we booked through Voyagin where it's cheaper than the official website and you can throw in a bento box and drinks.

The low point of our trip was the day we went to Hakone to see Mount Fuji. We were looking forward to visiting Ōwakudani via the ropeway but they were closed due to volcanic activity. This is a frequent occurrence so I suggest checking the status before heading there, at least have backup plans. Another thing we did not realise was that the Hakone area is really large, for some reason we imagined it was like a small town but there is a lot of twisting/turning roads up and down the hills. We spent almost half of our time on a bus.

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It was not all doom and gloom however, we did visit Lake Ashi, and we took the sightseeing pirate ship from Togendai-ko to Hakonemachi-ko. We would normally be able to see Mount Fuji at some point between those two places but the view was shrouded by clouds on an otherwise clear day.

One reason to visit Hakone, other than Mount Fuji is the hot springs. We went to Tenzan Onsen to soak the day away. It was was a 15mins shuttle bus ride away from Hakone Yumoto station, and when you're done, you can take the same bus back then take the RomanceCar straight back to Shinjuku.

It was my first time in an onsen so I did not know what to expect. We saw that there were 2-3 other onsens in the area, accessible from the same parking lot. Tickets from the vending machine out front only buys admission, it costs more for a towel and a washcloth. I had a bit of an embarrassing moment, I stepped in the building and the person at the reception desk started waving his hands at me. I missed the carpeting, the benches, and the shoe lockers on the side... shit, I stepped on their floor with my shoes on. My bad.

After deciding that I will never show my face at this place again, I worked my way down to the changing area. Imagine a building that sits in a valley that has hot springs in the Japanese mountains. Now imagine the inside of that building, a dark, smooth, wooden interior. High ceilings with dim lighting. Smooth wooden floors. Near silence. That is exactly how it was when I walked through.

I entered the changing room and there were naked guys everywhere. I don't know why that's a shock to me since it was a changing room for an onsen, of course there's going to be a whole lot of nakedness. I guess it's because I am the opposite of athletic, my time in locker rooms is quite limited, so being naked around other people took some getting used to but thankfully everyone minded their own business. After you get naked, you must wash yourself with soap and your washcloth. Don't bring your outside filth into the hot springs.

There was a booth about the size of a telephone booth (remember those?) with an illuminated interior. No clue what it was, I don't remember reading about this chamber. I tried flicking the switch, the lights went off... oops, I turned it back on. I stepped in, nothing happened. Strange. I decided to leave it alone but kept an eye on it in case someone else used it.

Outside of the body cleaning area, there were several pools of water. The setting was breathtaking. You can see steam wafting slowly from the water surface, and hear the water trickling down the rocks. It would have been a perfect winter scene if there was snow.

As I looked at the different pools, I decided to jump into the one closest to me. It was so hot, my eyes teared up. After I tried all the other pools, I realised the first one was the hottest one there. I usually shy away from hot baths, can't stand them, but there is something different about these pools. I found a comfortable spot in one of the pools, and let the heat soak into my body, and sat for about 20 minutes, my heart was pounding. Found a less hot one, and soaked for half the time, pretty much followed this other older man as we went from pool to pool.

After I was finished, I tried my luck with the phone booth machine again. I realised the entrance was actually facing outwards, I opened it and stepped in, I shut the door behind me... warm air rushed all around me and blew all around me. It was a full body dryer! I stayed in as long as I could stand and got changed. There were two areas for a post-onsen nap, there were already a few other people sleeping. We caught a shuttle easily enough at the top of the hill outside the onsen, then headed back to Tokyo.

I was apprehensive when I thought of the onsen, it would have been hot and I would have to be naked in public, two things I didn't care for but now I will definitely have to visit them any time I visit Japan.

I have been on a ketogenic diet recently and have lost almost 30 lbs in about 3 months. Downside is that I have not been able to add to my French Toast Diaries series. Anyway, I hate recipe posts that have a long rambling story before the recipe so I'll post that in another post. Here is the recipe.

Cheese Cake filling

16oz Cream Cheese
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup water
1-2 tablespoons pure gelatin powder
3-4 tablespoons sweetener

Blueberry sauce
125g blueberries
2 tablespoons sweetener
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons of water

Dark Chocolate topping
30g 72% dark chocolate
1 tablespoon butter
1-2 pinches of salt

Steps:
1. Leave Cream cheese out to soften.
2. Mix the gelatin and sweetener together with the water, let sit and thicken.
3. Put blueberries sauce ingredients in a sauce pan, bring to a simmer and reduce down until thickened, I like seeing chunks of blueberries.
4. Use hand mixer and mix the cream cheese with vanilla til smooth, about 3 minutes.
5. Mix the bloomed gelatin to remove any hard lumps then add to the cream cheese.
6. Mix that stuff together til smooth then pour into a container, I used a large tupperware container.
7. Pour the blueberry sauce on top of the filling then stir to create swirls.
8. Put in fridge to set, about 4-5 hours or overnight.
9. Check if set, taste a corner.
10. Melt chocolate with butter and salt over double boiler.
11. Pour and spread thinly over the cheesecake.
12. Wait.
13. Cut into 20 rectangles or however many portions you want to meet your macros.

According to myfitnesspal, each serving is...
Calories 116
Total Fat 9g
Total Carbohydrate 6g
Protein 2g

If you want you can do some other chocolate topping, or none at all. I opted for the chocolate and butter because I was on my last container of cream and I wanted to save it for my coffees.

It has been a month and a half since I had this French Toast. If this was 1.5 months ago, I would be able to tell you the same things about this French Toast as I will now... which is not much. This one is forgettable, and they only have me a small ketchup squeeze baggie of syrup. Seriously. I could have asked for more, yes, but that is not the point. The pat of butter was left on the toast for a bit longer since I was finishing up a normal meal before I got to it. If not for the picture, I would not have remembered that there was peanut butter.

Cost: 35ish, with a drink
Location: (link)
港暉茶餐廳
Kong Fai Restaurant
G/F, Convex Building, 388-390 Portland Street, Prince Edward
太子砵蘭街388-390號康威大廈地舖

I have tried to make a mental note of where I am whenever I get French Toast but this time I've completely forgot this place's name and location. It also doesn't help that I got it in the Ferry St. area in Jordan... Let me explain.

I used to live in this area with about 8 high rise blocks, and at the ground level there is a mix of supermarkets, mechanic shops, taxi garage, and restaurants. Lots of restaurants. On the ground level of almost every building there is a restaurant. There are tea restaurants supported by the endless supply of construction workers working on the Kowloon High Speed rail station, there are dimsum places, seafood banquet restaurants, two Vietnamese restaurants, a wine bar, an oyster bar that I think I'm probably confusing with the wine bar, definitely a place that sells oysters in bulk, an Indian restaurant, a couple cart noodle shops, a fantastic Bánh mì shop (Tim Kee) where they only serve one thing, a chicken hot pot place, a Turkish place, a Korean place... and that's just the ones I can remember... so you see, with the large number of places I could have possibly had this unremarkable French Toast, it's no surprise I can't find it again without poring over a list of restaurants.

I do recommend you visit the area for a meal, you'll be spoiled for choice and you won't be going that far out of your way if you were visiting Temple St.

As for the French Toast, it was... forgettable. Soggy with not-enough filling, and not-enough syrup. And apparently ordering French Toast for lunch is out of the ordinary, one of the waitresses yelled in surprise that someone ordered French Toast for lunch.

Interest in French Toast in Hong Kong has increased from my perspective! I spotted a Chinese article from WeekendHK (here) that ranks 8 French Toasts in Hong Kong posted last week. Looks like Sham Shui Po is the district to visit for the French Toasts on the list, will report when I get around to that side of town! Then again, the 2.5 inch thick French Toast from Lung Fung Cafe (龍鳳冰室) in Tai Hang looks divine...