Wibble

To end today's blogstravaganza, and to lighten the mood after that little rant, here's a little picture of Wibble doing his best impression of an ornament on the bedside table.



Wibble is blind in his right eye, but he doesn't let that stop him from getting into trouble, although he does take a bit longer than his brother to hop off a ledge, and has rubbish aim when trying a flying leap onto someone's lap (painfully so). But he's oh-so-cute

Tolerating tolerance?

I was re-reading the post about Moral (I know, I read my own blog. How sad.) and it reminded me of one of my major, major issues with the subject. One of the values that were pummeled into us was "Tolerance".

I absolutely hate the way the word "tolerance" is bandied about in society as something to be sought. I know hate is a strong word, but I really do feel strongly about it. Why should I "tolerate" cultures that are different from mine? Why should we teach our children to only "tolerate" others? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but to me, to tolerate is to bear with. To keep a smile on my face even when what I want to do is to punch the other guy in his. That can't be the right message to be sending out to our children, surely?

I think the word we're all looking for is acceptance. When we accept others, we no longer want to knock their teeth out. We now accept that even though they are different from us, they're still human, and it's okay to be different. We don't "tolerate" them because there's nothing for us to have to grin and bear with.

I'm glad I finally got that off my chest

Valentine's Day

So Valentine's Day has come and gone, and the missus and I spent it in typical cheapskate fashion - at home. She had classes that day which meant I finally succeeded in wresting back control of the kitchen. Unfortunately, in all my excitement, I forgot to take pictures of the food. I'd successfully convinced her it was going to be a Western affair, but knowing she preferred Chinese food (and having bought hor fun fresh from Lo's in Chinatown earlier that morning), this was the final menu:

Mozarella and Tomato Salad
I know, not very Chinese,
but necessary to keep up the charade until the main course was served.
Sadly cut short with "I'm hungry, can we have the main now?"

~ @ ~

Hor fun steamed with tomato and haddock
Served on a bed of choi sum and a big dash of Po Po soya sauce.
This went down well.
Made way too much of it though, so had some for breakfast the next morning

~ @ ~

Chocolate Mousse
This went down really well. And I made it myself too!

You're going to have to settle for a photograph of the table setting:

Part of the Valentine's celebrations though, was something else I'd picked up in Chinatown: Durian. She'd been craving it for ages so I finally bit the bullet and plonked down the princely sum of £20.88 for a rather oddly shaped Thai durian. Normally I wouldn't touch the Thai ones with a barge pole, they tend to be overly fleshy with not much texture to the meat and just not as much flavour as a good Malaysian durian. But hey, desperate times.





That's me with the traditional threatening look. That knife ended up not being used because after spending a day trying to get the durian to ripen (including sitting a bunch of bananas on top of it) we finally noticed that its mouth had already opened and I managed to prise it open with my bare hands, the way Real Men do it



Can you see the missus drooling?



Despite its good looks, it was an average durian at best. It had the tiny, oddly shaped seeds that you tend to find in Thai durians (result of genetic selection to get more flesh?) but not much taste. Parts of it were still not quite ripe but I wolfed those down because they had a much better texture than the ripe bits. It has after all been almost 5 years since I last had a durian. We settled on a verdict of not great, but we enjoyed the experience and it did cure her of her cravings, so I suppose mission accomplished?

This though, I did enjoy to the max - five mangosteens as good as any you can find in Malaysia if a bit small, sweet and slightly sharp. Heaven.





And that ends possibly the most picture intensive blog I will ever do. If there's one thing I learnt from this, it's that I enjoy writing far more than I do the tedium of pasting pictures

Pah to your Pendidikan Moral!

The lovely lady sent me a link to a reader's comment in The Star today: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/2/12/focus/3251506&sec=focus

In case you are too lazy to click on it to read it, the gist of it is this: The writer, one P. Srithanran, has recently witnessed three rather high profile people accused of corruption waving and smiling at television cameras as they are whisked into court. She draws from this the conclusion that "...It looks as though being charged with corruption is something to be proud of or which is normal. It also looks as though all of them had gone to war and returned victorious....there were hugs, patting and shaking of hands."

I have absolutely no problem with that. It is a perfectly fair assumption to make, although one could also possibly have made the following:

1) When you intend to claim trial, the last thing you should probably do is to look as though the weight of the world rests on your shoulders. A far better strategy is to look as though you have nothing to be worried about. Remember, these people she refers to are people in high positions (ie politicians). Being good actors is in the job description.

2) Assuming they weren't acting (a rather large assumption), might it not be that they want to show a brave face to the world, to instil some confidence in their supporters and family that there is nothing to worry about, that there is no doubt in their minds that they are innocent, and that this would be borne out in court. No problem.

But again, I'm also perfectly comfortable with her allegation that the accused are proud of being corrupt. What really narked me though, was the conclusion to her article, these immortal words:

"If such attitude spreads, then it would be easier to count those not corrupt than those who are. I think Pendidikan Moral should be introduced as a compulsory examination subject."

Are you daft, woman? That one sentence has just completely ripped to shreds any semblance of credibility you may have had. What kind of numpty says something like that? For one thing, Pendidikan Moral is already a compulsory subject - it's compulsory for all non-Muslim students. Or are you suggesting that it be made compulsory for Muslims as well? And even if it wasn't already a compulsory subject, what possible good could studying for this subject do for our morality? Have you simply forgotten what it was like? Or are you one of those ancients who left the Malaysian education so long ago, when it was still halfway decent, before the whole system was changed and brought to its current dismal level?

Pendidikan Moral, for those of you fortunate enough to have never had to go through its many wonders, is a subject with X number of arbitrary moral values (I forget now what X is). In my time (admittedly, I took the SPM in 2002, ages ago now), I think X was something like 88, but these days, in the characteristic dumbing down of the academic system (as if Pendidikan Moral could be dumbed down any further, hah!), it appears to have been reduced to 36. In order to score well, we were told that you had to remember and regurgitate the X values word for word. One word out of order, and it wouldn't count.

Questions were along the line of "You are crossing the road and you see your neighbour trying to cross. She is having trouble. What values can you apply in this situation?". For crying out loud! Help the old lady across and stop bloody agonising about it! (Sorry. I had to heavily edit out this article after writing it to take out all the family-unfriendly words that were in my initial post, but left that one in). How is being able to tell the old lady exactly what I am doing (Aunty, I am helping you because this shows "respect for the elderly" and "consideration for others". Not "being neighbourly", mind you Aunty, because that doesn't quite apply in this situation. If I helped you weed your garden, then that would be the "being neighbourly" bit). How does being able to do that improve my moral values at all? Being able to word-perfectly put a name to something does not make you any good at it. I can probably recite to you the FIFA rulebook, but that doesn't make me a good football player, it just makes me a football geek who needs to get out a bit more. Tell me, Ms. P. Srithanran, how does making that mind-numbing, time-wasting, pathetic excuse of a moral education course compulsory (it already is!) make us less likely to be corrupt? "Oh, I'm sorry, I can't accept that bribe, it would be 'dishonesty'. Not 'being dishonest' mind you, that's ok, I just can't practise 'dishonesty'"

If the government wants to instil moral values in today's society, it's going to take a lot more than just memorising 36 values or however many values it wants to feed its young. Send the children to old folks' homes. Send them to volunteer. Send them to build bridges, irrigation supplies, hospitals. Show them what life is like when human beings forget to be kind to one another. When the young see what the world could be like without values, the values will find their way into their hearts. No reading or writing necessary. And no, the National Service doesn't count. It is far too little, far too late, and far too pathetically planned. I will resist the temptation to blog about that for now, or this will turn into a swear-fest the likes of which the world has never seen. But as for Pendidikan Moral, and P.Srithanran's stroke of genius, I have but one word: PAH!

Carbonara and Lamb

Dinner today was a combination of roasted lamb shoulder steaks with a side of carbonara and, in a concessionary nod to the five-a-day crowd, a helping of sweet peas, baby corn and mushrooms. I love to share my food. I would love to share it with you. But I can't. You're too far away. So sad. And so, we took some photographs so that you could perhaps imagine what it would be like to have this dish set in front of you



Now, we understand this may not be enough for some of you, and so here is the lovely lady herself with the recipe for you to try:

Rosemary Lamb Shoulder Chop

Ingredients:-

6 lamb shoulder chops
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce (Lea & Perrins)
1 tablespoon of dried rosemary
Enough sea salt and pepper to taste
Lemon zest (optional) - I am usually too lazy to grate that


How to :-

1) Preheat oven at 180 C
2) Add all above ingredients to a fairly large bowl and mix thoroughly
3) Sear lamb on a hot pan until lightly brown, not burnt
4) Place lamb on a lined roasting tray (for easy washing) and stick it into the oven for 10 - 15 minutes depending on the thickness of the lamb and also on how well done you like your meat.
5) Enjoy!

Vooooooom!

I recently broke our second vacuum cleaner. I seem to be jinxed when it comes to the bloody things. Our first vacuum, a £15 rubbish one from Argos broke after a year and a half when I stepped on the hose by mistake. And this second one, a £35 monstrosity from Robert Dyas, broke from apparent overuse - the floor head attachment cracked and no amount of masking tape would fix it enough to get the crap that seems to accumulate in our carpets, especially since this last weekend we were planning to clean up after the builders (another story for another time). To be quite honest, I'd been lusting after a new vacuum cleaner for a while now so perhaps it wasn't quite as accidental as I made it out to be.

We toyed with the idea of getting yet another cheapie vacuum cleaner, but decided against it, as we felt we'd moved sufficiently up the ladder of life to get away from our studenty lifestyle and get something that would actually work and (hopefully) last longer than a year and a half. Asking around, the advice seemed unanimous - when it came to vacuum cleaners it would appear my colleagues all put their faith in a Dyson. But £240 for a vacuum cleaner? I couldn't bring myself to do it, and my wallet fell apart in protest. No, seriously. So I would need to add on the cost of a replacement wallet to the £240.

Just when all seemed lost, a last glimmer of hope showed itself. A Miele Cat & Dog TT5000, winner of a Which? Best Buy Award, almost universally good reviews (except, presumably, from my Dyson-loving colleagues) AND for £60 less than the Dyson! I was ready to buy it based on the lower price alone. The missus was sold on the fact that it was a bagged vacuum cleaner, which I agreed made sense - no matter how clever the design of a bagless vacuum, I just cannot believe that no dust will escape into the air when you empty the bin. And come on, the Miele's German!

I can safely recommend to anyone who ever finds themselves in the same position as us - go for the Miele. It's powerful, it's quiet, it made using our old vacuum cleaners feel like we were trying to suck dirt out of our carpet with a drinking straw, it comes in a pretty box with a ridiculously cute cat on it, it's a German machine, and it's £60 cheaper than a Dyson. Sure, it's £150 more expensive than our old one. But it was worth every penny.

It might be called a Miele Cat & Dog but it doesn't mean these two don't like it

I am a genius

I've had a few articles swimming about in my head recently and I guess that's what led to the creation of this blog. As anyone who knows me will know, this is a significant capitulation to market forces. I do not like anything that is popular. I resisted reading Harry Potter until the last novel was published (No regrets - I enjoyed it, but I also enjoyed not contributing to Ms. Rowling's already significant income and not having to fight with anyone for that last copy in the shop/library). I am an anti-populist prat who thinks he's superior to everyone else just because he prefers more obscure, less popular things, like the Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. And the one thing I hate above all, is crowds. So what on earth am I doing here in the already overcrowded blogosphere? (Every fibre of my being railed against using that word. Alas, a suitable alternative failed to present itself)

Unfortunately, like many others who share my superior complex, I feel the need to trumpet my achievements to the world. Like how I fixed the heating in our flat yesterday. Our electricity supplier had been mucking around again and when the fourth power cut finally ended about a week ago, everything came back but the electronic programmer for our heating system. Which meant that as Britain fell over, crushed by the apocalyptic 8 inches of snow, we had no heating in our flat. Fuses were changed. In the best traditions of the IT professional, the programmer unit (and the mains, and the heater, and the light bulb in the hallway) were turned off and on again several times, in the hope it would send a little flicker of electronic life pulsing down the pre-war wiring into the wretched thing, bringing heat and life to us all. No such luck. And so a week was spent huddling around our portable heater, praying that our pipes wouldn't freeze. Until yesterday, when I finally remembered there was such a thing as a user manual, and got round to digging it out.

In the pages of the hallowed tome (who would have thought a little thing like that needed a novel to tell you how to work it?) there was a reference to a previously unknown battery, including instructions on how to access it. Worth a try, I thought so screwdriver in hand, I prised off the cover and set to work. The battery looked fine, but I found dustballs in there older than I was. I swear, some of those things were developing consciousness (and feet), much like Dust Puppy in User Friendly. Like all conquering humans before me, I paid no heed to their cries for mercy and offers to trade, and blew them away. And lo, there was heating again. It turns out that the dust had gathered to a point where it was affecting the connections between the wiring and the unit itself (that's my theory anyway). We returned to civilisation. And that's the story I wanted to share, which led to the creation of this blog. Reliving this, it seems so pointless, so I apologise for wasting your time. If you must take something away from the 20 seconds it took you to scan through this, here, have this: I am a genius. It is undisputed. It is why this blog exists. It exists, therefore I am (a genius).

And how did my lovely lady respond to the announcement that we had heating again? "I hope you washed your hands". No tears of gratitude, no declarations of undying love. Not only am I a genius, I am an underappreciated one. Score.