Neil Gaiman: Neverwhere Gaiman's 1st full length novel reads like a dream. A story about London Above and London Below, if you have ever lived in the city, you would get this book.
I reserve the right to remove comments that I find too personal, inappropriate and/or likely to have me eating chicken curry for two years. I also assert all my rights folks.
I had my hands on a box of Sas Brownies last weekend when Bobby away on a Rinjani-Man-of-The-Mountain trip with a few good men. When I got them they were still warm fresh out from the oven (delivery time accounted for). At first glance a white box of 9x flat square brown chocolate cake, at first smell it was heavenly.
Sas Brownies are baked by none other than, Sas Monroe, blogger formerly known as Pynk. I'm not much of a foodie and my brownie description may be shallow but you must be bitter, very bitter, not to enjoy these chocolate brown mamas. Full bodied and sweet just like their baker, they were a bit on the soft side, though I'm not complaining. A bite releases fudgey, rich, moist and chocolatey goodness. Not tooth-achingly sweet, which was a nice touch. The top was textured crisp and shiny. You can easily, I say a little bit forlorn, eat one whole brownie under 60 seconds. I had mine with a side of You've Got Mail. Bobby had his warmed and with a side of Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chocolate ice-cream. Deeelicious.
It was decadent and most appropriate for a girl's night home alone, taken slowly yet surely, chick flick/vampire Mills & Boon paperbacks optional. Full brownie points for Sas and her box of sassy, sexy brownies.
You can order Sas Brownies by tweeting Sas @sasbrownies or text 8950000.
As much as I love Neil Gaiman, I know you love him more. So for your birthday this year I'm getting with the programme and give you a tweet from @neilhimself:
I'm going to tweet my way thru today's line edits of the book I wrote with D. Levithan--who has no twitter. A novelist w/o a twitter? WTF!?
See what he says? You so need to get yourself a Twitter account darling.
I have it. My family have it. My friends have it. One of my favourite author has it. Queen Rania has it. And of course Mr and Mrs Kutcher have it.
What is it that we all have besides knees? Unless you've been living underneath a rock in the next galaxy, when I answer "Twitter" you would know I'm talking about the microblogging sensation that has taken the world by storm, and not some form of bird speak.
It's slightly disconcerting to me all this twittering business. Its like we've become a world that tweet to all and sundry our (oft mundane) lives in 140 characters or less. Because I follow @neilhimself, I am slightly intimate with the going-ons of Neil Gaiman. He tweets me goodnight and tells me to dream magnificent dreams even. Okay, to me and 386,193 other people. But still.
So this twitterverse has made my world feel even smaller, that's a good thing right? On the other hand, the fact that I spend a considerable amount of time figuring out the best tweet to get Mr Gaiman to @reply me IS rather sad.
In the end, my impression of Twitter was right and wrong. Twitter IS a massive time drain. It IS yet another way to procrastinate, to make the hours fly by without getting work done, to battle for online status and massage your own ego.
But it's also a brilliant channel for breaking news, asking questions, and attaining one step of separation from public figures you admire. No other communications channel can match its capacity for real-time, person-to-person broadcasting.
Twitterverse has now crept into space, thanks to astronaut Mike Massimino, who is the first person to tweet from outer space. That's pretty cool man, and not at all a mundane tweet.
I finally got hold of my two copies of 'My Favourite Recipe Book' a compilation of recipes by our very own foodies, bloggers or otherwise. The recipe book was a sold-out and a signed copy of it (by Her Royal Highness ‘Azemah Ni’matul Bolkiah) raked in a further B$5,586.00 for its charity of choice, the Special Olympics Brunei Darussalam. The aim was to raise funds to send our special ones to the World Special Olympics in Athens in 2011.
I feel most guilty at not being able to partake, but hopefully there'll be a next time. I've read that the recipe book gathered some vitriolic discussion over on RA's tagboard over some missing ingredients in some recipes, well-intentioned people simply using the book for fame and glory, the usual defeatist comments that seems all too common in our country. All I can say is My Favourite Recipes is a commendable and worthwhile effort and that at least these folks stepped up to the plate and gave their time for charity:
Ps/ Bobby likes the look of the Udang Galah In Saffron Dill Sauce by Brunei Creative Chefs on Pg 29 and I'll give Yee-Man's Chinese Chicken Salad on Pg 10 a go.
Bobby and I weren't the first ones in the queue to buy tickets watch the much anticipated latest Star Trek movie. We're not Trekkies, so a lot of our interest to watch the movie stemmed from reading rave reviews from those who have. And, I must say, the brilliant casting of Zachary Quinto, who plays bad hero Sylar in the TV series Hero, as Spock.
The movie, directed by JJ Abrams (he of Alias, Lost and Cloverfield fame), is simply called Star Trek. Apt I thought, this movie did a lot to enlist new Trekkies because it re-introduced the show with a spanking fresh, yet immediately identifiable in their new skin, cast that bowled us over in a plot oft seen in the best Star Trek episodes: The crew of the USS Enterprise saving the universe from Romulans.
With due deference to ol' Leonard Nimoy (the original and quintessential Spock and who also cameo'd in the new movie), after last night I can't imagine a better new Spock than Zachary Quinto. From the eyebrows, to the hair, to the face, to the body, to the ears. I read that Adrien Brody was considered for the part and while I like my Adrien, no way not with Mr Quinto around. Quinto also made Spock hot. Seriously. Pointy ears and all.
I thought the rest of the cast deserves high praise as well.
Chris Pine as James T (T for Tiberius) Kirk was played brand new. I remember watching the early Star Trek TV series in the 70s and thought the young William Shatner was a mildly attractive cosmic older guy. And then he started making records. Pine's Kirk is young-dumb-and-full-of-c*me, HOT, a nice mixture of Kirk, Han Solo, even Tom Cruise's Maverick and became perfectly saleable to this age youth (and their mummies).
Uhura was played by Zoe Saldana and Zoe played her black, lush and in Uhura's customary short short skirt (a wide belt really). John Cho (of Harold from Harold and Kumar Goes To Whitecastle, fame) although Korean, was casted as Hikaru "Sulu". John Cho provided the movie a lot of its comic turns and did a great job. The original Sulu was Japanese and the fact that Cho is Korean didn't really matter much to the movie. Maybe it made die-hard Trekkies throw up in arms, but I thought casting John Cho as the asian was enough to satisfy the universal make-up of the USS Enterprise. Karl Urban, who was bad guy/assassin in The Bourne Supremacy, now plays Dr Leonard "Bones" McCoy, all bad mood yet noble. Anton Yelchin plays Pavel "Chekov", the 17 year old Russian communications officer on the USS Enterprise who has difficulty in vocally inputing passwords because he says "Wictor" instead of "Victor". Simon Pegg comes onboard as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, the scot who has skills in beaming people up.
And then there's Eric Bana as the movie's bad guy, a Vulcan called Nero. Another notable turn was Winona Ryder almost unrecognisable with new teeth and wrinkles, made a turn as Spock's mama.
With the help of kick-ass CGI, smart thrills and comic writing, Abrams acquitted himself well as Director, effectively repositioning the old Star Trek franchise to welcome the future. It made Star Trek and the crew of the USS Enterprise with Warp Factor 10, Shields and Photon Torpedoes ON, let's-save-the-universe vibe, well worth the price of admission.
Ps/ Also a must-watch, Leonard Nimoy delivering the Top Ten List Of Lines Never Before Said In A Star Trek Movie, on David Letterman!
Mama haven't posted a letter to you in a while. The last time was 6 months ago when I posted a picture of you in an Ultraman mask. Eversince then your Mama has been distracted with rather addictive online pursuits, like Pet Society which I thankfully outgrew and my pet is now languishing in Pet Society World in a 7-bedroomed home, hungry and dirty. Then your T'tan introduced me to hidden objects games, like Mystery Case Files and the like. I think my eyesight has gotten worse due to peering on the screen for 'protractors' or 'screws' or similar inane objects. After that T'tan suggested I try time-management games, which took up all my time building houses, and parks, and making sure I paid the damn taxes on time. And then on my own accord I got re-hooked onto Twitter, following all and sundry. It really is time for a heart-warming letter to your daughter when one begins to mull all day about a @mrskutcher tweet just so I can get Demi Moore to acknowledge my presence online.
So.
In a couple of days you will turn 1 year and 8 months. Here's how you look without the alien mask:
Although having straight-as-a-plank hair means all those curls on your head is alien to your Mama. Every morning you wake up with serious bed-head and I think "GAAAAAH! WhatdoIdowhatdoIdo??". You're not too fond of hair clips and cute hairbands so you often channel Wild Woman Of Borneo. But its okay my darling, cos you're one SMART Wild Woman Of Borneo.
You are a voracious reader, here you are "reading" Eric Carle's 'Slowly slowly slowly said the Sloth':
You can also count one to ten, know some of your ABCs and, Mama is proud to say, tri-lingual. Why just the other day when I asked you to please close the door, you said "Bisa" (that's Indonesian for 'Yes/Can') and promptly did.
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