Cooking school 2

Here we went for day 2 of the veggie cooking school. Theme was "raw food".

Take a look.

Front of the school.

Around town

Besides cooking, we did a walk-about around town.

Prior Park to see the Palladian bridge. Only 4 in the world and this was one of them. 3 in England and 1 in Russia.

After that a Jane Austen self guided tour. Downloaded the podcasts and a map to our iPhone and the way we went.

Cooking school

Day 1 of a two-day vegetarian cooking school. It was an all-day event. Brunch and late lunch. We made everything!! Bread, soup, tangin, tofu stir fried, grilled pumpkin salad and rice pudding.

Moroccan

First night arrived at Bath after 13 hours of flying and 2hours of train. Cold and wet. Still had snow on the ground. Found an authentic Moroccan restaurant. The outcome was "Wow"!

I had the traditional Moroccan soup hot and steamy. Iron wife had the tomato soup. Followed by a shared couscous dish covered w/ mushrooms and veggies.

B&B

Here's our b&b at Bath, England. It's a lovely place. Good size for 2 people. And the b'fast, looking at it one would not know it was vegetarian. Even the sausages were soy-based. So yummy!!

what the F888888ck App! e

I think this company is going down hill since the beloved SJ passed away.  I have not gotten a good solid stable anything anymore…..  The musical Tune program since updated to the latest and wonderful ipaddy looking interface to be more uniformed across devices was just crap.  On my laptop, it has been hanging more time the last month than the entire 5 years since I own a mac.  This new version of ipaddy looking app couldn't find my devices.  Hang on startup, hang on everything…. 

Then, with this new version 6 of mobile device that mapping where you go are artistically presented with curvy images….  You need to use a new podc@$t app by the yours truly company.  It kept losing my already download podca$t$ and kept using up my monthly free data pack to re-loaded what I had just download from my wi-fi a day before.. Better yet, completely disappeared….  I had to first download to the computer then transfer using the not so stable ipaddy looking thing to sync.  And the syncing was crap too.  I ended up spending 4.99USD to be a new one from the store.  There you go, way to boost your earning.  

Yes, since version 6, my contact groupings went from good use to complete useless.  I had everything grouped nicely.  When I want to see a particular group, I click and it expanded.  Not so anymore.  It introduced the old bug back in version 5 - the checks to select your group contacts to display.  Right…. What the f*******k.  

Now, after three tries to get my ipaddy looking thing to see my phone through the wi-fi network which worked beautifully before this ugly looking interface, I couldn't sync it anymore.  Toasted.  Puuuuuuuuuuu……

I am looking at totally switching out to LINUX as a solution.  Will spend the next 10 days playing how "business" ready it is.  Stay tune. 

bloodied p0llut!on

Yes, it is… Last night I walked home from the school, about 1.2 KM.  I smelled funny!  Smelled funny because I had walked through the "fresh" air of cigarettes, car exhaust, bus exhaust, more cigarettes, and of course, whatever else got blown in from all those industrial might here.  The result was, sniff, sniff, I need a shower!  Badly.  

Then, we are all subjected to the continuous playing of the Rose and another Spanish song for since the Summer.  Yes!  Illegal music burned on small little CDs.  Being wheeled around by a small 3-wheel bike and two huge speakers hanging on both sides of the bike.  And it parks eternally in front of Mark & Spencer on the side walk.  The city worker aka "cheng guan" should kick them out.  Yeah, right…. So I have not just air pollution but noise pollution from across the street and from upstairs - renovation. 

Now, I am ready to leave….

MFM

After two consecutive days of working from sun up till sun down in front of a computer on various conf calls and "stuff", my eyes were toasted.  Decided to walk over to the casino central by the shore.  This was a nice view.  Turned to my left… 

Casinos.  I went to a mall which housed top luxury brand names such as Zegna, Lora Piana, Ferragamo, Boss, Panarai, Bvlgari, Coach, Hermes, you name it, we have it here.  The last few months, I have been noticing a significant increase of foot traffic - visitors from across the border.  The more expensive the shop, the more visitors.  The mentality is: $$$$$ = status symbol. I think I have just been priced out of my brand - Z…...gna.  I couldn't get in there two days ago.  I was told to wait outside the door. What?  I left.  Today, I went back in.. less crowded.  I tried a sweater.  I was expecting it to cost about MOP15,000 ( just shy of USD2,000).  Well, I missed a zero - in front of the decimal point!  Really!!!!  The sweater was priced at MOP 110,000 (about USD14,187).  Ouch!!!!  And this sweater along w/ other sizes of the same were just laid around like cheap sweaters.  Scary.  The sweater I tried was lined with fur.  This liner could be worn as a vest individually.  Do you need one?  I think that was more than 3 years worth of my clothing allowance.  Or just enough to help this family to rebuild its house in a village just north of here after an arson had burned it down over an argument of ….  RMB 1.00 (USD 0.16) over a bottle of soft drink!   

Poofff….

I was sitting in "my cave" working away tonight.  Lights were flickering.  I thought, Ummm…., power failure imminent.  Not quite.  I heard a loud pop and then smoke.  Light bulbs… Energy efficient ones… This was the 2nd time in about 2 1/2 months I had to replace them.  I smelled burned material after taken these bulbs off.  

Look at the pic here.  Scary huh?  

set lunch

I had a set lunch in a Japanese restaurant inside a state guest house complex today.  Take a look.  Total authentic Japanese grilled cod fish lunch set.  I had a big bowl of rice,  a big piece of fish, miso soup w/ tofu and sea weeds, stew beef, salad and some black beans. O yeah, a nice big bottle of hot sake to warm my body… snow/rain here in Shanghai, 0C….  The cost of the lunch was RMB 95.00 (USD15.00).  Here, no tips required.  

I bought mom lunch in M@c@u two days ago at one Centr@l's Jap'nese restaurant.  Two of us.  Mom had grilled cod fish w/ rice.  Just a pice of grilled cod fish on top of a bowl of rice.  Waited 20 minutes for it.  It was MOP 250.00 (USD 32.00).  I had a bowl of soup rice.  We shared a plate of fried oysters.  The total bill came to …. ready for this?   MOP 1,400 (USD180.00).  It came with a small bottle of sake. 

Think of the price diff?  A bit ridiculous….. It's like burning money in south of my town these days….. 

mother wants to know

I changed my search security setting so that no one can tab to see what you are searching online. I used "HTTPS" vs "HTTP" for G 00 gle …… so it is https://www.g0000000000.ca you know what the "000000000" are for ;-) It's blocked. Ha! From inside …. it was being H@rm 0nized. Very interesting. I don't mind being recorded on my searches as they are for geeky stuff anyway…..