Block Heads ... Literally

Lego Block Heads, that is.

Do you recognise these "famous" characters?

How Do You Feel?

THIS is psychologist Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions.

It is set up like a colour wheel with the eight primary emotions being JOY, TRUST, FEAR, SURPRISE, SADNESS, DISGUST, ANGER, and ANTICIPATION.

You can see how the opposite of joy is sadness, the opposite of trust is disgust, the opposite of fear is anger (I don't quite get that one), the opposite of surprise is anticipation.

The degrees of these emotions are likewise illustrated with the  mild emotions on the periphery and the intense emotions in the "core" of things.

• Serenity -->  JOY  -->   Ecstasy
• Acceptance   -->  TRUST  -->   Admiration
• Apprehension   -->  FEAR  -->   Terror
• Distraction  -->  SURPRISE  -->  Amazement
• Pensiveness  -->  SADNESS  -->  Grief
• Boredom  -->  DISGUST  -->  Loathing
• Annoyance  -->   ANGER  -->  Rage
• Interest   -->   ANTICIPATION  -->   Vigilance

We often hear the term "mixed emotions," well this wheel suggests the combination of two emotions creates a third.  Examples include

• ANGER  + ANTICIPATION    =    AGGRESSIVENESS
• ANTICIPATION  + JOY         =    OPTIMISM
• JOY +  TRUST                      =     LOVE
• TRUST + FEAR                    =     SUBMISSION
• FEAR +  SURPRISE             =      AWE
• SURPRISE  + SADNESS       =       DISAPPROVAL
• SADNESS  +  DISGUST       =      REMORSE
• DISGUST + ANGER           =      CONTEMPT

Going beyond these equations, I found an article where someone felt there were even MORE mixed emotions to be equated involving the mild and intense emotions.

For the mild emotions:

• Interest + Serenity                  = Bemusement
• Serenity + Acceptance           =  Acknowledgement
• Acceptance + Apprehension  =   Acquiescence
• Apprehension + Distraction    =  Wariness
• Distraction + Pensiveness      =   Dismay
• Pensiveness + Boredom         =   Listlessness
• Boredom + Annoyance           =  Impatience
• Annoyance + Interest           =   Disfavour

For the intense emotions:

• Vigilance + Ecstasy               =  Zeal
• Ecstasy + Admiration            =  Devotion
• Admiration +  Terror            =   Subservience
• Terror +  Amazement           = Petrifaction
• Amazement + Grief              =  Horror
• Grief + Loathing                  =  Shame
• Loathing + Rage                   =  Hatred
• Rage + Vigilence                  =  Domination

In spite the documentation of all these emotions, I still can't put a finger on how exactly I am feeling these days.

No More Smile

Sometimes things happen and you just wish your smile could last forever.

Instructions for the Optical Illusion : Stare at the smiley face  for 20 seconds (preferably without blinking) then look at a white wall.

If You Can't Buy 'Em, Make 'Em!

My former boss went on a baking spree the other weekend and brought some goodies on Monday to share.  She packed five cookies for me to bring home and said there was some cake on her table if I wanted some.  The cake she had made had crushed oreos for the base, chocolate on top and peanut butter in the middle.  She had cut the cake into small serving sizes knowing how rich the dessert was.   She started distributing pieces to  everyone in the team.   I was quite busy that day and I set my slice aside.  When I finally got to taste it, I was simply blown away.  It was soooo delicious!  I immediately sent her an IM saying that I loved it.   

Later in the day she handed me a small package in aluminium foil.  It was the last piece of the cake.  (YES!!)

The next day, I thanked her again for the cookies and told her that the kids enjoyed the cookies.  I added that the last piece of cake was (hidden) in the refrigerator and I was still contemplating whether to share it with the rest of the family or not.  She found that amusing.

That night, I decided the right thing to do was to SHARE the piece of cake.  

I dutifully sliced it into four (since GI was out that night) and let everyone taste.

Naturally everyone loved it too.  I told them that it reminded me of Reese's Pieces.

RD said that he didn't think he had ever had Reese's Pieces but he really liked what I had brought home.  In fact, he said, "You know Mom, when I was younger I didn't really LIKE peanut butter.  But it's probably because you never let me taste anything like THIS before!"

Not all American chocolates are available here in Australia. For instance, there are no Peanut Butter M&M's nor Pretzel M&M's here.  I have spotted Reese's Pieces in some stores but of course  they are somewhat more expensive and automatically fall under our 'luxury' and 'non-essential' items.

So what was one to do given the sweet memory of the oreo-peanut butter-chocolate cake?  Look up a recipe for Reese's Pieces online, of course.

This was my latest FaceBook post.

What's on my mind? (And in my hips, no doubt.) 

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/homemade-peanut-butter-cups/

It was not the easiest thing to do but these satisfied my craving for Reese's Pieces. 

RD's comment, "They're good, Mom. My only complaint is there's not enough." (We managed to make 12 pieces.)

I should have read and re-read the recipe before starting. We didn't have enough chocolates on hand so I had to modify the recipe a bit. 

A bit? A BIT? MyGirl strongly disagrees. She said, "Mom, you altered the recipe by 90%!!"

I confess. I did. But they were still delicious. Less sinful but not as good as those oreo-peanut butter-chocolate things my officemate made (which triggered this Reese's Pieces yearning).

We cut off part of the foil muffin cup so our peanut butter cup would be shorter.

Upon melting the chocolate, we used the pastry brush to coat the inside of the muffin cup.

We had initially made 18 chocolate cups.

But apparently, we only had enough peanut butter to fill 12 cups.

So we melted back some of the chocolate cups to add to the topping.

This is what they looked like before we put them in the freezer.

 

This was the one that most resembled a Reese's Piece peanut butter cup.

It had the most chocolate topping, you see.

YUMMY!!

(Our Motto :  Diet Another Day)

Four Letter Word

Friday the 13th 

7 Little Words spoiler alert

What can I say?  MyGirl and I couldn't resist...

Of course we all know that BOOR is the correct answer.

So there.

Unica Hija

I forgot to log off from Skype yesterday.  As a result, I got a missed call from Jersey Girl.  By the time I was really online, she was no longer there. 

When I saw a notification on the corner of my screen saying she had just logged on, I immediately rang her up.   The moment I said hello, even before her video came on, I could hear her calling her two boys.

Apparently, she had called earlier because the boys wanted to request their cousins to please send them gifts. Gifts of gems in one of their internet games Dragonvale, that is.  I could not understand this but apparenty, the kids speak the same language.  Right there and then, MyGirl pressed some buttons and sent off a gift to each of her cousins.  (Based on MyGirl's explanation, she is able to send one free gift to three people a day.  Fortunately for Jersey Girl's boys, some of MyGirl's other friends are no longer actively playing Dragonvale.)

Anyway, right after the request was made, the boys disappeared and we were left online with Jersey Girl who was getting her hair done care of her unica hija.

In between the shampoo and the styling, we were able to take a screenshot to get mother and child.

Choose Happiness

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care.  In her http://www.inspirationandchai.com she had written an article on Regrets of the Dying.  

She now has a book (which I have not read) The Top Five Regrets of the Dying - A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing.

I actually chanced upon these top five regrets when watching Jane McGonigal (a world-renowned designer of alternate reality games — or, games that are designed to improve real lives and solve real problems) in one of her Ted Talks appearances.


Let me share what people on their death beds had consistently expressed as what they regret or wish they had done differently 

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
2. I wish I didn't work so hard
3. I wish I had the courage to express my feelings
4.  I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
5. I wish I had let myself be happier

There you have it folks.  If you are reading this blog post now, then you still have time.


Let us LIVE a FULL LIFE, not a live a life full of regrets.

“The saddest summary of life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.” ~ Unknown

Two for Two

You just gotta love Skype.  

Eldest Sis with her oldest daughter and youngest son.

Me with my eldest son and youngest daughter.

Sealed with a ...

Sealed with a ...  magic stick aka SEAL STICKS.

I got a set of these magic sealing sticks after I saw how it worked.  Yes, the set of four was a bit pricey as compared to the AUD2.00 for thirty pieces of regular plastic bag clips but I love how these magic sticks are able to seal bags and save space.

Of course, when I showed them off to Eldest Sis during one of our Sunday Skype sessions, she ran off and grabbed a bag of half finished potato chips so that I could see what they used in their household.

Yes indeed, nothing beats the good old sealed with a ... CLOTHESPIN!

Give the Dough a Rest

After numerous messages and weeks of Skype conversations, I finally convinced SOMEONE to try and bake bread using the Five Minute Bread technique.  Sister Deer was a willing accomplice.  Sadly, she reported back to say that the dough was so soft she could not form it properly.  She added that the bread tasted fine but the crust was funny and the bottom was rubbery.

W H Y ? ? ? ?     


Every single time we used the five minute bread dough, it turned out perfectly.

Yesterday, we made stromboli.

 This is what it looked like before it went into the oven.

The kids said I overdid the garlic powder on top.

They didn't complain about the Italian Seasoning and 

the parmesan cheese, just the garlic powder.

 In a feeble attempt to get the dough to rise, 

we placed it in front of the heater.
(Don't worry, the bread pan was sitting on a wire rack.)

  

It seems I used twice the amount of dough required for the dish.

You can tell by how the surface of the bread just cracked when the dough rose during baking. 

 Nonetheless, we enjoyed a hearty meal.

After this though, I am giving the Five Minute Bread a rest.  Even if I just bought several kilos of flour, I won't replenish my dough in the ref. 

I have resolved : No bread baking for a while to cut down on the carbs.  

Exercise.  I need exercise.

(These questions remain : How long will this resolution last and will the exercise even begin?)

Miss My Anorak

When we were very young, we had these blue anoraks.   I loved my anorak so much that it was hidden away in my cabinet for years with its sleeves folded in and the whole thing rolled up and tucked into the hood.  And when I say 'years', I mean 'YEARS' as in my three kids could have worn it at some point in time  had I remembered that it was in my cabinet.  Alas, the kids are too big for that anorak and besides I already donated it before we left the home country (at least I hope I did).  As for me, I don't think I went to enough cold places as a child to merit wearing the anorak because I have little recollection of me wearing my anorak yet in spite that it was a special piece of clothing.

There was a sale at Rivers some time back and they were selling 'puffy jackets' at half price.  It was still Fall at the time and I wasn't really looking to buy a jacket.  However a friend of mine had recently mentioned to me that the secret to keeping warm was not so much the layering as it was the air-tightness of the clothes, and the jacket I happened to pick up was size XS (extra small).  When I tried one on, it was soooo nice and cosy.   (Let's make new anorak-like memories.)


SOLD!   

I usually wear my puffy jacket at home so whenever I catch people on Skype these days (and they see me wearing my new jacket), they would say, "It must be cold there."

Little do they know, the kids love to hug me while I wear the jacket.  They put their arms in between the layer of clothes I am wearing and the jacket I have on top and they go, "Oh, it's nice and warm in there."


These pictures are especially for Z, who mistook MyGirl for me yesterday.  She said we looked like twins.  I had to take a second shot to capture more of the puffy jacket because MyGirl said that if the blogpost was about the puffy jacket then the puffy jacket had to be part of the picture.

Go With the Flow

End of Subscription

The two-year subscription to our mobile phone service was about to expire and we were would be eligible to acquire a new phone for free upon renewal of the contract.  Apparently my contract expires ahead of MacGyver's in their records.  So when mine expired, MacGyver asked me if I wouldn't mind having a phone like GI's.  

At the start of the year, with GI going to uni, we shifted GI from a pre-paid to a post paid plan and he got a new phone, a Sony Xperia.   Compared to the  Nokia I had been using for over 2 years, the Sony seems small and fragile to me.   This one was an android with a touch screen and GI had been showing off how he would swype (swipe to type).

I hesitated for several days until finally I told MacGyver I would be fine with that phone.  Upon checking, MacGyver discovered that the Sony was no longer available as an option. He suggested an HTC model.  

Again, I dilly dallied.  I dilly dallied to the point that MacGyver's contract expired as well meaning both of us would be able to get new phones together.   

When MacGyver checked the website, all psyched to upgrading our phones, he saw that they had added a Samsung Galaxy Mini to the line of phones available in our plan.  

Nice. Samsung it is.

New Mobile Unit

So we got our new Samsungs two weeks ago.  MacGyver was quick to adapt to the phone.  I am still a tad behind with this new mobile phone technology.  

In the same way that I miss the clutch of a manual car when driving, I miss the arrow keys of the Nokia when typing.  (Of course I get more practice with the phone than with the car.) When I want to add punctuation marks or spaces, or when I want to correct the spelling of something I had written, it is not a simple matter of moving the cursor back (left, right, up or down) anymore.  The once simple act of getting the cursor to the right spot is difficult because the touch screen requires me to drag the cursor from one spot to another but the space in the screen is so tiny I never seem to get it right in my first try.

However, I must say that the psychic ability of this phone is amazing and gives new meaning to the words 'predictive text.'   My fat fingers never seem to hit the correct letter in the virtual keyboard displayed on the touch screen, the words I form are perpetually gibberish.  Amazingly enough, the word that would appear on the text line once I hit the space bar is more often than not the word I had intended to type. (That's technology for you.)

So anyway, thanks to MacGyver, my phone got my contacts and calendar entries plus  it  got loaded with the basic applications he felt I would need - Gmail, Facebook, Google, etc. -- the works.

Alarms and Alerts

The day after I carried over my alarms into the new phone, I am happy to report that I woke up to the new alarm.  And better yet, in my half asleep state, I was able to switch off the wake up alarm before the rest of the house woke up.   (I recall the many times Slash-M had to come into the room to shut my alarm clock off as we were growing up. Am sure he can relate to the reason why I am elated at being roused by an alarm and successfully switching it off.)

Sadly, when an alarm went off at the office in the middle of the day, no amount of pressing could get the beeping to stop.  I was all ready to switch the phone off to get it to stop when a colleague came over and showed me that I was supposed to SLIDE across the screen to stop the alarm. I was probably redder than the big X on the middle of my phone screen by the time he arrived to help.  I should have learned my lesson on the need to swipe across the screen seeing as I was unable to answer a phone call the day before because I had insisted on pressing the green telephone instead of swiping across the screen.

That night, MacGyver loaded additional music for me.  

While he had my phone on hand, he asked me what tone he wanted for an alarm.  I randomly replied David Foster.  

B I G    M I S T A K E.

The next day, at exactly 9:30 AM, the phone started playing a David Foster song out of the blue.  I couldn't figure out why it was doing that.  Worse, I couldn't figure out how to stop it from singing.  (I was about to sit on the phone to muffle the song.)   My officemates just laughed at me.  

I thought it was just a fluke incident but when it happened again the next day, I had to find a remedy.  Another officemate said I must have some sort of calendar reminder that goes off at 9:30 AM and I just had to find it.

I assumed the daily alarms were coming from all the birthday reminders that got ported in from my Gmail account into the new phone, coupled with the David Foster alarm I had selected.  No, I didn't wish that I didn't have so many friends with birthdays, I just wish that I had just opted for a simple beep.

Not to worry, eventually I figured out how to change the calendar alarm to a less scandalous alert tone. So now, in the middle of the day, I get a short quick melodious sound to remind me that I have friends that are celebrating birthdays.

Skype

I am still at a loss on how I would be able to Skype with this new phone without everyone seeing my feet instead of my face. I wonder if London Eye has figured out how to get around this issue.  The last time I caught her on Skype she was on her mobile and it was a choice of me seeing her (and she seeing nothing) or me seeing her desk (and she seeing me).  This is where big mirrors would really be useful. I went into the bathroom the other day so that Mindy could see me while we were on Skype using my Samsung.  Eventually I gave up and powered up the laptop.   

Games

Last night, I discovered the PLAY STORE.  MyGirl had loaded the phone with Seven Little Words earlier and I decided to get a couple more free apps into the phone.  I got Sudoku and PacMan, as well as Flow.

So now I am really going with the flow with my new phone.  Flow is so addictive, we managed to go through over 70 of the 150 free games.  It is so addictive that RD couldn't put the phone down MacGyver wondered whether he would have to give me back my Nokia.

No way, RD.  It's mine. ( My precious! )

The Healthy Alternative

These were the loaves we made last week.   

It was my first experiment with wholemeal flour.

The bread was great.  The crust was excellent.

I sliced the bread through to check if the bread was completely baked after the required twenty minutes. I had to put the loaves back into the oven to get the middle to bake but that didn't stop me from cutting off the two ends of one of the loaves for an advanced taste test.  One for me and one for my baking assistant, MyGirl.

 (Note how the photo on the bottom does not show the ends.  Sneaky, right?)

Since the wholemeal experiment was a success,  I mixed up a new batch of wholemeal dough that went into the refrigerator last week.  

Most of the dough became the pizza bases for lunch today. 

This is what happened to the rest.

Bread for afternoon tea.

Not Just Pizza

It's no secret that we love pizza.

For MacGyver's birthday, we decided to order Domino's pizza to bring for his celebration. As if on cue, the relatives arrive with their gift for MacGyver.  

It was a pizza maker and not just any pizza maker, but a JustPizzaOven.  This pizza oven comes with a pizza stone. (Think dream come true.)

You may ask, how come it took us this long for the maiden voyage?

Five Minute Bread, of course.

I wanted to make pizza using our own dough.  

I refused to go and get store-bought pizza base or Lebanese bread.  It would have been so easy.   (Such is life when one is a Taurean aka bull-headed.)

But what can I say?  It was worth the wait. 


It was not just pizza ... it was OUR pizza.

We made three pizzas.  

The two on the left are waiting to go into the pizza maker.

The one on the right is MyGirl's special one.

MyGirl's pizza has NO onion, NO capsicum, NO olives 

and the teeny-tiniest amount of garlic.

  Pizza #2 out of the oven.

Pizza #3 -- waiting for its turn.