These are my microwaves, timed for you, heating your foodstuffs, making you free... Yeah, doesn't exactly have a ring to it, does it? But I can imagine people in the Church of Microwaveable Objects singing this with renewed vigour.
And yes, my house has three microwaves. Don't judge me. They have multiple uses, as makeshift tables (as shown above) and storage cabinets. Here's the problem, though. All three work (and two are almost new), but I only use one - the little old one on the right. And I've not worked out how to open the other two either.
"Why?" I hear you ask (well, you could care less, but I'm going to tell you anyway).
Now, before I launch into my long rant, let it be known that my cooking skills aren't exactly Jamie Oliver standard. Despite most of my family being accomplished cooks (and my mother previously owning a Thai restaurant), the skills haven't exactly been passed down into this generation. Ditto her geography ones. I can cook when forced to, and most of the time, my stuff is edible, but it's burnt and grotesque-looking.
This is where my microwave comes in. It's no Funcooker, but saves my ass on the occasions when I just don't want to be frustrated at my lack of talent in the kitchen any more.
If microwaves are meant to make everything happy and simple, why are they getting so stupidly complicated?
Take my 'baby', for example. She/he was bought several years ago, has a power setting, a timer setting, and a little button I can push to open the door. What more could a girl want from a microwave? I can reheat the food I burnt the night before in it, defrost stuff, and cry when I forget about the food I've left in it. [I'm quite absent-minded; it does happen!]
Then you get the newer versions... Dude, I just want to heat things up. It's all very well having a grill option, but if I wanted a grill, I WOULD BUY A GRILL - We actually do have a grill, making this microwave's grill option useless for me. I don't want to spend ages twisting a knob just so I can get to the right option to set the time, as opposed to setting the convection. Also, how do I open the damn thing? I'm pretty sure one of the buttons does it eventually, but my brief interaction with it ended in tears - the tears being "OMG WAII DON'T YOU WORK???!"
*cries and flails helplessly* What are these knobs supposed to do?! I DON'T WANT TO SET A COMBINATION OR CONVECTION OR THE WEIGHT, I JUST WANT TO USE THE DAMN MICROWAVE! At least tell me how to open the stupid thing!
I know the simple answer to this problem would be to read the instruction manual, but where's the fun in that? It's a microwave, it's meant to make life simpler! It might not help that I don't know where the instruction manual is, either. I don't read instruction manuals for any gadgets I get and they seem to work fine until I break them, so what's the difference here?
...I think I need to start a "one microwave per person" plan in the house. Otherwise, the only microwave I know how to use will soon die a slow and painful death, and then what will I eat? I'll actually have to learn how to cook. *shudders*
Old microwaves really do do it better.
[If you've made it this far, it means you've read a 500 word rant on a simple kitchen appliance. Hooray! Oh, and you've probably also viewed the detailed pictures of these microwaves I spent ages taking. Great use of your £500 camera and Flickr subscription there, Rammi. *claps*]
Originally published at rammi.glomp.me. You can comment here or there.
Hello and welcome to Rammi’s blog. I am Jennifer and I will be your host today. Today I will be sharing some worldly blogging with you. As you know this blog is set in London, England. I have always wanted to visit there. There is so much great history there. I am such a history lover. Relatively, America is a newer country. England has a long rich history. It would be so amazing to be right there where it happened.
Of course this blogs roots are in Thailand. That is another place I would love to visit. My Aunt Paveena is from Thailand. She was born in Bangkok and lived there until she was a teenager. I love Thai food. My Aunt is an amazing cook. She taught me to make eggrolls. I love them. She also makes some super fried wontons. I could eat a million of those. She always serves them with this really hot sauce. It tastes good, but it will burn your mouth. Once when I was with my friend Trisha at the famous Farmer's Market in Los Angeles (see, I have been some place cool) I had a Thai iced tea drink that had these little balls, like black tapioca but bigger. I can’t remember what it was called, but it was good.
As for me, I was born and raised in southern California in the United States. Sure, we have plenty of cool stuff here too. I have been to Disneyland so many times. I love Disneyland. I have been to Hollywood. I have been to many beaches. I have lived in San Diego. I have been to the Seaworld and the world famous San Diego Zoo and San Diego Wild Animal Park. I have traveled across country and visited many other cool places. I have been to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. I have visited sites in Oklahoma City, Albuquerque, New Mexico and St. Louis, Missouri. I have toured Chicago many times. I have traveled all over Wisconsin. I have been to the Mall of America in Minnesota. I have driven all the way around Lake Michigan. I have vacationed in Nashville, Tennessee, Las Vegas, Nevada and Palm Springs, California. Earlier this year, I spent three weeks in Georgia for work. It was my first look at the Atlantic Ocean.
Right now, my sister lives in Hawaii. I have never been, but my kids went with my parents in the spring. They brought back some really pretty pictures. My sister’s husband is currently in Afghanistan. I hope he comes back safe and soon.
Here in good old California, the weather has been cooling off. The leaves are changing colors. I live in the Mojave Desert so we don’t get too much rain. I understand it is pretty rainy in London.
Well, Rammi, thanks for letting me borrow your blog for the day. I really enjoyed it.
Originally published at rammi.glomp.me. You can comment here or there.
Connery made a better Bond but as a person he is a bit of an arse....
Examine how many words you write in a blog post, on average (the answer is 300). Examine everything around you, in case a better idea suddenly dawns on you.
Examine why you feel the need to repeat the word "examine" over and over and over again just so it sounds slightly poetic, as opposed to just typing the thoughts that are coming out of your head when you hear the word "examine".
Examine your head thoroughly.
Why are you doing this 100 Word Challenge again? It *is* kind of fun, but maybe your next one will be better than this rubbish attempt.
Originally published at rammi.glomp.me. You can comment here or there.
I consider myself fairly neutral when it comes to politics. I'm not left-wing like Labour, central like the Lib Dems, or right-wing like the Conservatives. I'm quite middle-of-the-road, and am not loyal to any one party. I will be the first one to admit that my household sometimes votes on a trivial basis, because most of the party policies are quite similar these days, and it can get quite hard to differentiate between them all. What it all boils down to is how engaging they are, how much they connect with people, and what they can offer the community (i.e. if they have Twitter or Facebook and choose to communicate with their constituents, that's a massive tick in my book).
With the general election coming up soon, the campaign posters are coming out again, encouraging people to vote for a particular party. The frivolous aspect that my family's votes rely on this year are what they seem to portray in front of a camera.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I think it shows. Most politicians don't know how to act in front of a camera. The main candidates in my constituency seem to be a mixture of the stereotypes you see in schools and the workplace.
We have the cool, popular guy...
Then there's the serious one...
Gurcharan Singh is the Conservative candidate (although he defected from Labour in 2007). His face is currently appearing on local billboards everywhere. You can tell he thinks carefully about every decision he makes, but it seems to be reflected in his face. Is it sadness? Is it tiredness? Or is he just pissed off?
His squinty glare scares me as I walk down the road with bags of shopping.
And finally, we have the nerdy one. Because we all need one of those.
Nigel Bakhai is the Liberal Democrat who will be going up against the other two in the next election. You can tell by the awkward smile that he wants to do well, and will try to do well, but he hasn't got a hope in hell of managing to do it because of the party he belongs to. Poor thing.
Usually, Labour and Conservative will gain the most votes, with the Lib Dems trailing behind. So, basically, the race is on between the cool guy and the serious dude.
Interestingly enough, as my area is mostly filled with people of South Asian origin, there is no BNP candidate for my constituency (because that would probably be a major fail). And the Monster Raving Loony Party member who is standing for the seat is the minister of chocolate.
Originally published at rammi.glomp.me. You can comment here or there.
This is the poppy I will wear at 11AM to commemorate all the members of the armed forces who have fought - or are currently fighting - in our wars. They've done so much for us that it's hard to put into words. The two minutes' silence will be held, as we have so much to be thankful for, and there's so much we owe them. It seems only fitting that we take the time out of our lives every year to remember. My godfather served in the RAF during WWII, and has so many stories of the people he met (most of them being American girls. Ahem), the guys he served with, and, most importantly, the tales of the many fights he had in the sky with the Luftwaffe.
I will never forget all the things he has taught me for as long as I live.
This is the chocolate-covered profiterole/cream puff I will eat to remember Maddie Spohr, the little girl who would have been celebrating her second birthday today, if she hadn't suddenly died on the 7th of April this year.
I first heard about her when the hashtag #Maddie became a trending topic on Twitter on that very same day. When I finally had a chance to visit the blog belonging to Heather, Maddie's mother (for all of this attention had made her server crash), my first thought was disbelief. There was only a sentence mentioning her very unexpected death, and the rest of the posts showed off Maddie's mischievous and vibrant personality. Someone like Maddie that was so bright and full of life couldn't be taken away so soon, could she?
Fate is cruel.
I immediately changed my Twitter page to purple, her colour, like many others who had read of her passing. As the months passed, I continued to read Heather's blog, and my heart broke a little bit more each day for her. As much as I love her blog, I would have given anything to have never known her through her words, if only Maddie was still living.
Today is Maddie's birthday. Last year, on her first and only birthday, her birthday treat was a giant cream puff. On the other side of the pond, the closest thing I could find were these little chocolate profiteroles.
I will gorge myself on chocolate and cream today to celebrate the birthday of a little girl I never knew, but one who has had such a profound effect on me in the past couple of months in the way no one else never could.
Today will be a day of remembering. Those who have died for us, those who are fighting for us, and all those who were taken too soon. I will hold my two minutes of silence, eat my profiteroles in the messiest way possible, and remember.
Originally published at rammi.glomp.me. You can comment here or there.
Daily Confession: I read TNT Magazine although I'm not from Australia, New Zealand or South Africa.
Aside from all the references to celebrities that I don't get, it's one of the better free reads that you can pick up outside Tube stations. There's things like Photoshopped images of the Queen and interviews with famous people - most of whom I know, yay! - but what makes me laugh the most is the reader perspectives on London.
Having lived here for at least 10 years, I feel I can be self-righteous and call them n00bs. ^_^ With the latest issue I picked up outside a Tube station, a reader of the magazine was complaining about having to wait *gasp* between six and thirteen minutes extra for a London Overground train!
Now, London trains work in pretty obvious ways: those that go underground, and those that do not.
London Underground (Tube) trains usually come every 5 minutes or so in central London, but as you go out from the centre, trains become less and less frequent. On a normal weekday, because I'm near the end of the line, I can wait up to half an hour for a train to take me on a 10 minute journey eastbound during the so-called peak times.
London Overground trains, on average, come about every 15-20 minutes during peak times, less so during off-peak times. There can be major delays, but usually nothing that can't be solved within 20 minutes, and most commuters are happy to wait.* Although this may be because they have no other choice.
This letter to the magazine was hilarious to read. Not only because he seemed so put out that he had to wait a bit extra, but that he ended the letter with "This is London, not Sydney!"
London and Sydney have at least one thing in common: they're cities. And what do cities have? Imperfect transport systems!
If the guy who wrote an indignant letter into the magazine was so annoyed with being a whole THIRTEEN MINUTES later than usual for work, he should get up earlier.
...And try waiting for buses more/come to South Harrow or Boston Manor station with me. That should put his lateness into perspective.
*There was a time last year where an unusual 50 minute delay on a London Overground train made me totally miss French and Saunders live, and I was upset for days, but amazingly kind people on Plurk gave me another ticket for their last ever show, but that's a long story for another day...
Originally published at rammi.glomp.me. You can comment here or there.
I occasionally use my Vox blog as a place to put memes and other stuff I wouldn't like to post on Wordpress (my blog is generally not treated as a MySpace bulletin). There's not much difference between all the platforms where blogging is concerned - words are words no matter where they are - but the commenting systems and privacy options SUCK on both Vox and LJ.
You can't comment on LJ and Vox blogs without having an account on there (or in the case of LJ, sometimes having an OpenID also suffices).
I don't use my LJ account at all. I don't need another blog to update, and I hate faffing about with trying to remember who my OpenID provider is. Also, my OpenID doesn't link back to anything I want it to, which is annoying when you're trying to get a friendship going via blog comments. "By the way, this is my blog URL, but this isn't spam, honest! My OpenID doesn't lead anywhere."
Vox is apparently an OpenID in itself, but anyone who has a blog on Vox is restricted to only getting comments from other Vox members. So, in theory, I could comment on LJ blogs, but anybody who doesn't have a Vox account cannot comment on my posts on there.
[I forget what happened when Six Apart owned both LJ and Vox, but I believe it was still strictly members-only; Vox wasn't even an OpenID then.]
Most of my friends are not Vox users. The community there is not for everyone. Ever since I started using it several years ago (beta testers FTW), not much has been done to it or changed. You still can't make your own themes from scratch (you're stuck scratching your head on the best size for your custom banner, and what colour of text will make your blog title show up), there's no API, and it's plagued with spam - even after a user is deleted for spamming, their comments are still around for people to delete manually.
Generally, it sucks.
And, like I said earlier, it excludes non-members. People who have blogs already don't really want to sign up to another blogging service just so they can comment. If I didn't have a Google account already, I probably wouldn't even bother reading blogs hosted on Blogger.
I have my name, my email address, and my website URL. Surely that should be enough? I have difficulties commenting on others' blogs as it is, and I'm not going to jump through hoops just so I can leave a comment.
Originally published at rammi.glomp.me. You can comment here or there.
Thanks to Mr. Wang from MT, last week I received a package of masking tape samples which are limited editions only to be sold in their very own new shop near Waseda University in Tokyo.
Kamoi's beautiful washi paper made masking tapes are getting so popular, many end user inspiration just keep coming in as evident from MT's web site. These new patterns and sizes you see here gives a hint about MT's development, more applications built-in to the tapes, like labels, wallpaper, wrapping paper and Xmas versions.
Check out MT's blog and you'll see how the shop looks like, can't wait to be there next year. If you can imagine it, Kamoi can make it, so don't be shy to send mail to them to suggest new product ideas.
I hate waste. Wasted food, wasted resources, wasted time; all these things lead to a very annoyed Rammi.
Even if I'm full up, and feel as if I can't eat any more, whenever someone is about to throw perfectly good food away, I am always tempted to take it from them. And sometimes I do. I'm not greedy, but I just hate seeing something that could easily be salvaged go into the bin.
People in third world countries are starving, and yet some people still think it's OK to throw away half their lunch because they "just didn't feel like it after all". I'm the type who is very particular about the stuff I leave behind. I squeeze and squeeze a ketchup packet until there's nothing left, and when tipping a soft drink can into a cup, will tap and tap until I'm satisfied that all the last drops have come out.
I'm the same with everything else too. It's not just food that annoys me. If there's a tiny bit of paint left in the tube, you can bet anything that I will be the one to spend 20 minutes trying to get it out. I will cut open a toothpaste tube when most of it is gone to try and get the last bits in the tube, and will attempt to use every single inch of paper that I get. Aerosol cans? I press and press until nothing - and I mean nothing - but air comes out. None of this throwing away when it begins to splutter nonsense for me.
People who throw away money also deserve a slap, in my opinion. I've walked alongside people who, after coming out of a 99p shop, will casually throw away their pennies. Statistics have shown that every year, people throw away millions on the streets. Why would anyone waste their money like this?
In the scheme of things, a penny isn't a lot. But when people who frequently throw loose change away calculate how much money they've thrown away, it can add up to quite a lot of money.
Wasted time also irks me. I hate being late (although I sometimes often am), and will often get quite angry at friends who leave me hanging. I know some people don't mind lateness at all, but if a friend I'm meeting up with is an hour late, that's an hour I could have spent at home in bed, or doing something equally as worthwhile. >.>
I don't know where my obsession with saving comes from (besides from not really having enough money to buy all the things I want to buy). It certainly doesn't come from my mother or grandmother. My family are the type to leave everything where it is if they don't like it, and will frequently throw good food away when they feel that they don't want it any more - my grandma is a prime example of this. This makes for awkward mealtimes, when I insist that they at least finish some of their food (one mouthful of a meal they just made isn't good enough), then get tired of arguing and eat it myself, whereupon I am rebuked for being greedy. It's a no-win situation.
Frugalness isn't an admirable trait to have when you live in a developed country, where practically everyone wastes what they have without even thinking about it. I know I can get quite obsessive over this, but it's difficult not to be. I would be able to understand throwing things away if people at least made an attempt to use them, but when they don't even make an effort, why should I bother trying to understand?
If I ever get the chance to be a parent, I wonder what I will be like. I hope I'm not one of those parents who forces their kids to eat all their greens and clear their plates even if they don't want to, but I can see myself heading that way already. ^_^
Originally published at rammi.glomp.me. You can comment here or there.
