Junior MasterChef Australia

One of my favourite shows!

These kids’ culinary skills could put some adults to shame. It is a good quality programme that kids should watch.

I always felt that a cooking competition is healthier than taking part in a karaoke or beauty contest.

Boulder's Spinach & Artichoke Chips

I saw this brand of chips going on sales at the Cold Storage.

The Boulder Canyon's Kettle Cooked Potato Chips cost $3.60 per pack.

I was quite intrigued by the Spinach and Artichoke flavour and so bought it to try. It is not very often that we see chips flavoured solely with vegetables. Spinach I know had a bitter taste that normally existed in vegetables,  but what does an artichoke taste like? I never had that before.

When first popped open the packet, one will get an almost familiar smell. I am sure I smell it somewhere, but wasn't quite sure what it was.

The chips were cut in good size. They are cut just like any kettle-cooked chips should be. For those who never had kettled-cooked chips, they are thicker than Jack and Jills' wafer thin chips.

It has a nice colour - beautiful golden brown and a good crunch too.

Upon the first bite, the strangely familiar taste finally hit a match in my taste database.

The chips smell and taste as though it was flavoured with pepper and a hint of basil.

I don't really taste the spinach though and I also wasn't sure if that is how artichoke should taste like.

In fact, it was quite salty after a few chips more.

Verdict: Can try a packet if you are curious, but it wouldn't be on my buy-list again.

If I were Warhol – Ayam Brand Sardines

Attention, Pop art lovers! Marina Bay Sands’ ArtScience Museum is bringing in Andy Warhol artwork to Singapore.

The exhibition titled Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal features over 260 paintings, drawings, sculptures, film and video. Well, no sure whether I should go or not as no photography or videography allowed.

On a side note, I read that a Singaporean visual artist Jahan Loh painted a tongue-in-cheek version of Warhol’s famous Campbell Soup can - The Luncheon Meat Can. His painting will also go on display.

He told ChannelNewsAsia that:

"I chose a very common reference point which is canned food. It's clearly a tongue in cheek poke at Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup, but contextualised within our Singaporean, Asian context. Certain similarities are deliberate, but other things are very different if you look carefully. I think maybe Andy Warhol would have painted luncheon meat if he'd tasted it."

Well, I thought I can create digital version of tongue-in-cheek Warhol’s can painting too. I dedicate the following graphics to my Mum. It is her favourite can food – The Ayam Brand Sardines.

It’s quite interesting isn’t it? Maybe I will start doing a series of Warhol’s Can Photosophize style.

Well, here is episode one – The Ayam Brand Sardines can.

Press release here: http://www.marinabaysands.com/Singapore-Museum/Whats-On/

The Book of the Dead: Lives of the Justly Famous and the Undeservedly Obscure

I am currently reading this book - The Book of the Dead: Lives of the Justly Famous and the Undeservedly Obscure.

After hanging around in the digital age long enough, I find that my attention span is getting shorter and shorter. It's more difficult to finish a novel nowadays. I almost never did manage to finish any book in recent years.

In fact, the last book that I managed to finish reading and in about three days was the last sequel of the Harry Potter series. I wouldn't be surprised if someone had told me that Ms JK Rowling had cast a magic spell on it and that why we are all hooked reading it.

Anyway because of my shorter attention span, I would chose books with many little stories instead to keep me interested. And the book of the dead is one of such books.

It's a compilation of short life stories of many famous "dead" historic figures like Christopher Anderson, Sigmund Freud, Leonardo Da Vinci to some people whom you might have heard of but not really know much about them like Mrs Mao Ze Dong for example.

So, these famous people were first grouped into thematic chapters like "Bad Start in Life" and "Happy Go Lucky", as if to suggest why they were the person they were. Then every person's life story is summarised into a few pages. Most of the information that you should know or didn't know about the person is highlighted. Then they elaborated only the more interesting bits of their lives in slightly longer paragraphs.

I find it quite interesting and enriching. I could read the life stories of a couple of people then put the book aside when I get bored. After a few days, then pick it up again without feeling missing out on something. The content quite easy to digest as well, almost like reading a tabloid but with historical facts and backing in it.

The authors, John Mitchinson and John Lloyd apparently had a series of books under similar theme – I bet you didn’t know about this. Maybe when I finish the book, I will buy the rest of their series. I quite like this one : The Book of Animal Ignorance: Everything you think you know is wrong.

Read more from Google Books review:

• The Book of the Dead: Lives of the Justly Famous and the Undeservedly Obscure
• The Book of Animal Ignorance: Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong

Photosophize is now a Dot Com!

Cheers, everyone! Photosophize is now a Dot Com!

For the past two years, I haven’t been spending much time on Photosophize. Studies and work took up a lot of my time that I didn’t even check the email.

My apologies to Andra Leo. She had wrote in sometime last year to ask whether she can use one of my photos for her magazine but I didn’t manage to reply in time. I felt very flattered that my photo was considered in the first place. If there is another opportunity, I will provide you with the photo you needed, Andra.

And there is another email from Renee asking whether I would like to review a book about Ophichus. Wow, but I am not very sure whether I can do a good job reviewing books. I haven’t done reviews before. I must stress that I am not a professional astrologist. I am just a curious girl who likes to read about interesting stuff.

Besides, my English command is still quite bad. I sometimes just don’t know what is wrong with my grammar even though I read my writing many times over. I guessed this is what happen when you study in a Chinese school without a good English foundation.

I am back on blogosphere and maybe for good. I will review the content, returning Photosophize back to its root – about photos and things that people do not usually notice. I will also take more photos of Singapore, my beloved home.

Food reviews and recipes has been one of the most popular reads on this blog. But I am in serious dilemma on whether to still put up food recipes or reviews on this blog or to move them to a new blog.

If you have been a long-time reader of Photosophize, do write in and tell me which section interests you the most. I do check my email daily now.

Have a joyful Monday, everyone!

Going serious with Nikon DSLR D5100!

I scored a really good deal at the recently ended IT show - I bought a DSLR camera finally!

I have to stress that I have not received any endorsement fees from any companies. I paid for the camera myself and these are just my personal opinions.

I did some research on which brand of camera to buy previously. There aren’t many choices for DSLR camera really and most people I know will only consider two brands.

In the end, I chose Nikon because they gave me a deal I couldn’t resist. Come on, Nikon basically gave buyers a full kit with any DSLR camera purchased. Best of all, they didn’t even need to advertise separately about the user guide as it came included with every purchase of camera as it rightly should!

The D5100 camera comes with a REAL 20 liters dry cabinet, a lowepro bag, a Manfrotto Velos 3 backpack, two 16 gb SD card, a full-size tripod, cleaning kit and card reader! How to top that?

They basically outdone themselves this time round. I remembered few years back they weren’t even participating in the IT show.

Anyway, I am very impressed and thankful to Nikon for offering such a good deal. Their generosity save a beginner like me a lot of trouble and money from having to buy these items separately from other vendors.

One tip for people who might want to buy stuff from the IT show but not sure how to do it – I usually prefer to buy directly from the manufacturers themselves – for example buy Nikon cameras from Nikon booth, Dell computers from Dell booth for example.

At these large IT shows, manufacturers will group several vendors together and make one-off deals which only varies from day to day. The manufacturers themselves called the shots and hold the lines on what freebies to give. This gave consumers some assurance, I feel.

With the new camera, I am going to re-organise my blog and start to express my thoughts through photos. I think I have whine enough during this two and a half years. It is time to start observing the world again and see more! 

Stay tune!

What makes us human then?

This incident almost slips off my mind until I was reminded of it recently. It happened during the Lunar New Year holidays. 

I had wanted to get papers from the near-by 7/11 when I saw a few stray dogs roaming around the neighbourhood.

They all appeared thin and bony and they were poking around. I had the feeling that they were looking for food.

I didn’t pay much attention to them and continued my journey.

At the shop, my conscience was pricking. We were so well-fed during this festive season, to the point of overeating but these poor stray animals were hungry to the bones.

I couldn’t bear the thought and so went on to buy them some food.

Not sure why, but that particular 7/11 didn’t stock up pet food. The next best meaty canned food was spam.

I know, I know. Spam is salty and they aren’t good for dogs. But I rather see them full than being hungry for the rest of the night. And a can of spam aren’t cheap either. It came from Dutch and cost a whopping $6.

To reduce the saltiness and to bulk up the food, I bought some bread and milk to feed them.

It feels almost like a picnic when I sat down at the bench laying out all the food stuff.

I did sacrifice a lot for doing this. You never know how many dirty looks and murmurs I had to endure when people walked past me.  Who can blame them? I also think I looked like a freaking lunatic who is trying to stuff self silly with bread and spam in the middle of the night.

And if I didn’t mention, I had a phobia of dogs since young. I get very nervous and panicky when a dog comes near me. This feeding dog operation wasn’t really easy for me. 

Armed with a pair of wooden chopstick and big cups, I mixed the expensive spam, milk and bread to form a comforting mushy paste.

I carefully place the mash on a near-by grass patch and retreated to a safe distance to observe them.

Minutes later, one of the dogs came by. It moved faster and faster as the nose picked up on the savoury meaty scent. I was so excited when it finally found the food.

The dog smells a bit more and took a few bites. To my surprise, it flee off immediately after those few bites.

I was quite sad, thinking what is wrong with the food.

Isn’t it hungry at all?

Just as I was puzzling away, the dog came back and this time round with a companion.

It had then became clear to me.

The first dog had ran off to alert its partner about the food! It even let the partner eat first, while it waited hungrily at the side. The other one took a few bites, then moved back to allow his partner to take a few bites as well.

I was so touched at that moment looking at them.

All these while, science has taught us that human is human because we have compassion and humanity, but animals don’t.

At that point, I am not sure if this is still true.

I have seen a lot of times of how animals have more compassion and humanity than humans.

From body language and everything, you wouldn’t see a fake thought or feeling from them. They are always genuine and they treated others like so.

And then you looked at how we communicate with our own species. We are supposedly more superior than the animals. We have our own languages and some of us bilingual even but it is so hard to communicate clearly with one another. Worse, people lie literately and sometimes undermining others as if the other party couldn’t tell apart…

That is why it is in fact easier to “communicate” with animals than with humans, I sometimes find.

So what makes us human then?

I think we should take a good moment to ponder over it. Who know, it may be time to redefine humanity or find out what lacks of it.

Adele - Someone like you (Live in her home)

Woh, I wish I could sing live like Adele does. Freaking good voice.

She represents hope to plus size people out there. Please also note our talent, not just our size. Big girls can be beautiful too. I hope fashion houses will do more plus size clothing because of her fame. 

I brought myself a AT2020 last year and I want to start record my singing vocal. I like to think that I have a pretty good voice.

Maybe I will be famous one day and I will record this song.