Saturday, July 26, 2003

 
Finally perfect weather! That does not happen too often here. It is a sunshiny day with 24C/76F and 66% humidity, which is one of the lowest I have seen here in a while.

Other than that, I keep being busy creating some websites and try to keep the house in order (which with all my cooking can be tricky sometimes)

Oh, I just noticed that the comment feature is back ... see that little link below each post saying "comment", yes, you can use it to add your 2 cents to my ramblings.

#posted by Peter 2:21 PM

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Thursday, July 24, 2003

 
So .. I had this idea to make cheesecake ... hopped online for a recipe and found this .. too bad I cannot do my mom's recipe as I cannot get quark here (That is some european white cheesy/ creamy stuff)

Anyways .. I totally misread the recipe .. I thought it was 4 eggs (right) and a 8 oz. pack of cream cheese (wrong) .. it is more like 4 packs of 8 oz ... well. At least this is what Philadelphia, as the main producer of cream cheese, wants us to believe!!!

I was surprised as to how liquid the mix was, at that moment I realized I did something wrong...but it turned out surprisingly nice .. not super cheesy in flavor .. but very yummy ..

So, learning from that experience, I would now not ever try a 4 pack to 4 egg mix .. more like 2 to 4 ... we will see very soon. Have to try again...

Oh, the crust I used was a pre-made graham cracker crust which I was very happy to have found here at Cost-U-Less. Now if I could only find fresh raspberries !!!


sorry .. weather still the same .. and not much else going on ..


#posted by Peter 2:02 AM

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Wednesday, July 23, 2003

 
what can I say .. more rain .. 21C/71F @ 82% weather .. and not much to report ..

to all those anonymous millionaires out there who keep reading my website .. curious what to get me as a birthday present (which will be on 8/17)

Here some cool ideas (besides a nice japanese cellphone with camera, which will not work here anyway)

• a spanking new Sony Clie, though it only runs a windows OS and I have never been a big fan of handhelds .. but you never know .. maybe it can run movies ... speaking of which:
  
• Now THIS little thing would be swell .. but seems it will not be ready for birthday, rather for xmas ..
  
• But now THIS firewire hub in shape of a godzilla is surely a must have !!! yeah !!!
  

well .. unless there is not a new bigger iPod around the corner ... or some cool 10" G4 powerbook .. or .. ah well .. just some rambling on a rainy day :)

I just love tech toys :)

#posted by Peter 3:15 PM

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Tuesday, July 22, 2003

 
Rain, rain, rain .. and some more rain ... 21C / 70F at 75% humidity ... cozy weather ... not much to report ... was working on a favorite salad of mine, vietnamese beef on green papaya ... the green papaya we have in the garden, and I got the peanut, lime, fish sauce dressing about right ... but the marinade recipe for the beef (which I got from some website made the beef way too salty ... I wonder if I can salvage that ... the salad itself was great ... when in Manhattan make sure to order that one at Saigon Grill (upper east side)

#posted by Peter 3:30 PM

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Monday, July 21, 2003

 
Winter weather here is interesting ... it stayed mainly 22C at 83% humidity, which delivers a very new experience of "cold" .. think "cold sweat" and you get the idea .. you sweat while freezing ... It also rained a lot today .. very cozy, exactly what everybody associates with the Fiji Islands ..

I finished reading "The man in the high castle" by Phillip K Dick .. and I am still very puzzled .. I know that Dick's sci-fi is not the easy-digest kind and I really like the premise of the book ... and the book within a book story ... but it gets too weird at times ... I have read quite a couple of interesting interpretations .. if you really want to stretch it, yes, you can always find a way ... for me it is mainly a very intriguing set up with little or no payback ... I hear that they plan a movie version of this book... if so .. i can imagine 2 scenarios ... Brucknheimer / Bay just use the backdrop idea and do an action flick with lots of 'Splosions ... or M.Night Shyalaman does it !!! :)

Just some totally non Fiji rambling



#posted by Peter 10:32 PM

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Sunday, July 20, 2003

 
We just got back from our 5th trip to Toberua Island, and while rainy, it was again very nice, time seemed to fly ... I already put a little video clip together which I will upload later, and of course pictures ...



This trip was a bit different in some regards: First of all we did this to celebrate (again) our first anniversary and wanted to have a tree planted at "our" bure #9 (which we got again, 5th time in a row) .. and though the people knew about it and even asked again, they never approached us about the planting ... ah well ...

While Saturday was nice, sunday was very rainy, but somewhat cozy.

The dive on was done from an old wooden nutshell boat, instead the new shiny one we got used to, but it was actually a bit more comfortable / spacious.

Ritsu tried to get a massage on Saturday at 4 PM ... at 4:25 PM I went to the office to ask again and got confirmation that someone is still coming ... but that never happened ... so we arranged for a massage on Sunday 10 AM ... sure enough no one came, Ritsu had to go bitch and finally got her massage while I was divining (I very spontaneously decided to join the 10 AM dive boat and had a nice dive, the first without Ritsu in a long time)

The crowd was different, more well paying tourist types, no kids, no weddings, a honeymoon couple ... some very nice people, but some guy knocked down our wine cooler, we lost about 2 glasses out of the bottle ... and besides "sorry" he offered no compensation, so not polite.

Speaking of food .. that again was great:

Friday dinner
prawn mushroom risotto
scotch fillet / crab meat ciche
passionfruit bread pudding

Saturday lunch
chicken / corn soup
fish kebab - peanut sauce / mince meat - sundried tomato - cheese pie slice
ice with passionfruit sauce

Saturday dinner
seafood appetizers (lots of different mussles in coconut cream and spices, even seacucumber)
indoor BBQ: beef, cod, pork, chicken, sausage. Beef was great.
again something with passionfruit and icecream
bottle of 2002 Jacob's Creek Chardonnay

Sunday lunch
crab fritter with red pepper salad
beer battered Kawakawa and a filo filled with veggies (great idea to repack last night's unused veggies:)
angel hair pasta with mushroom cream sauce
icecream with tropical fruit strudel (wrapped in the same filo dough as above)

To bad we had to leave again, this time it really felt very fast that the weekend was over ... at nakelo landing we caught our slightly crazy cab driver and around 5:30 PM we were back home, where a hungry cat was waiting for us.

Here is something fun I had not done since the USA 2001 trip: Panoramic pictures :)
Please click on the pic below to see a really big version ... and soon I will learn how to create QuickTime VR pictures out of those ;)





#posted by Peter 5:50 PM

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