The first entirely non-instant meal I cooked in Oxford

So I've been here in Oxford for close to three weeks now. The city is absolutely beautiful, the work load is ridiculously heavy, but this post isn't about either topic.

For the past two year in NY, I've not really cooked since I had a meal plan package that was provided for with my financial aid. But alas, here, no more free meals, which meant that either I could eat out daily (incidentally, prices here are not out of this world - they're expensive definitely, but no more than in NY, I think. But the difference is that American portions are gigantic, so you can either stuff yourself or tar-pau for the next day. Here, it's back to regular portions. :( ), or I could attempt to save money by cooking.

So I've been doing the whole cooking thing with regularity thus far, with a caveat. Everything I had cooked began with something instant - it was always instant noodles, instant Maggi porridge (which travelled the distance with me), or pasta with instant sauce. To be fair, I'd add lots of fresh veg to those so they were sorta healthy meals. But yesterday, I finally cooked a meal entirely from scratch! I cooked rice (without a rice cooker!), boiled bak choy (damn expensive. 1.83 pounds for TWO large stalks. lol) and fried some chicken breast (method: some olive oil, throw in different herbs shit like oregano, paprika, mixed herbs, ground black pepper, soy sauce, and just fry. lol).

Result:
Voila rice with chicken (I don't know what to describe the style/flavour, lol), bak choy with oyster sauce and fresh tomatoes.

Ok, so the rice was a bit soggy (again - without rice cooker!) and the chicken could be more tender (decided to err on the side of let's not get bird flu or some shit by undercooking it). But I'm proud of it! yay~

Oh, and I cooked extra rice and saved it for the next day where I made fried rice! Apparently, you have to use overnight rice cause it's drier or something. I fried it with tomatoes, sausages and egg. 'Twas edible, if I may say so!

Hopefully, there'll be future editions of Sterling's culinary adventures in Oxford! (Sneak preview: I did bring over chicken rice paste, nasi briyani paste from SG...)

Spring Break 2009

Ok, this is more than a little late (in part due to multiple issues with Blogger), but I figured I ought to blog about my spring break this year, for posterity's sake if anything.

I spent Spring break this year on a week-long trip to Washington, D.C and Philadelphia, the former of which I enjoyed very much because of the numerous free museums and government buildings/historical monuments that I visited, including

Unfortunately, to actually tour the White House, one has to sign up six months in advance apparently. And, for foreigners, we need to approval from our embassy as well. What a hassle. I'll wait for my invitation someday. :P

Fortunately, gaining access to Capitol Hill proved tedious, but not impossible, so we managed to visit the US Capitol, the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court.

Tatiana and I in front of the huge Capitol building (which houses the legislative branch of the US government).

Zoomed-in shot of the Capitol dome from inside the building.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office that we walked past! (Ms. Pelosi, stay strong on the healthcare public option!)

Statues of congressmen, such as this one, are placed in the touristy section of the building (the only parts we were allowed access to.)

Next up is the Library of Congress, which is linked via underpass to the Capitol. It houses the largest book collection in the world, including

The Gutenberg Bible

Tati and I inside the Library. We didn't actually step into the area where the books are held (though it is possible to).

Next up is the US Supreme Court. At this point, I just want to note that though these buildings are near each other, a lot of walking has to be done to get from one to another!

The Court looking like some Greek temple, its columns regal.

Obligatory posing inside the building. The Court was in recess at that point, so there wasn't a chance of us attending a hearing, but we learned from the tour that there is a basketball court above the court!

Ok, a change of scenery as we head to the outdoors...

for some street-style horse racing (or rather, it was a St. Paddie's Day parade)

C'est moi (unrotated) in front of the Washington Monument.

This is a view from up inside the Monument. What you see is the National Mall (I know right, not quite Ion Orchard), which is a huge-ass park with govt buildings/museums lined on either side and at the end, the Capitol.

Another view from inside the monument. If you caught President Obama's inauguration this year, then you might find this pic familiar. This is the reflecting pool leading up to the Lincoln Memorial where Obama was sworn in as president. I guess they only fill it up with water when there's an event? So yeah, not so picturesque like this.

Up close with the larger than life Lincoln at his memorial.

So, Lincoln aside, guess which are the other two great American presidents to be memorialised?

One is of course first president, George Washington.

The other is war president and New Deal founder Franklin Roosevelt, here pictured with his beloved, iconic pooch.

Leaving history aside, here're some non-monumental shots of D.C.

A cavernous D.C metro station.

A row of buildings right opposite the White House. Prime real estate. Most of downtown D.C. looks like this - historical-looking buildings that have obviously been spruced up, which makes everything look v. nice and pretty, but also makes it look artificial. You need some dirt/grime for authenticity, least that's how I feel.

D.C's Chinatown, which, unlike say Manhattan's that is located in an untrendy area, is situated right in the heart of downtown D.C.

Team Obama/Biden do their part to boost the sagging economy. I wonder if Bush/Cheney merch sold as well.

Like I said, museums were a big part of my travel itinerary. One that left a great impression was the Holocaust Museum, where of course I did not really take any pics. Then, there was the Museum of American History...

where we all got to be POTUS.

Diorama with history, I think.

V. cool vintage war propaganda posters.

Dumbo's an integral part of American history, yo.

Posing in front of the 'Berlin Wall'.

Next up, some cool-looking stuff from the Air & Space Museum.



Ok, I'm tired of uploading pics, so I shall end with a shot of us attempting to pose all *nonchalantly* in some Louvre-like structure outside the National Gallery.

Keep it mind that though it was 'spring', it was pretty darn cold!

Bill and George say goodbye!

Part II of this post will be the trip to Philly, but from past experience (last Spring Break, where I blogged a Pt. 1 about my visit to Boston, but was too lazy to blog about Montreal/Quebec), said post is unlikely to happen.

Prescient statement from a great POTUS

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals. We know now that it is bad economics.”

Frankin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression, on enacting the New Deal.

Hear, hear!

Political Orientation, circa 2009

Did this quiz on political orientation on this website, PoliticalCompass.org. Turns out I'm pretty much as far left as one can get without being a commie, and quite a libertarian to boot.

Basically, the X-axis represents the economic spectrum (from pure communism on the left to pure neo-liberalism on the right) while the Y-axis represents the social spectrum (from totalitarianism/facism on the top to revolutionary anarchism at the bottom). What this quiz does well is that it clarifies the sometimes vague labels of "Left" or "Right" that we associate with people. For example, as the website explains, Stalin and Hitler were both all about totalitarian police states, putting them at the top of the Y-axis, but the former, obviously, was a Communist whereas the latter did believe in markets. So dictators both were, but on opposite ends of the economic ideological spectrum.

As of August 2009 then, I'm your typical bleeding heart liberal. But that's probably because I haven't entered the working world yet. Perhaps when I have to start dealing with taxes and money issues in general, I'll start moving towards the right. We'll see!

You can find out where you stand by taking a test here -->http://www.politicalcompass.org/. It's a bit US-centric, but still very relevant, I think. If you've never really given much thought as to what you think about certain issues and where you stand ideologically, take the test (won't take long) and who knows, you might be surprised with the result!

Served up!

Yay, went to the school website a while back and saw these pics of me in action playing competitive tennis! So yeah, I have on the SLC tennis team the past two years. We're obviously not Div I or anything remotely in the same region, so it's pretty non-competitive and fun.

It's also been crazy playing tennis on early spring nights where it can go as low as 6degC! Thankfully, tennis practice is a really laid-back affair, unlike soccer practice, which is the total opposite. The coolest part of being on the tennis team is that we get to play our conference finals at Flushing Meadows! No playing on the show courts obvously, but still, it's a fun experience.

Mid-air while serving. Good clearance, I must say!

Completing the serve motion, up and over. I think serving's the only thing which, despite my lack of proper tennis training, is pretty orthodox and correct. The rest is all a bit japalang.

Hitting a forehand. Bad positioning here, for any would-be player reading, because I'm backing away from the ball, rather than stepping forward to receive it (see how my left leg is behind my right. It should be about even instead)
That's the really really small team we have. From left, that's Coach Hassan , Vaughn, moi, Adam, Ben (who are brothers), and Eelum. Hassan was also the soccer team's coach. He's a really cool guy. He was a lawyer, but left the practice to become involved in coaching instead. Vaughn's NYC born and bred, Adam and Ben were German-born, but live in NY now too. And Eelum's int'l too, from Nepal. And that's my mini-intro of my team mates. No idea why I felt the need to do that.

Too bad there aren't many pics of the soccer team, and of the ones that were taken, I'm not in them. :( lol.

Raccoon City-esque

I almost missed my connecting flight to Singapore, thanks to the delay in the flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo. And then, there was the OTT flu screening at Narita. Before passengers are allowed to deplane, health authorities board each plane to screen passengers for signs for fever, etc. We had to fill out forms that make it possible for them to do contact-tracing as well. The entire process took friggin' 45 min, and meant I left the plane already past my scheduled flight time to SG. Thankfully, the latter flight waited for those of use stuck.
Imagine a bunch of workers all dressed up like that coming up the plane. As if we were in some Resident Evil movie or something... The guy is using some thermal scanning device to catch for signs of fever in passengers. Apparently, if so many as one person registers a high temperature, the entire plane is forced to stay behind.

The nice lady who took my health form.

All of us were given these yellow forms that cleared us to go through customs. We were told to wave our forms in the air, because there was apparently some discrepancy between the number of forms handed out and the number of people of the plane. That took a while to resolve. Thankfully, no one on the plane had fever, and we were cleared to leave after this. Pardon the blurred screen -twas my phone screen. But, I think the blurriness adds a certain imagined sense of paranoia, no?

Sheer Genius

Two of the most important goals of United's campaign this year.

Just like that, a star is born.

And this one....what else can you say but 'wow'. It actually takes like 1 sec for the ball to go for foot to goal - that was how long the distance was. Really, Messi has an amazing ability to keep the ball stuck to his feet, but Ronaldo has the overall package and is the best player in the world.