kenna

I am so pissed, frustrated and TIRED. I really need a vacation, SOON. I used to write to relieve stress, but it doesn’t help the same way as it does before. BOO!

I will just think about the current weather which is making me feel ok, cold but sunny, please be like this longer.

Yesterday was the last day of Dubai Shopping Festival  (DSF) and since the goal for this year is to save as much as I can I only bought a pair of sunglasses for my collection (ok, so I bought a couple of shoes before but a girl can never have one, two, many shoes).

I got this.

So that leaves me with this year’s Sunglasses wishlist. LOL.

DSF shopping tips

1. I usually find really good deals before DSF starts and after.
2. Check and compare the prices and deals in all stores in the whole mall, and in other malls.
3. When you like it, buy it.
4. Try to ask for more discount (hehe).

Reading in the 20th century is different from what you used to know and it’s not because of e-readers. Nowadays, when you want to read something new, you don’t have to look up the paper, say, New York Book Reviews anymore, well you still can, in fact it’s even more easier now because of the web. But what I really like is, reading became social. There are a lot of communities and places where not only can you track on what you’re reading but places where you can talk to fellow worms about the book you’re reading. I swear on Goodreads by the way.

I love Kindle and I think its newest reader which is the cloud reader is pretty cool. Reading has never been this accessible.

Now comes Reading Mill.

Read Mill is a curious community of readers, highlighting and sharing the books they love.

We believe reading should be an open and easily shareable experience. We built Readmill to help fix the somewhat broken world of ebooks, and create the best reading experience imaginable. Readmill launched in December 2011 with a small dedicated team from all over Europe. We are based in Berlin.

It offers a lot of ways to share highlights and what you’re reading. Patiently waiting for a Kindle Fire app. For now, you can sync the books you’re reading on your Kindle and your highlights with a bookmarklet.

Another really cool thing about Read Mill is that they have Apps and ways to connect to different services/applications like The Book Report, which is a pretty neat timeline of your books.

I think Amazon’s Kindle community is ok, not enough, can improve on a lot of things, but I guess that’s not their focus.

Connect with me on Read Mill through http://readmill.com/kenna and on Amazon Kindle through https://kindle.amazon.com/profile/Kenna/191377.

I don’t know whether to get mad or cry because of this issue I’ve been trying to deal with at work. It surely has been trying to test my patience. And I’m trying my best to be positive about the whole thing not do anything stupid such as be rude or arrogant…

So I’m trying to recover some more of my old posts but I think they’re all really gone by now. I just realized it this morning that I was unable to save all my feeds because I can’t find my tom yum recipe.

Did I tell you that one of my hard drives broke and I lost all pictures taken before August 2011? And all docs and applications as well? Yeah, it really sucks. I’ve reached the point that everything seems to be missing or breaking and making me crazy that I’ve been apathetic about everything (with both of my middle fingers having a boner, I raise my hands and scream, FECKKKKKK) .

Here are some tools and sites where you can learn and try HTML and CSS, for designing your own websites or just for learning something new. This post has been long overdue, sorry Didi.

There are a lot of tutorials and tools in the internet but here are my favorites.

Blogs/Websites

Lissa Explains it All! - This helped me a lot! It’s a site which aims to teach people, especially children, how to make their own websites. I learned almost everything here, the basics.

Don’t Fear the Internet - You can watch short tutorial videos where you’ll learn to manipulate the CSS of a basic wordpress blog, it’s HTML, and PHP.

HTML 5 Rocks - a Google site for everything HTML5

Web Design Ledger - Tutorials, freebies, inspiration on web design.

Smashing Magazine - a site/communicty for web designers and developers, from n00bs to professionals.

Line 25 - Tutorials, freebies, inspiration on web design

CSS Tricks - CSS tricks.

Tools

Cupcake Ipsum - Loren Ipsum generator with a twist.

Border Radius - round corner CSS generator

Tekzr - a coding app

Another good way to know about HTML and CSS is by reading books. A Book Apart “publishes highly detailed and meticulously edited examinations of single topics”.

The three books shown in the picture above are up for grabs until February 15, 2012 at Mensis Liber. Click here to join.

I’m trying to lose weight by watching what I eat and doing cardiovascular activities.

This site is pretty cool. Swole.me is an automatic diet planner.

The meal plan looks pretty easy.

So this is my grocery list for a 7-day meal plan I generated. I’ll start on Wednesday. Fridays will still be cheat day, and looks like, cook something from now on, as well.

Prep and Cook time: about 20 mins
Serving size: 1-3 people

Ingredients:
1 kg of fish, Sherry (or halibut, sea bass)
Ginger (you can make ginger flakes or buy minced ginger)

Salt
2 tablespoon soy sauce (less sodium)
2 tablespoon vinegar or sherry
2 tablespoon of Sesame oil

About four spring onions (half chopped)

Banana leaves/foil to cook the fish with

Directions:
1. Boil water. Rub fish with sea salt and ginger.

2. Using a steamer, the water should be an inch apart from the steamer. Place the banana leaves/foil on top of the steamer, we will cook the fish in it.

3. Place the spring onions and the fish. Season with salt if necessary and add the soy sauce and vinegar.

4. Steam for about 12 mins.

5. Pour out the accumulated water and put the fish in a serving dish. Sprinkle with chopped spring onions. Add more soy sauce (to taste).

6. In a wok or small skillet, heat the sesame oil over medium heat, when it starts to smoke and its hot, pour it over the fish.

7. Serve immediately.

Optional: Prepare sweet corn with eat, or steamed rice.

Prep and Cook time: 15 mins
Serving size: 1-2 salad plates

Ingredients:
Minced Garlic
Brown sugar
Chili Garlic Sauce
Salt and pepper
Fresh lettuce
Basil leaves
Beef steak (sirloin or breakfast, lean beef steak and must be without fat)
Tomatoes
Cucumber
Limes
Olive oil (or Vegetable oil)
Low sodium soy sauce
Fish sauce
Optional: minced ginger

Directions:
1. Marinate the beef steak in lime juice, sea salt, black pepper and some soy sauce for more than four (4) hours or overnight.

2. In a small bowl, prepare the sauce. Mix two (2) tablespoons of chili garlic sauce, a tablespoonful of brown sugar, a teaspoon of minced ginger, 1 lime, freshly squeezed, and four (4) tablespoons of fish sauce.

3. Chop the tomatoes and cucumber and get some basil leaves. Prepare the lettuce and put them all in a salad bowl.

Beautiful organic lettuce!

4. Grill the beef, depends on how you like it.

5. Mix the beef with the vegetables and put the sauce and serve!

Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 30 mins
Total time: 35 mins

Ingredients:
Two cloves of garlic
Salt
Pesto (you can make your own, follow recipe here)
Pasta, Spaghetti
Chicken breast fillet chopped into bite-size pieces
Canned Tuna
Olive oil

Directions:
1. Cook the pasta, add salt to the boiling water.

2. In a pan, sauté the chopped garlic in olive oil.

3. Once the garlic is brown, add the bite-size chicken pieces and make them a bit brown. Season with salt.

4. Add the tuna.

5. Add a tablespoon of pesto and mix.

6. Add the pasta and mix everything.

7. Serve, top with parmesan cheese.

I use Jamie Oliver’s Pesto, which is delicious! You can get it at Choitram’s.