Lamingtons!

I can't believe how much work it was!
Lamingtons are some kind of Australian treats. They are cake cubes, coated in a layer of chocolate icing then desiccated coconut. It took me 2 days and a totally wrecked kitchen and a back pain to make these, but it was worthed. I MADE Lamingtons :D
I also successfully made Tameshk's turkey meatloaf, plus some Magic cookie bars. I've had my share of cooking this thanksgiving weekend, from now on, i'll just sit back and eat:) Btw, this video teaches you how to cut the turkey, in case you need to perform the task tomorrow, i'll again sit back and eat the cut turkey!

Wishes do not wash the dishes* !

Or equivalently, wishes do not pack your stuff:) I have nagged here about how i hate packing before, i remember. And I always end up un-packed, behind my laptop late at night (it's 12:35) when i have to wake up early and hit the road the next morning.
I'm going hiking in Tennessee. I'll post a photo here when i come back. Have a good weekend everyone.

*I heard this sentence from one of my English teachers years ago, and it stuck in my mind. I use it from time to time, but i googled it now and apparently it is not a common expression.

Katie Melua - I Cried for you

(Try this link if you can't open youtube.)

La Boheme

I went to the opera of La Boheme in our Krannert Center today. I don't have a classical music education, but there is something about opera that gets me. The direct exposure to the music that comes not from a man-made instrument, but from flesh and blood. This was actually my second experience of a live opera. The other one was Oedipus a couple of years ago. Although the performers of Oedipus were well known, and La Boheme was produced by the theather department in UIUC, but I liked it better.

The pick of the show for me was in the first act when Rodolfo was telling Mimi of his love for her and she would reply back, all happening under the gentle mist of the moonlight. As their voices went higher and higher I could feel something building in me, like a fire ball of passion that would expands till the point that it wanted to burst out of me, like a crazy flow in my blood vessels that would rise up each second with the music.
What an amazing feeling. What a wonderful performance.

-An economic footnote: Did you know that in 18-19th century the word "Consumption" was used to refer to Tuberculosis!
-A technical footnote: The opera had real time English super-titles. It was much more convinient than looking into booklets as we had to do in Oedipus.

Do you backup?

I went on a trip past couple of day, came back to find my fitness blog is lost. Yes, lost, it says no posts available. I still hopeful that the host fixes this, cause it's not only my blog with this problem, many of my friends there also lost their blog content.

But it would be a tragedy to me if i were to lose my posts here. Does any of you know of an "easy" way to backup a blogger weblog?

Reverse Speech

This  video is really interesting. I ran into it in a
friend's gmail status. It's a part of a TED talk.
You might think the song is tailored to work that
way... it could have, but the idea of Reverse Speech
is that even in the statements we make, there
are words and phrases spoken unconsciously that are
revealed only when our recorded speech is played in
reverse.

A famouse example is Neil Armstrong's "That's one
small step for man" , which in reverse would sound
like "Man will space walk." Read more about it here
and here.I remember in one episode of The Simpsons,
they showed a popular teenagers rock band playing a song
which in reverse would read "Join the Army"!

Post Script: by writing this post i didn't mean that i totally believe or support
this Reverse Speech theory. It was a new thing to me and i found it interesting.
Now whether we speak words unconscionably, is something i look skeptical to as well.