Ta koh

One day a few moths ago my mum came home from town and presented me with a dessert. It was small, a bit smaller than the size of my palm, and round - or maybe it was a bit squarish. It was wrapped in a strip of banana leaf, with two layers; the top, a white layer, salty and coconutty. The bottom was light green and jelly-ish with pieces of water chestnut. The dessert was so delicious that I only had half at first, and put the other half in the fridge for later.

Yesterday, we bought some more. I had one then, and I've just finished another one. I've also just realised that the dessert is called Ta ko. I think Ko might be like the Malay word, "Kuih," which means, "Sweetmeat." The Ta ko I've just had wasn't like the previous ones, because it had sweetcorn and rice instead of water chestnut. It was nice, interesting, but not as nice as the other ones.

Because it had pandan flavour, the ta koh reminded me a bit of a Malaysian dessert that I like making, called, "kuih chara" except that kuih chara is nicer.

I home-school - why don't people get it? Part 3

Okay, so there was this woman (I'll call her woman number 1 because I don't like saying people's names on my blog) who introduced me to this other woman (Woman number two - haha sounds a bit like she needs the toilet.) So anyway, as she was introducing me, she just haaaaaad to tell woman no. 2 that I was home-schooled - and she said it just after she said my name, like it was part of my name, like it was essential for woman no. 2 to know. Then, you know what woman number two said? She said, "Ah, that's interesting - is it legal?" You know, she actually seemed like a clever person, not the kind of person who would ask that. Usually it's just kids and not-so-intelligent adults who ask whether it's legal, but this woman seemed above asking it, so I was really surprised when she did. I answered,
"Yeah" with a rising internation to show that of course it was legal. Unfortunately, the internation was not rising enough, so I don't think I got my point (Which was, "Duh") across well enough. 

Anyway, you won't believe what she said next: "Ooh, I hope she's qualified." So, you know what I did? I totally forgot to give a snappy answer, which I'd planned to do if people were rude or stupid about home-schooling. I replied,
"No, you you don't have to be qualified to teach your children at home." Thankfully, I didn't say it sweetly with a smile, but not so thankfully, I didn't snap at her.

Then she went on to ask the usual annoying questions e.g. "What about uni?", "What about examinations?" etc.

Next time I shall try harder to be snappy.

Here are links to the other parts of this:
Part 1

Chocolate milkshake

Today we had some cream in the fridge that was near its due date, so I decided to made it into a milk shake. I love making milkshakes because they're so easy, you can make the recipe up as you go along and you don't need lots of ingredients.

To make it, I just mixed hot chocolate powder with milk, cream, soya milk, maple syrup, crushed ice cubes and vanilla essence using the blender. I whizzed until smooth and frothy, then poured it into two glasses and sprinkled chopped banana on top. If you want to make this, you don't have to worry about quantities; just add the ingredients to your taste.

I wrote this post quite a while ago. I didn't publish it because I thought I would attach a photo, but I don't think I'll find the photo, so I'll just publish it. Hope that makes sense. The photo was really good, but now you'll just have to imagine what the milkshake looks like...

Art!

Last night I stayed up doing art journaling. As I have said in an earlier post, I have a mixed media art journal. That's the one I was doing last night. At first, there was just a kind of bad sketch of a book, but that soon got covered up in red, yellow and purple acrylic paint. Then I added some gesso on top (Which is meant to be used to prime a page) using the dry brush technique. The dry brush technique is, like its name states, a technique in which you don't use any water; just paint. Even then, you don't put a lot of paint on the page - it's meant to look a bit messy and of course, dry. I also stuck on some photo copies of those things that you used to have to display in your car - they're these small circular pieces of paper that you had to put in a transparent pouch in your front window. I don't know what they're called! Then I stuck on some chocolate wrappers, and a picture my sister drew - and coloured everything in. This morning I carried on.

Yesterday, I also did a fashion drawing in my new fashion book. My mum bought the book for me a few days ago when we went to a shop called, "Cass Art." Today I'll do another drawing in it.

Today I finished this sketch that I started a few weeks ago. It was of a sculpture my mum made in her art class that she used to attend. Before, when I'd started it, I used a graphite pencil, but today I carried on with a piece of compressed charcoal, because you can be freer with it.

I am carrying on with art...

LIBERTY scarves

My mother and I wanted to show a guest of ours a shop called Liberty. Liberty is a well known british brand that is sells scarves made by famous designers. The style is very distinctive; flowery, colourful and flowing. The shop doesn't just sell scarves, but they were the thing that caught my attention.

When we stepped in, I saw that there were scarves everywhere (All really bright and busy); hanging from the walls, in baskets, hanging from pillars. Some of them were in large metal baskets with the names of their designers above them.

Photo of a Liberty scarf (taken from www. weebirdy.com)

Everything inside the shop was really expensive; small bandanas cost 65 - 95 pounds, scarves even more. There were some cool hats as well - I didn't see the price tags, but I'm guessing they had way higher numbers than 65 or 95 on them. Most of the people in Liberty looked like they weren't going to buy anything; they were just touching and trying things on - I'm not surprised; I have seen much more expensive things in my life, but they weren't little scarves.

Surprisingly, chocolates in the shop were much more modestly priced (Relatively). They were good quality chocolates, too, and some of them were Rococco (My favourite brand). I wouldn't mind spending some of my money on those.

There was a part of the shop that just sold stationary, but it wasn't as interesting as the other parts. Some things were a bit cool; I preferred the scarves.

By looking on the official website, I found some ways to style the scarves. Obviously, you don't need a Liberty branded scarf to do these styles, so I'm going to try with my scarves at home.

Here is the page with the videos: http://www.liberty.co.uk/liberty-tv-scarf-styling-1/article/fcp-content

I noticed that one of the styles (The plait) is very similar to a way that I sometimes do one of my scarves at home, but I'm still going to try it out.

Why do people lke being called, "Geeks" and, "Nerds"?

I really don't get why people like being called, "Geeks" and "Nerds." I thought it was really uncool, but now lots of clothes in shops have, "Geek" or "Nerd" printed across them in large letters. How come it's suddenly become "cool" to be called one? It's just strange. Maybe it's because people like to be specialised in some area, and recognised for it. Being specialised in something gives you an identity, and that's cool. So because being a geek means you're specialised in something, it automatically makes you cool. Or perhaps being a geek makes you cool, because geeks are supposed to be good with computers; being good with computers means you can hack into things and download things illegally, easily; hacking into things is rebellious; being rebellious is supposed to be cool.

Maybe being a nerd is cool because nerds got upset that they weren't cool. And people felt sorry for nerds because they thought nerds weren't cool. So everybody set about trying to reverse it. They reversed it so well that now being a nerd is, "Cool." Or maybe, like with geeks, it's the identity thing.

Despite it now being,"Cool" to be a geek or a nerd, there is no way I would like to be one. I still think it's uncool. Maybe I'm just, "Old fashioned," and in a few years I'll be like those people who think it's cool. Or perhaps, because fashion goes in waves, next year it won't be trendy any more. I guess we'll just have to see...

Cross-stitch

Like, ages ago I wrote in a post that I was working on a cross-stitch, and that I would update my blog about it.... I am aware that I never did do that update... The reason why I didn't do it, was because I wasn't doing my cross-stitch - and the reason I wasn't doing the cross-stitch, was because I just couldn't get round to doing it!!! I left it for about a year, but today, I finally managed to do a bit more of it - YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I WOULD upload a picture - but my mum is using her iphone now, so I can't take one and upload it...

;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(  ;-(

But I shall try soon...