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The End is Nearer

10 Mar

You know how apps are automatically updated? Of course this is if the device is set up for it to do so. Over one mid-December weekend, something unusual happened with my iPad Mini. It was updating Candy Crush Saga in the background whilst I was playing the Soda version.

Suddenly the game quit unexpectedly and a black screen with the Apple logo appeared. Uh oh. Then the next thing I knew, the Candy Crush Saga app disappeared! Is this a sign that the end is nearer for the iPad Mini?

I had to do a complete shut down, wait ten seconds then switched on the device again before the app appeared. Haish… why do this to me?

Seriously methinks the Mini wants to retire for good.

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Friday the 13th

9 Mar

A day before the ominous Friday the 13th in December last year, my MacBook Air crashed and died. I never saw it coming although there were tell tale signs of instability after installing MacOS Catalina 10.15.1 a few weeks earlier. I caved in and updated because of iTunes and my iPhone XR. To cut a long story short, I had to update the OS in order to have the latest version of iTunes that could sync with the iPhone XR. Otherwise, I could not back up my phone, something that I don’t do that often.

So all was fine and dandy except a few small matters like several of the softwares. The Adobe and Microsoft softwares that I have—essential but not critical—could no longer be used because the versions I have were not supported with the 10.15.1 OS. But since I hardly use those softwares these days and I could back up my iPhone XR, this was all that mattered I rationalized.

On that faithful eve of the ominous day, I had my Skype launched and ready to have the weekly session with M1. Suddenly, the app was acting up and I had to restart the laptop. Several times in fact. A prompt came up and caught my eye – the OS needed to be updated with Catalina 10.15.2.

Reflecting back the several instances of instability and the recent wonky behavior of Skype, I thought perhaps it was best to update the OS. Bad idea, really bad, bad idea.

The laptop could not install the OS and hung several times. A black screen kept appearing with each restart. Uh oh. Even with Global Network Recovery and all the steps I could find online could not save my MacBook! Oh no….

The next day, Friday the 13th I went to Machines, a local authorized Apple reseller to see what could be done. To my dismay, Machines no longer provided support for older devices. Oh no! The apprehension of this ominous day struck.

My 11” MacBook Air is a 2012 model and deemed a vintage device and as such, do not qualify for further technical support. I was advised then to go to a third party repair shop. Do I have a choice at that point?

So off to a third party repair shop I went. Thankfully, these guys fixed the problem (they took a few days though) and I also had all my data recovered for an additional fee. Phew. My MacBook Air is now downgraded to MacOS Sierra 10.12.6 and should remain at this version for optimum performance.

But less than a month after that, the laptop acted up again resulting in the decision to do a total reformat. This was after backing up all the recovered data to an external drive. So so problematic.

While updates are good, it does not necessarily add value to older devices. One should be cautious before doing so, otherwise be prepared for some stress of losing data and then a little hole in the pocket to fix the damage and retrieve the precious.

Hopefully nothing disastrous will happen to my laptop on this ominous date this coming Friday. And I have since been backing up my iPhone XR on iCloud.

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Maybe I Can Bake, Part 2

2 Mar

The baking bug seems to have gotten me. After the success of the carrot cake, I itched to bake again! And so I did. This time I picked up two boxes! A the Zesty Orange Cake Mix and a Banana Honey Muffin for various reasons.

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Green’s baking mixes make you look good in the kitchen!

The main reason being I had leftover milk and butter from the last baking episode. They are food that I don’t usually consume, so baking was the only option to use them up.

Reason number two: the brand’s website showed an orange cake with poppyseeds choice but our regular grocer did not have this, only the one sans poppyseeds. And because I love poppyseeds—I used to eat poppyseed bagels whenever I could when I was living in New York City dinosaur years ago—I went out of the way to buy a pack of poppyseeds to add to the orange mix. Clever, ain’t I?

Reason number three: I actually have a muffin tray. Yeah… I know, for someone who doesn’t bake, my baking gadgets seems to be quite comprehensive. Previously, the tray was used to make mini quiches for M2 to bring to school. But now with her being away in college, the tray has not been used.

Back to my baking novelty, this time I was super efficient and needless to say, the Orange Cake was simply delicious as it now comes with poppyseeds. Next week, muffins! With poppyseeds as well.

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I skipped the icing topping and the cake is just right with a slight crunch of the poppyseeds

I must attribute the baking success to the brand, Green’s Baking of Australia and not so much of my skills in the kitchen. It’s the mix that makes me look good and feel good. Forget the 16/8 diet for the time being until this baking novelty wears off.

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Maybe I Can Bake

24 Feb

I gave up the idea of baking with my Kenwood Rapid Bake but not baking itself. So another box of cake mix I bought and another attempt.

This time, I opted for a carrot cake that comes with icing! An improvement because there’s another step involved instead of just adding eggs, milk and butter to the cake.

The cake itself was easy – this time, an egg with water and oil instead of milk and butter to add to the mix. And for someone who doesn’t bake a lot, if not at all, I have a fair bit of baking essentials, like the loaf pan that I found. So I didn’t have to use the round pan.

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Top: straight out from the oven; Bottom: drowned with icing

After 40 minutes in the conventional oven, my cake was done! Excited I literally drowned the cake with the icing that was mixed earlier, a separate fun task I must say. Maybe I’m not supposed to drown the cake like this? Hmm… but the overall taste was good, not too sweet and just right.

Maybe I can bake after all if I put my mind to it by using the correct equipment, that is the conventional oven and not a bread maker. Having said that, true baking skills come from doing it from scratch and not from a ready-mix box. What I have attempted the last three times was simply novelty and I’m far from being a pro at baking.

If I truly want to pursue baking to hone my kitchen skills, I should keep trying. But do I really want to? Hubby says we will gain weight from having to eat all the cakes, muffins and what nots. Given that we are still at the 16/8 diet, I think this baking novelty will be short-lived.

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Consistently Inconsistent

21 Feb

Just when I thought golf is fun again, back to using my driver and woods, reality sucks. After the Iron Challenge Tournament on Sunday, I played a game on Tuesday and couldn’t get used to teeing off with the driver.

I have been so in tune with my 4-iron to tee off that switching back to the driver felt so strange. My coordination was off and consistently inconsistent. There were times when I could fly the ball off the tee, the ball would go so very far. But when I couldn’t launch it, the ball would just sputter off the tee to a pathetic 20 or 30 feet in front! Terrible.

As a result of this problem, I lost five balls playing at the Lakes course! What a confidence spoiler. Hopefully this setback is a temporary thing. I need to play more games to get my rhythm again for better golfing days ahead.

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This Is Why I Don’t Bake, Part 2

18 Feb

So I attempted to bake again, on Saturday. And you wouldn’t believe the process of this second attempt. It’s simply incredulous.

I bought the same brand of cake mix but this time Vanilla instead of Butter. Despite this little flavor difference, the ingredients needed were the same – eggs, milk and butter to add to the mix.

Like a pro, I put everything into the pan efficiently and switched on all the buttons and my Kenwood Rapid Bake came alive. It was put to work to churn the ingredients before baking. Oh yay I thought, let’s hope it works this time.

But no, that’s when all the problems started!

It went straight into Mode 1 before I could even select Mode 7 for cake. Then it was user problem because somehow, I couldn’t press the buttons—any button or all the buttons—in a semi-panic state to change the setting. After that it was machine problem as it went into overdrive mixing because it was in the bread making mode. Quite a comedy…

Finally hubby had to help me and he managed to change the setting. By now, the ingredients were thoroughly mixed which was probably good. Or maybe not… I don’t know.

With Mode 7 selected, the machine started another round mixing the ingredients all over again. Gosh! Can a cake mix be over mixed? Suddenly several funny knocking noises could be heard…

The next thing I knew, there was a power outage!!! My Kenwood Rapid Bake in cake mode setting tripped a fuse in the house. Amazing or is it just me being totally hopeless?

As for the thoroughly mixed cake mix, into the round pan again and into the conventional oven again. Thirty minutes later, the Vanilla cake was done but a little bit more crusty on the edges and more brown than the first cake last week. The taste? Quite nice I must admit in spite of all that crazy problems.

A little burnt, a little brown but yummy

If I had known baking with the bread maker can be so hazardous, I wouldn’t even attempt. But will I bake again? Hmm… it’s hard to say because both cakes did turn out okay. It’s the idea of using the bread maker that was problematic.

So if I do want to bake, the easy way of course, I should just bake the conventional way and leave my Kenwood Rapid Bake as an extension of the upper kitchen counter.

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Soldiering On

17 Feb

This year the Iron Challenge Tournament was held early, just over the weekend! And I was the only lady golfer amongst the men in the club soldiering on by myself in the event. I was unperturbed by this fact and thoroughly enjoyed the challenge, held on the less intimidating Hills course.

I should stand proud because I held up well in the field of all men, 16 flights in total and tied for 11th placing with a nett score of two over my handicap! A very good achievement.

I was very focused and basically played my own game without any external distraction. With my red tee box way up front, ahead of the field for all the Par 5s, some of the Par 4s and a couple of the Par 3s, it was certainly advantageous for me. One of my flight mates, however, jokingly lamented that it was unfair because their tee-offs would be just slightly ahead of my tee box and I have yet to tee off.

But hey… how can it be advantageous when the men’s tee boxes are also moved up? Also, it’s not like suddenly, I tee off with a driver. I’m also subjected to using just irons for the competition like the rest of the field. Nonetheless, I brushed his comments aside and focused on my game.

Initially I wasn’t prepared in the weeks running up to the competition, having had problems with my long irons and short game, but I managed to resolve these when it mattered most. And this year, no major blow ups or bunker disasters. And not even a loss ball, a big confidence booster indeed. The only big let down was a sudden loss of focus and I four-putted an easy hole. Hrmph.

The elbow pain was hardly felt because I took a painkiller to suppress it. It worked and helped, but today, it’s throbbing to high heaven, I don’t know why. Sigh… a constant battle with this problem.

So now that the tournament is completed and out of my golfing schedule, I will return to using my driver and woods for all my upcoming golf games.

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The Streak Snapped, Part 2

14 Feb

It was only a matter of time because I’m bored by the mundane commitment. The Candy Crush Soda Daily Bonus on the iPad Mini finally snapped too. Three weeks ago, it snapped on the iPhone XR.

After being at it for 1267 days, I was taken aback when on Wednesday morning, it was back to Day One. Oh… I guess I had forgotten to check in on Tuesday morning.

Oh well. Now that this mindless pursuit is no longer a pursuit, there’s a sense of relief. I had wanted to give up after passing 1200 Days but I kept at it, just to see how long I could go on. Well, it has ended.

So with this end, there’s no more Candy Crush Saga, Soda or Daily Bonus to tie me down mindlessly.

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This is Why I Don’t Bake

11 Feb

I have a Kenwood Rapid Bake machine sitting on my lower kitchen counter and all these years, it’s used more as an extension of the upper counter to put things than to bake. It was a house warming gift when we moved in ages ago rather than a purchase on my part. As I’m really hopeless when it comes to being adept in the kitchen, the appliance hardly saw any action all these years.

Somehow over the weekend–out of the blue–I decided to bake a cake! I don’t know why but there was an unexplainable urge. Not from scratch but to use the machine which I thought was a brilliant idea.

Apparently my bread maker can also bake a cake at setting number seven. So I did some homework to make sure this idea was feasible before I even began.

To make things easy, I bought the easiest box of cake mix that called for just eggs, milk and butter to add to the mix. I can do that, right? Yep.

So Sunday morning was the big bake day! Everything went into the bread maker’s pan and all I had to do was even out all the ingredients and let the machine mix ‘em up and bake. Easy…

But when I put the pan into the machine and switched on the main power before pressing the ON button, nothing happened! Oh no!!! Has the machine kaput? It’s been left unused for so long. Why didn’t I think of testing the machine first before embarking on this ambitious attempt?

As for the mixed ingredients, what a waste if I left it unbaked; so I transferred the mixture into another pan and baked the cake the conventional way. In the oven…

After 30 minutes, the cake was done and it actually turned out pretty good for my first attempt after so long. A little crusty on the edges but moist on the inside.

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The butter cake which turned out good!

Later as I was cleaning the counters, I was mulling over what I should do with my bread maker. Do I still leave it as an extension of the counter or get it fixed? Then when I was putting the cable away, I discovered another power button! Hey… I didn’t see that earlier!

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Somehow I missed this!

I plugged the machine in again, switched on the main power and flipped this newly discovered button and voila, my bread maker came alive! Hahahaha… what a major dork I was.

I simply did not realize there’s a power button hidden behind and thought the worst of my bread maker. Now you know why I don’t bake or fuss around in the kitchen that much. I hardly know my appliances!

But having said that, I think I’d want to bake another cake again just to try the Kenwood Rapid Bake in the cake mode setting number seven.

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New Carving Direction

3 Feb

It’s February already but I must say with the new year and new decade, I thought it’d be good if I embarked on new shapes to carve to expand my collection and ability.

Towards the end of last year, I was debating what I should carve next when my margarita partner sort of decided for me. She was in Japan (last year) and stumbled upon some cute figurines during her travel. And after several exchanges with me on WhatsApp, I decided on this cute little Yew wood piece from Takayama. It’s not cheap, let me tell you.

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My carving/whittling skills have improved tremendously from my first piece to what I am able to do now. But I want to push myself further to do more challenging pieces. So cute little bird will be my mould to try. So stay tuned for the progress on this!

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