Report From A Cheapskate

If you are a Starbucks regular, then you knew this already.

I got a couple of Starbucks giftcards for free yesterday, so today I decided to enjoy some gourmet fancy coffee. I ordered a Tall vanilla latte, and the price was a whopping $3.50 plus 0.29 sales tax to a great grand total of $3.79. Holy Moly. Thank goodness that was on the house.

Oh My God, Holy Cow

It's snowing.

UPDATE:

More pictures from my backyard.

Yesterday we went to Barnes & Nobles. Harry got his Pikey books and were happy, Alex got yet another Pokemon book, he was happy too. Jin was busy with her PTA fund raising stuff. I read some magazine and some book. I was tempted to buy the Life of Pi ($14) because literatus extraordinaire mentioned that before but I figure chances are I won't be able to finish it so I put it back to its shelf in the end. I hate to buy books just to decorate my bookshelf. I might as well leave it in the bookstore. If I really want to read it, maybe then I can borrow that from the library. I still have one book to finish, which is taking forever. I should have read it when I was between 17 and 27. Anyway that's another story.

I seldom buy any coffee from Starbucks except when I am at B&N, you know when I am surrounded by books and all that, I need some good coffee to just to stay awake. So I ordered an over priced regular coffee. And since I am not familiar with the lingo and English is my second language, the cashier had to show me the cup size, and I resorted to pointing, No, smaller, no, still smaller, smaller; yes, that's the right cup size. I told him I am very happy with that small cup size and anything bigger I can't handle. I am such a cunning linguist sometimes. I asked him what's the official name for that size, he says it's called a Tall. That deserves a WTF right there. You have to be a dwarf to call that a tall. If you show that to any guy who works at McDonald's, he will definitely laughs his rear end off. So my small Tall coffee cost me 1.75 plus .15 tax for a grand total of $1.90. I added some milk, cinnamon and nutmeg. It did taste pretty good. I had some difficulty falling to sleep that night, I don't know if it's because of the gourmet caffeine or because of the $1.90, any astute reader of this blog knows that I am a cheapskate and that $1.90 means a lot to me.

Here are some more pictures I took at my backyard. Okay, my pants are on fire now, only one was taken in my backyard. The rest were like taken in or around Kissena Park which is actually like my backyard.











SELF PITY WHINING
D3 is shipping together with some new nano coated lenses. I am still shooting with my puny D70 with a meager 6MP and some old lenses which I insist are good enough. You know, good enough is never really good.

How I Spent My Saturday

(Or otherwise known as who the f.u.c.k cares.)

I spent about 30 minutes to prepare today's lunch. These are totally home cook dishes by yours truly. Inspired by what I had and saw before. Except baking which I prepare more like science experiments, I usually just cook by estimate.

Shrimps with Scrambled Eggs.
Ingredients:-

• 3 eggs, scrambled, add salt and pepper to taste
• a handful of shrimps, peeled and deveined, roughly diced or served whole
• Some onions, wedged and peeled
• Some chives, chopped in inches
• Some olive oil

Procedure:-

In a hot cast iron skillet (10 inch), add olive oil, saute onions until translucent, then add chives and shrimp. Stir until shrimps are cooked. Add a pinch of salt. Stir in the eggs, move eggs around. Don't overcook the eggs. Turn off the fire once eggs start to curd.

Sauteed Sliced Chicken with Okra In Brown Sauce
Ingredients:-

• Chicken breast, sliced. Marinated with salt, black and white pepper, some olive oil, some soy sauce or whatever turns you on. Some corn starch if you like.
• Fresh okra, washed and cut off stems. Cut lengthwise then halve. You may put them in water to cut down on the slime factor.
• Some minced garlic.
• Brown Sauce, a teaspoon of cornstarch in a small bowl, add some cold tap water, add some soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, some white pepper which goes well with the chicken I think, some oyster sauce if you have it. Mix them well.
  
• Some olive oil.

Procedure:-
In a hot cast iron skillet (those cheap ones), add olive oil, then chicken, add half the minced garlic, cook till barely done then remove. Clean skillet (or not).
Add olive oil, add the okra, add the minced garlic, saute until is done.
Add the prepared sauce, cook to boil in high heat, return chicken to coat.

Sauteed Watercress
Ingredients:-

• A handful of watercress.
• Minced garlic (don't tell me you don't know how to mince garlic)
• Some olive oil

Procedure:-
In a hot cast iron skillet, add olive oil and garlic then the watercress. When wilted, in two minutes or so, add salt and pepper to taste.


After lunch we drove to the Barnes & Noble in Bayside. I always enjoy spending some time at B&N, flipping through books and magazines. And sometimes even buy myself a cup of coffee. I haven't had a Starbucks for a long time so I decided to treat myself one. I ordered a small one and the price was 1.70 + 0.14 sales tax, a total of $1.84. On the receipt it says Coffee Tall. It didn't look tall to me. I am no expert in coffee but it didn't disappoint. I don't know or care enough that Starbucks has its own set of coffee size vernacular, tall is small, grande is medium and venti is large, a testament to my Starbucks ignorance . Anyone who wants to talk the Starbucks talk can use some help from this page, I especially like the fact that the graphics link is broken, it looks so early 90s, Web 0.0 ....

In the end, Mr. Alex bought 2 Pokemon related books and Mr. Harry being an ardent fan of bodily functions jokes chose a handful of Captain Underpants, in the end we talked him down to buying just two as for the others we either actually have them at home or read them before from the library.

American Runs on Dunkin

If you despise anything Starbucks, you are in luck. McDonald's, Burger King, and Dunkin Donuts are all competing for your crave for premium and not-too-premium caffeine indulgence.

Here is Dunkin's average-guy ad campaign, he sure looks like he is so capable of beating up all the Starbucks snobs. I don't know if he looks average, but I think he looks pretty scarry.

"Hey I just killed my 5th Starbucks snob ... this week, want to be the sixth?" You see this Dunkin man, you better run.

[photo linked from New York Times, all rights belong to their rightful owners]

Nytimes Commute Digest

Save yourself, yes, people need to save more for their retirement, that is if they can retire, and save, at all. Social security is heading to bankrupcy or something in 2007 or 2042, so folks you are on your own. If you don't have anything to save now, at least quit drinking $3 fancy coffee every day. I don't have additional cash inflows other than my day job, so I don't do Starbucks. I can't explain to my kids like Daddy can't afford your college education because I drink $3 a cup coffee every day.

Older people blog too and they may be the better bloggers. Older bloggers tend to avoid cyber cutesy words. I think that's a good thing, got to remember that. When you are older or plain old, cutesy words just don't sound right.

Angelina Jolie is saving poor Asian kids one at a time. Soon to be 18 illegal Chinese alien, Young Zheng would soon get his green card from Home Land Security, thanks to Angelina Jolie who urged John Sullivan III — a partner at Fulbright & Jaworski to work on his case pro bono. Angelina Jolie might be much hated and made fun of, but I think she does some real good work, I mean not her movies, though.