The Amazingly 'Beautiful Asian' Race is back

Yay, The Amazing Race Asia (TARA) is back for season 2!

I must admit that I love the Asian edition although I can't help myself from comparing them to the US edition. Anyway I'm very positive that season 2 will be better improved compare to the first one.
Here are some of the things I'm looking forward to in this season:

1. Allan Wu will be more relaxed and not as stiff as he was in the first season.

2. Consistent when implementing time penalties. Do not imply time penalty at the beginning of the leg like what happened to Andy and Laura for speeding in one of the episode. Time penalty should always be given at the pit stop. In Andy and Laura's case, if this rule has been followed, they would have been eliminated from the race. Obviously, the producers wanted to keep them in the race but not through such a bias and obvious ruling.

3. There we go again... models, tv personalities, beautiful Asian people with great body on TARA. Honestly I would prefer to watch fat soccer moms, ordinary son and dad team, geeks, etc.

4. What? No Indian contestants?

5. Hope to see more dramatic scenes when boarding flights e.g. competing to get seats, using alternative airlines/routes to get to the same destination, etc.

6. More self-driving, please. It's always more challenging to see the contestants drive in foreign countries rather than just taking the cabs.

7. Do eliminate a team during the first leg. During the first season, again it is very obvious that the producers wanted to keep Sandy and Francesca in the show after they were spared the elimination after came up last during the first episode.

8. Would like to see the contestants travelling farther and more countries rather than just focusing in Southeast Asia. And the contestants in season 2 will be travelling outside of Asia which is a good news.

9. I'm hoping for more drama between the team members. It seems that there are more all-female teams this time around and my instinct tells me there will be cat fights going on. Meow!

10. I'm rooting for one of the dating couples to win in this season.

Reviving music from the 90s

*Beware! Long post ahead*

Okay, nothing is being done to my revive90s website and I don't think I have the time to update it anytime soon. So, in the meanwhile, I'll just show some of my favourite cassettes from the dusty collection in this blog instead.

I was a big, big fan of Wilson Phillips back in the 90s. Their songs were so infectious and everyone love their harmony singing. The girls (Chynna, Wendy and Carnie) were like the most popular all-girl band back then. They had 3 number 1 singles from this debut album: Hold On, Release Me and my favourite is You're In Love (this song accompany me when I was heartbroken).

As a teenager back in the 90s, New Kids On The Block (NKOTB) is definitely one of the biggest boy band everyone love. Although the album Hangin' Tough is the album that made them famous, I love Step By Step more than any of their albums.

Well, no era beat the love songs from 90s. From Tommy Page's Paintings In My Mind album to Jose Mari Chan and from Babyface's For The Cool In You to Hi-5, these are some of the albums with great love songs that I can't missed back then. And if you still remember groups like the Guys Next Door and All-4-One, you definitely remember their love songs that made all the girls go wild too.

By the way, I love soundtracks too. Some of the soundtracks that I have are Beverly Hills 90210, Boomerang, Pocahontas, The Bodyguard and Space Jam.

Last but not least, I'm a rock 'n' roll fan. I listened to groups like Guns 'n' Roses, Firehouse, Skid Row and Def Leppard.
And didn't I tell you I fancy MC Hammer and I used to be able to rap to most of his hit songs?

Blogger unclothed meme

Finally I'm writing this post tagged by Keeyit. I'm taking too long to think whether I should unclothed myself in the blogosphere, didn't I? Taddaaaa... here you go...

Well, I don't wear anything more than ordinary and casual to work. Yeps, everyday is casual for me and I'm kinda blessed working in this publishing line not worrying what to wear every day.

That's a Baleno Special Edition Coke T-shirt bought from Hong Kong/China and a blue jeans from Mark and Spencer.

I don't really wear much accessories. Just a pair of stinky sneakers (and socks), a camouflage Animal Planet watch and my nametag.

*** How to do the meme ***
Post pics and write a short description of what you were wearing and accessories you had with you at 1200 noon or 12 midnight today or yesterday.

Satu, dua, tiga, empat

Time for tagged post. I have yet to complete a few meme and I'll try to do some simple ones first.

Anthraxxxx casts a cursed Number 4 on me. Although I'm not really superstitious, it's always best to follow or at least take precaution of what the older generation of Chinese people believes. So, I decided not to pass this curse to anyone and let me end this here with the 4 things about me.

4 Jobs I have had in my life:

• Promoter
• Shampoo girl
• Tutor
• Temporary teacher
  

4 Places I have lived:

• Kuantan
• Kajang
• Petaling Jaya
• Kepong
  

4 Countries I have been to on vacation:

• Malaysia
  
• Singapore
• Thailand
• Dreamland
  

4 of my Favorite food:

• Pan Mee
• Nasi Lemak
• Penang Curry Mee
• Egg Tart
  

4 Places I would rather be right now:

• In bed
• Kuantan
• Kathmandu
• Tibet
  

Popular words used as blog titles

When I changed my blog title from 'hcfoo's blog' to 'Rambling thoughts of a 30 something' recently, my intention was simple. I don't want to sound too narcissistic by mentioning my name all the time. A lot of bloggers like to use the word 'ramblings', 'rants', 'thoughts', 'diary', etc as their titles.

So I'm pretty curious of what are the popular words used as blog titles. So, this blogger, Elliot C. Back actually did a research and came up with top 100 words most widely used as blog titles.

1. blog
2. life
3. weblog
4. world
5. from
6. journal
7. news
8. thoughts
9. with
10. daily
11. girl
12. mind
13. what
14. this
15. diary
16. musings
17. online
18. about
19. just
20. ramblings
21. random
22. your
23. adult
24. love
25. content
26. little
27. that
28. home
29. blue
30. time
31. marketing
32. blogs
33. right
34. digital
35. things
36. city
37. rants
38. internet
39. like
40. free
41. journey
42. words
43. business
44. more
45. notes
46. place
47. real
48. house
49. american
50. view
51. stuff
52. music
53. black
54. chronicles
55. tales
56. times
57. diario
58. dreams
59. another
60. adventures
61. inside
62. corner
63. other
64. photoblog
65. confessions
66. book
67. living
68. soul
69. head
70. heart
71. search
72. truth
73. live
74. reality
75. good
76. brain
77. here
78. vida
79. geek
80. through
81. eyes
82. thought
83. blogging
84. politics
85. personal
86. page
87. site
88. days
89. dream
90. john
91. thinking
92. have
93. left
94. road
95. something
96. lost
97. project
98. into
99. media
100. where
101. design
102. conservative
103. star
104. mundo

So, is your blog title using some of the words listed here?

Kitchen-krazy #3: Agar-agar (jelly)

No time to update my blog recently but I did find some time to make some jelly over the weekend.

The ingredients are cheap and simple:
1 packet of agar-agar
1 can of longans
1/2 packet of rock sugar
Food colouring (rose flavour)
Ribena
Pandan leaves

How to make:
1. Wash and soak the agar-agar / jelly for 20 minutes.


2. Put the agar-agar, pandan leaves, rock sugar into hot water and boil it together.
3. Continue to stir the mixture until all the rock sugar and agar-agar melts.
4. Separate the mixture into two bowls; add the first bowl with rose flavour and another one with Ribena flavour.

5. Pour the flavoured mixture into plastic cups.
6. Add longans.
7. Let the agar-agar cool off first before you close the plastic cups and put them into the fridge to chill.