Bubble rice (wo ba)

Had this for lunch today, absolutely lovely. The sauce was slightly sweet, and mixed well with the crispy rice, which soon softened. Thanks to ww for ordering this! :)

book review: the Afghan

I've always been a Frederick Forsyth fan, and when i found myself with a bit of time to spare while waiting for my flight to Hong Kong, i popped into a bookstore and found his latest paperback on sale: the Afghan. Long story short, i managed to finish it in 3 days while on holiday in Hong Kong, although i confess that to do this, i'd sneak in a few pages while ww was making her purchases (and testing her credit limits at times).

Overall, i was disappointed with the book. It may have the usual meticulous research and planning but some of it seems like a rehash from previous books. The main protagonist is from Fist of God, where quite a bit of background was laid down there. I haven't cross checked, but i'm sure they match up. Then there are things like the 'Afghan' training at Castle Forbes. Those who remember his other book Icon will also remember that Jason Monk trained there, and the caretaker and kitchen helpers are the same. His novels follow a trend of first the background information, then the in-between fill in stories, then the preparation, then the main climatic action scene. The background information was quite engaging but then fell flat as obvious as red herrings go, you could smell it coming (wth i'm writing about i have no idea, but that sounded better in my mind lol). The main climatic scene was set at sea, and while it was well described, it reminded me too much of one of his earlier books, Devil's Alternative. The ending itself seemed too PC and hardly a twist in the tale, more like a slight diversion to the fish & chip shop and thence the pub, almost as if you couldn't wait to get to the end, so it was all rather abrupt.

Quite disappointing really, his other books are really much much better. If you're not into the rather heavy research and "what if" scenarios, he did do some books with short stories, like No Comebacks and the Veteran. Surprisingly, he did quite a good love story in one of them.

Caught an interesting sight of multiple bikes escorting a whole bunch of cars yesterday and the bikes would close off traffic at the various junctions so that the convoy could travel unimpeded through the CBD. The only clue to the VIP’s identity is the red flag with a yellow star on the lead car, and the following conversation ensured:

z: who is the Chinese VIP?
ww: I dunno, no reports of the Chinese premier coming over
z: oh yeah, the newspapers didn’t say Hu is coming.
ww: well, if the newspapers said who is coming then we wouldn’t be asking now would we?
z: so Hu is the VIP?
ww: I dunno!
z: lol, we should get our own show/podcast, we’ll be hilarious
ww: only to us.
z: depends on who’s listening.
ww: don’t start that again……

Further funnies over the weekend when we attended a stay-in course in preparing for our nuptials (to each other that is).
ww: so what did you put in the feedback form?
z: I just said that this weekend was good because it allowed me to explore myself ….
ww: *lol*
z: omg, that sounded bad. What's worse is that the rest of the sentence reads: “allowed me to explore myself and each other”
ww: *rotfl*

Gone for the weekend

Attending the above event so hardly any updates. 
It does remind us guys of the army, since it is a stay in retreat.

Back to school

Long absence due to a complicated life, ie too busy/lazy to blog. Am on course today and it feels weird using my trusty pencilcase again with the multi coloured highlighters, from ww :). Am engineer on course is a happy engineer.