One Of My Best Duck Dishes

Korma Duck with coconut milk, lime leaves and honey

It has been sometimes since my last update. I had so much fun over the weekend. I went to clubs and got drunk just to release some of my tenses. Arghh..being a PhD student is actually very demanding especially the time because you need to make sure that you are not behind of your plan. Otherwise you have to be quick at several parts or stages of your research. I mean if you are currently behind of your plan, make sure you can do the next tasks quicker to make sure you are back on your plan. After several attempts and failed to develop my algoritham I had a long weekend holiday in London just for a change. I was feed up being in the office most of the time or clicmbing mountain over the weekend. I needed a change and didn't want to think anything related to my research. Yucksss!!!! Last Friday I thought I was dying and wanted to puke everytime I think about it. One way was I left my laptop in Wales and went down to London with no laptop. I think for the first time ever I didn't bring my laptop together with me travelling. But several days off made my brain fresher and new ideas came this week. So for four days, I think I've developed an algorithm although it doesn't work as I expected/wanted but the result was much better than last week.

Anyway, I should be talking about one of my best duck dishes. Fuhhh!!! I must admit this is one of the best. Maybe not the best but I am certain in my top 5 among more than 20 duck dishes I can cook. How to make it? Mmmm...not that difficult. In fact quite easy as long as you know the ingredients. The most important thing is to roast the duck in an oven for about 1 hour 45 minutes (or 2 hours). But I prefer less than 2 hours because I don't really want the duck get dried. I like it moist and make sure the skin doesn't get crisped. Once the duck is cooked carve the breast and chop it into small portions. The most important is its gravy. A few things that you need to mix and fry them together. Here they are;  Kaffir lime leaves, korma curry, coconut milk, honey, onions, chicken stock, lemon juice and salt. These are easy to get and you can get all of them from a single shop like Morrissons, Tesco or even Asda. So just fry them all together with olive oil of course or corn oil (doesn't matter). When the gravy is boiling just put it in a plate where you put the chopped duck! That's it! simple but very delicious. I would personally rate this 4.7/5.0!! I had a duck dish somewhere in Oxford and my personal rate was 4.8/5.0. So I'm still learning and finding the best ingredients to get the best taste for duck!

Just A Love Letter

Well, it has been sometimes since I made something through my emotions. Today is really bad. Probably one of my worst days ever! It started since yesterday when everything didn't go what I wanted. And my thought got so chaos with everything. Memories came to my head disturbed my concentration and went into my emotions made me feel a little bit upset and emotionally unstable. But I managed to controlled myself until today's afternoon when once again my plan didn't work and emotions were playing up and I just couldn't concentrate what I was doing in the office.

I went out of the office very early today about 3PM or a bit early which I never done it before but then I can't take it anymore. I needed a rest and when I got back at home (I had my hair cut on the way back home) I had my bath and shower (yes both). Listening to several sad songs (i don't know why they were sad songs but it felt nice soaking my body in the tab). Anyway...I had my dinner and after dinner I wrote something from my heart and how I feel about love.

Take my hand,
Hold it tight and touch my face,
Down my chest,
Can you feel my heart?
It's beating faster than you ever know.
Can you see that you are always there?
Always at the centre of my heart.

Do you know what does it means?
It's not just a love
But,
It's a love with tears, blood and flesh,
Love with tears means emotions,
Love with blood means sacrifice,
Love with flesh means togetherness,
Because love with tears, blood and flesh means unbreakable,
When love is unbreakable it stays forever,
When love stays forever it means it never dies,

That's why love never lies
That's why you can't deny love
Because once you denied it
It hurts you.
To mend a broken heart is tough and painful,
So when it comes to love,
Don't forget
Love needs tears, sacrifice and togetherness
But it has either happiness or painfulness

Originally written by: Jungle Boy
23/08/2012
8.15PM in  a conservatory of Aberaron Village
Wales, UK

Yesterday and Today

Yesterday.......
Yeah...yesterday was a history and today is a plan as tomorrow is the future. I've heard this so many times and this is absolutely true. Anyway, yesterday was a lot of stress with much heavier work carried by my little tiny brain. Sometimes I said to myself that those are too much and I would never be able to handle or even to solve it. I came to the office almost 11AM. My brain was struggling thinking about what shall I do today. Arghhh...what a day. I wasn't in a mood at all to do what I suppose to do. Lots of journals on my desk and some of them I've read 3 or 4 times. Pretty boring and I tried not to look any of the journals as it makes me feel like I should do this method of the other method. I've tried several method and none of them has the potential to achieve for what I want. An hour later I started drinking my coffee in the flask I filled in about couple of hour ago. As usual coffee is a good booster especially brain. I then slowly persuading myself to open MatLab. With a my laziness I slowly pushing my brain to think about something else. Something new with a better prospect to do what I want to do. Although it's still very early to say but then based on its logic plan, it seems like this has a very good potential to do a segmentation. Although some of my friends thought it's something very weird idea but I was so firmed to myself that this technique would work. After several hours mingling on MatLab I completed 70% of the algorithm (or maybe 80%).  With that piece I did a few pretests and it shows very good potential to do what I want to do. Although the result is still very uncertain but then this should be a good start for me to achieve my first objective.

Today.........
I didn't need a coffee to start the engine of my brain. I came to the office quite early and feel very excited to start MatLab. In fact, I couldn't sleep well last night because my brain didn't stop thinking about this algorithm. Now I am doing it and I hope to see some potential results by today...

Frustrated With the Weather

How I miss to have a holiday here again

Well, it's almost 3 months since I came to Wales in June 2012 and been living to the UK almost 3 years now but on and off otherwise I would die. The main problem here in the UK is the weather. People are talking about the weather and again, again and again. When the sun came out many people will go out and enjoying the sun but when the thick dark cloud came everybody will be miserable. Well, not quite true because some people like it cool as they say it feels fresher and nice. But not for me because the cool weather here is actually doesn't feel very nice because the wind is always blowing and this makes the cool weather feels cold.

I really enjoy the hot weather

Well, maybe for someone who likes to trap himself/herself indoor and doesn't keen to enjoy the outdoor activities like camping, picnic, hiking, this kind of weather is good for them but someone like me who likes to explore places this is far too cold for me. Anyway, I'm complaining the weather at the moment and feel a little bit frustrated with it. Although I have been here for three years already but I still feel I need warm weather rather than thick kind of climate.

Nice weather that's what I'm looking for

 For 3 months summer we only had a few days hot weather. I mean that's not enough at all. When the summer comes it should be at least 80% should be hot (or at least warm) days and it's okay for the other 20%. But it's true what my friend said last time. He said something about the weather in Wales is always wet and dull. I thought I already used to it but then this year's summer gives me the real challenge of being a British. At the moment there are only two factors make me staying here in the UK. The first one is the money and followed by their best education. If not because of those factors I would never wanted to live in this country.

I can even sleep under this very nice weather

The old say "the grass is always greener on the other side of the land" (something like this i think!). A perfect place is heaven and as long as we are living in the world, there are always complains. I know sometimes Malaysia gets very hot but then that doesn't not stay long. In a few days it will change not like the weather here in the UK. The miserable days will last up to a week and sometimes months. Anyway..I shouldn't be complaining too much because I am here and I must be grateful for what I have because my life is much better compared to millions of people who never had the chance like I have now.

A Stressful Day For Me

I'm talking about my PhD research again. It has been very stressful for me last week and this week. I have read so many journals investigating several method with a great hope that this any of them would help me to achieve one of my objective. I find it so stressful. Basically I have done 25% of my first objective and I am stuck at the moment. I have successfully extracted more than 10 features from an image using three different methods which are Lindeberg Edge detector, GLCM and Local Binary Pattern. So each pixel has about 10 feature vectors. Now I want to combine them (fusing them) but I don't know how to do this. I have spoken with several postdoc researchers in the group and they suggested me a few methods but after many hours investigating those methods it ended up with null result. Very disappointing day for me actually. I really hope sometimes this week I could get some idea on how I can fuse those features for classification without using a database as a ground truth comparison (it sounds very strange) .

Anyway, as soon as I finished in the office. I went to the gym and had change. A few minutes later I went out of the gym and had a 10KM run on the circuit in 49 minutes. Also a little bit disappointing because I really thought I would time myself a little bit faster. In fact, after the 7th KM I really thought I was doing quite well and had the change to make a new personal best record for 10KM. As soon as my watch beep which means I completed the 10th KM I quickly press the stop button of my watch and looked at it. My watch shows 49:00 with 10.01KM distance. Arghhhh!!!!! What the heck!!! I was about 18 seconds slower than my personal best. Very disappointed because after a weekend rest and great food I thought I could run faster. Mmmmm.... never mind!!!!

Tomorrow I must go to the office a little bit early not like today I came about 10.50AM and finished at 5.30PM and had my run just before 7PM. I am now a little bit tired and I need some rest before more difficult work need to be done tomorrow.

Friday's Dinner With Delicate Taste

Pineapple chunks and Chinese mushrooms cooked with vegetable stock

 There was a friend visiting last Friday and I was more than happy to welcome her with my delicious and very delicate Malaysian Cuisines. So I went to the office in the morning while she was having her walk at Haford Forest (the best forest I have ever been so far). She had about 4 hours hiking and it was a pretty long walk. But I believed with the amazing scenery of the forest she enjoyed it and every drop of her sweat worth for it ha ha ha..

Duck and Chinese mushrooms cooked with honey and black pepper

 When I was in the office with my throbbing head squeezing my brain I actually had a few minutes looked on the Internet to get some ideas what to cook. Huh! I can't find any and what I did was imagining something or some sort of very soft flavour and something sweet and sour to go with it. At last, a yogurt popped out of my heavy tired brain and of course mango has the flavor of sourness and sweetness. Exactly what I wanted. For the duck I have already planned to cook it with honey and black pepper.

Prawns and mango tikka curry and yogurt 

So as soon as I finished at the office I didn't even go to the gym because I knew I was late already. I needed to do some shopping at Morrisons and also needed to go to the filling station. When I come to Morrisions there were so many people shopping which surprised me. Why on Friday? But I would guess they were buying food for their weekend camping or picnics. I was there at least about 30 - 40 minutes and quickly drive to the filling station. Huh!! I was late, as soon as I arrived I had a quick chat with her and went to the kitchen cooking the food. I took at least about 1 hour 30 minutes to do everything. Since they were new recipes and I never cooked them before, I had to be careful in many aspects especially the flavor and the thickness of the sauces. In fact, I had to cook twice for the honey and black pepper because it wasn't enough to moist the duck. The prawns tikka curry and yogurt dish was great but the sauce was a little bit watery and I should have make it thicker. But in many aspects they were very nice indeed and she enjoyed the food. Overall rating I would give 8.5/10 ha ha ha ha if those two factors were perfect it would be 9/10. After this attempt cooking curry and mango I am now looking for a something different with very exotic flavour. Maybe cooking with papaya or maybe apples. Those fruits are rich with vitamins and should be good for health.