Slow

It's going slow.........

Nordic Cuisine

Some of the nice Nordic cuisines that we had the privilege to taste.

One of those (I do mean one of those! For those of you who might be interested to know what else we have tried may find them here or here.) we have tried in Iceland is Whale meat and we have tried it at a seafood restaurant called Thrir Frakkar

Whale Sashimi (also salmon)

Whale steak!! very nice, although it was seasoned so much that I could not taste any whale flavour. I think sashimi was better.

As for Finland, we went to the NJK's yacht club restaurant to taste some of delicate Finnish reindeer

Helsinki, Finland, July 2008

Some photos I have taken in Helsinki.

Food at Zurich

Last week were TOOLS EUROPE and ICMT and they were held at ETH Zurich. While we most ate at the conferences, we went to try some "local" cuisine when possible... here are some photos of the food we have had...

One of the lunches "I" have had at ETH was SUSHI!!

One of the meals we have tried outside conference is the traditional fondue and rabbit raclette... I have to say though the waiters in the restaurant we went to called Swiss Chuchi had very very very BAD ATTITUDE!!!

Sausages (veal, beef, pork, chicken...) are the local food we have also tried... the way is to dip into loads of mustard and ketchup hahahaha....
Although not a Swiss cuisine, kebap (kebab) is also a fairly local dish. Again there are veal, beef, pork and chicken as meat... I actually found them to be better than the ones back at home...

Punting

All of a sudden (即興)... we went to punting... actually I did the punting... so many punts on the river today, but it was good....

Acceptance!!

Dear Authors,

We are pleased to inform you that your paper .... has been accepted for both presentation ... and publication in the conference proceedings.

Hurray!! Yeah!! No rejection for this one!! I am relieved now!

BCTCS at Durham University

It was a week of attending presentations and giving one... Also I had the chance to meet up with Steve and Sara who taught me back at Warwick ^_^. Incidentally according to some Formal Methods is not quite Theoretical Computer Science. Below is a photo taken from the bedroom I stayed at Grey College, overlooking the cathedral.

BBC NEWS | Health | Scientists probe meditation secrets

An article from BBC titled Scientists probe meditation secrets
describes how meditation can affect states of mentality "scientifically", here a quote from the article

"... compared the brains of these experienced practitioners with people who had never meditated and found that there were differences in the thickness of certain areas of the brain's cortex, including areas involved in the processing of emotion."

Professor Williams from Oxford said: "All of these things are just thoughts. And, they will come up in meditation and learning to recognize what they are as thoughts, and let them go, can be enormously empowering for anybody."

I say science is still quite immature when used for reasoning about the human mind... so for the time being the best way for anyone in doubt is to try to understand it by getting some first hand experiences...

Easter Weekend

A round of applause is needed to all sections who contributed the fabulous dinner at Easter weekend!! Well done to all sections!!

Biking together

Two photos of us on our bikes, having just got back from city centre. Note the bag of rice at the back of my bike.

Royal Society Meeting

I went down to London last Monday and Tuesday to participate in the Royal Society Discussion Meeting on "From computers to ubiquitous computing, by 2020". I was there as an audience and as a "microphone helper". Below are two photos I have taken at the venue as I arrived too early on Tuesday (it did not start until 9:45am)

A display of a photo of Alan Turing and his certificate of royal society fellowship!!

Pasta sauce using Venison

We have made pasta sauce according to Jamie's idea of using chopped tomatoes and herbs. This time though we tried venison mince, bought from the Wolvercote Farmers' Market and it tasted pretty nice. ^_^

Process Algebras: What's the point?

A thread from Lambda the Ultimate titled "Process Algebras: What's the point?" .... umm....

西炒飯

Earlier this week we tried another "蘋果" recipe - 西炒飯. It is very easy and tastes good too (I think anyway ^_^) !

Roast Sea Trout with spinach, orange and crushed new potatoes

We have tried another Gary Rhodes' recipe. This time it is the Roast Sea Trout with spinach, orange and crushed new potatoes.

It looked okay and tasted not bad. Although the orange sause was a bit different, the potatoes was definitely one of the best I have made - smashing! This meal went perfectly with a glass a white wine!

Sea bass fillets with tomato and olive oil

A recipe I have found from the telegraph other than the fact we also cooked rice and used chopped onion as well!! According to the recipe the portion supposed to serve 4!!! (and guess how many it really served?)

印尼炒飯

Yesterday I dashed out on my bike into the horrible weather to do grocery for dinner, and
Last night we have made 印尼炒飯 (without 印尼蝦醬).


Not too bad I say...

Lime, coriander and coconut pan fried salmon

A dish we made tonight with salmon fillet, coconut milk, lemon grass and chilli....


Not bad I think... although next time we should try using fresh coriander to add a bit more colours to it ^_^

Tomato Soup, Pasta and Homemade Meatballs

We have tried some homemade meatball (肉丸) (not 肉球 ^_^) tonight...


Meatball or Meatball?!

It is a healthy dish, meat cooked separately from the soup, the soup is all veggie with only a bit of oil.

My first moussaka

Here is my first homemade moussaka (μουσακάς) ^_^.


Before being baked....

After being baked...

Certainly looked ok and tasted fine... although I would prefer the aubergines to be thinner and smaller....

The Big Question is... How was mine compared to the one I had in Cyprus??

1st Wedding Anniversary

At our 1st wedding anniversary we have home-cooked the following for dinner

pan-fried sea bass with smoked bacon and caper cabbage (link)
served with
Asparagus risotto (link)

For wine we have black tower rose wine.

Beef & Guinness Pie

DSC05311.JPG, originally uploaded by Wendy.Chang.

This had got to be the best meal whilst at Belfast! Cubes of prime beef cooked in Guinness with a pastry crust top... from Crown Liquor Saloon. Very Nice!! I was completely stuffed afterwards (with 2 pints of Guiness!!)

Apple Crumble

My first homemade apple crumble...
I should really tried homemade custard (just like I said before)


now I know what is in it I think...!!!

From flour, sugar and butter .... to bread crumbs...
over peeled, cored and pieced apples

After 45 minutes... voila!!

I think it looked okay with 鳥牌 custard!!
Although I should really use cooking apples next time...
Just A BIT TOO SWEET!!