I really like LaRoux*. Their music pops out of the headphones with tons of bass dripping life. But Oh. my. sweet. piano., I LOVE this kid's take on two of their most popular songs!



If you decide to visit his page, check out his Lady Gaga cover. I mean, anyone who makes the completely awful and disastrous "Poker Face" sound like a lush 40s broadway musical deserves more than just an applause!

---

For the non-electro-poppers:
-- *LaRoux:
-- Bulletproof:
-- In for the kill:

I was walking back from PriceRite today when I saw two old ladies struggling with their groceries on the way. I offered to carry one of their bags and they accepted my offer. We walked the very short distance to the American Cancer Society (ACS) mansion on the corner of Oakland Place and Summer.

I was surprised that they lived there. I always thought it was some kind of a regional office for the ACS. Apparently, they let patients and their families from all over the world live there while they are being treated for their cancer at Roswell Park. One of the women I met was from Florida and the other was from Canada. I also met one of their friends who had come all the way from Greece with her husband for treatment at Roswell. They were all praises for Roswell. I couldn't tell if they genuinely felt that way or were just saying that because I told them that I study there.

They gave me a tour of the mansion. You won't believe just how beautiful it is inside! I wish I had my camera with me. The mansion is wonderfully maintained. The massive polished door leads to a small foyer which opens out into a landing. You immediately see a wide generous staircase leading up. The banisters are gorgeous to look at, though I can't remember whether they were specially carved or not. I have such a fickle memory for detail!

The landing also leads to a living room - with nice furniture and very soothing curtains. The dining room is really impressive with a huge table and matching chairs. I could almost see a formal 18th century banquet there! Then there was a kitchen followed by a corridor which lead to bedrooms - that are given to the patient families. At the back there is another dining room/living room of sorts. The place is enormous - seemed like a endless cave mansion of sorts.

The mansion is actually similar to the 24 in so many ways. I remember mentally comparing it with the rooms in the 24. From several (e:Matthew) conversations, I think it must have been built around the same period in time. I have a feeling that (e:Matthew) would love it! I am wondering if I should take the ladies up on their "visit us again" invite just to snap photographs or better yet, go with (e:Matthew) so he can weave his magic photo-capture technique (and I can then get the scoop on that).

The ladies told me that they are given lodgings but they cook for themselves. In fact, a couple of the other people I met were sitting together and shelling peas (or maybe cutting cauliflower - I really can't remember!) in the back-dining room.

It was an interesting little revelation about that mansion. I wonder if they pay for their lodgings or if its a service that is fully/partially funded by the ACS. If its funded by the ACS, then they are doing a remarkable job!

• SPOILER ALERT*****

Don't watch this unless you don't plan on watching (or have already watched) the BBC series. It will spoil it somewhat for you.



I thought of this exact scene as I was watching the finale of the series. Hahaha. I can't believe someone else actually thought of the same scene in that movie!!

Remember the songstress from ABBA? She is still weaving beautiful melodies...

I had a nice wake-up scare this weekend and lost some newer revisions of my dissertation. I am not sure entirely what happened but overnight, some of my revised copies went back to their earlier versions with all their glorious little ancient mistakes. It was a very painful weekend. My dissertation is now backed up in 4 more places. My laptop looks like this:


Source:

Yeah, it really does.

I am on a cleaning up and backing up mission and I think I want to go back to the bare-bones aggressively slipstreamed Win XP version that booted in 14 seconds in another life long long long back. I have so many programs here that I have no idea about. I have some piece of obscure software that simultaneously displays weather and forecast in 10 cities. For some reason that I don't have the faintest clue about, one of the cities is Kathmandu, Nepal. Really? What was I thinking??! That is insane, even for me. Did I plan an ill-fated climb of the Mt. Everest in one of my nightmares?? That .exe just went into oblivion trash.

I have no less than 6 Java updates installed! Innumerable re-installs of Firefox and Opera with stray shortcuts ALL OVER the place.This is a living nightmare.

I am whittling it down. Maybe I should just stick to these in the next install

Browser:
Firefox.

Documents
Word 2007
MikTeX

Books/Articles
Adobe Pro
CutePDF
PDF Unlocker

Citations
Bibtex4Word
Jabref

Statistics
R
G*Power3

Visual Media
MPC
ffdshow

Audio
Foobar2000
SRS Labs Plugin
RealAlt Plugin
Mp3Tag


Art
Paint.NET
ArtRage
IrfanView


IRC/Phone
Skype
Neebly

Utilities
Winkey
TaskSwitchXP Pro
7zip
CCleaner
FreeCommander

Do you have better alternatives? :)

---

• NB: I think I might need to update this thread - I have so many random things on my laptop, its ridiculous.
  
• : Wow that image is so tiny, the font became unreadable... I thought the width limit for (e:strip) was 600 pixels. Apparently not...

Indeed. Hahaha...

You want proof? Behold the hard annotated evidence!*


You begin to have your first suspicions when you see these random dinghies packed with people who wear a regimented attire of a blue flimsy plastic...


...in preparation of sailing face to face with a mighty waterfall that can crush your bones into powder if it crashed on you.


In the wild multinational excitement that surrounds this dinghy trip, you take leave of your senses, suspend your suspicions and pay $13.50 to be loaded on to a wobbly vessel wearing the cult attire.


The dinghy sails past this structure know

---

• a.k.a the virtual Maid of the Mist tour captured enthusiastically through a soaked lens by a wildly excited 1st time tourist. ;-)

I was out grocery shopping and guess whom I heard honking at me while I was crossing the road?



Heh. That was funny, (e:enknot). :)

The Taste of Buffalo festival has a stall giving out samples of Fruit Simple - a fruit smoothie mix with no preservatives and no sugar.



I like the idea of not adding sugar and high fructose corn syrup to just about everything under the sun. I thought the smoothies were really good - they tasted like fruits should. The pomegranate-berry flavoured one had a nice tart zing to it. The grittiness of pomegranate pods came through and and I didn't feel as if I was getting short-changed when it came to the fibre-content. The strawberry-banana smoothie was smoother and sweeter and good as well.

While I was at the stall a number of mums with kids in tow sampled the smoothies and without exception, all of them said the smoothies were not sweet enough, were too gritty, were too thick and had too much pulp. Exactly what do these mothers feed their children everyday? Sugar syrup? Because that would fit all of those descriptions - sweet, completely devoid of pulp or any fibre of any kind.

I couldn't help asking one of the mums why she felt her children would dislike the taste of Fruit Simple. Her answer was very revealing. She said that her kids don't drink anything which was not as sweet as soda. Apparently, she sprinkled sugar on all of the fruit she gave them - otherwise they wouldn't eat them.

I don't think it should come as a surprise if a majority of the kids who are growing up today are diagnosed with chronic lifestyle diseases such as Diabetes Type II and Cardiovascular diseases in the future - the victims of an imbalanced ratio of adipose tissue to muscle. Why do parents feel the need to give in to whatever their kids "want to eat"? Why do restaurants have "kid menus" with greasy high-sugar items?

I am sorry if I sound like a parenting nazi (and perhaps I am not even justified in making these comments since I am not a parent) but children are what parents shape them to be. Sure, they have free will and independence but all of it is very much amenable to guidance and healthy example. Healthy habits only persist and bear results if they are started early. If parents are so indifferent and exhausted that they spare the proverbial guiding stick, they must also realize that they are almost entirely responsible for taking years of health off their kids' lives.

I had a fun-taste-tick time at the Taste of Buffalo. It was pouring in the morning but it cleared up beautifully by around four.


I sampled a good variety of really appetizing stuff, learnt how to make a fairly complicated Turkish dessert, came home and made an inspired crunchy stir-fry.


The Turkish Cultural Centre of Buffalo demonstrated the art of making traditional Turkish Baklava and a savoury little appetizer called Borek. It was quite interesting. The culinary stage was too high for me get direct shots of their cooking. I had to instead resort to somewhat blurry shots of the broadcasting TV screens.

Baklava starts with layers of "filo" dough.


Twenty layers of filo dough are stacked atop each other with a generous brushing of clarified butter between each layer.


Then comes a layer of grated walnuts and sugar, followed by twenty more layers of butter-sandwiched filo dough layers. At this point, I was consciously wondering what the rates of cardiovascular diseases in Turkey were. I think they must have got through 75% of that box of butter.


The Baklava came out of the oven looking heavenly. They brushed it with a sugar-lemon glaze and topped it with grated pistachios. It started raining and I was probably their only non-Turkish audience. They let me take this shot from inside the stage trailer.


It was delicious enough to make me forget that probably a week's worth of calories were packed into this small triangle.


The Turks also demonstrated Borek - a savoury deep fried savoury pastry roll filled with feta cheese, mozzarella cheese and parsley.




The rich flaky pastries were accompanied by slow-brewed Turkish tea. They put this traditional turkish kettle on when they started their show. It brewed for a complete 40 minutes before they handed out a deeply burgundy-golden coloured tea. It was strong, bitter and completely refreshing in the rain.


The "Cina-Monkees" - a vegan dessert from Craftsmen cafe, was interesting and went pretty well with the Turkish tea.


The previously publicized dark chocolate covered funana was fun. :)


Got to hear a couple bands in transit.


The White Chocolates were egged on by a completely smashed undergraduate crowd in the beer tent. They played a string of MJ hits. Random people within hearing range launched into personal versions of the MJ dances. It was weirdly hilarious.


Jon Seiger and the All Stars played some awesome jazz tunes. Some talented couples from the crowd broke out into ballroom jazz dances in front of the stage. It was a curious contrast to the MJ fever simultaneously razing another part of the festival.

I also sampled a salad from the Polish stall, fruit juice samples, a bruschetta pizza from one of the Italian restaurant stalls (I forget which one. There were so many of them!), a mango smoothie and some chips with salsa.

Overall, quite a well-spent and enjoyable food experience. :)