Showing posts with label FoodTechStuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FoodTechStuff. Show all posts

Sunday, May 24, 2009

ranting somewhere in philcoa

Eyes hurting, eighty-peso dinner gobbled down in less than 20 mns., yellow lights flickering in my eyes as the multi-propellered ceiling fan tries to keep me cool.

staring at the pc monitor for 9 straight hours isn't something i'd gladly do but i'm doing it through my own fault. i'm putting myself and ma'am djanna into a lot of pressure rushing the writeup of my thesis like this when i've had two whole sems and the start of the summer term to write it. i've never worked well planning things ahead, or doing things ahead for that matter. Papers photocopied and pdf files downloaded semesters ago only got to be read now, less than a week before final manuscript submission and it's not like it's very easy to do a writeup and look for supporting data in other references when the data you obtained seem quite out of the ordinary, the expected trends were not there. and the data changed from one phase to the next. and i'm not really sure how much to assume, and how much to keep searching in the world wide web. does it surprise you that i'm writing this on paper? well, i am a bit surprised. i can't believe i'm still writing, like i can still churn out ideas on paper. it's been a long while since i've last written my ideas on paper. and it's been awhile since i've written anything this long so my hand is kinda hurting.

why are Filipino TV networks so intent on fueling the stupidity and prejudice that already abound? i've at for less than an hour in front of the boob tube, switching the channels from one station to another. this was around 6-7 pm on a sunday evening. many families would be at home, kids watching whatever's on tv unguided. TV says: it's right to make fun of fat people, of who they are and what they wear; it's good to make fun of gays, and make them do ridiculous things for the rest of the TV-watching public to see. Why do you make kids do antics on TV and frighten them while doing it, all the while catching the whole thing on tape? Why twist public service announcements so that the public including kids could laugh at them? why make kids act like adults, delivering lines which would not benefit you or them, teaching kids watching that it's alright to be like them and do as they're doing. The Waldorf style of teaching is right: television should not be viewed by kids...

Hmmm... I gues i've had enough ranting. my eyes want to go close already. one more thing. there has been so many online communication tools already, different sorts of RSS readers, twitter/plurk, and many others i don't know about: del.i.cious, diggit, stumble. i tried seeing what twitter was all about. was tempted to create an account for a bit. but then i'm not online all the time. and for me to fully make use of it, i have to subscribe to other users using it. that'll add to the tons of things i read on the net or the other things i have to do when i'm online. maintaining an online presence is not very easy. but i'm in [it already]. it'll be hard to get out of it. so there, i think i need to sleep already.

Monday, August 13, 2007

[what has happened]

my life is such a mess, but before i depress myself which i am wont to do everytime i think about it, lemme just write about the pleasant things that i've learned or experienced these past few days or weeks. it was the thought of such things while i was walking home tonight which actually spurred me to write after months of silence (well, at least on this front - so much has happened, just wasn't in the mood to write during those times).

so, where to start...

hmmm... to fellow ft students out there, can i just say that fn (nutrition) subjects are so much fun. for those not in the know, we only have two fn subjects in our curriculum, and yet, these are the only subjects where we are able to cook meals or dishes which we get to sample for purely hedonical reasons (i.e., parameters for evaluating each dish are only qualitative such as "i like this cabbage salad in mayo with paprika extremely", or "i like this kare-kare very much", or "i dislike ampalaya in whatever preparation it is done in moderately" using the 9-point hedonic scale). this afternoon was the second session wherein we've cooked the dishes we've planned. the first one was the result of our planning for a given set of meals per day given a person's height, weight and energy requirement given his occupation. this was accomplished by using the Food Exchange List (FEL), an extremely helpful tool, especially if you're planning special meals such as when you are dieting. you are actually able to limit your calories, but then, to be able to provide more variety, you should be quite well versed in substituting food items as well as able to prepare them in a variety of ways so that you won't get bored with the usual stuff which you prepare, which i think i am wont to do since i don't have enough knowledge on cooking foods. the lesson is that with more meals per day, you are able to distribute the carbohydrate requirements in terms of food items. in our case, we only had three meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner and the requirement for the normal diet for a healthy person is that a minimum of 65% of the day's energy allowance come from vegetables. therefore, for breakfast of an adult male with an activity of the typical jeepney driver, we prepared a breakfast of 2 cups of cereal with low-fat milk, a slice of Gardenia wheat bread with four teaspoons of strawberry jam and a small piece of apple. for lunch, we had one-and-a-half cup of rice, tinola (with chicken breasts and sayote), 1 serving of lakatan and two teaspoons of iced tea. dinner was fried tilapia with sauteed kangkong with soy sauce, sauteed togue and buko juice. we also got to eat among others, buttered rosemary chicken (oha oha! o di ba, something close to gourmet cooking - well, at least from my point of view, since di naman ako napupunta sa mga fine dining places dito sa metro). =)

today, we prepared low- and high-calorie dishes. our group was assigned to work with vegetables. for our low-cal, we had steamed vegetables: young corn, carrots, brocolli, cauliflower, pechay, button mushrooms with a very minimal coating of butter and salt. our high-cal dish was kare-kare, the peanut butter and fatty pork slice upping the calorie content of an otherwise very low-cal dish had we used only vegetables. of course, the peanut butter taste of it was more than what i was accustomed or else used to, especially since it's been ages since we had kare-kare with genuine peanut sauce at home. mom had resorted to using only the kare-kare mix in recent years. however, to macky, our chief kare-kare cook since it's his favorite dish, the peanut butter taste was less than what they usually prepare at their home. i also discovered a new way of slicing eggplants. haha. what joy...

other dishes called for entree, dessert and beverages, appetizers and salads and cakes. thus, today's banquet (haha! i wish) included brownies for a high-cal dessert, a low-calorie cheesecake (cream cheese was replaced with cottage cheese) which still needs freezing at the moment (tomorrow is when we get to sample it), adobo, watermelon smoothie, hawaiian lumpia, cabbage salad (with raisins, cheese, onions, mayo and paprika) and ensaladang mangga. the cabbage salad was mexican-inspired, and the mayo didn't taste revolting at all, which it usually does, with the mixture of ingredients and more importantly, the large influence due to the paprika, which lends the salad its taco-like flavor. the hawaiian lumpia was also quite an interesting dish with sotanghon, ubod, pineapple and tuna flakes, among others, inside the usual lumpia wrapper complemented by a sauce with a tart taste which, if you would believe, has fish sauce (patis) as one of its ingredients. by just stretching the imagination, and combining food items with different sorts of spices, one can actually come up with many interesting dishes. a frustration of mine, actually. i'd really like to have the knack for combining different sorts of items and subsequently, ingest wondrous flavors, much like the chefs in 5-star hotels who create masterpiecese which less than 1% of the world get to witness within a span of 24 hours and never to be experienced again. the last holiday's chef didiere of the hotel poop come to mind.

those dishes i've talked about here, except for the ones which our group prepared, are courtesy of group one's executive chef, diana dreza (dood, apprentice ako sayo!).

***


last friday, i had the pleasure of watching pinikpikan's sir sammy asuncion do a hegalong solo with a perc accompaniment (i forget the specific instrument which was used). it was my first time to see him perform, not even with pinikpikan, although they'll be performing at this week's Friday Film Bar (6.30 pm at the Ishmael Bernal Gallery (back of UP Cine Adarna) featuring student short film Sakdal Laya, the full length In The Red Korner by Dado Lumibao and Bong Ramos, a not-to-be-missed performance by Pinikpikan and free-flowing tea and coffee).

Sunday, April 15, 2007

dreaming, walking, remembering

i lost all the reflective mood i was in before i turned on the pc to lay those thoughts bare this very early hours of a new day. yes, i've slept some two hours when i got home from BAI-APDC where i'm currently spending my practicum hours, so i'll be awake for a few more hours before i wake up again for my sunday tasks. one of those sunday tasks is going to greenhills, or elsewhere, where i can buy cheap collared shirts to wear for my daily trip to APDC. wearing collared shirts is one of the requirements, besides waking up at 5 am in the morning so that i can have breakfast and buy food for my lunch, which i haven't been able to do yet since the wednesday (april 11) we started spending the whole day there.

today was like the FS 178 days all over again when we had fruitcake or ham production in the PFP. this is because the Meat Processing trainees did luncheon meat and corned beef. the activity that most reminded us of it was when we cleaned up the lab during the time when the trainees were somewhere having discussions about the activities they did in APDC for three days (they started thursday, where the four of us practicum students - cindy, diana, ron and i - were sitting in). we not only had to apply disinfectant to the floors and walls, we also had to scrape the tables and the floor dry. although the total floor area is smaller than the PFP, it was still harder work, especially since there were only four of us, sometimes three. and since no stools are provided in the work area, are feet were dead tired after the day. we only got to sit during our snack and lunch break, and then we had to walk all the way across tullahan bridge before we got to sit in another massive traffic jam to get home.

one unlucky thing that has befallen us is that the tullahan bridge is currently under repair. the first time we went there, tuesday, the route was redirected into a private subdivision and on the way out, the jeepney would pass by APDC, so i thought we were lucky for this repair. normally, one would pass tullahan bridge, and get off somewhere a bit further off, but which is some yards' walk from the bridge, and walk through the street at the corner. when wednesday came around, there was no more route through the subdivision, and we had to start walking some distance off from the bridge since during those mornings, there was heavy traffic of empty jeepneys before the bridge, so we had no choice but to walk. i don't mind the walking, if not for the heat, and the fact that i sweat easily, even with little sunshine, which is impossible with this summer season and global warming, and only five minutes' walk.

anyhow, that's it for the practicum so far. unfortunately, to complete those required 300 hours, we have to go there everyday - five days a week, till june 1. and oh yeah, we got to chat with two trainees awhile ago who also took up BS FT in UP Diliman and i found out that they knew my cousin ate mm. they had student numbers starting with 94, the year i started grade 2. however, i wasn't able to get their names since we were chatting well before lunch break, and after the break, we separated ways, them in the session room and us in the meat processing lab.

***


my roommate for the past month has left just this friday. she'll be finishing her one-year course in IT at the UP ITTC by april 18. sadly, i wasn't able to see her off. also, i'll have no more source for bleach or other anime episodes or japanese series. she gladly updates me with what's new in her manga/anime/japanovela library and i wholeheartedly burn myself a copy for future viewing, since ittc students could download them freely and quickly at the japanese-funded ittc computers. lucky anime addict, that girl.

***


i wonder how my past roommates are doing. ate zye is working somewhere, but we haven't been keeping in touch much. alessa is in texas, taking part of her practicum. mars is also having her practicum right now with a semiconductors packing company and i'm glad she got in, for when she was telling me the story before, it seemed that it was impossible for her to be accepted in that company.

***


i had a weird dream recently. it was that dream that woke me at 5 am on a friday, when i could sleep late since we were allowed to absent ourselves to complete our summer registration. in my very vivid dream, the details of which i remembered the moment i woke up, i had a boyfriend, and the transition from friend to boyfriend came about quite quickly, since the guy, a familiar face among my blockmates, just asked me about it. i gave some explanation on why we shouldn't be a couple, but we ended up being together by the end of the day. the next thing i remember, the face of the guy changed into one of the classmates i've had this second semester. this was a younger guy, and the dream left me feeling like a sort of babysitter because of one really weird incident in the dream sequence. hehe.. what's really weird about it is probably the strange feeling of having someone care for me, which came with the added cost of me kinda looking after the guy since he was younger than me (he's like in second year right now, haha), the feeling that yeah, having a relationship with a younger guy (even if only in dreams) could turn out into or feel like a babysitting job, and also the bliss i get when i'm with him since my parents don't know about it, although there was one scene where my mom was kinda just making small talk with me and him. really weird.. so weird that his face has been lying around in my head since friday.

maybe because i've been tired all week that i haven't been having dreams, except that friday morning. haha, i'm wishing for more along the same story genre Ü

p.s. there was a soundtrack to the dream. it's the song beautiful by flipperstick :)

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

singing japanese

many things oughta be happening. i'm taking a break from the breakneck speed that i'm supposed to be doing things tonight. i have to finish the first compilation of our fs 135 report so that i could give it to macky for the final touches tomorrow. on top of that, i still have to start my report in fs 131 on descriptive sensory analysis. at least the calculation part is through. i've only my analysis to think about and put into words. of course, given the simple way i've told you what it's about, it's not really that easy trying to do this report with the various parameters involved (ANOVA on 9 different attributes of three product brands). up next, our report on the pretreatment of fruits and vegetables for fs 128 which was supposed to be due last wednesday, but which, due to the lack of time for it we choose to pass tomorrow. however, results still need to be analyzed. and i will only be able to get the parts done by each of my groupmates tomorrow morning. plus, we have classes tomorrow afternoon. and our group will be torn between doing the microbiological test for our special problem and doing the dehydration experiment. plus, i'm a respondent for dette's group's experiment at 12:30 pm tomorrow. also, i'm to evaluate longganisa again tomorrow. at least, there are a number of freebies for me. way to go.

anyhow, that's not what i wanted to write about. last sunday, i listened to the soundtrack of rurouni kenshin that i have. and i thought, why not sing along with the lyrics while i listen. so instead of doing more important stuff, there i was, blabbing incoherent japanese words along with the song. and i was having fun with it. the lyrics were not all wrong, mind you. i actually had saved some lyrics before and they're stored in my pc. and most of them even had translations. it was really fun. and it made me all the more want to learn how to speak japanese (nihongo). what struck me was the very different ways in which the japanese words were spoken. it's like no two songs were the same in manner of speaking (or word choice, if i may clear up the notion). in fact, one translator even noted that the writer uses a distinctly feminine/girlish speech, almost a "valley girl" type of Japanese. if there was formal, there's informal, but then, there're also other forms of speech. get what i'm saying.

and well, rurouni kenshin is quite action packed. so what i found out about the lyrics of the opening and ending themes did not quite match with what i thought it would be. all the translations i read were reminiscence of love. either the song talks about memories of a loved one, what that person does to you or the hurts caused by relations with that person. and i thought those japanese words on sobakasu were some be-strong-you-can-do-it type of message. had a good time last sunday. and of course, the words had to be pronounced every syllable. so that when you read a word that spells shitenai, you actually have to pronounce it this way: shi-te-na-i.

well, new discoveries. i miss watching kenshin. but most especially, i miss hearing the sounds that reminds me of him. good thing i have my pc. which is really very convenient for me. it's a good thing i got to convince my parents to buy me one.

so, after this long litany, i have to go back to what i was starting. wish me luck. ciao!

Thursday, June 22, 2006

aber?

kumusta na nga ba?

isang hectic na sem coming up. naririnig ko palang ang mga kailangang gawin para sa fs 135 (physico-chem analysis of foods), fs 128 (post-harvest handling/non-thermal processing) at fs 131 (sensory eval of foods) - idagdag mo pa jan ang math 54 - at napapagod na ko. masaya pa naman. pero nafi-feel ko nang nagcri-creep up ang responsibilities sa likod ko. baka dumating iyong time na pagsisihan ko lahat ng naging desisyon ko for the past few months or so.

masaya pa naman ako. may drive pa naman for life. gusto ko nang makapaglaro ng football. sayang nung wednesday, nasugatan pa kasi. lecheng damo iyon.

gusto kong magrelax muna nitong weekend. kaya lang meron nakong dalawang exam next week, parehong araw ng july 1. math 54 at fs 135 pa naman. hay, nakakabaliw.

at least ok naman si mam dumelod. daming smiles kanina. mejo happy moments pa. wala pa naman iyong time na sobrang katakot/nakakanginig to the bones. probably later as the sem progresses.

mababasa ko na sana iyong pinapabasa ni mam luna kaya lang tong lecheng pc na to, ayaw mag-install ng adobe acrobat reader. pano yan? kainis naman tong pc shop na to.. well, assurance din cia pero essential iyong program na iyon, lalo na sa mga estudyante.

hmmm... astig iyong vid ng obs na give it. di ko pa siya napapanood/naririnig ng buo dahil patigil-tigil iyong connection. here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyvBL3gaMl4&search=out%20of%20body%20special

ayan, eto na lang muna. more next time. if, there is a next time.