Ball of Whacks

Yesterday I was working from home and finally got a chance to play with my Ball of Whacks (while eating lunch). It is a set of 30 magnetic shapes that you can combine in any number of different ways. In doing so, you're supposed to be able to spark creativity or just have fun. Even from a different angle (perspective) a creation may look different (symbolic of problem solving - they like to play that up).

Here are some pictures of the things I made, along with what I thought they resembled. Maybe they'll remind you of something else - that's the whole point.

A sea anemone.

An AT-ST.

A windmill.

A biker and his motorcycle.

A farmer his wife and and their dog.

A chair.

A scorpion.

A dog scratching his side with his back paw.

A chipmunk on its hind legs.

A lobster directing an orchestra, Disney-style.

A tri-force..with ears?

In case you're wondering, I made the descriptions less visible to give you a chance to play along. If you are having trouble my "answers" then highlight the text (if you're lazy, use Select All).

Red Rooster

One of these things is not like the other. One of these thing just isn't the same. Can you spot it?

Who do they think the are fooling by putting it between the Red Bull and sugarless Red Bull. I admit it could probably fool someone that lacks all 5 senses and is not familiar with energy drinks. Even then I'm sure it would still be a tough call. That doesn't seem like a very profitable demographic to be targeting. They copied Red Bull right down to the last detail and still managed to do a terrible job. As if naming the drink "Red [animal]" wasn't enough they ripped off the tag line too. The original, "Energy Drink," has been swapped for "Stimulation Drink" à la Word-right-click-synonyms. Way to raise the bar!

At least they went with an appropriate animal, roosters do wake up and can be red. Although, to be honest I would probably buy a drink named Red Platypus just for the amazingness-factor.

Also: Note the slightly larger cans of Red Bull on the left self. That isn't an optical illusion those are bigger and therefore packed with more energy. But still not quite as much as Power Thirst.

Iron Man

I am an absolute failure at ironing. I bought an ironing board yesterday which helped a lot until my iron went crazy and started leaking water. The board has a convenient little rest at the end for my iron. It also another convenient feature: being really poorly made. I expected it to be awful, but not this awful. It stands a little higher than my knees, but that's alright because it gives me a reason to iron sitting down. It absolutely refuses to fold up nicely, but that's alright too because I'm sure I could get it to fold if I pushed hard enough (assuming it didn't snap in half). The real reason this is an abortion of a patent is that it hasn't made me a professional ironer. I'm thinking of buying a blazer and wearing a massive tie so that my shirts won't need to be pressed. This weekend is going to be the deciding moment in my away-from-home-ness where I'm going to battle the evils of wrinkles with my steam machine. Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion. Same bat time, same bat channel.



Sadly I don't think an bat-anti-wrinkle-spray exists...OR DOES IT?

Bonus link: Here's something I found while searching for the that spray.

Revenge of Toad in the Hole

As promised, I present to you the sequel to yesterday's post. I let it cook longer today and it is significantly better. The parts that look burnt taste like pancakes. On the plus side, my baking tray will definitely be non-stick for life.

Here's the "nutritional" information you (probably only my mom) have all been waiting for:

Food Facts/Average Values:
Energy: 835kJ/200Calories (~54% from fat)
Protein: 9g
Carbohydrate: 14g (2.6g of of which are sugars)
Fat: 12g (3.2g of which are saturates)
Fiber: 2.0g
Sodium: 0.48g
Salt: ~1.2g

Ingredients:
Pork Sausage (43%) [Pork, Water, Rusk [Wheat Flour, Water], Pork Rind, Pork Fat, Soya Protein, Salt, Dextrose, Emulsified (Diphosphates), Flavouring (contains Yeast), Spice Extracts, Sage Extract], Water, Wheat Flour, Egg White, Skimmed Milk, Whole Egg, Rapeseed Oil, Salt. NO COLOURS OF PRESERVATIVES. NO ARTIFICIAL FLAVOURINGS

Contains:
Gluten, Milk, Wheat, Egg and Soya. May contain traces of nuts and/or seeds.

Well, that was enlightening. Here's the fun part, that's for 1/4 of a pack. Sorry Mom. Don't worry though, I had partly skimmed milk with it so that should balance it out. Right? Right...?

Night of the Living Dead

Tonight I ordered Chinese food. I was hungry and was craving General Tao/Tso chicken. They don't have that here but I wanted to try the closest thing I could get. I'll start the story off with a bit of an interactive writer-reader challenge. Can you guess what's in this mystery bag?

To be fair a lot of things came in those mystery bags. Things I didn't even order. I still have no idea what this stuff is. If someone knows, please leave a comment. It tastes sort of fishy and looks like large Styrofoam chips/crisps. This is not the thing in the mystery bag mentioned above, though. Keep guessing!

I was too hungry to take picture then so this is what was left over from my feast last night. I had eight mini-spring rolls, which didn't last for the photo. They were really good. Also, the chicken is missing but it used to be in that plastic container filled with orange sauce and some mystery vegetable. If you know what that vegetable is please let me know. Fun fact:It's a nice plastic container, I think I'll be able to reuse it. Last chance to guess before I reveal the mystery item.

Finally, the answer you've all be waiting for! (Except those that just scrolled down here right away, way to not play along and cheat the system.) This is my crowning achievement for food purchases in London. Half a liter of delicious Belgian chocolate Häagen-Dazs ice cream. I'm saving it for tonight. Unless, of course, I get hungry before then. But since it's already mid-afternoon I don't think that will be a problem.

Despite my diet I am still alive. I watched Sicko last night, so I'm feeling pretty good about our health care. Then I watched 28 Weeks Later and that balanced it out. I don't recommend wasting your time with 28 Week Later unless you would have otherwise had to spend that hour and a half of your life watching anime.

Death by Breakfast

If there's one thing that's been wrong with the UK so far it is the food hands down. Two days ago I was feeling adventurous and decided to try a new kind of peanut butter. Bad idea. It is the kind you have to mix up before you eat it, which is disgusting enough if you aren't expecting it. So I started my sandwich off by almost spilling peanut grease onto my laptop. I hoped it wasn't normal peanut butter gone-bad and set to work mixing it. It made the more horrible sound. Something between the sound of a cat working out a hairball and a dead octopus being repeatedly smashed onto a rocky beach by waves. It felt like I was eating tasteless peanut butter mixed with sweat and tears. To add to that, my loaf of bread got mangled by the slicer so I ended up with these deformed crusts. One end was super thick (2-3 slices wide) and the other was the normal size but had triangular pieces missing. In case you're wondering why I chose the retarded loaf, that company's bag is not see-through so I had no way of knowing. It wasn't my fault that time.

On my next trip to the store I found this abomination.


Who needs canned hot dogs. And what's with naming your company "Ye Olde Oak." They shouldn't be pretending to be old English, this is like selling canned America it just has to come with a baseball cap, a gun and a some processed cheese. To be honest, I almost bought it because it looked so heinous but then I realized I had no can opener and I'm really not interested in keeping it as a decoration.

At that point I stumbled across "Toad in the Hole" as I was looking through the frozen meals. It was so greasy I felt like I was eating a Gino's hair. It tastes amazing but I'm sure I'll be dead by supper time. I felt I wouldn't be able to describe it well enough so I took pictures. Get ready!

This is how it looks out of the box. Of the 6-for-4 meals it has the biggest package and comes with a foil tray. Hint: This may end horribly.


It's a little hard to tell in the other picture, but it looks like they dissolved a pig with some sort of special chemical and all that was left were eight sausages and a tray full of liquid hog. Then they froze it and sold it to the idiot from overseas that thought it looked like a traditional British meal.


Here it is cooked! Success? I don't think so. The middle of it looks sort of uncooked and there is a film of fat covering the top. Saying film is pretty generous given that it's about half a centimeter thick at some points.


I took a break from eating to write this blog. Like everything else, it tastes fairly good.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the nutritional information! I still have another one to eat so I don't want to think about that yet.

Hot Dogs

I had to eat five of them instead of three but they were acceptable. I don't really have anything else to say about them. So...ya. Acceptable.

Jam (Round 2)

I got a different kind of jam today because I couldn't believe that England would produce such an awful product and leave that to be the only option. I was disappointed when I opened the jar and saw that it looked very synthetic and more like JELLO than jam. I decided to applying common sense and general logic and forge ahead by making not one but four sandwiches. My heart sank as I scooped out the globs, it looked like another failure. Thankfully, by some miracle, it tasted great. Maybe it was because my expectations were so low at that point. I don't care as long as it's good.

In conclusion, the UK's PB&J comes close ours but they need to work on the overall UX. It feels like you're eating a play dough and month-old JELLO sandwich but it tastes right.

Tomorrow I'm going to test hot dogs, unfortunately I couldn't find chicken ones. They didn't have much choice and they seem skinnier than American ones.

Another Update Gap

I'm still alive, I just haven't had anything interesting to write or complain about. I'm sure that will change all too soon. I've been doing a lot of waiting and killing time but I've tried to kill it semi-productively, if that's possible. There are a couple of potential jobs that I'm waiting to hear back from. I don't want to write about them until I know if they will work out or not.

I saw a flier for an Italian pizza delivery place pretty close to my house. They talk about how the pizzas are cooked in wood ovens or something like that, but the real selling point for me was that they deliver Häagen Dazs ice cream. I can't tell if it's overpriced but I plan to give it a try this coming weekend.

The weather isn't too great today (cloudy and chilly) but it isn't raining so that's always nice. I have to go to the store to get more food. Among other things, I need to get more peanut butter, but I think I'll try the other brand this time. I'm going to test out their hot dogs, hopefully you can't mess those up. I actually had a dream about making hot dogs last night, it was pretty creepy and thankfully I can't remember it very well so I won't even try. I also need to get a plate, I've been eating out of plastic containers and bowls for the past while and it would be a nice change.

I've had pretty good luck with my TV dinner-type meals. Last night was probably the best and most complete one I've had (at home) since I got here. I had two piece of chicken garlic Kiev and a potato/cheese/broccoli melty thing.

Anyways, I'm going to go get that shopping done before people in Montreal get into work, in case they need me.

Jam

While London's attempt at peanut butter ultimately succeeds, their jam falls short. It's pretty much offensive to all five senses (only Lisa and Alex will realize what I just did). Maybe it's just a bad brand. I can barely put into words what it's like, the closest I could come up with was: Imagine eating a glob of chilled, artificial-raspberry squid. I should apply for a job doing quality control for this company, they need it desperately. Unfortunately I bought two jars. I guess having to eat them is an appropriate punishment. On the bright side I didn't get the same flavour so maybe strawberry will be better. I hope I was just in the wrong aisle and got 'tea jams' or something because I think I might miss PB&J.

Peanut Butter

It exists! I went to buy a jar today but it looked disgusting and grey, so I bought two jars instead.

Update:
I made some peanut butter and banana sandwiches to test out my morning shopping. I have discovered that ASDA brand peanut butter is to KRAFT brand peanut butter as to infomercials are to prime time TV. They are similar in appearance, smell and even taste. Unfortunately, the magic is missing. (Not the kind of magic you can buy for limited time only for three easy payments for $19.99 plus shipping and handling. Certain conditions apply. Offer not valid outside of the continental United States of America. And if you place your order in the next 60 seconds you get this 15 piece stainless steel knife set absolutely FREE...59...58...57....) The kind of magic I'm talking about is the experience of having smooth, soft peanut butter in your mouth. Instead it it feels like I'm eating paste made out of ground up peanut-flavoured crayons mixed with peanut-flavoured white glue. It isn't that bad it just feels wrong, like Tom Selleck without a mustache. Anyways, I'm going to go back to eating my arts and crafts sandwiches. I have to get through a whole loaf of bread by Monday because I forgot that "reduced" doesn't necessarily mean "on sale" it is more like "we found this in the back and it expires tomorrow, enjoy."

Update (again):
As an added bonus, if you let it sit for a little while it seems to turn into peanut-flavoured construction paper.

Mini America

I took this just outside the ASDA near my place. It feels just like home! The reason this picture is bigger (when you click to enlarge) is that it was a test to set up posting directly from my phone. Now I can post pictures of fun things while I'm seeing them. Real-time reality blogging! I probably won't do it very often because it costs money and because it isn't that useful now that I have internet. On the plus side, if I get kidnapped I can still keep you posted.