MCAT study guide arrived in the mail today. It cost me almost $100, I'd better use it. Regardless of whether I get into med school or not, it should prove to be a useful review of the basics.
Number of chapters: 69 Chapters to cover per day: 3 Number of days to cover the book: 69/3 = 23 Number of times to cover the book's material: 3 Number of days to finish overview: 69 ≈ 10 weeks ≈ 2.5 months
Other preparation for the MCAT: - Vocabulary: 10 per day - Writing practice: 1 blog entry every 2 days - History books or novels: 1 every 2 weeks (30 mins per day?)
Okay, I think that's ambitious enough for now. At this point, I don't care too much about the JLPT, that can come next year (or the next, or the next).
BMV is evil. Within the past 3 days, I've bought 3 cookbooks. That brings my total to... oh wait, I'd rather not know how many I have, nor know how much I've spent on cookbooks so far. Everyone tells me, when they see a stack of them, "wow you have so many cookbooks." What they don't know is how many I actually have, I only keep a TINY FRACTION of them visible, and they already think I have so many. I'd rather keep it a mystery as to what people would say if they saw the entire collection; I know most judge me disapprovingly, because it could be considered a waste my money. I even think so myself, sometimes, but I know my collection will probably continue to grow.
Part of the reason for my obsession with collecting cookbooks is that I fear, one day, I will no longer have access to the amazing array of multicultural restaurants in Vancouver and Toronto. What if your favourite restaurant closes down? Aren't you curious about how your favourite dishes are made? It's not even just about the recipes. Where did these dishes originate from? What is the history behind it, and how did it come to be like this? Also, it seems that as we head deeper into the future, an extraordinary amount of food culture is lost; more restaurants are cooking to suit local tastes, and restaurants run by families over generations aren't going to last forever. (Newer generations have so much more freedom and are no longer locked into inheriting the family business.)
Perhaps I'd have a reasonably-sized collection if I wasn't so into collecting so many different types. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, Singaporean/Malaysian, Thai, and Italian, just to mention a few. I'm beginning to collect those rare books that teach you how to prepare ingredients that you'd normally buy prepared from the store. Oh, and the dessert cookbooks, I can't forget those - those were the ones I first started buying.
What about finding recipes online, people say? I guess I could, but I'm definitely not a fan. You can't always trust them, because half of them are nowhere near authentic (some of my past experiences were just... ew). I believe my paranoia over the disappearance of websites is justified. Everyone's experienced the disappearance of a site or web page. I have, too many times. Then there's the corruption of data when burning DVDs and seemingly short lifespan of hard drives, both internal and external. Sure, I can print it out, but it gets messy really fast - organizing hundreds of sheets of paper? No thanks.
Regardless, I should start cooking out of them more since I have them. Over 95% of my library is back in Vancouver, because I don't want to be stuck wondering what to do with my cookbooks after graduating from UofT. I know I'll never get through all of them, because there are simply too many recipes. If only my interests would stop changing so much, maybe I could actually get somewhere. At first, I was into Chinese cooking, when I got my Sichuan and Hunan cookbooks. Then, thanks to Amazon.jp, I went for Japanese cooking. After discovering an awesome Korean cooking blog, I began experimenting with Korean cooking. And recently, because I miss Singapore, I've taken a liking to Singaporean and Malay food. I don't even want to think about stepping outside the Asian realm yet, there's simply just too much to cover here already. However, since my most recent purchase (made just 3 hours ago) was an Italian cookbook that looks absolutely amazing, I will probably be trying some of the dishes out of it over the next few weeks.
And of course, there's my dessert cookbooks (all of which are in Vancouver). I sure can't make too much out of them, or I'd suffer from a heart attack at an early age if I kept making desserts.
Long story short, more real cooking needs to be done by me. No more random crappy stir fries. My current goal is one recipe per week. If I'm not too lazy to take pictures with my piece of sh** camera, you'll be seeing some of those here.
To finish off this entry that is 10x as long as I intended it to be, I will mention a quote that I rather like. "You can only eat so many meals in a lifetime. Why waste one on something mediocre?"
スキマスイッチ does live performances so well, too bad I'll probably never get to go to one of their concerts! (And holy crap. 大橋卓弥 looks so young in this video.)
Currently playing: Tales of Destiny [2/3 way through]
Next: 1. Metal Gear Solid 3 [About 2/5 way through; game is quite hard] 2. Final Fantasy IX [On Disc 3 of 4] 3. Persona 4 [Still in July] 4. Dragon Shadow Spell [Chapter 9 of 10] 5. Final Fantasy XII [Probably near the beginning; don't really like this game]