Coffee

After resettling in my hometown, I get to know my distant nephew whom I recently met. Well..  I might have met him in the past, but just forgot. The fact is, I've been away from here for the past seven years, and so did he. Alright, that sounds as a valid excuse :)
Anyway, I'm just five years older than him. Now, my nephew is into coffee, drinking, roasting, grinding, the whole nine yards. Me, I just drink it. I couldn't tell the difference between a good coffee and a superb one, just like with wine. For me, what makes the difference is the whole experience of drinking it. You got to have a good reading material, and nice bread/pastries to go with it. I wouldn't mind music or radio in the background (my current favorite is BBC London).

Roasted coffee beans

Grinder

Slightly coarse grind

I've been looking for a decent (read: inexpensive) French press. I'm not going to pay more than 30 bucks for a French press. My excuse is.. so I can get a decent tasting coffee without burning a hole in my wallet. My standard does not include the regular freeze dried (instant) coffee from Nescafe. It just tastes sucks.

Premium brands taste better, but they costs a lot, compared to ground coffee. 

What I don't like about ground coffee is the coffee residue. That is why I need a French press. The other method is to use coffee drip, but its hard to find the filter here. So I settled with the press for the moment.

Update : Finally.. got it. And thank God the resulting brew is good.

Freedom press in action

(*okay that's a bit lame)

Memories

I always wonder how people write their own memoirs or biography. I seem to have a short term memory. I already forgot past distant travels. I'm not sure if this is common, or that I'm the only one with this shortcoming. Some people seems to be able to recall old memories vividly, just like it was yesterday.
I envy them. Maybe this is partly why I became a photographer, and writing this blog. To record fleeting moments.

Well, after idling for some time, I did something useful today. I got an acceptance for my offer for IT consultancy. Albeit the low rate, at least its a start. Which prompt me to fix my laptop due to its slowness. After five years, I was wondering whether its time for a replacement. Usually I don't like working on a laptop, since at a comparable cost, its performance is far from a desktop. But if I need to travel, there is no other option.
So I began to Google the web and try to find what causing its slowness. It turns out that the IDE transfer mode is set to PIO instead of UDMA, for some puzzling reason (maybe a crash). So after a few restarts, it was fixed. It seems I still get to keep my notebook for at least another year.