Like Me

Like many of us, we like to win stuff, whether its getting the lollipop or the lotto jackpot. Something for nothing always brings a smile to our face & makes us happy. So CAR magazine have a facebook competition, post a picture of yourself with a supercar & get your friends to "like" the picture, the one with the most likes wins a hamper worth R2000. God knows whats in the hamper but an insider says a watch makes up bulk of the value. So I figured, it cant be that hard. I got 400 odd (people that I do know, not random ppl I add or added me) as friends. Im sure if I ask them to, they will.... boy was I wrong. First time I ever asked them for something, thats real & not some stupid game where they need sheep or horse manure to grow crops & only about 60 odd did it. Then a few very good followers from twitter followed as well. Which I thank.

Besides winning, I used this as part research for me & my sister who is studying marketing. Seeing the various forms one can use online social networks for self marketing, agreed there was nothing much for the others to gain from but seeing that these were people I knew & most of them do spend most of the time using facebook, one would have thought 10 seconds (which is roughly the amount of time it takes to do it if you have ADSL) isnt that much to ask of them to like something. I emailed it out, put it as my facebook status & put it out on twitter. Roughly it reached about 800 odd people. The current number of people that liked it is 76, thats a pretty shitty percentage which I dont want to work out. The competition ends in 3 days time, Im currently 13 "likes" behind the leader who I must add has a pic of him and the stunning Koeningsegg. So this is it, my final attempt to gather some "likes"

Its pretty simple & doesnt take much time as I explained.

Step 1:  click this link: http://bit.ly/9C5Lqx it will take you to the CAR magazine facebook page, all you have to do there after is click "LIKE"

Step 2: click this link: http://bit.ly/cXhJPk it will take you to my picture on the CAR magazine facebook link, then all you have to do is click "like"

Doesnt seem hard enough?

If you want to vote, go ahead & make my day, really! but yeah, just learnt something about this whole deal. It may seem easy but if you dont pester people into doing it, it wont get done. Begging people isnt my style & I wouldn't like it the other way as well, so I wont go into that extremes, if I was able to win the car in the picture, then that would be a different story altogether.

In conclusion, I wouldnt say this showed me who my "true friends are" because as I said, its doing a favour. Not many will have to the time to do so & many access this website via their phones which tend to skip these type of requests. Its just an interesting experience that has taught me a lot in terms of marketing on the social streams of the internet. I could have gone "balls to the wall" but thought is it really worth it?

Well there is some things I did manage to accomplish in all of this...

Not bad hey?

Scouts honor

I never did join the scouts when I was kid so when Wonderbra launched their campaign I thought "heres my chance to scratch that off my list". At first I did it for the fun of it, so I could go around staring at the gifts that god has blessed the female body with & not getting into trouble for doing so. You see they give you a card which has your "unique scout code" so if you spot a girl that thinks will best suit their product, you walk over, tell them that they were worthy of your drool & ask them to register online at www.wonderbra.co.za , but when doing so they need to enter the code to say I was the one that scouted them. Ive been getting a lot of ladies asking me how it works, hence I did this blog to explain to them how to go about registering themselves for it.

STEP:1

log on to www.wonderbra.co.za, the welcome screen shall prompt you with either wanting to become a Wonderbra Girl or to become a Wonderbra Scout, like me. Now girls chose the right one, which is the first one.









STEP:2

You'll encounter another menu screen which will prompt you something similar but with more choices. Just chose the "I want to be the girl"










STEP:3

Once you click that, an account login sign will pop up.
Obviously you dont have one as yet so read the fine print & click to register.









STEP:4

A new pop up will ask you to fill in the required info, once complete & submitted Im guessing an email for confirmation will be sent to the address that you provided. So either you have to revert back to your email to confirm or it will take you to the next step which is...






STEP:5

well nothing else to explain besides fill in the rest of the required & please please put my unique scout code or the code of the person that scouted you. Its only fair to do so, since our eyes dont lie.








Now ladies, please read the rules as well, they arent  many & they are very basic, eg: you have to be unmarried & they goods must be the ones the big guy gave you and not Dr Whats his face put in you.

You must be thinking, why would a guy do this? well besides helping Wonderbra find a new face & erm cleavage, if my eyes picked the right girl & she wins I get R11 grand, which could come pretty handy for buying KFC during the year.

Anyways, thats the low down, now that you've got it, go on, register.

I cook, I eat

I cook, big deal? Some guys make like its cross between nuclear physics & heart surgery but its damn easy once you get the knack of it. The real problem is cleaning up, that shit is where the "hard work" comes in. You see for me cooking is the fun & games part, being creative, letting your mouth & brain work in tandem judging what you make, how you make it & what go's in it. Once you got an idea of what you going to make, you think of things that could work with it.

Yesterday I was going to make the family meal but passed the responsibility onto my sister. Though sitting there relaxed, poised to read the Sunday paper, my mind bugged me that I havent successfully made a butter chicken curry that I really thought "this is the one". So I got off my butt & dug in the freezer for some fillets & the magic begun. So here's how it went down


the recipe 
ingredients for chicken

• 2 chicken fillets
• 3 minced red chillis
• 3 minced green chillis
• grated ginger
• minced garlic
• 1/2tsp tumeric power
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2tsp chilli powder
• 1/2 tsp coriander power
• 2tsp lemon juice
• biryani mix (dried :cinamon sticks, cloves, star aniseed, aniseeds & cardamom)
• oil  
• butter

ingredients for gravy

• 1 cup sour milk/ yoghurt
• 1 smallish round tomato
• 1 smallish onion
• 1 green chilli

Method:
the chicken

Take the 2 chicken fillets, cut into cubes. add the minced chilli's (green & red), the minced garlic & ginger, 1/2 tsp turmeric powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp coriander powder, 1/2 tsp chilli power, 2 tsp lemon juice & some oil. Rub it well into the chicken & leave to marinate (It doesnt have to be long, I let it stand for 10min)

chicken cooking

In a pot, heat some oil, add the biryani mix & allow them to simmer so the flavours can come out, then add in your chicken mixture. Best is to cook it covered, it will steam up and will release all the excess water from the meat. Dont let all the water burn out though. Once the chicken is cooked, just take out the chicken, leave behind the water and the biryani mix (this will form part as the gravy).

cooked chicken

Mince your onion & tomato separately & add it into the pot with the remaining water from the chicken, cut your green chilli into strips & add to the pot as well.

onion, tomato & chilli

Then add your sour milk/ yoghurt in. Stir it well as it might begin to curdle. If you feel its too runny for your liking, you can always add some flour as a thickening agent, only a pinch or 1/2 tsp at most though! Then add 1 table spoon of butter.

gravy beginning to boil

Once it begins to boil, add your chicken pieces back into the pot & cover while the gravy mixes with the chicken for about 5 minutes. Stir well then serve!

I made a quick roti (Indian bread) to accompany the meal, which is basically cake flour, salt, oil & boiling water. Mix well until you get a dough similar to bread dough texture, roll it out round & cook on a hot non-stick frying pan. You can add garlic butter to it once cooked.

As I said earlier, its up to you what you want, so you can mix & match things in this recipe to suit your taste. The dishes on the other hand weren't that much, it gets messy when making the bread though, playing with flour isnt my strongest ability, last time I made pizza I successfully got flour all over the laptops keyboard as I was searching the net for the best dough recipe.

If you do decide to try it, hope it comes out great as it did for me!

Bon apetite.

September 11th

Tomorrow (11/09/10) marks the 9th anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks on the USA. None more striking than the destruction of the twin towers better known as the World Trade Center. I dont want to go into detail as to what transpired that Tuesday morning in New York as you pretty much know every detail to it.

For me I was sitting at home that afternoon watching a re-run of some movie & by chance I paused it to see what was coming on TV, at that point WTC2 begun its fall. Sitting there watching the scroller at the bottom read "US under attack" I was shocked, confused & sadden to see this happen. Im a fan of anything big & concrete, at the time those 2 towers were the ultimate for me. The design from the outside may have been plain & dreary to the others but that didnt strike my mind one bit. I had it down on my must visit places before I died but now I will never see it thanks to some extremist that thought it would be a good idea to park two planes in them.

The world lost 2 truly great landmarks that day, & as it came down it took with it 1000's of innocent lives, but as I said I dont want to go too much into that. Its a touchy subject & rightfully so. No one deserved to die that day, including those 2 monuments to human engineering. So tomorrow, not only do we remember the lives losts, but also the buildings lost.

RIP

gone but never forgotten 

 

The Brick

English football has many "greats" that still ply their trade in the league, the likes of Gerrard, Giggs, Scholes, Terry's, etc. Carragher is one that wont strike many off hand though, as his not one to catch headlines & his goal scoring record really does him little favours, but that doesnt stop him from being one the greatest footballers in the league of recent. Tomorrow (03/09/10) see's Anfield play host to a testimonial for him & I thought it would be fitting to do a little post on the Bootle born defender.

"His heart is as big as his home town"

Born & bred in Liverpool you dont get more Scouse than Jamie! Just trying to understand what he says sometimes is hard enough for us that speak the English language can you imagine what it must have been for his CB partners Agger, Skertl & Soto when they arrived?

No one can deny his love for football & Liverpool FC, even though he did at 1 time in his life support those in Blue across the Mersey. Every performance from him is a master class to defenders out there. Whether we losing 3-0 or winning 3-0 he is forever throwing his body around protecting our goal. Hence the title of this blogpost "The Brick". He is the brick in our Liverpool defensive wall. Being a center back he interacts alot with his partners either side of him, not in a gentle manner though, screaming so loud you can hear him over the commentators at time, just ask Arbeloa about it after Jamie gave him an earful after slacking in a game against Westbrom in the 08/09 season where we were comfortably in the lead but lackluster defence from the Spanish RB allowed Westbrom to get an easy corner. Jamie was adimant on keeping a clean sheet & helping Pepe Riena get closer to that Golden Glove award.

Carra having a moment

His commitment is therefore everyone to see & cant be better highlighted than the night of 25th May 2005. After coming back from 3-0 , & losing players like fly's. The whole team were running on reserves, Jamie cramping in pain, barely managing to stand a full 10 minutes ran, tackled, dived in order to protect the goal. He knew the team came to far to give it up like that! He was quoted saying after the game:

“The additional 30 minutes were the most tense, strenuous, but ultimately rewarding I’ve ever spent on a football pitch,Courage, character, willpower and grit – these are virtues that have been instilled into me since I was seven years ld.”

2005

Its moments like that which make one easily forget about those 2 own goals he scored in the game back in 99 when Manchester United came to visit. All the managers heap praise on him, so much so that he was forced out of internationl retirement to rejoin the England squad for the 2010 world cup!

One can go on heaping praise on Liverpools 23 but it will never be enough to show our true gratitude in his efforts for our club. He really is a legend & hero to all.

We all dream of a team of Carraghers