My Lecka-Lecka Gelato Invention

I love watching The Apprentice, the regular ones before they changed the format and made it to celebrity version. The tasks are inspiring and they helped me to get different insights on working creatively on any given tasks. One of which, was to design new ice cream flavours, and have the most sales from it. Read about the tasks here.

Lecka-Lecka organized a rather similar contest not too long ago, with the sales aspect absent of course. 3 flavours was chosen by them and I was lucky enough to get my flavour chosen among the top 3. :D You can get the taste sample from eCurve or Wangsa Walk Lecka-Lecka branch, on the 29th and 30th of December 2012.

The winning flavours are - Ribena Lychee, Bubble Tea Craze, and Snowball Fudge in descending orders.

Came in 2nd. Bubble Tea Craze

My take on the task was simple, I wanted to choose a flavour that is susceptible to most Malaysians, thus ultimately choosing the Bubble Tea flavour. Had it been the Year of the Donuts, I would've gone with Donut flavour (The winning flavour of the said Apprentice episode, lol) but this year has been very much influenced by bubble tea, thus that direction.

Of course, none of the winners are involved in the actual food tasting process until the results are out, and each of us received 0.5 kg of the winning flavours.

1st Prize - Ribena Lychee

The verdict? I am a sucker for the brownies in the Snowball Fudge flavour but the vanilla based gelato is kinda odd for my liking. The bubble tea gelato works, however as predicted by some the tapioca pearl has been rendered kind of inedible due to its harden/frozen state. The Ribena Lychee should've been a slam dunk, but it resulted to be a bit too sweet.

2nd Runner Up - Snowball Fudge

That's just my humble (food taster/focus group/picky eater) opinion. The public may think differently, hopefully towards our favours. But none the less, it has been a delightful experience to be a gelato designer for once, this could be very well a stepping stone for any of us to hit into the food industry (dreaming it over/dare to dream).

My humble creation - Could've been better :)

And of course, that doesn't hinder me from feeling like....

... I am an Ice Cream man now.

Les Misérables - The Murphy Law Day

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong - Murphy's Law

That was exactly what happened last Friday, where everything I expected to go wrong actually went wrong.
Woke up late to shower up for an event. With great stink, I attended a finale where I stood a 1/175 chance to win a Hyundai Elantra. Sounds good, no? Murphy's Law struck again, I was eliminated in the 1st preliminary round.

Later that evening I was supposed to attend a preview screening of Les Misérables, courtesy of Nuffnang. I managed to secure another pair that day, just in case one fell short of the other. I gave the other pair away, and was expecting that the contact person would redeemed the pair for me, even if he/she watches the movie. I personally don't care if that person watches the movie or not, I do care however that the ticket is collected because I gave my word/RSVP for it.

The night before, fearing that contact person might forget about the screening, I decided to send a private message. True enough, contact person totally forgotten about it. And Murphy's Law struck once again, on the day it self, contact person forgot about the magazine cutting, thus making it hard to redeem the tickets and it gets better, contact person decided to let me know that he/she actually got a pair from Nuffnang.

Frustrated, but decided not to argue, I went to collect both pairs and decided to burn a pair. Murphy Law struck once again, the screening for Les Misérables in the Nuffnang hall was halted due to technical difficulties.

But no matter how much Murphy's Law decided to bring me down, the day do have its silver linings.
I didn't win the car, but I won some consolation prizes, so I was not empty handed.

And it was due to contact person FFK-ing, that I actually switched hall to watch the premiere anyway (I found out after that the screening did not happen at Nuffnang's hall afterall and was replaced with another day). It was one of those rare occasion that I am glad that people FFK me. LOL.

Les Misérables, directed by Tom Hooper (who directed the Academy Award winning movie, The King's Speech) and starred by Wolverine, Gladiator Maximus, Princess Diaries, that Mamma Mia girl, Mrs.Tim Burton and AliG-Borat-Bruno.

It's a full 160 minutes of musical cum film, telling the story of Jean Valjean, being chased by an obsessed police inspector Javert, met a prostitute Fantine, and kept her daughter Cosette after she died. I know, the summary is complete trash, but seriously, the movie brought broadway to the silver screen, in a good way. Never knew Hugh Jackman was such a performer, Anne Hathaway gave me goosebumps from her solo number, Amanda Seyfried is amazing to watch as usual.

While we can't exactly avoid Murphy's Law from happening, everything that happened/bound to happen is for a reason, it might be just for the better. Just hold on to that if you feel like you're having a crappy day!