Tuesday 16th Sep '08

Takeaway for dinner at work again tonight. I stopped by the food court at Westfield Carousel and ordered the unagi don from the Japanese stall. While waiting, I picked up some hot chips from the Chicken Treat stall - hee hee.

I managed to get away for a dinner break despite being really busy. My dinner was a disappointment though. There was one small very thin piece of unagi (eel) amongst a pretty bland assortment of sliced vegetables. This salad (I italicise the 'salad' because I dont believe it even passes as a salad) consisted of a few slices of cabbage, red cabbage and carrot. The slices of white cabbage were the tough stalk part of the cabbage - the part I usually cut and leave out of my cooking because of its toughness. There were a few slices of some sort of pickle which tasted pretty much just like the vinegar it was pickled in. All in all, I have to say it was a really crap meal.

For the last night of my 4-midnight stint, of course everything had to go wrong. Marissa was run off her feet in transfusion and there was still alot to be done when she left for home. The coagulation machine died on me and I spent a few hours trying to fix it while balancing all the urgent work coming in. I had to perform a calibration on the biochemistry analyser, then change a sensor. I didn't get out on time and felt bad about leaving two trays of blood films for the next day. It was one of those shifts where I feel I'm running around on my feet the entire time and I just feel so physically exhausted I don't know how I'm going to find the energy to even drive myself home afterwards.

But I made it. I need something special to pick up my spirits and celebrate the end of my night shifts. I felt like a cocktail so dug out my vodka. I mashed as much juice as I could from a few strawberries and added it to some ice and vodka. I sliced a chilli in half lengthways and threw it into the mixture for a few minutes to let the chilli flavour infuse into the drink. I didn't have any soda water so a can of lemon squash had to suffice. The chilli I used is from our garden so it's a really really hot one. I didn't leave it in for too long otherwise it would overpower the whole drink. Not bad. Would have been better if I'd had some actual strawberry liqueur and sugar syrup.

I had some leftover wantan soup but my Mum had precooked the wantans so they all broke up when I reheated them in the soup. Didn't make for a pretty photo so I didn't take one.

To bed!