Experiment: Edibility of Microwavable Popcorn that is Past Expiry Date

So a few years ago, I had bought from the store some microwavable popcorn packs. Being the superbly healthy person that I am (and that whenever I make it, my place smells like popcorn and butter for days), today I still had a few packs lying around. Needless to say, the expiry/best before date was well past.

However, craving popcorn to complement my TVB watching, I wondered - what would happen if I microwaved a pack of popcorn that is at least a year (if not two) expired? Would it be edible... would I get sick?

...Since my sick days are no where near used up, this was the perfect opportunity to give this a shot...

Purpose:
To establish if expired microwavable popcorn is edible

Hypothesis:
Since 'normal' popcorn kernels can last for a long time, and microwavable popcorn are just popcorn kernels in a bag, it would probably work.

Observations:
There is less popping during the microwaving time. On opening the bag after, there are less popcorn overall (alot more kernels were left unpopped) - still got at least a 3/4 bag full though.

Popcorn otherwise tasted just like before. Same taste, and didn't get sick.

Conclusion:
This is supported by various others out on the world wide web - where apparently, I wasn't a pioneer. But this confirms my results.

Another experiment complete!

The bargain shopper

Have been years since I looked at flyers. I get so many I just throw them out without looking. A couple days ago though, I actually took the time to read through one of them, and they had some deals going on at my favorite grocery store...

So today I went (after beer:30) to check it out. My goal was to rack up a $75 tab, because then I would get $10 off on my next purchase :).

I pick and choose, try to add up the items in my head... thinking I didn't buy enough, I eventually just added more and more stuff. Rresults: Ended up buying $100+ .. guess I completely missed the adding up of the items... lol.

But I did meet that $75 limit and got $10 on my next purchase!..

Bargain Shopper = Me!

Part II - Karoake...

Perfectly content to just call it a day after such a worthwhile and early outing, later on tonight I was dragged out and convinced to drive all the way into Seattle for karaoke.

So I arrive to this new karaoke place (right across from Salsa place actually), and there were no rooms available (and probably not for the rest of the night). Young genius and lady friend were there, wandering about trying to decide what to do next... then I hear some crazy talk about 'oh, let's go to a friend's place and play rock band'... .. Mson's wtf radar goes off and he springs into action...

Surveying the area, there was a bar, a waiting area that had some open area, and a table with sofa around it (waiting area) and a few mics just out and a small TV. There was a group already singing at the bar (they were waiting for a room). Spurred by the 'rock band quote'... a light bulb goes off in my head goes - this is really just the lounge area at any K place...

Then a sequence of event happens....
1) Get drinks - there is no way I come all this way into S.town, and just drive back.
2) Pick a song... and persuade aka. coerce little genius and lady friend to pick a song(s) too :). There's nothing like peer pressure...
3) Take over the 'waiting area' seats and table - yes, there were a few people on their last drinks there... but they left and voila, my table opened...
4) Get more drinks, chat, sing, play...
Transformation complete!

All we were missing was dice...
Then salsa beast and company arrived, at first reluctant to sing in the lounge with people, but seeing how much fun we were all having, joins in and fun times it was.

So all in all, we ended up taking over the lounge as 'our room', sang the songs we wanted, had a table and seats. Rock band?.. HA! Neverrrrrr...

Best $50 spent in awhile...

Today I work up bright and early (on a weekend) and drove to the Museum of Flight to take a photography course. Found this deal and supposedly this session was suppose to be for $200+, but this deal had it going for $50 - so I figure, why not right? :).

Expecting some super private workshop, I show up 15 minutes early to find that there are literally 100s of people in front of the line. Turns out the guy had booked an auditorium and well, he filled it. $50 a head, easily 300 people, that's $15K. That's pretty awesome (for him).

So back to me... though it was a 3 hour lecture style talk (in which of course I had the customary naps), I learned quite a bit. Particularly, I finally learned what metering was (hahaha), and now understand better how I can get the pictures to have the right exposure and make it like how I see it through my eyes without snapping randomly a bunch of photos with different settings. Still working on finding the right place to meter though. There were other little things that was taught and some parts that was a review of sorts, but overall well worth it.

In the afternoon, there was also a hands on session where we walked around with our cameras just practicing the various techniques that he went over. That was pretty useful too.

So a 3 hour 'useful' lecture, a hands on guided practicing session + free admission to the museum of flight... all for $50! What a great deal!

One thing I learned that I thought was really interesting...
How to shoot 'through' a fence.
Left = notice how close the fencing is. And on the Right = same fence!!! Notice how basically I shot 'through' the fence. (and note, there are actually two fences in between the lens and the object). Thought that was pretty cool. Apparently, if you go to a zoo or safari, you can pull this trick to take pictures through a fence and if done right, not see the fence at all! I thought that was pretty cool.

PS. The course was offered by this place called Capturing True Emotion - worth a look indeed.

Irish music - yuck...

After craving for noodles, we headed out to this placed called Boom Noodle. Pretty interesting place where it felt like a high class cafeteria style place.

Afterwards, headed to this bar that is supposedly pretty good. So here we are, arriving and first paying cover because of some live music event, only to hear this Irish music playing. I have to admit, it was pretty horrible. I shall never go back to this bar again... .. . (yea - can't even spin an optimistic spin on this one). The only good part was when the guy wasn't playing... .. .

Allll clean....

Having been lazy for 2 months... this weekend was errands and get rid of 'mental clutter' weekend.

Did quite a bit... I no longer have mountains of little annoying todos, and finally cleaned my place. Feel sooo clean.

Another TODO completed... watch, battery... unite!

A couple years ago... I don't even remember when exactly - but my watch ran out of batteries. I have been meaning to replace the battery on it, because it is a nice watch afterall.

Finally, today I decided to do it... and it was actually really quick to do. I went to the store, dropped off my watch, went next to buy some sashimi, then came back, and it was done. Why didn't I do this earlier?

And with that, time starts moving again...

Lecture on a Friday...

As one of the final items for the course, we had to present our 5 page paper.

I liked the research actually, it was looking into something that I was intrigued about, and learned quite a bit about the topic.

One of the more interesting talks was the last one, where one of the students looked into a paper that talked about e-commerce. Apparently, for quite a while, there were ways where you can pay $5 for a $500 item, or buy more than one item for the price of one... not at shady sites.. but at large super legit sites. Can you imagine that, the e-commerce system had such a big hole that who knows how many people might have exploited!

The downside of these talks... it was on a Friday night... and I thought originally that w/ 5 minutes a person, it would be over in an hour (since there was about 10 ppl). Turns out it took almost 3 hours to go through :(.

And with that, another Friday night passes... .. .

PBR in a paper bag...

So on Sat I get a call in the afternoon, after my nap, that I should go out tonite to meet lil genius's new friend... So after a quick steak dinner, dressed up, and then headed into town.

Originally, it was to start with beer pong, then flip cup... but having arrived late, we headed straight to the bar. Went all the way to Fremont, feels pretty weird in some ways, because as I was going there, I realized that I never really have gone to Fremont for a bar night before. And I wonder why I haven't earlier!

At the bar, I was strangely amused when there were people drinking out of paper bags! That is just awesome. You buy a bottle of PBR, then stick it in a paper bag. So I bought one and I have to say, it's hard to drink out of a paper bag... it felt like it was gonna slip away at any time...

At some point, I also convinced someone that 3am hot dogs are better than 1am hot dogs. I guess them books on conversation and persuasion's paying off.

Pretty fun night overall. Haven't had one of these in ages...

Freeeeeeee

With yesterday having passed, this marks another course done. No more weekly homework for another few weeks!.. yay!

Watched King's Speech tonight. Pretty interesting movie. The whole time - kept wondering how the actor does it... to purposely stutter through the entire movie.. .that's pretty awesome.

Oh - and it was British accent all through the movie!

Whistler Weekend

The yearly trip to Whistler at Fairmont arrives this weekend.

I have realized that I am terribly out of shape. 3/4 of the first run was awesome - I was flying down, felt fully in control. Then that last 1/4 of the run, I was dyyyyiiing. So tired.. legs burning. That was pretty much the rest of the day... hahaha

Had the usual Japanese dinner - but like Travel Buddy mentioned, each year we seem to order less and less.

The highlight though was being able to drink Canadian beer. Moosehead and Rickards... here I thought we would get 3 6-packs, between 3 ppl.. and I can take some back. But the result.. only 5 beers left! All the while playing a card monopoly game and Rambo...

Spend Sunday bumming around Richmond... then bought myself a nice 21 yr old bottle as compensation for missing lil dragon dumplings... .. .

Fun timesssss