Dido World Tour May 5 - June 30 2019

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Feels Like Travelling:

Don't you just feel like travelling? I know I feel like doing that :)

Summer Vacation is just about 5 weeks away. Sometimes I just wish the summer vacation would just hurry up and start already. It's been really hectic at the university for the past several weeks and as you can see I haven't been updating my blog that much. Doesn't anyone wish that their summer vacation would just start already. The only thing that has been going on in the university is that they're just bombing us with quizzes and projects...Hello we need a break. Right???
It's just been so stressful lately that I had decided to give up a couple of things like cooking and most of my free time. So let me just translate it: Be a robot - study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study, study and study.
Everyone is now starting to get restless and don't get me started on the summer courses. Some universities have announced that their going to be extending the semester from 6 weeks to 9 weeks (excluding exam weeks). If I add the exam weeks then it would be about 11 weeks. The normal semester (Autumn or Spring) is about 12 weeks or 13 weeks and if I add the exams it's going to be about 15 weeks.
Now come on don't you think that's a little too long? Summer Vacation Where Are You????
But we all know Hedassa (from Crank Yankers) would be saying "..I'd like to wish you a Merry Reality..."
That is so true, we all know that it would be taking a lot of time for the summer break to just start. The weather just started to heat up across the UAE. I think we're going to be ending up getting burnt before the summer even starts :P :P :P

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Happy Mother's Day



I would like to wish everyone a Happy Mothers Day. On The 21st Of March is Mothers Day for the
 Middle East :D :D :D

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Retro's Last Recipe Of The Year:

I have an announcement to make, I have decided to quit cooking. I know this is coming out of the blue, but what can I say, I just got tired of cooking. A couple of family members and friends of mine are devastated about my drastic changes that I've been making. I haven't really decided about when I'm going to resume cooking and adding recipes to my blog ( I still have a bunch of recipes on my mind, but these are the breaks). Who knows when I'm going to resume cooking, maybe in a week, a month, a year or probably never.
So as of today I'm going to be uploading my last recipe of the year. I hope you'll like it, it's just Retrotrut's Homemade Burgers.

Ingredients:

  • Low Fat Minced Beef
  • Smoked Gouda Unprocessed Cheese **
  • Chopped Onions
  • Chopped Garlic
  • Crushed Black Pepper
  • Spicy Mustard (Dijon Mustard would also do)
  • Sour Cream (Not Labnah)
  • Hamburger Buns
  • Lettuce
  • Tomatoes
Preparation:
First take the Smoked Gouda Cheese and cut it up into cubes, then add it to the minced meat. While you mix that with your hands, you should then add the chopped onions to the minced meat and keep mixing it with your hands. After that add the chopped garlic followed by the crushed black pepper.
Once you're done with that, you have to make the minced meat into patties and once that's done, you just fire up the grill and cook it. Cook it to your preference (Whether you want the burger to be rare, medium or medial-well or well done). I prefer grilling it until it's well done, I took about 30 to 45 minutes just grilling it because I had made about 20 burgers for a gathering once (about 15 people showed up).
As soon as you finished grilling the burgers, you have to make them into sandwiches. Before you do that, just take the spicy mustard and mix it with the sour cream because that's what you're going to be putting on to the burger buns. 
Now after you add the must and sour cream sauce (Rachael Ray's South Western Sauce Recipe if you used Dijon Mustard and eliminated the black pepper). You can add some black pepper to it, then after you do that, add the burger and then you can add the lettuce and tomatoes.
I hope you like my last recipe of the year or maybe season, I'll see I might cook again sooner or later.

**Note: The Smoked Gouda Cheese (Unprocessed): Where can you get that in the U.A.E.?
You can only get that from Galleries Lafayette at The Dubai Mall. 3rd floor in their grocery section. It's really worth it. It costs about 20 dirhams for about 2 thick slices (about half a kilo or even less). Now this would be unprocessed cheese and it's extremely healthy to have (in my opinion). Don't get the Processed cheese from Spinney's or the Union Co-Op or Choitrams, those cheeses burn easily and it can ruin the recipe.
Now in case you don't want to  use the Smoked Gouda Cheese, simply go and buy some Mozzarella Cheese and it should be a large block of cheese not shredded cheese.

Faithless Is Over:

Faithless Performing Live at Nasimi Beach on April 1 2011


I just got word that the band "Faithless" is going to be performing their last and final tour.
 Dido-France has this to say:


"...Indeed, this group with Rollo (Dido's brother) is a member and producer has proposed some collaborations with our beloved Dido. It was with Faithless she took her first steps on stage. Bad news for fans of the group, Maxi Jazz has announced the dissolution of the group and the end of this adventure.
He said on that occasion: "After fifteen years and 6 albums, I think we managed to get our message but it is time now to turn the page. "
We do not know what will happen to Rollo. Maybe he will become full-time producer of Dido, who knows?
In any case, to pay a final tribute to Faithless, I suggest you review the clip Feelin 'Good (with vocals by Dido)..."

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Is The World Breaking Down?

Have you ever stopped to think about what the hell is going on with our planet? Well I have and by the looks of it, it doesn't look that great. Now remember in the past, right after the World Wars 1 & 2, the weather systems across the world have been changing rapidly.
Back in the late 1900's, the U.A.E. used to get rain at least once or twice every 3 or 4 years. But that was in the past, Now, in the early 2000's, it has started to rain a little more frequently in the U.A.E. (Except for the year of 2011, no heavy rainfall).
What else has happened?
-in the late 1900's: There used to be crazy weather conditions across the world. In the U.S, in a state in California, Did you know on March  the temperatures would be about 5*C or less when now in the present (2011) it's about 37*C. Is it me or did it just get hotter in town?
What has happened from the years 2000- 2011?

-In the year 2001, Japan has recorded the strongest typhoon ever (it was at the wind speed of 287 miles per hour)
-In 2001, Gujarat, India, a magnitude of 7.7 had hit killing 20,085 civilians.
-In 2002, the temperates of the U.A.E. during the summer, went all the way up from 40*C to 67*C (FYI, The human blood boils at the temperature of 60*C) with the humidity levels about 95%
-In 2003, there was a European Heatwave, the temperatures suddenly went up from 15 *C to 55*C and it killed around 40,000 people
-In 2004, an earthquake had occurred in the Indian Ocean triggering a large and powerful and destructive Tsunami and it had hit Sri Lanka, Various parts of India, Thailand. The magnitude of this earthquake was between 9.1 & 9.3. This was one of the most devastating earthquakes ever recorded but wait it gets worse, keep reading.
-In 2005, Kashmire, Pakistan was hit with an earthquake of a magnitude of 7.6 killing 80,000 people.
-In 2006, It had snowed for the First time in the UAE, in Ras Al Khaima.


Skipping down to the years of 2008-2011:

-In 2008, there was an Earthquake that hit Sumatra, Indonesia. It was a magnitude of 7.5, it killed about 11,500 people. Then there was that horrible blizzard that killed a bunch of people in Afghanistan. There was also the worst case of Hailstones recorded in the UAE, and also there was a lot of thunderstorms and rain occurring that year in the UAE. Also some strong winds were so bad that it had killed about 5 people during the Dubai Shopping Festival.

-In 2009, there was a bad wild fire that had happened in Australia, killing thousands of wildlife and plants.

-In 2010, Haiti gets hit by an Earthquake, killing 200,000 people. Straight after that, Chile gets hit by an earthquake as well, killing about 100,000 people. The worst avalanche falls and kills about 175 people in Afghanistan. And in Pakistan an avalanche also falls and kills  102 people. Russia also gets a bad heatwave killing about 56,000 people, Iceland Volcano Eruption leaving about a billion flights cancelled due to smoke covering the air spaces from Iceland to The U.S to Most of Europe. Millions of people were stranded in the airports for days. In Tibet there was also an earthquake but the magnitude was not given to the press (I don't know why). There was also a bad blizzard that had affected Europe & America. It was so bad to the extent that people in the far South of America, where it never snows, actually got affected big time. New York was actually in such bad shape. Hundreds and Hundreds of flights got cancelled, leaving a bunch of people stranded. In the Northern part of Saudi Arabia, the temperatures have actually dropped so much to the extent it had snowed for the first time over there. Also in 2010, there was a massive storm that had hit Australia and it had lead to some severe flooding. With this typical monsoon like rainfall, a Cyclone also headed towards Australia and hit it, causing even more death and destruction. As soon as the Cyclone hit (Cyclone Yasi), a Tsunami also hit Australia. Now half of Australia is literally underwater. The total estimate of the destruction caused by all of these disasters are 50 billion U.S Dollars

-In 2011, Rio De Janeiro, They got the worst storm which gave them the worse case scenario of mudslides. It was like mudslide galore and it killed a bunch of people and it had destroyed a lot of property. New Zealand gets an Earthquake with a magnitude of  6.3, killing 166 people. Then about a couple of hours ago, Japan gets hit with an earthquake with the magnitude of 8.9, killing about 9000+ people. The Earthquake in Japan was so strong to the extent the earthquake triggered a COUPLE of Tsunamis. Now from what I'm hearing is that these Tsunamis are about 4 feet high and they have just hit Tokyo and many other areas of Japan and now a couple more Tsunamis are heading towards Hawaii and Taiwan and Russia and the U.S (California and Washington DC). They have already been alerted and people are evacuating these areas. Also since the earthquake was so strong in Japan, ALL the Fuel/Oil Refineries have literally started to explode and cause a set of uncontrollable fires spreading through out Japan. Many people are trapped in skyscrapers. Now to make things even worse, the earthquake has also cut most of the power to Japan, leaving millions of people without electricity and also the Nuclear Power Plants have Officially shutdown their systems due to an automatic detection in an increase of pressure overload. The Nuclear Power Plants just shutdown automatically leaving no damage to happen what so ever. This is one of the worst earthquakes in history for the year of 2011.

Other than the weather, Did anything else happen to the world after The World Wars I & II?
Yes, the world continued to deteriorate.
-The world's first Jackass "president" got elected. George W Bush became president and I swear to God, I the first time I heard that, I was waiting for Ashton Kutcher to come and scream to us that we've been Punk'd but so much for that theory. We had this Jackass as president for about 8 years :(
-In 9/11 or September 9, 2001, there was that issue with the World Trade Center in the U.S that got hit by a an American flight plane. The Americans have accused the Arabs that it was our fault that we destroyed their buildings. Now I don't want to go into politics because I'm not that interested in it but what the Americans said about the Arabs was a big huge insult. Now there still is a lot of tension going on with both the Arabs and the U.S citizens.
-In 2008, the U.S got the first Black Male President. We welcome President Obama as the president of the U.S. George W Bush can go F##k himself to death, we hate Bush....(sorry with the boring politics)
-Now in 2010 -2011, The Arab world had started to fall apart, lets see  Libya, Egypt and Beirut have been having a lot of strikes lately and most of their governments have been overthrown by the people of those countries  (Except in Libya, that's still going on)

In conclusion, yes the world is breaking down but it's trying to heal itself. Now everyone is going "Green", Save the world, Save Air, just go Green. Or stuff like that. Use reusable items and so on.
As you can also see even though some people think that 2012 might be the end of the world and all that but it's not true. No one knows whether the world is going to end. This is just a phase that the world is going through and who knows in time, the world will heal. We all know that now since the world is acting like this (by causing natural disasters) it's all based from the past mistakes that us humans made. What can I say, the world is just trying to teach us a lesson. Also another reason could be it that the world might just be old and it's now breaking down. Well who knows, it's not like it's coming to an end. We don't even know when that would be

Thursday, March 3, 2011

And The Oscar Goes To:


Who is the lucky winner to take this back home with them?


About 3 days ago The Oscars or The 83rd Academy Awards was aired on TV and it was actually pretty good and bad in a couple of ways.
The good thing about the Oscars was:
-Anne Hathaway and James Franco were brilliant presenters and also they did make some funny comments and jokes about the movies in general :P
-Dido was Nominated for an Oscar
-There had a brief memorial for the actors that had died in 2011 (Which was thoughtful, I might say)

The Bad Things about The Oscars:
-Dido lost the Oscar to Toy Story 3's crappy music
-They were too busy focusing on fashion. I'm sorry but I don't think any guy would care about what Nicole Kidman wore. My god she was such a whore (hence the rhyme :P)
-There were too many crappy movies being nominated (The Social Network - total bullshit, Toy Story 3 - even more bullshit, The fighter- I'm sorry but I'm allergic to all this bullshit) that didn't deserve to be nominated.

Who Won?
The Movie of the Year is:
-The Kings Speech (I haven't even watched it yet but people say it's really good)

The Best Animated Movie Of The Year:
-Toy Story 3 (Wait? Hold the presses, Why wasn't Despicable Me nominated or Mega Mind? Those were even funnier)

The Best Actor:
-Colin Firth (The King's Speech)

The Best Actress:
-Natalie Portman (Did you know she's pregnant? Guess who's the father, I was shocked to hear this from Yahoo, it's the dance choreographer from her movie "The Black Swan")

The Best supporting Actor:
-Christian Bale (No offence but I thought the movie "The Fighter" was extremely boring and not worth watching at all)

The Best supporting Actress:
-Melissa Leo (Again the hag from "The Fighter" who couldn't keep her dirty mouth shut during The Oscars. She literally dropped the F-Bomb on the crowd and the rest of the world)

The Best Original Song:
-Toy Story 3 "We Belong Together" (We belong together in hell, that song wasn't that nice, Tangled was even better, but Dido's song "If I Rise" was the best but still come on, Why can't they chose a better song? I think the people have gone deaf)

For more info about The Oscars go here  

Dido Reveals Something On Twitter: Short Post


About a couple of days ago Dido had made an announcement about her new album. There has been a rumor going around the world saying that Dido's 4th album "Everything To Lose " (as it says on Dido's MySpace Account) is already finished but Dido said that it's not finished there still are a couple more songs that she's going to be adding by the end of the year. I'm guessing straight away after she has her child.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Peanut Butter & Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

This is quite a difficult recipe to make because of 3 ingredients. At first it might sound easy but it's not, you just have to spend time searching for the right type of chocolates. I used 3 different types of chocolates. Some of them include actually grating an actual Cocoa pod and making my first batch of homemade chocolate chips (literally speaking). Here is the recipe:

-2 to 3 eggs (with the yolk)
-1/2 a teaspoon of salt
-1 tablespoon of normal granulated white sugar
-1 and a half teaspoons of Icing Sugar
- 4 and a half teaspoons of olive oil (you seriously have to measure it)
- 1 teaspoon of Lurpak Salted Butter
-1 teaspoon of Honey - for the best results
-1/2 a cup of milk

Now as for the Flour, it depends on how much quantity you need, it mainly depends on how many cookies are you going to be baking, whether it's 12 or more. I used about almost 3 cups of flour (2 and a half cups is also enough)

- 1/2 a teaspoon of bicarbonate  of Soda

-8 tablespoons of peanut butter

-1/2 a bad of Nestle Mini Chocolate Chips

-5 large chunks of my homemade chocolate bar (Recipe can be found on Google)

-Any Brand Of Cooking Chocolate - It must be chopped into small cubes





Instructions:

First in a bowl add the eggs, then add the butter with it and mix it with a spoon, then add the icing sugar and the normal sugar and continue to mix it. After you mix it, add the flour and the salt and mix that with the batter. It should look a little dry, yes when it's like that, add the olive oil followed by the honey, then add the bicarbonate of soda and mix it with a spoon. Then after that you should start adding the Homemade chocolate Chips, you can follow any recipe on the internet on how to make your own homemade chocolate chips. It's not compulsory to add it, but I would recommend adding it. Just google up a recipe on how to make chocolates and then once you make that at home, you can break it into a million pieces and add it into the batter.
Now in the next step you need to use your hands to knead the dough, since the dough might be a little try add a little bit of milk (about 2 table spoons to be exact) and continue to knead the dough. While you're kneading the dough add the chopped brand of cooking chocolates into the dough followed by 1 teaspoon of peanut butter and continue to knead the dough. After you're done with that, put the cookie dough in a bowl and wrap it with plastic wrap and keep it to cool in the fridge for at least 3 hours to overnight. Sometimes I keep my cookie dough for about 12 hours and then I bake it the very next day.

Once that's done just preheat your oven to 170*C, while the oven is being preheated, add the cookie dough on to your desired baking tray. You can either cut the cookies into a shape or just dump it together on the tray all together and then cut it into pieces after the cookies have been baked.

Take the peanut butter and smother it onto the center of the cookies if you cut it into a shape, or else just take the peanut butter and smother it on the cookie dough by using your hands. It's going to be a little sticky, so please make sure you wear some gloves, because I did that so that my hands wouldn't smell like cookie batter :P

Then once you finish smothering the peanut butter, you then sprinkle about half a handful of Nestle Mini Chocolate Chips right on to the cookie dough and then you're done. Just bake the cookies for about 10 to 25 minutes and then keep it to cool for about 15 minutes and then serve it :)

Enjoy :)

Dido- Friends

Here is the song "Friends": Dido - Friends Lyrics: I know you thought I'd never be Really much of anything While y...