spook

umm, i just used normal flour: http://www.dianaskitchen.com/page/bread/tortilla.htm after you make them into little balls, let them sit for 30mins or so. i think this helps them settle a bit and makes them easier to roll. then roll them out quite thin and fry each side on high flame. they cook really quickly. and when i make dough and sticky stuff like this, it's usually best to get one hand 'dirty' and keep another hand free, so that when you need to do something else you have a spare clean hand. good luck!

tortillas are dead easy to make. a bit messy and time consuming the first few times, but once you get the hang of it its quick and relatively simple. sort of the same as making your own pizza dough. sure its not as convinient as buying them, but they are cheap cheap cheap to make and taste so much better. flour, water salt and some lard/shortening is pretty much all that you need, a rolling pin or a bottle and a big fry pan. cooking is fun

luckily for me i've never hurt myself bad. worst injury was the last day riding last season. bad stack and mild concussion. at least thats what i think it was, i couldn't think straight and had headaches for days. stupidly i've never worn a helmet before, but is now a must have. kintaro - that leg break sounds horrific. a friend of mine did a similar sounding thing. she hit a tree and snapped her femur. in her graphic retelling of the story she reckons her foot was next to her head and she thought her leg was severed. and being allergic to pethadine and not fluent in japanese she refused pai

is this really sick? - i love the smell of books and magazines - the mustiness of old books and all the inks in new magazines. mmm i like sticking my face up to the paper and inhaling deeply. but everyone else here seems paranoid about picking up 2nd hand books, so maybe i'll have to kick my sniffing habit. and no, i don't purchase (or smell) used, ah, adult mags

i ain't ridden a fish type board, but they look excellent in powder. in hirafu lots of people ride gentems and burton fish but i'm not sure they are great for resort riding. because the stance is set back you'll get lots of chatter in your board when riding on groomed. how often are you going to need a dedicated powder board if you mostly ride in resorts? even on powder days you will be riding a mix of powder off piste and groomers(for the same reason i like a reasonably centered stance, rather than set way back). if you do alot of freeriding (like you hope to do db) they look ace - i've g

Roxette - Look Sharp. and i still play it LOUD

a book is a book is a book no? i've got no problems with second hand books, i love swapping books with other people, and when travelling swapping books is much more practical than lugging a stack of new ones around. and buying new books can be $$$ something i think would be cool would be to write your first name and and city in the inside cover of book then hand it on or leave it for someone else to pick up. it'd be cool to pick up a book and see that it's travelled around the world before ending up in your hands.

I've only used step-in bindings once and i hated them with a passion. I quite like conventional strap bindings, the only gripe with them is the strap can hurt your feet, but this is solved by loosening them after each run when sitting on the lifts. Oh, and bits of them break all the bloody time, so look after them a bit and have some spare straps handy. My advice is buy a well known brand - there are many arguments good vs bad with regards to Burton, but you can find spares everywhere if you break a heel cup or a strap. I love my Flow bindings - super comfy and responsive, and very quick

once in a state of drunken bravado i ordered, and ate, a pounder - a quarter pounder with 3 extra patties. the thing was a behemoth with fat and oil dripping out of it, but at 3 in the morning it seemed like a good idea. the secret to not getting hangovers is binge eating after binge drinking. the only downside is that you get rather tubby.

It’s not good, it’s not right, but racism is a very sad fact of life and something that will persist for a very long time. I’m half Chinese, and growing up in oz I copped a lot of abuse and bullying, and even though I’m not at the receiving end of it any more I notice it a lot in daily life. Incidentally, my mother is Chinese and thinks that the Chinese are very racist. It’s just a narrow-minded and insular way of viewing the world. I’m no expert but racism probably stems from a defense mechanism and a fear of the unknown and is present in most cultures. As a gaijin, do you think the Ja

my nuts are hurting just looking at those tows

Do you enjoy your job? Are you excited about going into work each day, or do you have the attitude where, well, it’s a job and it could be worse. I’m living in a city (London) at the moment, catching the tube to work each morning where I sit at a desk and stare at a computer most of the day. I work in marketing for a big film company, doing all the posters and promotional artwork. Mostly I feel like I just go to work each day and have no real motivation or drive. I’m not complaining, the pay is reasonable and in a short 5 months I’ve gone from arrving in London penniless to being relativel

it seems like a lot of money, but extracting eggs is obviously a lot different from sperm . the risk involved in the operation is permanent infertitlity. and i heard a rumour once that eggs in the US fetch up to $100 000! that would be something worth thinking about, but a paltry £1000? i don't think so

can't say i like riding in a whiteout, but i love freshies! i'd much rather take wild weather and fresh snow than bluebird and tracked. if its snowing heavily playing around in empty tree runs is the best. and the nighta at hirafu when its dumping is absolutely phenomenal.

good news about your suspended sentence, incarceration for such a petty crime would have been hell. suspended sentence means that it will not be enforced if you stay out of trouble for 3 years. break the law within this time frame and they can whack you into jail.

i would say go longer, but not too long, i guess it depends on how big you are. moving from a 159 to a 169 seems like a pretty big jump up in size though. i'm about 65 kilos and 5'10", and i ride a 162 salomon 550 (its a few years old now) i used to ride a 157, but wanted something longer for the deep stuff. i like the extra length, float and speed of a bigger board, but i also like to ride tight trees so i want something i can throw around a bit. depending on your size, 169 might be quite a big board to be riding around, but i have very little knowledge about big mountain riding. i guess

yeah, i have no idea about cleaning wax or base layers. i just generally make sure my board is free of any grime, give it a quick wipe, and then away i go. i'm not into tecnhical tuning or waxing, i just like a bit of speed, and i've found that basic waxing over the past 3 seasons has done me fine. i also put a coat of wax on at the end of the season, and then clean it off just before the next season starts, so that my base doesn't dry out over summer. anyone else do this?

You can use any iron, there's no need to buy an expensive snowboard wax specific iron made by burton or whoever. But your iron ain't going to be suitable for clothes after you use it for wax. Keep the iron temp reasonably medium/low - if your wax starts smoking the iron is too hot. Press wax to the warm iron and drip wax along your board. Then apply the iron to your base, moving it around slowly and letting it soak in evenly. Let your board cool down for an hour or so. Scrape all the wax off as thoroughly as possible - any wax not scrapped off the surface of the base will only slow you

are they getting travel insurance from japan or from elsewhere? if they are from oz, don't get HBF insurance. they are pricks when it comes to paying out claims (a friend works in their claims investigation department)

i rode a descender for a couple of seasons and absolutely loved the board. handed it down to my girlfriend and still jump on it occassionally. the board rules- fast and responsive, if a little heavy, but definitely a great board. i have no real idea about their new boards though. whatever you do, don't buy sims bindings. i've have 2 heelcups break, and they're a bugger to replace, especially in japan where so few shops seem to stock sims.

HK is wild, shanghai is pretty special too. It's quite touristy, but looking at San Fran from Alcatraz is a pretty good view - two bridges and then the city compacted into the middle. Moscow has got an amazing skyline - standing in Red Square is fantastic, and the Seven Sisters scattered through the city are all mindblowing. But a fave is Vancouver on a clear night from the south side of the river, with Grouse mountain lit up in the distance.

twice i've bought expensive burton mittens, both times they fallen apart on my over the course of long seasons. they start fraying quickly. last year i bought some cheap ones from a shop in jimbocho that had sale items in a box outside, and they work a treat. as long as they have removeable liners inside they should be plenty warm enough. goggles, i use oakley a-frames, but i like bolles alot

i have some flows - no idea which model, i think they are upper level ones and and a few seasons old (i bought them 2nd hand off a friend). i hated them at first, but once you get all the settings right they are unbelievable. maybe you should persevere with them a little bit more. my girlfriend has salomon boots (dialogue i think) and SPX5 bindings. there's this strange jagged bit under the heelcup/loop at the back of the bindings that sticks down a little, and it totally shredded the upper heel on her boots. other than that she loves the salomon boot/binding combo. i've also used her bin

maybe time seems to go faster as you get older because each passing year is a smaller proportion of your life so far. when you are ten years old one year is about 10% of your life so far. when you are 20 years old, one passing year is only 5% of yuor life and so you notice it less and it appears to go faster

going off like a frog in a sock. for reasons beyond my understanding, i can't get enough of that one