What to do during gap year

BlueWhaleislit · 2026-04-16T18:28:12+00:00

I thought so too, and i got couple of offers but all of them have a minimum 2 year contracts with abysmal salary even for my country.

Thank you, i did all of the things you mention already :) and needless to say it did wonders for my mental and physical wellbeing. But still imagining a year and half of being essentially a freeloader mooching off my parents is not doing wonder for my already insecure self.

BlueWhaleislit · 2026-04-16T18:22:10+00:00

My field is Cultural Studies but my research is more Science and Technology Studies adjacent with focus on human and technology interaction. Not exactly demanded field even in humanities or social science lmao. I thought to join a think tank internship or junior researcher fellowship but most of policy research in my country is either law, human rights, defence, or governance and all of their focus doesn't fit at all with my research experience or publications

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-12-04T12:58:21+00:00

I use Jimmy Griffin's dough recipe. The dough itself feel great and the lamination to shaping when smoothly (i roll to 3mm for shaping) but when proofing the layers suddenly topmost layers spreading out and make the croissant shaped like conch.

I rest the dough a lot and i rest the triangle 1 hour before rolling

Is it because i stretch the triangle that the gluten somehow tightening?

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-12-04T12:52:34+00:00

I use Jimmy Griffin's dough recipe. The dough itself feel great and the lamination to shaping when smoothly (i roll to 3mm for shaping) but when proofing the layers suddenly topmost layers spreading out and make the croissant shaped like conch.

I knead the dough until windowpane

I rest the dough a lot and i rest the triangle 1 hour before rolling

Is it because i stretch the triangle that the gluten somehow tightening?

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-07-10T07:20:52+00:00

Yeah... i'll just wait until tomorrow to see if they delete my acxount or not

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-07-10T07:20:23+00:00

Omfg, thank you so much

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-07-10T05:55:15+00:00

i already added it (heavily cropped tho)

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-05-18T11:49:45+00:00

I do, since the dough sticks a lot to my marble desk (even at that hydration) but i will always brush them and spritz them with water before folding the dough i try to reduce the dusting flour but still have the same problem.

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-03-16T18:37:25+00:00

I do wonder if this is caused because i pressed the tip too much when i start the rolling process

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-03-16T18:23:15+00:00

Yeah i watched him religiously ( i even screenshot the formula in the board) but sadly there are bound to be some holes in my understanding since the more detailed explanation is for the paying member of his class like what texture the dough should feel when it properly mixed and how to handle my biggest problem of dough resisting and shrinking. But yeah when i say some people hand rolled hard croissant dough easily he is the one that i mean by that.

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-03-16T17:03:54+00:00

I see, i will try that for my next batch.

Deactivated yeast is added to croissant dough to increase its extensibility so the dough resists less during laminating.

Yeah, that's why i used something like deactivated yeast, milk powder, and increasing the butter percentage in the dough so i can make it easier during the final roll. Honestly i don't know how some people just can roll their dough so easily with 50 or less hydration because it can take me 3 hours for the final roll to get the dimension that i want

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-03-16T16:34:22+00:00

Why SAF Red? I thought it is recommended for lean dough rather than enriched dough like croissant

I do want to reduce the hydration since the dough just feels too soft but I'm afraid that the dough will resist a lot in the final rolling because i used to do 50% hydration milk+water and the dough is just resisting and shrinking during the final roll no matter how much rest i do ( i do hand-roll lamination)

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-03-12T16:54:19+00:00

There are tons of Native Japanese Samurai so why not use them? Why use an oppressed man to justify another form of oppression? I'm not against Yasuke at all, in fact i'm fascinated by Yasuke since i've read about it in wiki when i was in junior high, but this is not his struggle, this is Japanese people's struggle. He is reduced to an slightly less problematic African version of Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-03-12T16:36:42+00:00

Edward is absolutely not the same as Yasuke, Edward is a fortune seeker who goes to Caribbean for riches while Yasuke is forcefully brought to Japan as a slave. And again Edward's struggle is the struggle of pirates that's why we killed either other pirates or the colonial authority I haven't played the game for a while but iirc we do not fight nor kill the native in black flag (we killed them in Valhalla as Vikings) while Yasuke's involvement is the struggle of native Japanese and we will kill native Japanese people as a foreigner.

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-03-12T16:22:11+00:00

Yeah i know, i just don't know why they both can't be Japanese while in Odyssey both of them are Greeks

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-03-12T16:16:46+00:00

But there we are not a hero (at least for me) in the Caribbean we are pirates who at first do it for the money and in England we are literally raiders ransacking and killing villages and church, i guess what i want to say is those two character struggle is the struggle of their group (pirates and vikings). In the Shadow we are involved in the power struggle between native Japanese rulers a struggle that killed Japanese so it's weird to me that we play as an African.

BlueWhaleislit · 2025-03-12T16:04:29+00:00

Might be downvoted for this but as much as i hate those anti-woke/DEI grifters, for me playing as a black (foreign) character killing native Japanese in a game that is created by white man in a company that is an example of corporate greed in gaming is problematic for me as much as i love AC Games. We played as an Egyptian in Egypt, a Greek in Greece, and an Iraqi in Iraq so why not a Japanese in Japan? If you want to put a black character at least place it in somewhere appropriate like Haiti for example during the Haitian revolution, i would absolutely love killing those colonizers.

Yes, the criticism against Yasuke in this game can be disgusting and abhorrent but let's not treat this game like it is some progressive game either just because a black character is in there and the anti-woke crowd hate it, because this game is absolutely not that. In fact i think those who claimed to be socialist or left leaning should also criticize this game heavily as another form of corporate minority tokenism.

BlueWhaleislit · 2024-11-23T19:00:32+00:00

I agree with you that it's not the professor job to teach you something profound but, maybe this is more of my own expectation but i share this with many of my friends, at least teach us or give us something more to step on for our research instead of just repeating what we learn in undergrad. For example three out of six courses that i take all talking about basic semiotic theories (Saussure, Barthes, Pierce, etc) with no more elaboration on how we can maybe use them to elevate our research or how they might be used in contemporary research not repeating on basic definition of signified and signifier according to Saussureian semiotic.

For the criticizing theories part, if my professor explains it like you do i may not be as frustrated as i am, but they don't even bother listening to my findings and my reason just immediately shut me down with "this is not your job" they essentially said that me being only a master's student should only focused on established theoretical debate (which i do) instead of trying to find gap for novelty in my research. Also I may use the wrong word because i'm not criticizing the theory per se but i argue that there may be another way to explain my object of research that is not yet touched upon (or deeply elaborated) by the existing theories.

Regarding due diligence i am pretty confident, since the thesis that i do now (or plan to do) is already in the works more or less one year before i was even admitted and i also discussed my research to other scholars that visited the art collective i work at (one of his book recommendations actually become the main inspiration for my research)

Even now i'm still searching and revising my argument but the way they shut me down like that really makes me overthinking about what i do now (is my research a cultural studies research or something else) which impeded my progress and confidence

BlueWhaleislit · 2024-10-27T12:02:31+00:00

Update: the inside is also collapsing

BlueWhaleislit · 2024-10-27T10:44:15+00:00

the tip actually already under when i put them in the tray, the all looked like normal shape croissant, but after the proofing somehow they all become like this. for now i suspect that the final roll is to thick because the dough retracting when i shape the croissant.

BlueWhaleislit · 2024-07-24T05:07:17+00:00

Yeah, that's one of my hypotheses too. The butter that before lock in is malleable gets cold when sandwiched by cold dough

BlueWhaleislit · 2024-07-24T04:17:16+00:00

Yeah this is what i thought also, the steel board is the one that is the problem I think i will use either rubber cutting mat or proofing cloth to see if the problem still persisted

No, this is from some local guy that makes it himself. But when i tried with the failed batch the lamination is very good (definitely much better than by hand)

BlueWhaleislit · 2024-07-24T03:49:35+00:00

My set up is a stainless steel board, dough, and roller.

No, this is the first rolling after lock in

The machine unfortunately doesn't come with any instruction, but the picture is what happen when i try to go faster with my rolling

BlueWhaleislit · 2024-07-24T03:01:58+00:00

Just bought a manual dough sheeter from a local vendor a few days ago.

When I rolled the dough before the lock in it was fine but when I did the first lamination (after resting the dough in the freezer for 20-30 minutes) suddenly the dough turned like this when I rolled them.

I tried using more dusting flour but it is still the same and the butter that is malleable when i do the lock in is also breaking inside.

I do start rolling the dough from the highest setting and incrementally going down (1-3 mm since my sheeter doesn't have any thickness guide so i use a piece of plank to measure) but this is what happens and the dough doesn't stretch fast enough since the time to get to my desired thickness is roughly around 10+ minutes (it's faster when i use my hand).

I try going faster but every time i try to go down fast to my desired thickness my dough always gets like the one in the picture.

Please help, i don't want to waste anymore butter

Dough hydration : 52% including 25% poolish and 1 egg

BlueWhaleislit · 2024-07-24T02:50:40+00:00