A Red and Rare Dinner

Slapping on a facial mask is one of my most treasured forms of therapy, albeit only for 15mins a week. So when I do paste that turquoise muck all over my face, all I want to do is zonk out (euphemistically speaking: purge my mind). However, today's affair with Gatineau was starkly different with me rushing to prise my laptop out of its shell once the muck had settled and I had rinsed my hands of it. I had stumbled upon some blog-worthy material from my home cooked dinner today.

My sucky camera didn't do any justice to the piquant bowl of Red Wine Chicken Mee Swa. A dish unique of my Hakka dialect group, it is the product of gently boiled chinese red wine, tender chicken pieces and smooth strands of mee swa. What I loved most about it was how the wine was so skilfully cooked that it surfaced only as a soft undertone beneath the chicken stock.

And there was no better way to enjoy it then with slice after slice of red chilli.

I'm very blessed to have Eden jiejie, my family's skilled domestic worker who has lived with us for 20 years. Nothing beats home cooked meals this way.

Double 1sts

It is not often that I do more than 1 activity for the first time within a day, but 15th Dec was surely an exception.

The first 1st today came in the form of Nihon-Go Lessons with Jie.

Beautifully typed hiragana with translation at the side, courtesy of sensei Gabriel!

Learning Japanese is a bittersweet experience. While I'm certainly looking forward to the day where I can listen to Gazetto without having to google the translation, writing out all those characters, memorizing their pronunciation and stringing them together to construct a sentence is a pain indeed.

So all 3 of us were seated atStarbucks for 1.5 hours, poring over the list of super basic hiragana, until an unsuspected call from mum had Jie and I heading down to some place I had never been before.

Big, black speaker

Not so sure of the jargon, but this was part of the huge sound-mixing device

I still can't believe we actually recorded a song. Well, true enough we sang only the chorus and did a short scating, but I was happy enough at the chance to sing in a professional recording studio. The parts we had were simple and hence we finished it in less than an hour. Hopefully my future involvement with this organization will allow me more than a glimpse into the life of a recording artiste (though I know its going to be lots of hard work, retakes, experimenting, late nights etc.)

And I did manage to land my hands on a packet of Vitasoy, but I had no camera with me to capture that moment in a picture. And Eden jiejie prepared chestnuts again, albeit when I was out.

What a day of new and wasted opportunities. Now i must grab another packet of Vitasoy and document it for sure.

Lists

First things first:

"Trials and Tribulations are a staple of every *********'s life'

- Simon Phua

Emphasis mine.

Yes that's what it is: a staple, not just a part.

Yes, the beauty of words.

Second thing next:

I love making lists. I somehow enjoy sitting down with pen and paper - or with fingers poised over keyboard - and creating a bulleted paragraph of the things I need to do before adding the finishing touches with a title. And I get a thrill out of ticking out the boxes I have drawn next to those bullets. Of course, the best part comes when every single box has been ticked.

The latest list I made was the 'Post-Exams Activities' - an attempt at making my post Year 1 Sem 1 break as productive as possible. And it looked something like this:

Ok so i cheated on the boxes for this one, but I guess I made up for it with the addition of those vertical lines labelled with the numbers 1,2,3 circled. A list within a list. Anyway, the lines were not completely ticked cause I took this picture something like a month back. As of 14th Dec 2008, they are :)

Being the list-maker I am, completing a list warrants nothing else but making another!

So here goes the list of 'Things to squeeze into the 2.5 weeks before Year 1 Sem 2 starts"

• Get vitasoy - I've been ignoring a terrible (but unexplained) craving for this drink and I can't wait to get my hands on a packet. I'll definitely blog about drinking it and (hopefully) get some artistic shots on the way.
• Savour some good laksa - Not just those ordinary ones you get from foodcourts or hawkercentres. Something like. Katong Laksa, or the Alexandra Hill Claypot laksa would suffice.
• Memorize every single alphabet (both hiragana and katakana) of Nihon-Ji - Argh. Its so hard. Maybe characters are not my forte but that just means i have to work harder at it!
• Run at somewhere else other than the Mount Faber route - Its getting boring.

Yay! Another list done.

Now, has my fascination to lists festered into an addiction? Well, a random check in Google shows that I am not alone. Yet, it has also told me that I am in danger of becoming a victim of 'list-making dependence'. The latter's symptoms include:

1. Making lists everyday for everything in the world
2. Referring to the list more than once every hour
3. Essentially forgetting or missings tons of stuff once the list is gone

1,2,3. Eh..whoops.

Snakes and Rat heads

I have learnt that retro-style, assymetrically printed heels are a quick fix jazz up solution to any outfit.

From a shop in The Central

At $32 it was a complete steal. But I did have to pay another 'price' in the form of the typical torture that new shoes inflict upon their 'wearers'. After bus rides back and forth I started to feel as if my toes were being attacked by a boa constrictor (hence the "Snakes" in the title).

And strangely enough, lilbro John, upon seeing me pry my feet loose from the shoes' grip, commented: 'Shoes are meant to match what?'

Me: What do you mean?

Lilbro John: As in, match your clothes, bag etc?

Me: Everything.

Lilbro John: (Holds up a pair of slippers in the RH and his white Florsheim loafers) Which one matches my outfit?

This is date to be remembered. Lilbro John asked me for fashion advice. Thank you retro-print boa constrictor shoes, if you were actually responsible for triggering that moment.

I did not get to photograph another subject for my Random Cat column today, but I guess my potential subject did leave behind a souvenir for me.

Cats are becoming increasingly picky these days.Looks like my subject has become a little lazy to de-bone, de-teeth and de-whisker the head and so decapitated it just to feast on the meaty body.

Oh how i hate to end blog posts with something as disgusting as a rat head.

How about some super hot nihon-ji who makes head swinging look sexy?

Ah Ruki-sama! You sure you want to 'kee meeeeee jennn tee?'

A Question that can only be answered a certain way

Question:

What is the point of studying so hard to squeeze into a university course that will eat up 6 years of your life, pay the exorbitant rates that the university charges to teach this course, and end up saying 'I Don't Know' x 10 within 15mins to someone who needs your expertise?

Answer:

I dunno, LOL. (remember to stop your shoulders at mid-shrug, and tilt your head to the right or left with raised eyebrows and smirk as you say this)

Anyway, I've decided to add a new label - Random Cat, to categorise all my snapshots of the stray/domestic furry little friends I chance upon. However, unlike other cat-devoted sites which were propelled to immense popularity by the addition of witty captions, Random Cat will only feature the unedited byproduct of my Sony Ericsson in action.

And so, the Random Cat for today is :

An orange coated stray which didn't let me get any closer to capture its light blue eyes. Who knew such sweet looking cats could snarl like tigers.

Chestnuts - The New Perspective, and Literally.

Maybe its just stress, having grown past the age where I believed Santa Claus was real, or what my friend terms my 'macabre sense of humour', but I've started to look at a certain christmas carol with a different perspective.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire

A few months ago, this opening line would have conjured the image of a cozy warm house where the inhabitants are safe from the harsh winter outside, the fire glowing a beautiful amber, and of course the lovely smell of chestnuts wafting through. But recently, this family-friendly image has since warped into something rather morbid. Imagine, cartoon chestnuts screaming in pain as they incarcerate amongst the bits of charcoal, their smooth brown exoskeletons charred to a smoky black, burned to a crisp before it is broken open for their innards to be chomped upon.

.........................................................................................................................................................................

Either way, Christmas came a little early - 14 days early to be precise - in the form of an Oriental twist to the aforementioned Western Christmas tradition - homemade steamed chestnuts.

Fresh Chestnuts steamed Chinese-style

Their wrinkly apperance was not a result of spending too long a time in the steamer, but rather because we steamed them straight after getting them back from the market, with their skins on. Sure the skins worked as a protective layer for the cotelydon (in non-scientific terms: the 'meat'), but some of them stuck so tightly that we had to yank them off this way:

Jie skinning the Chestnuts

It was tough, and dangerous!, work no doubt, and I almost let my knife slip a couple of times. But hey, it was certainly a small price to pay for



Its a pity that I don't have a better camera to capture the smooth, unblemished brown surface of this lovely chestnut. Better still, this batch of chestnuts that we bought really had a fragrant scent and crumbly but sufficiently moist texture. Jie and I peeled the whole batch - enough to fill an entire container - and of course, ate some along the way.

Dad just tried the chestnuts and he's gonna get another bag tomorrow. Ah, more Christmas goodies in the making.