19 posts from 2006

I hate that I never stick to them, but they make me feel good for a while.
I never was good at the SMART goals, so I'm not going to bother about them.
So here goes:

Primary (in no particular order)

• Commit to my art. And make a name for myself.
  
• Stay true to myself and to the good friends around me.
• Get a B for Higher Chinese 'O's.
• Get an A for French.
  

• Pursue causes: environmental and Fair Trade.
• Maintain my weight.
• Beef up my portfolio.
• Earn enough money to support myself for at least the second semester.

• Thank the teachers at ext. 854 profusely.
• Make sure FAM is a blast.
  

Today is a milestone for my Vox journal. It's a silly number, but it is a good number. Three, cubed.

I went for my Podiatry appointment today and had to sit through 30 minutes of Guiness World Records and 15 minutes of American's Funniest Videos. I wanted badly to sleep after having slept at 1am and waking at 7am for the past few days. Finally, the new nurse called me to the room and told me to wait while the podiatrist "would come shortly". How short? 15 minutes. Only! She's a new one called Jessie.

She's real nice though. (I still preferred the part-timer Jenny though. The nurse said the first one, Dr Tiffany Tsao, resigned and joined NUH.)

Anyway I'll skip all the hospital stuff. In short:

I spent an obscene amount of time there.

Went to East Point most grudgingly for lunch. That place is empty, really. Nothing good there, non surtout. It's an air-conditioned ghost town. If you stand in the middle of the lobby and close your eyes, that'll be exactly what you think. We skipped the Chinese restaurant (read: exorbidance) and made our way to Banquet. Which, by the way, is one of my least favourite places to go. Any food court is a bad place to go unless it's Wisma's Food Republic- the banana prata is just gorgeously sinful.

As I walked past the staples: Chicken Rice, Ban Mian, I felt this repulsive lurch in my stomach. Fortunately after we turned in, the word came into view: Japanese.

I took a look at the menu and decided I'd have it. (Seriously, the rest of the stalls' food put me off.) I had Chicken Teriyaki Don, which is the rice, chicken, and soup. Ma had Ten Don, which is rice, soup, and assorted food fried with tempura batter. The bowl was stupendously huge, and the servings were generous. The sauce actually tasted authentic, not like Yoshinoya's. There was so much food I couldn't finish it. The ebi tenpura was disappointingly skinny though (thinner than your finger, if my description isn't convincing enough.) I didn't try the sweet potato tenpura though, beause I was so stuffed. Later I had fruit juice- watermelon and carrot mix- at the drinks stall. Yummy healthy sweet goodness. Quite a satisfying meal I'd say.

By the way, the Ten Don cost $6. Which is not bad, because not only is it fried like the real one, typically it's more expensive. In Japan, we couldn't afford to have tenpura all day. (I lived on Teriyaki, I swear.) We only had it once, at a Tenpura restaurant- see how dedicated they can get to tenpura?- at one of the train stations. I think it was Hakone (箱根). Whoo.

I have realised, much to my annoyance, that Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman isn't Murakami's latest. It was published at least a couple of years ago. Singapore is just slow to bring it in. All of a sudden, his books are popping up everywhere. The libraries are being emptied of his books with the same speed. To my dismay, I only managed to find After The Quake at the Central Lending Library today. There wasn't even a single Kiran Desai book! In my desperation, I borrowed the Chinese versions of Murakami's Dance! Dance! Dance! and The Elephant Vanishes.

Dance, Dance, Dance

Haruki Murakami

I want his entire collection! At least Norwegian Wood. I would be contented with just one book.

Oh, Murakami, you break my heart so.

It would be queer for me to dedicate an entry solely to the festive season, considering I am the regular Scrooge. I loathe the jingles, I loathe the decorations (not even the Swarovski crystal tree cuts it), I loathe the food. There aren't even any good movies out this season. There are three, actually- at least in my opinion- After This Our Exile (yeah, bad grammar, I know), La tourneuse de pages, and Quinceanera. Problem? All M18. There was the NC-16 Days Of Glory, which was showing at the Picturehouse, but my sister refused to lend me her NRIC. The prick.

Only the other day I felt the full force of the Christmas spell at the NTUC Fairprice in Aljunied. (I digress for a moment: there is a very good fish soup and duck rice stall at #01-11 at the Aljunied Ave 2 hawker centre. It's called Ng Soon Kee Fish and Duck Porridge.) While waiting for lunch- typically they take half an hour- my sister and I traipsed off to the NTUC nearby and I was swept off my feet immediately by the music playing at the supermarket: a Christmas jingle. Oh, but not any other jingle. The singers sounded like children at first. I couldn't tell, really. They started to sound like... nothing I've heard. It's like when you fast-forward a song, you get those high-pitched noises? Yeah, it sounded just like that. It's not a comparison, by the way. It is what it was. NTUC: high-pitched screechy jingles?

Spare me.

It was the worst of the lot I guess. Everywhere people were playing warped versions of jingles. Not that I prefer the normal versions. It's just so, so, easy to get sick of them. I'd rather have them play the usual stuff, and let carollers sing the songs. But that's me. Scrooge.

But on a slightly happier note (for me),

Haruki Murakami's latest book is out in stores now!
It costs about SGD27 though. I don't even spend that much on... come to think of it, I don't really spend much. Sigh.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Haruki Murakami

Must save money. Must save money.

I must say that the books at Page One are exorbidant. Yeah, design books cost a lot, but still.
Kesselskramer's 2 Kilo book is a laugh, literally. And loads interesting. (Pun unintended.)

2 Kilo of Kessels Kramer

Kessels Kramer

Note to self: Avoid Vivocity.

I baked just about the most delicious- and possibly authentic- thing I've ever baked.

Banana Cake

Ta-dah! I'm so pleased with it. Even though I left it too long in the oven (stupid recipe said 40 mins at 180 deg C and 30 mins at 160 deg C; I left it there for 40 mins at 180 deg C), it was still edible. The crust was just slightly burnt at the edges. It turned to be really crisp and the banana filling was wonderfully soft.

My Recipe For Success

50g unsalted butter, diced
60g Demerara sugar
2 medium-sized bananas
1 medium egg
120g self-raising flour
cinnamon, ground

1. Mash the bananas.
   
2. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius.
   
3. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl.
   
4. Add the egg to the bowl.
5. Sift half of the flour and add to the bowl. Use a large spoon to stir the cake mixture.
   
6. Add half of the banana purée to the mixture and stir.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 with the rest of the flour and banana pulp.
8. Sprinkle cinnamon liberally over the mixture and fold in. I didn't use much.
9. Pour (actually, scoop) the cake mixture into your Corningware or any other oven-proof dish. Allow for at least 1/4 space for the cake to poof. Sorry, I forgot to measure the length of my Corningware.
10. Duh, leave it in the oven for less than 40 mins. I say, try 35 mins. A knive poked in the middle should come out clean.
    

Nice eaten after a few minutes of cooling, the crust is really crunchy.
Happy days.

Banana Cake Close-up

with Jamie Oliver.

I'm pretty happy with my current level of culinary prowess. I'm a bit off my rockers though, the only books I've been borrowing on each trip to the library are cookbooks:

All of the above three books are currently in my possession.

A Fair Feast: 70 Celebrity Recipes for a Fairer World

Vicky Bhogal

A Fair Feast took me a lot of trouble to borrow. I cleverly forgot to bring my EZ Link card when I went to Kellie's house, so I had to convince my mom that it was worth making the trip to lend me her library card to borrow the book. The deal? Washing the dishes. (My father did it in the end, though. Ha.) The recipes aren't that fantastic really, even without Bridget Jones' Recipe for Cheese. I liked- surprise, surprise- Jamie Oliver's and Nigella Lawson's though. And a few others, though I forget the names.
This morning, I made pancakes. They turned out awful-looking. They looked like fat pratas and simultaneously also like thin pancakes. I'm not exactly sure what went wrong, but I think it had to do with the absence of baking powder. Don't think my subsituting the sugar with brown sugar was a problem. The pancakes tasted alright though, despite the deceptive appearance.

I made Jamie Oliver's Lemon Curd Cake on Wednesday in between replying messages from a very morose Claire who was early for our meeting. It turned out okay, though I think I should've left it in the oven longer till it was browner. And I very embarrassingly forgot to butter the sides of the corningware, so it stuck. Big mistake. I brought the cake in a gigantic silver Toyota bag.

Met Claire at Starbucks at VivoCity, where she was reading some Chinese book on this girl in a bread tree. (Beats me too.) We sat there for a while until Claire finished her Gingerbreadman Latte- I think?- and we moseyed our way to Naturally Supermarket, which Nat had been telling me about just the day before. Our extremely brief trip to the VivoMart was interrupted by a call from Kellie, ticking me off about not telling her that we had moved from Starbucks. She and Eileen met with us and we had dinner at Banquet. We conveniently passed by Thai Express before that, shooting looks at Shuting, who, to my great surprise, came out to greet us and excitedly waved to us and asked if we were having dinner there. Quite alarming, but nevertheless quite an amusing scene.

We headed back to The Caribbean after Bravissimo ice-cream and another innocent walk past Thai Express. No Huimin, sadly. Along the way, Kellie insisted that Eileen take a photo at the fountain. Claire and I were dragged into it because Eileen refused to take the photo alone. I would've.

The Caribbean feels as huge as its namesake. We had to walk for 5 entire minutes before we reached Kellie's block. It felt like Hansel and Gretel walking through the forest, and instead of breadcrumbs there were different kinds of water features- fountain A, fountain B, wading pool, swimming pool, canal (yes, canal), etc- that showed the way. Fascinating. The lift wasn't stunning, but it led right to their doorstep. So naturally, we were stunned.

I'm not really in the mood to elaborate, but in point form:

1. I have been chirstened the Mahjong Queen after reaching a grand age of 22- the number of rounds I won. Claire was 9, Eileen was 14, and Kellie was 20. I was immensely pleased with myself, as you can imagine. Claire was at a disadvantage I guess, since she was a rookie and left earliest. But ha, anyway.
2. Kellie's little brother likes me. A bit too much. At first it was kind of flattering, but then he got stalker-ish-obsessive and I had to try to hide from him. Thank goodness, Kellie says he'll forget me "the next day". Keane's really intelligent though. We played rounds of Froggy with him (in which he teamed up with me) and Catch Me If You Can, a slightly warped version of Ludo. Kellie has incriminating media of Keane and my relationship. I'm praying she doens't blackmail me.
3. Kellie's family is generous. Too generous. After every other round, we had food: first it was Wang-Wang crackers, then my cake, then more Wang-Wang. For breakfast we had bacon sandwiches, at lunch we had spaghetti and macadamia nut ice-cream. I feel like Wilbur.

I should think that's all. The bus ride home was a nightmare, I dozed off and I think no one dared to sit next to me, haha. Especially with my giant Toyota bag beside me. I nearly got off at Eunos, thinking I had reached the wrong interchange (Bedok, I remembered, but there was another bus which went to Eunos and I thought I had misread) and everyone was getting off the bus. I had to calm myself down. Ugh. I desperately tried to keep awake for the rest of the trip to prevent any further self-humiliation.

Ah well. Was very fun.

On a slightly belated note, I have finished reading every good book Murakami has to offer. Almost.

I'd say, Norwegian Wood is his best work, or at least my favourite. Poignant and well-weaved. I don't completely understand it, and I didn't like the ending, but the story really draws me in. My second favourite would definitely be Kafka On The Shore. Still waiting for Hard-Boiled Wonderland.

Meanwhile, still on the recipe books. Note to self: need to buy stationery and calendar from MUJI.

I hate getting back results. After the last day- yesterday, I went on a little joy trip to Bras Basah. I borrowed two books from the National Library:

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

Kiran Desai

Shame: A Novel

Salman Rushdie

The haze has finally cleared off- the relief! The past two days were engulfed in greyness created by the south winds carrying all the forest smoke towards Singapore and Malaysia. Yesterday, the only thing I could see out of my window was white- and not the prisine kind of white, the burnt off-white- and the grilles. Yesterday, there was no sun or moon or sky or sea.

Miraculously, today the entire view cleared up. I can actually see the ships now, albeit the horizon is still nowhere in sight. All the same, what a blessing!

No photos for now, the camera is with the repairmen.

After repeatedly listening to my Lisa Ono CD, it has occurred to me that Track 6 was the song that kept playing in the giant MUJI store I went to in Japan. It has that quick strumming and avant-garde folkish (sorry, my vocabulary is that limited) feel about it. That at that time rather irritated me. I can't say that just because it's by Lisa Ono I like it now, but I like it better now that I can hear her voice. Of course, I could be wrong. But well.

りサ小野大好きです！

Yay- I went on a tiny splurge today and rewarded myself with a Lisa Ono CD from gramophone. I got it decent- it cost all of SGD9.95! Which isn't bad, I guess. It's quality.

Romance Latino, Vol. 2

Lisa Ono