Seriously???

I've been told I don't know my own strength but this was a shock.

Bye, hole punch. You were one of my first purchases when I arrived four years ago. All those reams of notes, archived assignments, logs and bills and statements and letters you helped me organise. I wonder what my Master's journey would have been without you.

Looks like the seasons really are shifting over here.

Diverted

I had every intention of going to church that Sunday morning.

I had every resource I needed for going to church.

I had every reason for going to church.

What I did not have was the foreknowledge that the usual route to church would be blocked, necessitating a detour so big that I'd miss half the service by the time I got there.

So I swerved away from the road to church* and spent the morning letting leafy shadows shift over me as I sat and read. Waterfowl squawked, sputtered, splashed nearby. Children raced past on foot, on scooters, on shoulders, urging fathers faster.

(I can't say that last sentence fast out loud. Can you?)

Diversions happen. They can frustrate, confound, delay... or they can lead us to conclude that if we're going to end up somewhere else anyway, we might as well make it somewhere nice.

*A decision rendered much easier by the existence of a fledgling evening service; I am so, so thankful for the women and men who put much of their lives into the health of this congregation

While away

A few notes about getting away:

If your destination is not too far from your place of ordinary residence, making travel time negligible and maintenance of food freshness not impossible, you can pack a light meal or two in anticipation of wanting to do nothing that evening but stay in and watch DVDs in bed. Of course, if you're at all like me, it might mean you pack a varied and detailed salad but forget all cutlery, resulting in your having to rip a tomato apart with your bare hands and eat dinner with a teaspoon.

This didn't diminish my experience in any way but if you think it might do yours, then by all means: don't forget the cutlery.

Being away, you might also find yourself spending more time on handwritten text than you would back in your Ordinary World: curlicues make a return, and the signature lavender sprig that was on your plate at breakfast enjoys a short-lived modelling career before returning whence it came.

Away is where there's time aplenty, and space to enjoy that time unhindered.

Away

"Self-care is essential," I have heard from every one of my lecturers and supervisors in this my latest (and, I'm hoping, lifelong) career. "Get away as often as you can," many also said. Enjoy the change in surroundings. Catch a break from containing other people's anxieties. Immerse yourself in beauty.

I ignored them. The excuses fell thick and fast. "I don't need to get away because I love where I live and it's pretty peaceful." "I can't spare a few days away from home." "I have too much to do." "Even if I am stressed, I let it out through baking and craft." "I'm fine. I really am."

I'm glad this time around it didn't take too long for me to realise that the above isn't always enough, that I needed to believe that people with decades of experience know what they're talking about -- and more than that, I needed to go away. Indecisive though I still am, the need to go was far greater than the fear of committing to the one choice. So it is that I ended up in that magical spot not too far from home, yet far indeed.

Where welcome was expressed not only in words and a lift up the stairs for my overnight bag, but in a pair of lavender biscuits and the offer of the programme for the local outdoor cinema.

Where a sandwich, mundane no-time lunch back in my ordinary world -- the very same sandwich! -- turned into a magical meal to the music of galahs and cockatoos conversing as they swooped down to the pool. Eaten here, eaten thus, it was fuel enough for the next few hours' wander through the lavender and through my raggedy, neglected soul.

Where discarded old things aren't made to feel worthless, or at least that's the impression I got. You can't feel worthless, can you, if you're given a place like this to continue your existence?

Where en route to the bridge I could press close to a tree, tracing the story of its years through its resin-coated bark.

Where indoors, too, had many wonders to be appreciated: a thimble-sized couple shyly courting on the windowsill (I gave them their space when taking this picture),

the stage set for that old, old battle between light and dark,

and a former inhabitant of this house reclaiming his favourite spot on the spiral staircase, lying in wait for the odd unsuspecting foot.

And so it was, my first day away.

I'm quite pleased with myself, writing this post only two weeks after the fact. My blog posts are usually so delayed that seasons change and cobwebs form in between.

One of these days

Yes, one of these days...

When I am not at work, talking to people in one of those snug double-lit rooms with the armchairs and the ever-changing number of water glasses and the non-lockable cabinets and the one fuzzy wall each, on which I have been tempted to stick a life-size camel made of felt -- except where would I find one? -- just to see who would be the first to notice...

When I am not outdoors, listening to the swish-swish of a playful summer breeze and observing what it is that sunlight does to leaves and vice versa...

When I am at home but not reading, watching a DVD, cleaning house, hanging out laundry, ironing, writing or otherwise Busy...

Yes, one of these days, I shall take out yarn needle and stuffing, and I shall make small, even stitches attaching ears and nose to head, head to body, body to tail end and so on, and then there shall be nothing lying about in pieces in my home.

 

Nothing that I'd want to know about, at any rate.

Another dream come true

So maybe we're a rare breed, the people who dream of making tau sar pneah. And maybe rarer still, the ones who actually reach for it, but Google would show you more than a handful of food/baking bloggers who have.

I'm neither food blogger nor baking blogger -- and there are frequently times when I can't be referred to as a blogger at all, times when my life is so busy being lived that it won't sit, stay and be documented for public consumption -- but here's my experience of it.

But first. Remember a few months ago, when I posted that tribute to the superlative breed of friends I have? I could add another point of thanksgiving here: For giving me company to make these labour-intensive biscuits with. On my own, it would have taken me at least another year to give them a try and even then, would have been weeping from the monotony and fatigue by the time I reached for the 50th lump of dough. (For anyone who's keeping track of these things: the recipe is supposed to yield 100 biscuits. We made 88.)

I arrived after church, after the doughs and filling had been prepared. This meant I was just in time to sit down to a quick lunch before the assembly began: first the weighing and the rolling into little spheres of the filling,

 the oil dough,

 

the water dough. 

Then the rolling and combining and rolling and rolling and rolling of the two doughs (not pictured, because by then it was all hands on deck and nobody had a non-oily hand for taking pictures with).

Then the egg wash and the baking,

and the laying neatly in rows for cooling and being admired and attracting longing gazes and finally

the being bitten into; the collapsing into layers of light, thin flakes; the revealing of crumbly-soft seasoned mung bean; the bringing of childhood memories and adolescent reminiscences and early adulthood nostalgia into present day.

It's nice, the feeling you get when dreams come true.

Delivered

My parents raised us in a cultural vacuum, or near-vacuum, an uncomfortable space created by one parent's baby-and-bathwater view of cultural practices not implicitly described in the Bible and the other parent's putting up with it. I guess life sans baby, bathwater, towel and tub is easier to bear in the long run than the prospect of living indefinitely with belligerent dogma.

And so I've spent a lot of energy in the past few years trying to learn more about where I came from. One thing I'd observed and wanted to know the reason for: Hokkiens really, really like sugarcane. It's there on altars or near doors whenever there's a big festival; when you pass a bridal car on the street you know if at least part of the happy couple is Hokkien by the four feet or more of sugarcane stalk protruding from the car window. I wonder now why I've never heard of any traffic incidents caused by a motorcyclist or pedestrian getting swiped by sugarcane.

Image by Jesuino Souza

So, the short version of all that I've gathered from talking to relatives and reading strangers' blogs: the Hokkiens were once on the run from enemies. Sugarcane plantations were the only place that provided cover for our trembling ancestors while their homes got sacked and pillaged. And ever since then, the strong, flexible stalks have been a symbol of our thanks. They're present at every major milestone of life to remind us how fortunate we are that life goes on at all.

I also learnt that it's on the ninth day of each year (which falls today and YAY I just proved I still have some level of attachment to this blog and I am so glad I finally have a timely post, even if it did entail having lunch at my desk) that we ritually give thanks for our deliverance as a people. I wouldn't know first hand; see beginning of post. But I have always known that there's a day during the Chinese New Year period when my relatives go the whole hog -- actually, the whole pig (roasted, head on) -- preparing food and paper offerings. By the time I got old enough to ask questions, I was also old enough to decide I didn't want to ask them because I rather prefer sweet silence to another blood pressure raising, high-volume lecture on idolatry.

Much of my energy is spent on understanding why people say and do the things they do; when I fail to arrive at comprehension, I try to accept and tolerate because I think that is how you avert most of life's destructive moments. There are things worth fighting for but once they've been identified, you realise how much else there is, therefore how much isn't worth fighting over. So I don't bear any grudges for having had huge parts of my heritage withheld from me in my formative years. There's nothing I can do now to change it all.

I'm only left wondering: how do you get so hung up on whom to thank and how to express those thanks that you cause your entire family not to give thanks at all?

New

Today's the first day of the year for us Chinese and our Korean and Vietnamese kin, and anyone else who goes by the lunar calendar. All my best wishes to you for the year ahead. May you find yourself on the road to all that your heart desires.

Scorcher

Thirty-seven degrees.

What else did I do in December?

After looking through my pictures taken in that month, it appears this post might just as well be titled "What else did I eat in December?" I think I should make concerted effort to take pictures of other things I do, because I really do more than eat.

Honestly.

But since the food-skewed pictures have been taken, I might as well share the main highlights.

A couple of months ago, feeling restless and hungry, I took a good-sized detour on my way home from church. "Huge" in the manner of "unnecessarily crossed river even though church and home lie on the same bank". The happy result was my discovery of this Vietnamese restaurant on the business end of Northbridge. It's spacious, charmingly dingy, and serves authentic, subtly flavoured food that doesn't leave me parched. I've returned a few times since, seemingly happier with each successive experience.


















December also being the month of Christmas, there was the work Christmas lunch. The set menu was a forehead-slapping ordeal for indecisive me. Did I want festive (turkey) or favourite (fish)? Unusual (veal)? Or how about going totally veggie? Veal won in the end, tweaking my animal-loving, humane-lifestyle sensitivities in the nose.

And then there was that full Sunday, which doesn't happen often at all these days (I write this thankfully, remembering seasons not so long ago when Sundays were more tightly scheduled, physically depleting, emotionally fraught and spiritually wounding than any other day). I was hungry after church and needed something to tide me over before our late-afternoon date with deep-fried sushi which was to take place before we went to the jazz club, finally, only eight months after we'd first talked about it. This kransky roll filled the gap just right.

You'd have thought I'd made Herr and Frau Hotdog's day when I insisted on having mine the way they would, the way any self-respecting German would. "Onions?" she'd asked, beaming when I nodded. Another nod to sauerkraut, and the beam got wider. But I have never seen a happier sausage-selling pair than these two when I winced at the offer of ketchup and accepted a squirt of mustard instead, not the common-or-garden mustard next to the ketchup but this secret mustard from the small bottle that stood on its own far away from the standard fixings. ("It is very, very hot. Trust me, you don't want too much." She underestimated my Malaysian-raised palate. I will have more of the "very, very hot" mustard next time.)

So, it appears I'm still eating meat. More uncomfortable dialogue between the different parts of me. Yippee.