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.

Words are not enough

This is lovely (profound, evocative, moving, passionate, stirring, playful...) :

I couldn't invent words in any language I know that would properly describe it.

So I'll just have to ask you to watch it. Then you'll know what I mean.

Image from Wong Fu Productions

Commentary and notes (and the film itself) here.

Will 2011 be the year I...

Image from Project: AK-47

• wear a child soldier's dog tag to remember the priceless lives being sold to a waking, 24/7 nightmare?
• finally get my social enterprise, no matter how small, off the ground?
• fall more in love?
• advance in my personal food reform plan, choosing to make more healthful and socially aware diet choices?
• get a pet that isn't composed of pixels?
• live in faith that it makes it normal to feel waves underfoot?
• have clients to counsel?
• have my work published again?
• can play a musical instrument unhindered?

What questions are you asking about 2011?

A story, a song

If you see a girl with a treble clef at her throat or a grand piano around her wrist, this might be the story behind it.

My being at the markets is a rare occurrence, and my buying things (non-food, non-essential) things at them is even rarer because Sydney craft markets tend to be expensive. But on this cloudy, UV-heavy Saturday I had set aside a small amount of mad money to be used in the event that I saw something I liked.

Well, that didn't happen.

I did see and buy something -- two things -- but not because I liked them. It was so much more than liking them at sight; I knew they were mine long before I even saw them. Does that sound like something a stalker would say? Fine, then. As long as all I'm stalking is small objects of 925 silver, I think society can handle it.

For a few weeks, I'd been wanting a new item of jewellery that had something to do with music -- something that I don't just love, but rely on. Come to think of it, I see music the way my mother viewed coffee. I can quote her, practically verbatim: "Coffee is my everything. It gets me up in the morning and helps me to sleep at night. When I'm at work coffee perks me up and helps me stay focused."

Hearing variations of the same theme on almost a daily basis for years is bound to make one memorise that theme.

But just substitute "music" in there and you have me. OK, I know music isn't my everything because I also have dance and chocolate and reading and lavender and fluffy animals and all the other things that have the same effects on me, but music means a lot to me. I know I am in really, really bad shape when I won't sing and won't listen to a song. Ironically, the cure for that state usually involves forcing myself to do either one or both.

Anyway, I had been reflecting for a few weeks on how much music means to me, and I'm a girl, so my mind tends to wander over to jewellery when considering ways to commemorate something so significant. I did my research, but everything I saw was either cheap and hideously distasteful (according to my taste) or exorbitantly exquisite. Since I am at present, but hopefully not for much longer, still a Mostly Unemployed Student, I couldn't afford the latter and wouldn't settle for the former. I stopped looking and decided it could wait until that one day when everything would fit into place and I'd see something I could afford and could wear in public without first having to sign a blood pact with some clan organisation.

So, when I spotted the treble clef in a tray of silver odds and ends, you may imagine that I felt someone had placed it there for me. The price was friendly, and I got out my wallet to pay. And then my eyes fell on...

... the grand piano.

A tiny silver grand piano.

See, another dream of mine, years older than the one of owning a piece of music-themed jewellery, is to own a grand piano.

Although that most probably will happen one day, clearly it hasn't happened yet. And given the way things had been going of late, my faith as it stood that warm December day was rather too depleted to reach the grand-piano compartment in my trunkful of dreams.

I knew I had to get the piano, too. I got the two charms for a song (bet you saw that one coming!), less than I'd budgeted for just one. And, along with the answer to my recent quest, I got a hint to my future, a key to not being so Cranky and Easily Upset over facing my post-Master's future.

I'd gone to the market that morning to accompany a friend who'd placed it on her Must Do While In Sydney list. I'd prepared myself to browse and not buy. I'd allocated an amount of spending money so small that I wasn't expecting to find anything in that price range. In the same way, I'd shrunk the space around my self. I'd made myself into something that filled the cracks in my clients' and friends' lives, but didn't have a lot left over for me. I concluded that what I wanted might have to wait, so in the meantime, why not treat it like an aimless walk through a market full of beautiful objects that I couldn't afford?

As I walked away with my new treasures, cheap trinkets to anybody else, I saw how it was about so much more than jewellery. I learnt that day about knowing that my dreams are remembered. And that the desires of my heart are recorded, even when I've given up on receiving them.

If you see a girl with a treble clef at her throat or a grand piano around her wrist, this might be the story behind it.

Love your work?

"My life's work was exactly what I was best suited to do. I loved what I did. It fascinated me." (Hudson Southwell)

How many of us will get to 70 and be able to say this truthfully?

When I have the time to get on my don't-waste-your-life-in-a-job-you-hate soapbox, I'll write more about career satisfaction. Right now, I think I should focus on heading home from the counselling centre while I can do it on foot, not by swimming.

What moves me

Two videos found over the past two days, a very sedentary weekend of not even being able to shimmy along to the Bollywood-meets-Austen extravaganza Bride and Prejudice, in order to give bruised head a rest.

Saturday: Interlude Dance Troupe's lyrical dance to Superchick's 'Beauty From Pain' at 2007's Kidz Take Kontrol. It's things like this that remind me: when words fail us, we still have dance.



Sunday: The arrangement sounds good and I liked the originals of both songs, but what gets me every time I watch this clip is the joy each of them finds in their music; once again, something beyond words. I miss that feeling. Thank you Miss C, teacher who succeeded in grooming me from unwilling ABRSM exam candidate into lifelong piano lover, for sending me this link.

Love does the conga

Once again, the (good) unexpected happens.

Right place: check.
Right time: check.

There I was, recording a video of a Project Dance performance. I'd actually stopped recording for a while, but the sound of Latin music had me start again. Then suddenly, into frame, across the audience area, danced a couple who entirely stole the show as far as I was concerned. Their spontaneity and sincerity were so captivating to watch, I didn't even bother recording after they were done.


Doug and Cindy stealing the spotlight.

I managed to catch a few minutes of Doug Eltzroth's time this morning to show him the video of him dancing with his wife, Cindy and ask his permission to post it here. I think many of us could always do with a reminder that love needn't always be painfully sought; it does sometimes sashay right across our paths, and if the timing is right, we can capture it.

Time was limited, but I managed to learn a little about Doug and Cindy. They met through a musical in which he wrote some songs and she choreographed. Together they lead Collage, an arts collective that sums up some of the dreams I have for my own life (and that of the guy I end up marrying). It's been uplifting to watch their family in action this past weekend.

Thanks, Doug and Cindy, for being yourselves in the midst of the busyness of Project Dance, for allowing me to post this private moment of your lives, and for your ministry. I've been so blessed.