Friday

I suppose when you find yourself in the corridors of a psychiatric hospital, it's good to know the way out. My first psychiatric practicum was interesting, and no more (probably considerably less) than what I might have expected, but I'm sure there will be challenges ahead. I love dance therapy.
Sunset over Hen & Chicken Bay. I've always loved looking at the sky in its various colours (except for the grey it takes on during haze season in southeast Asia or bushfire season in Australia), so these autumn evenings are a treat.

I know it looks as if I'm living it up in Sydney compared with my life in KL, and I am enjoying plenteous good times. But those are the ones I photograph. You won't see pictures on my blog or Facebook about the sleepless nights spent typing up essays, or the irritating housemate with her intrusive questioning and phone calls and insatiable appetite for country music, or the ache in my gut when I miss home and my nephew so much that I can't even cry. Blogs, like any other creative medium, are nice and malleable, and out of them you can construct a happy place where the worst thing that happens in life is that eggplant doesn't sink.

As I stood cooking

I left the house at noonish today in order to reach Ashfield well before the psychiatric practicum started.

By 4.15, after an hour spent with three rather quiet inpatients from the hospital and two other DMT students, I was on the bus back from Ashfield, and I had plans for that lonely slab of fish sitting on my designated shelf of the fridge, waiting for my plans to happen.

I decided to make it into green curry fish, with chopped mixed vegetables to make a nice, healthful meal of it. For the past few years, my cooking activity has been almost nil, which is why apart from mashed potatoes (or potato anything), tiramisu and assorted other low-skill items, I can't really cook. Now that I no longer live within easy reach of cheap and tasty freshly cooked food, it's time I learned.

OK, so using packaged green curry paste from the Asian grocery doesn't really qualify as making green curry, but I have to start somewhere, right?

5.00pm, at my local supermarket:
What veggies should I get? Potatoes, of course. I think seven of these glossy little Colibans should do. Eggplant... why are all of them so big? Never mind, they shrivel when cooked, right? (Right?) I'll just take the smallest one. And a kilo bag of carrots... I guess that's enough. Shouldn't overdo it. (In hindsight, after the whole thing with the eggplant, I see what a joke this is.)

6.15pm, after I have rested my muscles that are a little tired from lugging what eventually turned into a few kilos' worth of fruit, veg, and refrigerated pasta:
I say my goodbyes to friends I've been chatting with online, and start the preparations. The potatoes are easy; I have a long history with tubers and I know just how to handle them. Carrots, fine. The eggplant produces a problem. How big should the chunks be, so as not to dissolve to nothingness once boiled, yet not so huge that my Hokkien ancestors (were they still alive) would turn up their refined Southern noses at them? Should I slice lengthwise first, or crosswise? Only now do I see that this "small" eggplant was small in comparison to the others, and was in actual fact bigger than a guinea pig. An obese one. An obese guinea pig from a very large breed.

6.40pm:
Since I have twice as much santan (coconut milk), "meat" (the curry package doesn't seem to have been written by a seafood-fancying type) and veg...

Maybe I should rephrase that. Since I have twice as much veg as the recipe calls for, and I could just as well open the extra can of santan I'd bought in hopes of making kaya soon, let's cook up a bulk serving of green curry so I can freeze the extra.

All right, I need to rephrase it again. Since I underestimated just how huge the smallest eggplant was, and chopped it all up anyway and therefore now have about four times as much eggplant as carrot (about eight times as much as potato and, ominously, uncalculably more than fish), let's just cook a big pot and see what happens.

As per package directions, but double, I "fry" two tablespoonfuls of the paste in one can of santan. The resultant liquid is too pale for green curry. Mindful of my last attempt, which had too much paste, too little santan and too much meat, I decided to add paste in very tiny spoonfuls.

About five (gradually expanding) spoonfuls later, I decide it looks and smells right, and it's time to add the other can of santan and bring it to the boil.

7.20pm:
Hmm... still too pale. (More paste.)

Boiling. Time to add the fish. (This is a very small amount of fish for this pot, is my thought as the last sliver plops to the bottom. Mental note: fish is more dense than green curry.)

7.30pm:
Does this look too pale? (Still more paste. Have these paste people actually tried cooking using their own proportions?)

In goes the veg. The potatoes and carrots sink. (Mental note: Potatoes and carrots are more dense...)

My reverie over the potatoes and carrots is broken by the sight of all my beautiful, disdaining-Hokkien-ancestor-reject eggplant chunks floating. Evidently, eggplant is not dense at all. They're so floating that it almost seems they're not touching the liquid at all. This could be a problem. How are they going to cook if they're going to hover over the surface of the water- sorry, been spending a lot of time in Genesis of late (off-tangent aside: have really been spending a lot of time in Genesis of late; ask any other first-year Counselling student at Wesley)- of the curry?

I use the spatula to push a few chunks under the surface at a time. I feel like some mediaeval executioner, dunking unrepentant vegetables.

It's not working. I leave the lot to go on simmering while I duck back online and start typing this post, which I realise is a less worthy use of time than writing up one of the three assignments I have due next Friday, but take it as a warm-up for my writing muscles.

In between paragraphs, I keep going out to check on the curry. It has been a while since I last saw anything but eggplant. The carrots and potatoes obediently come up when I stir, but the fish, where is it? I can't find the fish.

Some of the eggplant has softened and submerged a little. Good. But where has all that fish gone?

Feeling optimistic at the sight of the softening eggplant, I put the rice on to cook.

8.00pm:
I can't wait for the eggplant any longer. I need to eat, because there are papers waiting to be written.

I poke a chunk with a fork. Instead of the soft, yielding chssssshhhh I want, I hear a firm, almost crunchy khhhk (my phonetics aren't very good, but if you have experience in cooking eggplant, maybe you know exactly what sounds I mean).

I decide to wait just a little longer. Besides, the rice, which I have decided to microwave on very low heat in stages so as to avoid the exploding rice problem I've always had, is two stages away from "done".

8.30pm:
I can't believe I've waited half an hour for vegetables. That's it, I am eating.

I take the rice out of the microwave and feel, lame as it is, that the perfectly done grains are cause for celebration. For once, there is no puddle on the microwave dish. There are no dried-out grains lying on top of a sodden heap of stuck-together grains. Perfect. I know just what to celebrate with:

Almost-vegetarian green curry. Or maybe vegetarian, because I still don't know where all my fish went.
Final verdict: Amazingly enough, everything was cooked just right. The fish did not dissolve, as some thought. It was pleasantly tender and the eggplant would have pleased Goldilocks.

But I think it could have been more green. The paste manufacturer definitely needs to revise the package directions.

How ironic?

How ironic is it to be a writer who doesn't want to write anymore?

I feel verbally dehydrated. I've given all I had, and more, and I have dug from reserves I didn't even know were in me. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of being everything and doing everything. I'm tired of editing my own work so that I will not be the one to make an editor scream at 11.30pm when her eyes come into contact with the words "Between you and I..."

It's the 9th year since my first paid job. I have had my pieces chopped into half to make way for ads, "sold" the right to songs into which I had poured heart and soul for the princely sum of 1 ringgit each, and been told to give my pieces "more sparkle", even if it means "less truth".

And I am sick of it all.

It's been a while, and I've been busy. A few weeks ago, I had reason to decide that making a trip to Melbourne was the best possible use of my mid-semester break. Thanks to Providence and the generosity of friends, I was able to make that journey in the speedy, cramped but none-too-shabby comfort of flying, rather than the 12-hour overnight coach trip.

It was, really, truly, no hyperbole or artificial enthusiasm, one of the best times of my life. I don't think there's anything more valuable to me than having a few days with nothing to do but spend time with people I love, people standing at different stations in life who enrich me just by being themselves.

I'm now back and plunged right back into the deep end, complete with a missed deadline through forgetfulness. What can a missed deadline teach one, you ask? Well, first of all, to always make a list of all known deadlines and CHECK IT TWICE! NO, THREE TIMES! ONCE MORE FOR GOOD MEASURE!

Sorry, I'm just trying to make sure I don't make the same infantile mistake again. But no, the lesson it taught me was that good friends are to be found everywhere (call it more of a revision than a lesson). The ones in Sydney? One lent me her car to drive home and grab my laptop so that I could finish the assignment during classes and submit it before Anzac Day. Another went out and bought my lunch to save me time away from the machine. Others gave me sympathetic encouragement (though not without a touch of relief that they're not the ones with the impaired ability to read dates properly).

I am so thankful that it's the weekend, and although other papers now scream to be written, I am going to ignore them until Monday and just enjoy this moment, and the next, and the next, until I hear the MIDI ambient music of my phone's alarm function and another week begins.

Some of the moments already enjoyed this long weekend:

1. High praise from my Counselling Foundations lecturer, who thinks I've improved from my session of "checklist counselling" a few weeks ago.
   
2. A knockout dinner prepared by my eldest paternal aunt, and seeing that aunt and her daughter again for the first time in years.
   
3. Being next to my cousin during his near-death experience. We didn't enjoy it right then, but now that things have turned out this way we can laugh. It had to do with drying plates in our aunt's kitchen, and a 34-year-old Villeroy & Boch Granada ceramic plate that my aunt bought new with one of her first paychecks oh-so-nearly crashing to the floor and smashing into a million pieces that all the king's horses and all the king's men wouldn't have a hope of re-assembling. Fortunately, he caught it, momentarily after his life flashed before his eyes.
   
4. The simplicity of eating Breadtop buns in Hyde Park with my cousin as a fine drizzle fell. Only when the fine drizzle reached the intensity of a fine heavy rain did he turn to me and ask, "Do you think we're overdoing it?"
5. Watching the Anzac Day parade in the city for the first time in my life and suddenly, unexpectedly, tearing up because I missed Ah Koong and the stories he used to tell of wartime.
6. Applauding my friend when he went up to receive his MA from Southern Cross College. What, universities don't do scrolls anymore?
7. Trying not to ogle like a hick at the detailed interior of Sydney U's Great Hall.
8. Lunch followed by churros (and the rest of the tapas plate at San Churro's Glebe branch) with my friend and his wife, one of the most beautiful couples I know in my age group.
9. A shortish, but very sweet, afternoon nap.
   

And more to come tomorrow.

Happy Easter

Thank you, God.

I'm just sayin'...

So I know the check mark, or tick, is a pretty effective visual marketing device because it carries positive connotations: approval, competency, credibility. It sure worked for Nike. It's been working for the Heart Foundation for years, and I genuinely appreciate the work the Foundation has done to help people take better care of their bodies.

But you'll have to excuse me. Although I've walked past this pizza bar many times and wondered about its "gourmet pizzas", I don't know about the pizzas from this section of their delivery menu, because they come with names like "Roast Beef Tick Pizza". Which makes me think of a pizza with roast beef and, well, ticks all over it. And, well, yuck. I grew up with pet dogs in a tropical climate, and I can well imagine what that would look like. (Fortunately, I don't share the childhood experience of someone who also knows what that would taste like.)

Like cold water to a weary soul...

I woke up feeling dreary this past Monday.

The distance between here and home seemed even more obvious than usual, and I felt like hiding under the covers and muttering, "There's no place like home. There's no place like home." until I woke up in my four-poster back home with the cow prints on the sheets. Or at least, until a butler appeared at the foot of my bed bearing chocolate, tissues and a roti pisang hot off the pan.

Didn't happen.


But what did happen is that I received more SMS and e-mails from friends and family at home (and beyond) than I have in a single day since getting here.

"As cold water to a weary soul, so is good news from a far country," goes the book of Proverbs.

And for this weary soul, knowing that I have people on every continent who love me is very good news.

Another one of those posts with random pictures

One evening last year, I was feeling pink and I wanted to test out my new camera. And I made sure that nothing embarrassingly private could be read in the shots, so stop trying to read my handwriting.
















The Twin Towers through a skylight in Suria KLCC.
















One of the twins, shakily photographed while I sat in way-past-what-can-reasonably-be-called-rush-hour traffic. Has it ever occurred to you when you looked at one of the Twin Towers through a crack in between buildings that you're the only person on Earth who can see that exact view? That the guy in the next car might have just as good a view, but it's still not the same one you've got? And maybe we need to appreciate our unique perspectives a little more than we usually do?

Please tell me I am not the only one who thinks such things while sitting in heavy traffic.
















To be honest, I hesitated to post this photo. Why? Because the person who gift-wrapped a box of sliced mango for my Christmas present is someone who reads my blog (which is how he discovered I love mango in the first place), because sometimes Malaysians have this thing about expressing appreciation for something nice that someone of the opposite sex did for them, in case that act of appreciation is seen as something else entirely. But you know what? I like talking about good things people have done for me. In ancient Hebrew tradition, apparently, "Thank you" is expressed as, "I will tell of your good works." And so I will.
















One I miss immensely, and will continue to for many years. I still can't believe she's gone and I didn't get to say goodbye. I don't know what I'd give for one more cuddle with an energetically wriggly fluffball, because I'll never get it anyway.

I also appreciate what another friend did the previous time she went missing (before the last ever time), which was to get out of bed in the middle of the night and drive over to help me search under drains and in bushes. Never mind that we haven't spoken for months; it doesn't take away my gratefulness.
















Last Sunday night, I was walking briskly home after attending church in the city, and I passed my neighbour's rose bushes and thought, "How nice if I had the time to stop and smell them."

Then I remembered that I did. So I did.

It's been too long...

I don't like leaving the blog un-updated for too long, because then its posts become like appam that's been left too long in the plastic bag on the dining table: old and unappetising. And I have had some complaints that updates are too irregular as well as too infrequent. So, now that I'm trying to introduce some semblance of sane order to my life, I'll aim for one new post a week, at the very least.

But now I'm feeling extremely sluggish in the blogging muscle, and I don't know what I want to write about.

Maybe I could write about how cold today was, and how thankful I am for many things:

1. That my housemate's sister offered me a ride to the mall so that I would not have to carry 4.5kg of hand weights home by bus and on foot.
2. That though I woke up coughing because my throat was cold, it didn't stay cold, because I have a loosely knitted scarf in happy pastels that I threw into my luggage at the last moment when I was leaving KL. So the coughing has ended.
3. That my housemate made a deliciously cheesy, corn- and tomato-filled omelette for dinner, and so for a respite from a half-day spent typing an assignment on my PC I got to eat omelette with toasted, buttered rolls.
4. That I have tastebuds with which to savour omelette, butter and rolls.
5. That those same tastebuds also have a penchant for chocolate ice-cream, which I scooped into a mug and took with me on a walk to the park, despite the cold.
6. That I have overcome the psychological barrier that my first assignment of post-grad life had presented.

This is getting too wordy, and after a whole day of wordy, I can't do it anymore.

Omelette in progress

Bye Spunky, Hello Providence

Many of my friends know how much my (formerly my) car Spunky meant to me and how much I'd hoped its next owner would be someone who appreciated how truly special it was.

So, e-mails were sent, phone calls were made...

... and nobody, it seemed, wanted to buy my car. The only people who wanted it and might be likely to become Spunky enthusiasts were offering me a figure rather low for a Spunky, so I declined.

So, four days before was due to leave KL for Sydney, I gave in and phoned my car loan agent, explained my predicament and asked him to help me sell Spunky.

This was with a very heavy heart because I knew that selling to a car dealer meant that Spunky would lose every shred of, well, Spunky-ness, namely the horses. Don't ask me why those horses were so important to me. It was one of those "becoming real" things that the Velveteen Rabbit talked about. To others, Spunky may have been a gaudy, slightly scratched car with a missing piece from its front bumper; to me, it was the best thing on four wheels.

The dealer called, I told him the brief specifications of the car, and we agreed to meet in SS2's commercial square because he didn't know the shops near my house.

When he called later, he said he'd found the shops. So off I went to meet him, fully intending to turn left towards the shops and a soft shoulder where I thought he could inspect the car in peace without fear of cars zooming round the corner and squashing him.

Instead, I was vigorously signalled to turn right, into a side lane, rather than left onto the shoulder.

Mr. Car Dealer Guy turned out to be rather more pushy than I liked...

... so it wasn't difficult at all for me to make the decision not to sell to him.

Now if this were an ordinary car-sale story, it would end with me being back at Square One, with a car and no sale.

But my life has not been ordinary for a long time, and it was not ordinary that day.

To cut a long (but fun) story short, Spunky has been sold to a private buyer and its new driver likes the yellow, likes the horses, and is very happy to have a Spunky.

And because of the Spunky affair, my father now has a new friend, cooking coach, English student and bilingual Bible study partner.

Which all leads me to realise that, while for weeks I was preoccupied with finding a buyer for Spunky, God had a lot more in mind than getting me to let go of my car before coming to Sydney.

How often is it that the centre of my focus, all that I can think about, is really only a sideshow to the main thing?

Note to self: Remember that life stretches beyond me, I, myself...

... and my car.