Redbull 5

OK I'm off. Finished one hour (!!!) of transcription, now going back home to cook. Highlight of my day oh yeah. Gonna make something with kidney beans and mushrooms and onions and potatoes. I have also just recently discovered the magic of butter.

Ska ska ska! Jamaican ska! For everybody can do the ska! It's a new dance you can't resist!

*dances away into the dusk*

Saturday Ramblings

Lazy Saturday and I am spending my time pondering about reading the humongous text of Francis Fukuyama's Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity. It seems like a perfectly readable book, if I don't think about the thickness of it.

This morning when I was flipping through TV channels while eating eggs and garlic bread for breakfast, I caught a small sliver of a programme about Samurai Bows. The advice dispensed by a master archer was intriguing. He says that one should not focus on the bull's eye when one shoots the arrow. The more you focus on it the more distracted you will be. You will just have to practise until you hit the target without thinking about hitting it. Fascinatingly counter-intuitive. Maybe that's the same case with the research that I'm doing. I should just enjoy reading and writing, hosting and meeting people, without putting so much pressure on myself. And at the end of the day, voila, there's my thesis all written and bound, and I wouldn't know how it happened. I wish.

Yesterday I had Jia Ling over for dinner and cooked two dishes for her, which she absolutely loved. And Jia Ling's not the type who would give false compliments so I feel extremely gratified. And it was a vegan meal too, score!

The first dish was brocolli + chick peas + tomatoes in a pot. I came up with it purely by chance the other day, as I was planning to heap some pasta sauce on random vegetables that I had in the fridge and a can of chick peas (aka garbanzo beans, which is such an ugly name) for dinner. Everything was simmering nicely in the pot when I found out that I couldn't open the damn pasta sauce jar, so I simply had to have it without the sauce, and I found that broccoli and chick peas go pretty well together by themselves. Jia Ling heaped high praise on this one, although I thought it was a little overcooked, but since she liked her broccoli soft I was in luck.

The second was mushroom tossed with pine nuts, extremely simple, and it was the first time that I've made it. Pine nuts are yum, even when they are burnt. I had a stroke of genius and put in a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar in with the soy sauce for seasoning, inspired by a mushroom salad that I had once with balsamic vinegar which was really good. I personally like this one better than the broccoli and chickpeas. We had hash browns and bread as sides.

An inventory check of my fridge shows that I have an eggplant, two green capsicums, tofu, mushrooms and some Chinese vegetable which I don't know the English name of. I also have some baby potatoes. It is mysterious that an entire bag of carrots has disappeared. Maybe I dumped them into the rubbish chute while sleepwalking because I secretly hate carrots, or maybe Housemate David ate them all to avenge his stolen bread. In any case I don't have carrots now. I am looking forward to putting together random stuff tonight again.

My parents brought me this vegan recipe book Veganomicon - The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook, when they came last week, and I will try out some of the recipes in time. Although I do enjoy working without recipes it is probably better that I learn through some guidance. I feel like making hummus this weekend, with the recipe that Val gave me some time ago, but it remains to be seen if I can get my hands on tahini (sesame paste) at Fairprice Xtra. Or if I can actually drag my lazy butt out of the house to get it.

I also feel like experimenting with wine. According to The Veganomicon, the vegan cookbook for Transformers, "there's really nothing like wine when it comes to drawing out the flavours of seared and sauteed vegetables (particularly mushrooms), herbs and oils." It recommends white wine, red or sherry. I think I'll get a bottle of red the next time I go to Fairprice. Will also get a couple of wine glasses just in case =D

Ah. Leisurely Saturday afternoon just thinking about nothing in particular but cooking. At some point I'll have to pick up the big fat Francis Fukuyama, but now I shall be content with just sitting at my lounge corner typing absently, wondering what Housemate David is up to in the kitchen with the clanging and banging. We're getting along great, by the way. He's amazingly cool and very supportive of my academic needs (i.e. to host strangers in our home in the name of research). I put up a calendar on our fridge showing when my surfers come and he never questions anything. And we give each other loads of space, which is something that I appreciate very much. Half the time it's like living alone. Great stuff. About 40% of my stipend goes to my rent and utility bills but it's worth every penny.

Raining cats and dogs out there, like it does, every afternoon. Hello Mr. Fukuyama.

Monday Eve

So instead of scrumptious, heartwarming and steaming bowl of soup, I woke up instead to a really, really salty pot of salted vege soup with too much salted vege in it. I attempted to patch up the mess by scooping out half the soup and some of the salted vege, and adding half a pot of water and the egg that I had accidentally broken this morning - oh yes my kitchen's a haven for botched culinary projects - and gave it another two hours.

Two hours have passed by and Version 1.5 tastes exactly the same as Version 1.0. I ended up stealing Housemate David's bread from the oven for dinner. I knocked on his door twice and he didn't answer, so I figured if he's going to be unconscious I might as well have his bread. At some point I'll have to kick his door open and douse him with cold water to ask him if he's ever going to take his laundry out of the washing machine, but I shall wait another twenty minutes and hope he gets up. Man that guy can sleep.

The weekend has been great. My parents were here, bringing a month's supply of fruits and sundries and lots of love. I did still go for dragonboating, while they went shopping, and currently I am aching all over with the intensive training that they had because next week's a major race. On the way back to the shore the coach pulled a trick on us and made all the paddlers change places, from left to right and vice versa, forcing me to paddle on my left side, hence my whole body's hurting like a bitch. Everywhere, from my arms to my shoulders to my back to the bruises on my hips and knees - except my waist, which is where the pain is supposed to be. Fuck this shit.

This weekend I've also been thinking about Project Lalala Europa (What? It's catchy!). After some soul-searching with my primary school pal SY through MSN, I realized that the chances of me actually making it to Europe next summer is pretty slim. With my current financial status, a.k.a. I have a vague idea that I'm very broke but am not sure how broke I really am, and the fact that I don't know how much I actually have, warrants some serious revamp on my financial management techniques. I mean, I just withdrew S$100 two days ago. Now I am left with 20 bucks. I honestly do not know where the money went to. Damn. And I found a $10 in my jeans pocket today morning. Yay!

So anyway. 开源节流。Meaning that I should seek out new sources of funding, and save on what I already have, i.e. work very hard to get my post-confirmation pay raise asap/find a research sponsor/submit a paper to a conference in Europe, and stop spending money on snacks and alcohol. That's ancient Chinese wisdom for you, all in four words.

Also part of my Project Europa regime is no more impulse ticket buying. I very nearly bought a ticket to Tawau for next year, because Airasia's having its zero airfare promotion. I sent a mass email to Yuen, Skinny David and Tony Twentytwo to notify them of the promotion, figuring that if someone else bought the tickets I might get some vicarious pleasure from them and thus getting it out of my system. My warped sense of logic did not work. Then I texted Asa in a desperate plea to tell her to tell me not to buy the ticket. She told me to tell her to resist telling me to buy the ticket. Obviously she does not play the angel very well. *shakes head in disapproval*

Then my rational, boring PhD student side told my crazy, impulsive backpacker side to snap out of it, as the trip did not only involve a one-off payment of S$51, but also follow up expenses of accommodation, food, tours, and time taken off work for travel planning and actual travelling... and that I should stop sabotaging my already slim chances of going to Europe. So in the end I bit my lip, took a deep breath, and closed the window. Saved. But that's going to be Rule #1 under Project Europa. No more unneccessary ticket buying.

Rule #2. Work hard like there is no tomorrow to speed up completion of confirmation report, for the money, and for the peace of mind. I have also put my CS profile up for hosting. My co-supervisor recommends me to "start doing intensive fieldwork, as soon as possible". My supervisor agrees. I have been eyeing my message box like a hawk but there has been no requests at all. I thought it was really hard to get hosts in this little red dot. Maybe I was wrong about it.

Rule #3. Eat properly, rest properly, so that I can work properly. I shall end this post now, because tomorrow will be a brand new day for hard work. And work hard I shall!

The lunatic is on the grass.

Was at the office by 8am this morning, to beat the morning sun. The location of my new place is a 20 minute walk to my office, which is pretty cool because it means that I don't have to waste time on buses or MRTs, and I shrink my carbon footprint, yeah! All the more to compensate for flights that I take =P

There is also a recycling station directly downstairs, I can see it from my room window nine floors up. So now I have two more trash cans, one for bottles and cans, and one for paper. Takes a bit more effort, because I'll have to take the recyclables down instead of just disposing everything through the rubbish chute in the kitchen that makes trash disappear magically (never ceases to amaze me). But I'm happy about it. It's one of the little things, out of many others, that makes my place so great.

Housemate David has not moved in yet, he'll probably move in this weekend or later. Right now I am staying alone, enjoying the space that I can call my own, finally. On the day that my parents returned to KL, the second day that I moved in, I lay spreadeagle on my mattress, buried in the midst of boxes and bags, and slept. For hours and hours. Woke up, thought about unpacking, and went back to sleep. After all these months, I could finally relax and unwind and... rest. From July I'd been rushing from one event to another, one country to another, one bed to another. I felt like I could sleep forever. And from that day I have been waking up every morning with a smile on my face.

My room is gorgeous. It is bright and airy (windy even, at times), fully unfurnished, meaning that I moved into an entirely bare room. This allows me tremendous creative space. I've planned the whole room out and know exactly how it will look like after I'm done with it. Right now it's a big mess but that will change after I get some storage space. My faithful wall map of Asia (with Europe thrown in) will go up on the wall beside my bed. I'll have a chill out corner, with soft lighting and a rug and lots of cushions. Dark curtains. A small book case half concealed under a table cloth.

And the kitchen! I can finally buy vegetables in bulk because we have a cool new fridge (as opposed to the old broken one with the previous Landlord of Nightmares), have milk, put my eggs in, have fizzy drinks, so on and so forth =D I've been cooking noodles the past two nights just putting together whatever I can think of, coming up with a final concoction of:

charcoal noodles + onion + carrot + tomato + egg + seaweed + milk + vegetable stock. Tastes pretty good actually. I also eat it out of the pot. One less dish to wash =D

I think I will make mushroom soup tonight. Maybe I should experiment infusing rice with a mushroom soup base. Make some sort of risotto-like thing, which in case of failure will just turn into mushroom porridge.

Yup I'm pretty happy =) Oh yeah I am going to donate blood this afternoon. Yes, after two times of rejection (a year ago my veins were too weak, 8 months ago I was sick within 3 weeks before the donation drive) I am going for the third time. I connected the dots and figured out the problem. Twice I went on Fridays, twice I failed! Coincidence? I don't think so. Haha just kidding. Anyway third time's the charm, fingers crossed. Back to work!