needing inspiration

(Yesterday)



Since neither my parents nor grandparents were home, I had to prepare dinner for my sister and myself, which would have been fun had I only realised we were mysteriously out of aioli sooner, which would have allowed us to have dinner before 8.30. (This was because I had already prepared crudites for dipping before realising we were out of the dip.) The main deal was the tomato soup because we weren't exactly famished and dying to have dinner.

Anyway I'm really happy with how the soup's turned out so I'll share this very rough and arbitrary recipe with you (that would be extremely unhelpful if you prefer following recipes with religious word-for-word precision and use calipers to measure ingredients for size).

Ingredients: (In arbitrary units)
3 units tomatoes
2 units onions
1 unit of garlic cloves (leave unpeeled)
1.67 units ground paprika, basil, thyme and oregano (fresh, dried, whatever.)
0.01 units salt and pepper (preferably freshly ground) (to taste)
0.5 units olive oil
4 units chicken stock (you may also use water but I have this idiosyncratic repulsion towards adding water to anything I'm cooking, apart from boiling)

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C. You have to do this early, or face a seemingly eternal wait for the oven to heat up as your tomatoes languish in the heat and humidity.
Quarter onions and tomatoes. You will end up with chunky wedges. Place them on a baking dish with sides that can hold the juices in. Spread out onions and tomatoes on the dish. Place your unpeeled garlic cloves inside. Splash olive oil all over, trying to cover every surface with as little oil as possible. It is certain that one will fail. Do not worry too much about this. Sprinkle/scatter ground paprika, basil, thyme and oregano, and make a mental note of where you left the garlic, because you have to squeeze out the golden mush later.

Place in oven, and grill for about 30-40 minutes. The longer you grill, the more the sugars in the food caramelise, and then you get this really rich and robust flavour. (Okay, so I cheated and sprinkled some granulated sugar after 20 minutes in hope of enhancing that sweetness in such a short amount of time. But anything goes, really. There's no need to go postal over little things like that.)

Later, once you've found the courage to handle the very hot tray/dish thingy, you can start scooping out the hopefully lightly-browned tomatoes and onions. You should, at this point, realise that the garlic is still in there. At this stage, the insides would have softened and you can squeeze it out easily, much like a whitehead. If you want a chunkier soup as opposed to a smoothly pureed one which may evoke instant-soup nightmares for the very sensitive, separate some pieces of tomatoes and onion and leave aside.

Note: there may be brown bits stuck at the bottom of the pan. This is gold. Put the pan over some heat, splash some chicken stock/red wine and scrape up the brown bits. There is a more glamorous term for this, and it's called "deglazing". Add this to the rest of the ingredients.

Dump everything in a pot that's big enough for soup (so that the liquids don't bubble out when it starts simmering and boiling), and throw in your chicken stock. It should seem watery enough to worry you. This is normal. Remember to turn on the heat and simmer, half-covered, for about 15 minutes.

Once you're satisfied, puree the contents of the pot to death. (I'm kidding. You can pick your preferred consistency.) Add the other tomato and onion chunks if you did reserve any, and serve.

Randomly, I went to the living room to watch the news. I happened to catch a story about an event called "Seductive Stories at Suppertime", which was a storytelling session for adults only.

Then, on the stage, I saw the vocal coach from the Multi-Voice Magic choral speaking days of yore, where my sec 1 class was subjected to hours of torture and rehearsals that we had no interest in whatsoever. (Yes, we may have been only 13 then, but that did not imply that we had no dignity.)

And as the camera panned out, I felt my innocence cave in. (Well, not exactly.)

stand up, your father's passing

Help, I am currently suffering clutter angst and it is turning me into a neat-freak. There are snapped and broken 30 cm rulers that I will never use for graphs ever again, my sister's failed and forgotten design and technology projects, a tangle of wires—some of which, I discovered, leads to relatively obsolete equipment, and used, crumpled plastic bags strewn randomly around that are officially the bane of my existence. Clutter Angst has hit me right smack in the face again after the initial discontent felt when looking at Apartment Therapy with the annoyingly perfect slightly-messy feel of decorative clutter done "just right" and Martha Stewart-esque home organisation ideas that I will never consider because (i) few know the claustrophobic feeling of living in a small space with two guitars, (ii) I live with people still stuck in the 1940s and (iii) there are regular dust storms in my house. I could go on enumerating, but I'll have to condense my grievances into a parenthetical aside for now.

Earlier, I went to see Ruimin off at the airport. She's going to HK to study dance, and there were throngs of friends/adoring fans who went to say goodbye. I only knew about the latest flight plans yesterday while at the southern ridges walk (in the pouring rain) and it was all very sudden. I spent the night doing up a stationary set for her while half-conscious! Anyway, I'm really proud of her! I guess it's really scary to leave one's family and friends behind and be alone in a foreign land, not knowing quite sure how to speak their language fluently. But still I'm sure it's going to be a great experience and opportunity for her.

And I'm trying to save up to get an iPod nano (because the current hard drive-based iPod that I have to share with esther can't go running with me and I've been dependent on the flimsy affairs that Sony Ericsson calls handphone headsets), but financial black holes keep syphoning off my funds! Hence I will NOT condescend to buy romance novels from secondhand bookstores for Zizhao because this goes against the entire notion of my dignity, and there are better things out there to read if one wants to maintain their level of English. Ha.

stars and butterflies

The holidays have started off with a bang! (This is within the same vein as Christabel's exuberance.) Teachers' Day celebration was a blast, my report book was finally not totally disappointing after the year-long drought of pleasant results, and I'm feeling so aligned with myself, for once.

Also, I received a call today! At first I thought it was Andrea because it was a private number, but when I answered, I heard a voice that did not seem familiar. It sounded as if the person on the other side was blonde with blue eyes and freckled cheeks, and I struggled to pinpoint her identity.

Then, she hinted, rather coyly, that she was overseas and this was an international call (at which point I died inside because of overseas dialing charges and the like), and she's been to the US and China. In that instant, I nearly screamed her full name in the phone out of disbelief because OMG, I SWEAR IT SOUNDED NOTHING LIKE HER and she was like hahaha and I was absolutely TAKEN ABACK. I thought someone had dialed the wrong number and was, in actuality, looking for a friend in Sierra Leone or Slovenia instead. And here I was minding my own business, only to have someone from the not-so-distant past come screaming back to you.

Oh, can you guess who? It is blindingly obvious, yet totally out of the blue.

snippet

I revisited the toa payoh polyclinic today (I last went there 10 years ago) to check my back. I think I smell like sarsi because of the sarsaparilla-scented ointment that I have to rub on the affected area. Also, I have painkillers (that I probably will not be touching unless very severely depressed), a new tongue scraper and the most delicious pack of caramel apple chips that I've had in a very long while. Shopping in pharmacies are strangely more interesting now.

They've changed a lot. The familiar latticework grills in the waiting hall are now replaced with sleek wood-and-glass paneling, and the sliding plastic signs inset in metal cases that once hung precariously on their hooks are now bigger, bolder and glossier. But before I start to sound like a piece of Unseen Prose , I must say that the people have not changed, or, if you will, seem replaced by a brand-new set of old people, languishing in their creaking wheelchairs as the wrinkles formed by their loose and hanging jowls undulate to create waves in synchrony with the movement of their wheels across the grouting in the floor.

Ugh, am so disgusted with myself. I ate like 5 tablespoons of aioli while studying in the kitchen, as if that has ever been a great idea. :(

Sit on a potato pan, Otis

I sprained my back AGAIN, TWICE. I was carrying a bench when it started to slip from my grip, and as I tried to stabilise that behemoth that it felt at that time, I ended up arching my back because I couldn't bend my knees and I ended up standing still, horrified at the pain that had come back to haunt me once more.

That was a few days ago. Today, there were these post-secondary education talks and we were made to sit in the hall with the sec 3s for 2 hours. As I wondered whether this was punishment for lackluster prelim results, my back started to act up again and now I am cringing as I type because a wrong move can send shots of pain that will spread out radially from the left side of my lower back.

Anyway I saw a tag by someone and it sent me into a laughing/gagging/choking fit. It teetered on that fine line between disgust and hilarity that paralyses people as they begin their descent into insanity and spiral into temporal madness.

Also, I made aioli.

buzzing:

1. Will be seeing off Lucas and Ruimin on two consecutive days next week! Changi airport here I come.
2. I love this wet weather because I can make myself a mug of hot vegetable soup and study in the kitchen without feeling uncomfortably warm. Also, I managed to wake up to the sound of rain hitting hardly on closed windows and shortly thereafter, experiencing the bliss of realising it's a saturday morning and I can continue sleeping in. Now all I need is a cat and a fireplace and a time machine.
3. Dad has collected the iPhone and I am currently drooling myself silly over its high-gloss and aesthetically-pleasing contours. I hate its lame-o camera, but I guess trade-offs have to be made, even though it may mean lugging around another camera or face greater discontent.
4. The olympics closing ceremony was stunning. Am starting to worry slightly about preparations for the youth olympics. Will there be as many fireworks? Will I end up parachuting off some tower to light up a torch? Will I be caught on international television wearing red face paint and then filled with remorse when the truth of that few milliseconds of fame starts sinking in? The possible scenarios are so zany and bizarre, though possible, that the reality of it all now eludes me with my currently volatile emotions in my fragile state etcetera etcetera.
5. Sakae sushi has so many new buffet options, it now confuses me.

dispatches from the daily grind

I DID get an A1 for literature *\O/*
And yes I screwed up the TKAM section and it nearly pulled me down to A2, how very most frightful. Fortunately, I did pretty okay for unseen poetry because unseen poetry is The Reason for me taking literature. (Okay, among many other things as well.)

(Here I am filled with a rush of dread and ennui because it's only tuesday and I still have, like, so many more days to go till the weekend. I am now starting to live for the weekends, that sole respite from the mechanical routine of memorising and route-learning and languishing in my tired old chair, propping myself up on my tired old table, smiling wanly and nodding faintly to reassure tired old teachers that Yes, I do hear your cries and Yes, I will be reminded for the nth time that I have to use a black or dark blue pen to do my exams, etc., etc., etc., as if their presence was enough to capture my very being in a suspended state of panic and anxiety.)

I am also currently enjoying listening to This American Life, which is a popular radio show in guess-where, via podcasts. I find it funny and sometimes find myself smiling and nodding mid-listen, as if I could relate to their topics. Is this odd?

Also today: english teacher was seriously absolutely killing with the narrative-writing comments/stand-up comedy act, our projection screen finally gave up on us, we expressed mild outrage after learning that we STILL have to return for chinese lessons despite the period being extra and how it's eating up into our lunch break, I've found a popsicle-product in 7-11 that is really really really worth my $1.20, and I have reconfirmed my distrust in SBS bus-timetabling during peak hours after waiting a record 20 minutes for 156 to arrive.

skittish

I'll be getting back my bio paper and lit paper 1 tomorrow. On hindsight, maybe I might not do so well for bio paper 2 and maybe I will do terribly for the TKAM question from lit paper 1 because my expectations for paper 2 were not met and I am now fretting over the quality of my essays. Worry worry worry.

Also, to add on to my anxiety, the table tennis finals are on now and I can't bear to be within earshot of the TV because the heightened anticipation and tension and excitement will kill me. This is, of course, highly uncalled for, with O levels drawing near and everything.

Will now try to quietly study for the chem quiz tomorrow and avoid splitting more infinitives in my agitated state. I think I need to invest in a good sensory deprivation chamber.