ten-ele-ven

私は　ColdStone Creameryのice-cream　をたべるのが　すきです。韓国で　いつも　食べました。　とても美味しいです。 すきなice-creamは　Strawberry Banana Rendevous です。

So glad that ColdStone is now in Singapore. But I like eating it alot better in cold weather than in our humid weather.

And I think I’m getting somewhere in figuring out how to use the GF2. The user can get the camera to focus on a specific area just by touching the LCD screen and this achieves a shallow depth of field effect in the image.

My guy friends would tell me – Girl, read the camera’s operating manual. That’s what manuals are for. I know, I know.

私は　晩ご飯に よく料理を　作りました。　おいしかったと　思いました。

Baked pork ribs marinated with char siew sauce for dinner. (A bit too salty this time….) Plus corn-on-the-cob, broccoli and sweet potatoes on the side.

I like this photo not for the food but because of the creamy bokeh which I rarely achieve in my photos.

^ Taken with the Lumix GF2.

I have been terribly remiss in writing posts on this blog in the past month or so. Because I have been too busy overdosing on a myriad of distractions.

Mangas. Animes. Korean dramas. Japanese dramas. Korean-boys-shipping! 本当に　嬉しいかったです。

I’ve been also been spending quite a bit of time everyday reading books, revising Japanese grammar, shopping for groceries, making home-cooked meals and playing chauffeur to Mr T.

One of my favourite things to cook these days is meesua soup. With lots of vegetables, an egg, shredded chicken meat topped with fried shallots and spring onions. I make the stock with water, chicken bones and sweet corn. After the stock has been cooked, I remove the kernels from the cob and snack on them. Corn, to me, is a comfort food.

I’ve always loved eating corn since I was young. Before I entered primary school, I was looked after by my maternal grandparents. My parents picked me up from my grandparents home after work everyday. Several times a week, my parents would stop at the hawker centre near our home for dessert. I would be allowed by my mother to eat a bowl of ice-kachang all by myself. It was such a treat that made me really happy.

My favourite ingredient in the ice-kachang was corn. But I would not eat it there and then. I picked out all the corn kernels, wrapped them in a tissue paper and bring the little package home. I would then pop a kernel into my mouth, savouring it slowly, while doing dreaded homework or after I had been punished by my mother for some wrongdoing. Which was pretty often.

So whenever I got a whacking, I looked to my secret stash of corn kernels for comfort.

One of the most satisfactory things to do in this world is biting into the bitter and creamy flesh of durian. I can’t even to describe the high I get from the taste of durian.  How is it possible for anyone to hate durian…?

私は　ドリアンが　大好きす。とても　美味しいです。毎日　ドリアンを　食べたいです。

I have abstained from eating durians for two years because my aging body have difficulty digesting durians. Those good old days when I could overdose on durians without feeling any discomfort.  All gain and no pain!

Yesterday, I went and bought 8.5kg of Mao Shan Wang, gave two-thirds to family and devoured nearly the remaining one-third on my own.  It was absolutely orgasmic!  It’s payback time after 12 hours.  I FEEL HORRIBLY SICK. 

I blame it all on my Japanese teacher. As part of an oral exercise, she went around the class asking whether we liked durians. Then a friend posted a photo of his latest durian escapade on Facebook and all hell broke loose.

Like they say, abstinence from anything that makes one FEEL GOOD is bad for health in the long run.  I figured that endorphins must go some way in balancing out any ill-effects of over-indulging right?

Okay.  I must not abstain from durians.  I must not abstain from alcohol.  I must not abstain from ogling at Korean boys.

I have finally tried all the four chiffon cake recipes given in Keiko Ishida’s book – vanilla, black sesame, matcha and kinako (soybean).  We (okay, more like TBH) really overdosed on chiffon cakes the last couple of weeks.

Of them, I like vanilla and black sesame the best.  The matcha and kinako flavours were a little overwhelming for me. The matcha was a little too bitter and the colour of the cake turned out to be an odd shade of blackish-green (even though the photo in the book displayed a lovely emerald green cake). The kinako simply tasted weird.

What next…?  I might try her dacquoise recipes.

For a long while, I have been meaning to take a photo of the one-storey house along Thomson Ridge where I grew up in. I had lived there with my maternal grandparents from the time I was brought home from the hospital till I started primary school at 7 years old which was when my mother became a SAHM and took me home with her.

I will never forget the house and the garden emcompassing it. I can still remember how it looked, the layout and the furniture as clearly as if I am still living in it. The garden was where my grandfather cultivated his plants – orchids, sunflowers, bougainvillea – and reared his goldfishes in huge fish-tanks. It was a place which witnessed the weddings of my aunt and uncle, the births of my cousins, my growing up years, birthday parties, BBQs, etc.

I went back some weeks ago with my Nikon, my mom and TBH. But I was too late. The owners had torn down the old house and is in the midst of constructing a 2-storey house, taking up most of the garden.

I felt sad at not being to preserve a memory of the old house on paper. I took a walk down Thomson Ridge, the road right in front of the old house. A road which I had walked on everyday for many years as a child. With my parents. With my grandparents. With my aunt and uncle. My mother wondered whether the old neighbours that she had known were still living along that road. Whether they were still alive. The immediate neighbour of our old house, a place where I used to hang out with their kids, is still living there. We chatted with them for a while before they had to go off for an appointment. My mother promised to keep in touch.

I saw the new MV of the song ‘Home’ playing in the cinema when I went to watch The King’s Speech. How is it possible to think of a place as home when the physical things that remind you of home are slowly being eradicated? I don’t know. With urban development, the old will make way for the new. Change is inevitable.

Maybe I should start a small collection of photos capturing places, landmarks, street scenes that have a place in my heart and my life before they all become nonentities.

At 35, I am sounding like an old fudge.

かんこくのバナナミルクは　だいすきです。毎日　このバナナミルクを　のんでいます。

After a long seach, I have finally found the Bingrae Banana Milk in Shine Supermarket at Burlington Square.  I lugged a box of 24 cartons back home.  I have been craving for this milk like junkies craving for a drug fix.

Unlike the ubiquitous jar-shaped packaging found practically everywhere in Korea, the ones exported overseas are the UHT versions and taste slightly different from the fresh milk sold in Motherland.

Still good enough for me. 🙂 Even TBH likes it.