June x 2

I have to finish this paper to finish this paper to finish this paper. (That is what I call two deja vus in one sentence.)

But at the back of my head I am actually there, in the picture, looking at the river below me, marvelling at the sheer insignificance of myself and my problems in general. I love how nature puts me in my place.

Motivation to finish this paper to finish this paper to finish this paper so that I can write other papers and compile them into a confirmation report so that I can travel again! Ooosh!

Labels: Canyons, escapism, half-baked, photos, rapid-voice-in-my-head, research, travelling, US of A

It is that time of the year again. What time of the year, you ask. Well, the time of the year when I get my personal belongings stolen, of course. What else?

Last year on November 27th, I was robbed in Kota Kinabalu. This year on November 28th, I lost my bag and its entire contents to a thief who somehow figured out the padlock combination of our dragonboat locker cage. Five or six bags were stolen, including mine. This is the first time that something of the sort has happened in my team, although someone cut through the American team's cage before, apparently.

Things I lost: My trusty Esprit bag, which YKent who bought it from Hong Kong sold to me, and it has weathered through so many conditions formal or rough because it's so versatile. Sigh. It was a good bag. My wallet which was cheap and falling apart, so no love lost there. S$100 which I had just withdrawn the day before, and a couple of hundred RM, which, don't ask me why I was bringing all around Singapore when they don't accept RM here. My student ID, my debit card (which has 2 bucks in it, they're welcome to it), my ATM card, my EZLink card, random transport cards that I collected from the US. My phone, the one that I hated. Well good riddance, except that all my contacts and sim card were in it. My umbrella. A library book - Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, which I had not finished, damn it. And it looked pretty old too, bet it was published a long time ago... well, let's just hope that the thieving bastards would appreciate classic literature. My Vegetarian t-shirt =( and my very absorbent gym towel. My house keys.

Things I didn't lose: More important forms of ID - my passport and Malaysian IC or driver's license. My research notes and camera which I took out right before I left, because I didn't want to make them wet.

Things I thought I had lost but didn't: my pencil case, my supervisor's library book, the cable for my external hard disk, my mp3 player which contained the 3-hour interview with Tope my Nigerian CSer (!!!).

All in all I suppose the damage wasn't huge, since most of the stuff that I lost are replaceable, apart from that vegetarian t-shirt that I got from San Fran... but I guess I could be thankful to the fact that I didn't lose my Old School or "If you can read this: make me a sandwich" t-shirts that are my favouritest t-shirts in the world, bought from Wellington, which have been with me through thick and thin, through leech infested tropical jungles and dry dusty deserts. Sucks that I lost all that money, but then money doesn't have emotional value so that's fine. Ambivalent that I lost my phone, along with it old and musty messages that hinted of relationships that could have been, people whom I've lost contact with, dear messages from my good friends that I can always accummulate again. I shall think of it as a yearly cleansing ritual, losing a phone and all the contacts, and building up again the core of people who matter.

The police took ages to arrive and in the meanwhile everyone crowded around to cancel credit cards and phone cards. The ones who weren't affected stayed back to give emotional support. There was this British uncle who kept growling in frustration every five minutes, haha. A really nice Indian guy loaned me 50 bucks. People kept speculating how it happened, and after they had already exhausted the possible scenarios they just repeated themselves over again.

After settling the collective police report (I'll have to make another individual report later) - I had a fifty dollar bill on me and a card with the case report written on it. And an old energy bar wrapper in the back pocket of my shorts, from the Grand Canyon hike. I could choose to go home, and wait till Housemate David gets home, but that could be a long wait. I decided to go get my sim card fixed at Raffles City instead. Then I changed my mind because I didn't have any form of ID on me and they probably wouldn't take my case; so I took a map from the Concierge and ran all the way to Chinatown to catch the free public screening of Gubra, a film by late Yasmin Ahmad, my favourite Malaysian director. After watching the (really good) movie I met Adibah (a Singaporean CSer) and her friends by chance, and they walked me to Outram Park MRT, although I told them that I couldn't be mugged since I didn't have anything on me. Well apart from 48 bucks and a case card and a Singapore map, but what are the odds, seriously?

There I took an MRT back to Pioneer, stinking everyone within a 3 feet radius of me with a combination of dried sweat and dried river water. After that I walked home from Pioneer MRT. Apparently it only takes less than 20 minutes, and it was nice walking under the night breeze in the knowledge that I had already exhausted the probabilistic quota of being robbed within a day.

Labels: dragonboat, movies, screw-ups, Singapore

Totally falling asleep while I'm writing this but I would just like to shout out to two delusional recipe authors out there: Singapore is not the food capital of Asia. Singapore is not the food capital of Asia. Singapore is not the food capital of Asia. Got it?

Labels: half-baked, Rants, Singapore

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.

Labels: books, cooking, good-mood-ramblings, life-in-general

You see a pair of eyes staring at you from your keyboard.

Labels: half-baked

photo credit: here.

*update at 3:50am*
Awful cloudy out there... I see like, one star, from my window. Think I'll just go back to bed, although there is this nagging feeling that I should do it anyway since I'm up... but walking 25 minutes to the rooftop of my school under such weather conditions seems to be foolish and I should not yield to my stubborn streak. (I have more than one stubborn streak apparently. Another stubborn streak who does not yield to stubborn streaks.)

Sigh. At least I learnt more about meteors and comets and constellations during my meteor shower fervour yesterday afternoon. Shirked all my duties too. Sigh.

*yawns**goes back to bed sadly*

Labels: bloody-cool, outings, Singapore

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!

Labels: cooking, dragonboat, lalala-europa, resolutions, travelling

Am going to cook soup in the crockpot, take a quick shower, and snuggle under covers to take a nap with full knowledge that I'm going to wake up to something scrumptious later. *grins with half-closed eyes*

Labels: good-mood-ramblings, half-baked, photos