taking restlessness to new heights

in the past 2 weeks, i've booked 2 flights to different places. anthony says it's taking restlessness to new heights :p one's to sydney for the cake course in october, and the other is to cairns in january. i was talking to someone at a birthday party, and he told me that he'd been diving in the great barrier reef, and that it was pretty amazing and i should go soon before it dies out.

that got me thinking. (i've been doing a LOT of thinking lately, especially as to what i should get for charlie for his birthday. it's not easy - the boy needs everything, but wants nothing in particular.. -_- go figure) anyways, i asked him whether he'd prefer an 'object' or an 'experience'. he picked experience. PERFECT :)

jetstar chose the best time to release sale flights to cairns. i found a course that i want to do over there. it's a 5 day long course, over which you become a certified diver (i've always wanted to do this ever since that virgin dive in thailand) and you live aboard a boat for 3 days and 2 nights, and you dive and dive all day around different strips of coral in the great barrier. it even includes a night dive! i am excited. we're staying for 8 days, which means that we'll have another 3 days or so to explore. i have white water rafting in mind, charles likes the idea of bungee jumping.

I AM NEVER GOING BUNGEE JUMPING.

i think in all fairness i'm a relatively adventurous person, but i draw the line at bungee jumping. why the hell would ANYONE want to dangle upside down by their ankles over some massive drop on a piece of rope??? why would you even pay 100 bucks to do that?? why why why??
and to top off my fear for that, we did a law assignment on it last semester where a guy was suing a bungee company because he broke his spinal cord and practically become one of those noodle people who cant move anything except their pinky or something. omg. i argued FOR the guy (i.e. bungee jumping is inherently dangerous, etc etc) ...

NO BUNGEE JUMPING!! >:(

made some panna cotta after desperately craving it after the one we had from Fifteen at Taste of Melbourne. it turned out surprisingly well.

the red stuff on top is supposed to be berry jelly, but i cbs waiting for the panna cotta to set before doing the jelly, etc etc. i wanted to eat it asap so i just settled for making some random concotion of berry coulis, which was nice anyway.
soooo sinful at 3am.

tonight i get to see kenny sia, my fave blogger ever! :D i am excited.

Life's biggest FML... and food porn :)

recently i read this book.. it was a pretty good book, i think i'll go back for the rest of the series except for this one twist in it that i thought was pretty earth shatteringly FML. this girl falls in love with this boy who's this total stud (you know, cynical, cool, etc etc, rides a bike, kills demons with one fell swoop..blah) anyway the two of them have chemistry, right? so they get together... kiss.. and at the end of the book it's revealed that by a cruel twist of fate, the boy is her brother ... OMG :\

is it wrong for siblings to fall in love (eros love) with each other if they never grew up together? it's a definite WRONG from me if they actually grew up within the same family (ewww.) but if they grew up as total strangers.. i dunno. i guess anything can happen right? to me 'family' is a concept involving the people around you whom you grow with. it's not really the people that you're born to. if that makes sense. i think that there are heaps of blood-bound families out there who aren't even as close as some 'non-bloodrelated' families.

anyway, went to the 2009 taste of melbourne festival. and from the moment i entered the halls, i knew that i'd be coming back, year after year for more. here are some of the exceptional dishes:

Confit Duck baked in puff pastry, with a tomato fondue
The Court House

Milk fed veal tenderloin served with soft polenta, swiss chard & pancetta
The Brasserie by Philippe Mouchel


**MY ULTIMATE FAVOURITE**
Vanilla Panna Cotta served with slow cooked Quince.
Fifteen by Jamie Oliver.

O.M.G THIS MELTED IN MY MOUTH. i could see black flecks in the panna cotta - real vanilla bean, not cheap essence!



Spiced Cinnamon Donuts served with warm chocolate sauce
The Court House.

I liked this one too :D

Lamb Kustilji: lamb ribs, roast nuts & spices, lemon and yoghurt
Maha

Dark Chocolate Mousse finished with a caramel ganache with a hint of salt, served iwth an anglaise sauce flavoured with Tonka bean
The Brasserie - Philippe Mouchel

Baked Crab Shell in Portuguese Sauce
Silks

Do you like pina coladas?? ;) the lemon alcohol in this was just lovely. fresh and not overpowering at all.

Slow Roasted Berkshire pork belly, with lentil du puy & salsa verde
Fifteen - Jamie Oliver

this one was okay. didn't beat the pork belly with spicy miso from Nobu which just dissolved in my mouth in an explosion of flavour. no photos, because it was gone before anyone thought to whip a camera out. we even had two servings of them! i think it might've been the perennial favourite amongst us.

Martini of bittersweet chocolate, expresso jelly, bourbon vanilla chantilly
Jacques Reymond

almost ate the whole cup myself *guilty look*

photo with Gary from MASTERCHEF <3 style="text-decoration: underline;">

and it's George! the other judge of masterchef!! :) he was so lovely in person. what a nice man.


lastly, it's now fri 28th of aug, 2009 and my best friend david ta turns 20. happy birthday davo. much lovelove.

planetcake

so i finally registered for this cake decorating course at planetcake :D
after weeks and weeks of mulling over whether it's too expensive, whether it's worth the money.. blah blah blah, i finally did it.

it's that time of the year now, when students one year away from graduating (yes, that'd be friends our age who did 3-year-long degrees) have entered into the flurry of applying for internships so that they can secure themselves a much-coveted graduate position. i hear the number of these positions are dwindling with the GFC on our backs and all. it's an odd feeling. on one hand, i'm envious of the friends who will start working in the near future. it seems like a whole new stage of life - after work drinks, work schedules (omg, 9 - 5 with only 4wks annual leave), flying overseas for work, having colleagues (!) they'll have taken that final step of independence - leaping into the air and testing out their wings.

and me? i'm not even midway through my course. it's awhile away yet.

there are so many things i want to accomplish before i start working. having a job is almost like having kids, it really ties you down. i know most people say that you can work and you can still do all the things you want to do (and with more money) but how many of those people really chase their dreams when they're chained to a desk?

these are some of the things i want to accomplish before i start working:
- one semester in prato on exchange
- as many internships as i can
- volunteering at legal aid
- getting through as many planetcake courses as i can (this is really really exciting)
- teaching english for half a year overseas
- learn to play the guitar
- pick up another language

the cake course is the first step. i wanted to pursue things like music but like most hobbies, it requires time commitment. the cake course seems like the perfect alternative.. fun and interesting, and once i learn it the skills will stay with me.

hooo.. i'm excited!!

did i mention the cake course is in sydney? ;)

district 9 - warning! potential spoilers ahead

Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

I saw District 9 yesterday with a very enthusiastic Charles.

I can't explain it, but the movie made me feel quite sick. I actually squirmed in my seat in several scenes and at one point desperately even wished to be back home doing finance. I don't say that because the movie was gory (it was, just a little), or that there are bloody bits in it - all of which I take quite well, thank you very much. No, it was the stark horror and reality of the flaws ugliness of humanity that made me sick to see. it's a little like looking into a mirror and seeing a monster you don't recognise.. and when i think about it, it's a monster that's in all of us.

i will say that i recognise a good movie when i see one, and it was a good movie. there's no denying it. only a good movie would suck you in so much that you feel yourself hoping or despairing alongside the characters.

it made me think of some pretty depressing things.

- it's human nature to be opportunistic, to take advantage of any situation for our own benefit.
the movie took it one step further - there was this absolutely mercenary scene where this poor guy was lying helpless, and his bosses and co-workers (people who he lived and worked alongside! wth!) coldly stood above him and discussed harvesting his organs for money. i think those two men died later .. i think (hah! take that you evil s.o.bs!)

- we are so limited and arrogant in our own species and knowledge that anything that we don't know or can't probe into frightens us.
it's true. as a race we exist in our own little bubble, ignorant to the possibility of life or technologies that surpass ours. and yet when we do encounter such things, it is incomprehensible to us. we try to conquer things that we don't understand.. to use for our benefit. (is there any end to the selfishness of humans? evidently not) and if we don't manage to tame whatever it is, we turn against it by capturing it, killing it, or force it into the confines of uniformity and our limited imagination/intellect. i'm sure there was once a time when instead of looking towards dissecting/controlling/conquering things, people looked towards discovering and creating and understanding.

- love does jack shit when you're an alien
no explanation necessary. lol. poor charles had to endure my incessant pestering about whether he would still love me if i sprouted alien extremities. :P

tis a sad sad world we live in.

cake

i woke up at 11. omg it's taken me 2.5 hours to have lunch and try to get cake organised for david's birthday. who knew ordering cake was so difficult? it took forever to compare sizes and prices and calculate just how much cake i need to go around 40 people.

we were a tad too late to order the specialty large cake, which apparently needs 7 days in advance and we only have 5; so boys and girls if you ever need to feed 36 people or so and you want a cake from lindt, give them a call one week prior. the lady on the phone told me that 'all our cakes are handmade' which sounded impressive until i realised.. hang on - aren't all cakes handmade anyway??

so these are the cakes:
'Opera' which the website describes as "luxurious cake is made from thin layers of dark chocolate ganache, coffee butter cream & almond sponge that has been soaked in coffee syrup. The dark chocolate topping is adorned with with 23 carat gold leaf."


and the 'St Moritz' which is apparently their most popular cake - Rich silky tiers of dark, milk &
white chocolate mousse are separated by thin layers of almond cake. The decorative top of this delicious cake is created from tiles of Lindt dark chocolate, dusted with cocoa powder.

YUM? :) i do hope davo likes it.

and now it's nearly 2 and i haven't even begun finance. RAWR. on the upside, i'm slowly getting my voice back.

The Quiet World

In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn't respond,
I know she's used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

losing my voice has made life pretty quiet - literally. i've probably said less than a hundred words today.. Van says it's good because then i'll only say the important things. on the other hand, i think there are alot of things i want to say.. but can't. which makes saying anything else less worthwhile.. does that make sense?
i also realised it's hard to sustain a conversation when i can't reply much. i like this poem.

meteor garden :)

six days and counting of being sick. time to get better already!

i have this irrepressible urge to dig out season one of meteor garden and do it all over again - pulling almost inhumanly impossible all-nighters, camping out in front of the laptop until the images start blurring :P the soundtrack started playing on itunes shuffle and it brought back all these memories of year 10.

yesterday i had this strangely honest, slightly unsettling conversation with someone that i'm not sure i like talking to. i guess it doesn't have anything to do with the person himself; i think i'm just uncomfortable being reminded of some of the bad decisions/poor judgment calls i've made in the past. see, me and this person, let's call him A, have some sort of history. anyway, A told me that when things went south for us, there was a time that he wanted to get back at me by becoming really rich or something, and then when he next saw me he'd snob me off. i didn't quite understand, because at that time to me it was a simple matter of stopping something that i'd set in motion with my indecisiveness, taking a stand. A explained that it was to do with the whole dumping thing - that anyone would feel demoralized afterwards and naturally would want to show that they're better, etc etc. which sort of made me think that sometimes the things we do, the efforts we put into something.. they might make us feel better, but i don't think it actually has the same effect that we intend - i.e. to make the other person regret leaving you. when someone doesn't love you anymore, you can move mountains for them and put the world at their feet and to them it would be nothing. this same person once said to me (years ago) that sometimes he thinks that it's like i'm blind to the things that people do for me..but looking back now i know that maybe it's true, maybe i didn't love enough to see.

a close friend of mine broke up with her boyfriend last night. he asked her 'if you had a job and your boss treated you really well one day and treated you really badly the next would you stay or would you leave to find another job?' she stayed and he left. he was the boss in the analogy.

if someone stopped loving me, it'd be hard to stay wouldn't it? so which is more painful, leaving them, or staying knowing that your love is unrequited?

charles says that it depends on whether that person stopped loving you voluntarily or not. involuntarily could be like, losing your memory or something and in that case it wouldn't be as bad as voluntarily not loving someone. but how do you choose to stop loving someone voluntarily? if it's possible.. then is it even love?

do we change for ourselves, or do we change for the other person and call it love? does loving someone mean changing for them, and if it does, whatever happened to the soul mate theory?

i've taken to baking again just to while away the time at home when i'm too sick to go to uni and study, but i've had enough of rotting at home.


vanilla roulade :)


orange poppyseed cake

anyway, after all the reflecting and stuff, i came to the conclusion that there's something that i must change about myself. i think sometimes i can't understand the way other people think or do the things they do. i must try to either understand more, or respect that they do things for their own reasons.

finance induced headache

today i woke up feeling inspired to get some work done. i made a list of all the readings i had to do to catch up, and almost broke out in hives as the list started growing longer and longer.

i don't know how the day passed (it seemed to drag, then again it's night time and that list is as long as it was before)

feeling pretty lethargic and tired now. it's taken me two hours staring at this Black-Scholes (black hole?) formula thing trying to deduce what appeared to be the word 'In' in an equation. to my dismay it suddenly hit me that it's ln, as in, natural log. FRK. :( fail much. it's almost 9.30, and i know CSI goes a double episode now. shall i or shall i not? uni tomorrow or not? decisions, decisions. one day they will get the better of me.

how come things got so difficult? i remember a time when it was easy to love and easy to laugh and easy to forgive and easy to be content. i thought it was the best feeling in the world, and it grew and grew and grew to new heights that i'd never known before. but as the old adage goes, the higher you climb, the farther you fall. it's not that i feel bitter or cynical, i just wonder where it all went. it's like comparing a glossy photo and a matte photo. the colors in the matte photo don't stand out as much, the photo looks older, less vibrant, less life jumping out of it. but nonetheless it's the same picture.. it's still beautiful. doesn't stop me from wondering though, where did the shine go?

over the weekend, two strangers were really nice to me. one was the lady at Brown's Bakery. i was having coffee with Van and when we went up to pay (or was it look at the bread?) i dunno - anyway, she offered us free bread. the asian in me had to resist doing a little dance of joy (oh, the joyousness of free things!) haha anyway it made my day somewhat, because it's so rare that strangers would be so kind. the second lady was the one doing my nails. i went to get acrylics again because the bad nail habit has returned with a vengeance and my nails are now shamefully short. i can't even wear rings anymore for the fear of people staring at my fingernails. i don't blame them, they do look somewhat disgusting. i can't help it though, i don't even know i'm doing it till it's done. anyway, i picked a color that turned out horridly. and i asked if i could use nail polish remover at home to change the colors myself. the lady paused mid-nail (she was already almost done) and asked 'you don't like color? you should've told me when i start!' i said that i didn't want it to be too much trouble, and she said 'oh if you have time, i have time. i do for you again!' which again, surprised me because well.. nobody says that anymore. people are always in a hurry to go home, to go somewhere, to finish work early. especially people who do your nails. i often find them quite brusque. this lady was such a surprise.. i shall go back there again.

can't smile without you... :)

i was at a birthday dinner last night. there was a little stage near the center of the restaurant with cords and cables littered around it and a single chair. it didn't look very promising. an hour later, an indian man walked onto stage, picked up a guitar and started crooning. his voice was rich and deep and it was definitely a pleasant surprise. one by one over the course of the night couples danced to old classics. i remember listening to this song - Can't Smile Without You by Barry Manilow (old school baby!) and watching old couples shuffle around the little dance floor. it's nice to see romance sustained so long. i only hope that one day when i'm 60 and shrunken and tired, my husband will walk up to me when our song plays and ask me to dance.

life has been a whole heap of ups and downs lately. i've really been riding the emotional rollercoaster in the last few weeks and just as i thought the storm was over, i got hit with this awful sore throat, and now i can't speak. it figures -__-

i'm abominably behind in study. i hope that the week picks up :)

it's hard, i realised that i seem to have lost myself. i hit a really bad low awhile ago where it seemed like all perspective had disappeared into a large black hole. it was like i was blind and i couldn't see, and everything around me was dark. i need to pick myself up.

my sister's keeper was really good. never as good as the book, i always think you can't fully condense a book's wealth into a 2 hour movie. anyhow it really made me think of the extent of a mother's love. will i be that strong one day?

that aside.. i did have a few really great days last week. hung out with some people i haven't seen in awhile, and did some shopping. it really is therapeutic.