Bulgogi & Kimchi, Asia Cafe, Subang

In my extended family (maternal side), one's character is measured by the amount of spicy food one is able to consume without tearing up or or gasping for air or crying for water or milk or any liquid in the general vicinity that will be able to extinguish the raging fire in one's mouth.

Yes, we are unrelenting and unapologetic masochists who employ stringent and restrictive culinary litmus tests to judge people.

My late grandfather's invariable response to any of his grandchildren's "but that's too spicy!" wails would be to immediately dump more of the said spicy food on our plates and glare at us while we ate it. As a result of this, I grew up with a high spice tolerance and disdain for people who can't eat anything pedas.

And then one day 10 years later at university while poking around on the hunt for something to eat, I discovered this random smelly jar of spicy looking red goo in the apartment fridge, courtesy of my Korean roommate's mother... and thus began my love affair with the Amazing Kimchi, which, I found, was miraculously both spicy and salty. Aka pretty much both things that I look for separately, in food that I like: but that in kimchi, were combined into ONE!

I really only ordered the Bulgogi so that the Korean man at the food court wouldn't think I was completely insane for ordering two plates of kimchi.

And yes, I am aware that I just penned an ode to fermented spicy cabbage. I'm sorry, I'm hungry. And I used to steal my roommate's kimchi all the time. Sorry for that too. Actually no I'm not it was totally worth it. And my grandfather would have been so proud of me and my spicy food stealing ways.

Cuppacakes; Wondermilk

I am all of a sudden sick sick sick and I hate it. I can even pinpoint the early symptoms and when they began, though how they became a full blown fever and cold in such a short period of time is beyond me. Apparently there's a flu bug going around at work, and (appropriately enough) work germs are hyper-productive and efficient.

First I started just sneezing uncontrollably; an hour later I started to become ridiculously hey-everyone-see-the-liquid-steadily-drip-out-of-my-nose sniffly; and an hour after that my throat started to join the discomfort party, only to convince the other partygoers to transform said party into a full out pain carnival.

So now I am bed-ridden and disgusting and ingesting this extremely untasty drug cocktail twice a day.

And the definitive kicker and ultimate confirmation that I really am sick (other than the tell-tale green phlegm): I can't even eat my cupcakes. Noooo! Everything tastes like cardboard and I can't smell anything. Stupid flu. You can take away my sense of taste and smell but you will never take away my eyes (umm now that I've said that and tempted fate please do not blind me seeing as--see what I did there?!--I'm practically legally blind anyway) and I can still look at them. And they are so pretty. Thank you goosey! I'm sure they taste delicious to someone who can actually taste. As much as I hate being sick, having cakes brought to my door almost makes up for it.

I Heart Pink

Am totally in love with the new calculator I bought, primarily because it is pink and white and the buttons are small, round and shiny and look like pink skittles. I would take a picture of it but I'm waiting for a blackberry upgrade (at the start of next month) so the picture will have to hold up as well.

So far the count of Pink Things at My Work Place is up to:

pink pencil holder

pink mousepad

pink (Marcus Aurelius) Ipod(omous)

pink waterbottle

pink notepad

pink pashmina

... and the pink skittle calculator

I am aware that some people may consider the pink explosion on my desk to reek of cutesy unprofessionalism. I am also aware that those people suck because colours, even the traditionally feminine ones, should not be mutually exclusive to work ethic and intelligence. Also I am totally not a cutesy kind of person at all and just happen to really like the diluted version of red so really I'm just proving all these people wrong. Unfortunately the bright things on my desk really make me want to eat skittles and pink cakes. Which isn't very professional. Damn you, backfired plan!

Chocolates Cakes; Delicious, Coffee Bean

Just realized, when looking through my pictures over the last month, that I have been ingesting an abundance of chocolate desserts. Maybe my stomach was trying to convey to me, via appetite preferences (ie the only way my stomach communicates with me... other than ferocious growling soliloquies during weekday afternoons that I pointedly ignore because no, Stomach, I will not feed you post-lunch and pre-dinner; the Body in which you reside is supposed to be doing work then, not eating at random hours) its gut feeling (pun intended) that Obama was going to become the first black* president of the United States.

Good on you, tummy. To celebrate your fortune telling abilities we shall consume more chocolate! I realize this whole post may sound and seem horribly racist. It's not. Obama won, I'm happy about said win, and also I like chocolate.

Chocolate Banana Cake from Delicious. And it WAS. It was thick and creamy and banana-flavoured and fudgey all at the same time.

Royal Chocolate Cake, Coffee Bean. Light and airy, with unexpected and secret crunchy layer of the chocolate cereal variety. I approve. I like finding textural surprises in my mouth.

* - Biracial, technically. If the dude keeps insisting that he identifies as black, which he does, I will respect his wishes and refer to him as black. But, Mr. President-Elect, I feel compelled to point out anyway that you are biracial. Assuming, of course, that race is even really anything but an arbitrary social construct and remnant of some archaic divide-and-rule alienate-the-Other power play as well as an internal manifestation of the human being's need to collate, collect, group and label ourselves and others for easy identification and simplistic understanding, which I totally think it is.

But I digress. Besides (back to the biracial topic), in order to correctly predict a biracial presidential win, my stomach should have gotten cravings for... what? Oreos? Marble cake? White and dark chocolate layered cake? Bounty chocolate bars? Evidently my cravings have not reached that level of sophistication.