Mid Year Review

Sometimes I feel like Time and I are in one of those estranged divorced-couple-living-together-for-the-children-think-of-the-children-won't-you relationships where we co-exist peacefully, each knowing the other is off doing their own thing, and where one only realizes the full extent of what the other has been doing when one allows oneself to pause and consider it. For example, I exist, usually blissfully unaware of exactly what mischief Time is up to, and Time exists and tick tocks along with no regard whatsoever to my feelings (he is a bit of an a-hole evidently, which should explain why we are estranged) and then when I pause, I suddenly realize, in no particular order and with varying degrees of panic: I'm 26?! When did that happen? I have friends who are MARRIED? But we're ki- oh wait I'm 26. My little sister is MARRIED?! (Actually this one isn't so shocking, because she has been quite the Mrs Monogamy for most of her dating life.) It's already July?! It's already 2011?! WHEN DID I BECOME A GROWN-UP AND HOW DO I MAKE IT STOP?!

The day I find wrinkles on my neck I am totally breaking up with Time, except I can't really because in this very awkward and not really fitting at all analogy, Time and I are in a Catholic relationship that does not recognize divorce. Or domestic abuse in the form of wrinkles.


As it is now July (excuse me again while I freak out about HOW IS IT ALREADY JULY?!) I shall attempt to take stock of 2011, this 26th year of my life, look deep into and ruminate gravely upon my adult soul, and undertake the all-important task of reviewing all the steaks I have eaten this year. Or at least all the steaks of which I have taken photos.


1. Dish
Goosey's birthday steak Part One. Dish has the best steak ever. Period. The reasons I don't go there exclusively for my steak fixes are: a) eating there burns an ugly, RM500 shaped hole in my wallet; and b) if Goosey and I ate there all the time, we'd have nowhere else to go on Special Occasions. As you might imagine, reason (a) takes precedence over reason (b), because if we really wanted to, we could be totally ironic and go to mamak stalls for birthdays and anniversaries. Theoretically.


2. Jake's
Goosey's birthday steak Part Two. (Yes, I am totally unimaginative and just ply my significant other with steak and various pieces of meat on his birthdays.) Burns a less ugly hole in my wallet, still very tasty, and best of all, their placemats have trivia questions on them! Clearly I am such a savvy foodie that I only deign to eat at establishments that have entertaining placemats.


3. Las Vacas
Formerly cute little hole-in-the-wall butcher's shop in Kelana Jaya; now overpriced and overhyped brand with its own twitter account and a restaurant in Mont Kiara. I DO NOT LIKE GOING HERE. Anymore. Like a true hipster steakster, I liked Las Vacas BEFORE it became mainstream, thank you very much. I mean, Mont Kiara? Really? You sold out, man.


4. Angus Steakhouse
Goosey liked this, and I don't really. I like my steak charred and charcoal-y, and Japanese-style steak just feels too healthy. Which is really the exact opposite of the feeling I am trying to achieve when I eat steak, because I could have just eaten sushi or sucked on a salad instead of ingesting hunks of meat.


5. The Fullerton Bay Hotel
Wagyu steak. I wasn't impressed. I thought wagyu steak was supposed to blow my tastebuds, but after this meal, they still remained very much unblown. Of course, this could be because I am secretly an un-epicurean, because the wagyu that I DID like is below, and decidedly unfancy compared to the FBH's.


6. Kissaten
Wagyu teriyaki burger, aka my true love. I know, I know, it speaks volumes (of the bad kind) that I prefer food court wagyu meat to the 5-star hotel kind. OR does it speak volumes of the kind that indicate this wagyu teriyaki burger is the shiznit? Let's go with the latter.


7. Alexis
If you, like me (before I did, I mean) have never ordered the steak at Alexis, I urge you to do so immediately. Do not let the fact that it is not a steak place bias you. It was lovely and tender and delicious, and if it had one middle finger, I would point it in Las Vacas' direction, because that there below, my friends, is how you do steak.


Right. So now I have gotten all that off my chest, I will continue to freak out about HOLY SHIT IT'S ALREADY JULY. It can't be just me who constantly thinks it's still 1992 and that I'm still 16 years old, can it? (The math does not correspond, I was not 16 in 1992. Subconscious Me, like Conscious Me, is not great at mental arithmetic.)

Chili Crab and Mantao; No Signboard

Things that have happened since my last blog post:
1. Work
2. Massive food poisoning at a certain hotel that shall remain unnamed where the company had a weeklong training session for work
3. Work
4. Singapore for work
5. Good news at work
6. Ran my first 5km (Yay! This is a Big Fucking Deal for someone who was (past tense!) as averse to exercise as I was.)
7. Work
8. Singapore for work
9. Work

Things that I have learned since my last blog post:
1. Food poisoning will strip you of all your dignity and remind you that food, particularly bad food, can make your body feel things that you cannot begin to fathom. Have you ever burst into tears on the toilet because of a molotov cocktail of pain: combination diarrhoea, stomach cramps, fever and headache, and then passed out on your way out of the bathroom because your stomach was trying to explode and your pain thresholds just didn't want to take that shit (pun intended) anymore and preferred unconsciousness? I have. Before I descend into TMI levels (yes, there is actually More Information to this story, and you should be glad I am not telling it), I shall summarize by saying those were a very undignified few days for me. And also Goosey, when he somehow got food poisoning too (copycat syndrome or sympathy pains? I still don't know).
2. The Singapore-KL MAS flights after 6pm all stink of body odour. But curiously, the Silkair flights smell daisy fresh.
3. That's it. (I haven't learned much.)

Best
Things About Flying to Singapore So Often
1. Hotel gyms. Why yes please, I would like my treadmill served with ice cold water, ice cold aircon, fluffy face towels and personal TV, thank you.
2. Deep fried buns! Accompanied by chili crab of course (I am not as insane as to just eat the buns without the crab. Though I totally would if I knew no one would judge me), but the buns are the underappreciated supporting actor star of the No Signboard show. Why can I not seem to find this in KL? Does Singapore trump KL, or have I not been hanging around in the right mantao appreciating circles? I am a shameless fan of unhealthy, deep fried golden balls of dough to dip into various sauces. Like KFC biscuits... Mmmm KFC biscuits. Someone recently asked me what I missed the most about the US and I said KFC biscuits, because Asia is lame and only has soft buns (just deep fry it, goddammit) and he thought I was joking. I wasn't.

3. That's it. I am on my way to Singapore right now (see, lest you think I am exaggerating when I say work and Singapore have taken over my life (what, me exaggerate and grandiloquize? Never!) I am so totally not that I am proving my own point right now) and it's just getting tiring.

Whipped cream and a side of apple cake; Antipodean

Apparently Antipodean, new cute little cafe in Bangsar, has amazing coffee. I wouldn't know, similar to the way in which I don't know how to properly pronounce Antipodean (because of this, Goosey and I put different em-PHA-ses on the different syl-LA-bles at alternate times when pronouncing Antipodean, because, law of averages, we must be getting it right at least one of the times: "Do you want to eat at AN-tipodean?" "Hmm An-TI-podean, what would I have there?" "The Anti-PO-dean breakfast set?" "That sounds promising, Antipo-DE-an it is." "Jom, Antipode-AN!").

Coffee is a drug, and I treat it as such, by only having it when I need it, and not for pleasure. (I didn't say coffee was a RECREATIONAL drug. Those, you would have for pleasure, when you most certainly do NOT need it.)

I know a lot about coffee because I am not a morning person, and require hot, bitter, liquid caffeine to wake my brain up in the a.m. I am also not an after-lunch person, because not being a morning person means you're a night person, which thus means that you probably stayed up late the night before, didn't get enough sleep, and will start to wilt by lunch. This past week has required me to wake up at 7am every morning (thanks a lot, training) and I've been more dependent than usual on coffee.

I also know a lot about drugs because the Goose has finally managed to persuade me to start watching The Wire which is a gritty police show about the war on drugs, or, as Goosey calls it, The Greatest TV Show Ever. My taste in TV shows tends to run towards the more humorous (Community!) or entertaining yet emotional (Grey's Anatomy) or materialistic but dealing with issues I can identify with (Sex and the City, always a classic, even though I started watching it when I was neither having sex nor in a city nor mature enough to identify with any of the issues), and it was difficult to get into at first (I do not understand gang slang at ALL) and shockingly real (total lack of stereotypically good looking Hollywood stars, everyone is normal looking. Which is ironically not normal at all for an American TV show) but... I kinda like it. Also I am now sort of an expert on inner city drug trade gang dynamics.






To cut a superfluous story short, I didn't have coffee at Antipodean, and had apple cake with a generous serving of my recreational drug of choice, whipped cream. Gives me intense pleasure and I definitely don't need it, but you can (metaphorically) pry my love for whipped cream from my cold dead heart after you gun me down in a drug related The Wire-type shooting.

Spicy Beef Macaroni; Fat Spoon

After being afflicted, for the better part of 10 days (yes, you read right, count it and weep... On my behalf, because that is how truly ineffective my immune system is) with a cough, cold and fever, which manifested itself in the form of neverending phlegm (in my nose AND my throat! In various colours and consistencies! My blog doesn't know the MEANING of TMI!) I have finally, thankfully recovered (somewhat. Enough, anyway).

I hate being sick. Schlepping about the apartment in my jammies and not being at work was fun for about three hours until I went through an entire box of tissues in those three hours, trying to expel all the phlegm from my various (facial, I should clarify) orifices (orifii?). It blows (pun intended) not being able to taste food and, my personal pet peeve, being told not to do this or that "because you're sick!" (Goosey is a prime offender of this. He also called me a masochist because I wanted to have fun and have a life despite being sick. I'm not a masochist! I'm a champion man), because I hateeee not being able to do things and then having those restrictions pointed out to me (I haz authority issues).







Goosey Offender trying not to look offensive

So this past week has rendered me somewhat of a soup expert: oxtail, mushroom, a unique (euphemism) version of chicken soup from the mamak downstairs, but I have to say the winner, hands down, was the spicy beef macaroni soup from Fat Spoon. So spicy it both cleared out my nose, and was able to evoke a reaction from my sick, deadened taste buds. YUM. The picture does not do it justice, for it just looks like a bowl of tabasco sauce (also spicy but not as yummy).







I also had cucur udang. I could not taste a thing, of course, but I still ate all of it. What did I tell you? CHAMPION.

I Love Baking

Hooray! Hooray! My gloriously feminine and shockingly pink baking apron arrived in the mail today!

Little bit suppressed 1950's housewife, little bit Barbie Stepford wife, little bit Bree from Desperate Housewives (who is, by the way, my favourite character on the show for the entire two seasons that I could be bothered to follow their increasingly absurd storylines), and a whole lot more interesting than baking in my regular clothes which inevitably get soaked and splashed and stained... I present to you my new kitchen armour. Sadly, there is no baking accessory that can keep me from getting flour in my ears and batter on my hair, which always happens when I bake, for the same inexplicable reasons I get food all over my clothes when I eat, but I think it would be a lot more bearable having flour ears and batter hair if I were wearing this.



I do bake on and off and when I feel the rare urge to get domestic, but I've decided (Umi, you would be so proud) to make a concerted effort to cook more. Also, I found these amaaaaazing things which may or not have fueled my decision to onward my quest to domestic goddessism.

1. iPodch recipe apps. They are GENIUS. GENIUS! So simple to use, to easy to scroll through the millions upon bajillions of recipes, with ratings and fellow cooking buddy reviews (call me an elitist, but I don't use any recipes with less than 100 reviews and less than a 4-star rating) and the AllRecipe app even has a recipe spinner! That you can shake and that will reveal what magical food item you should make! Like an 8-ball, for your tummy.


2. Robot Salt & Pepper Shakers: all the shaking fun of regular salt and pepper shakers (if you're the kind of person who finds fun in shaking out salt and pepper; I don't judge, whatever floats your boat man) but in robot form! I don't particularly like robots, but I DO like animating and giving personalities and names to otherwise inanimate objects. Saltrino 5000 and Robotimus 6000. At. Your. Flavouring. Service. *robot voice*

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/cf87/

3. Ninjabread Men Cookie Cutters! A cookie cutter so cute, not even the resident Ninja Man in my life could fail to appreciate it (although he doesn't like cookies, and even ninja-shaped cookies may not entice him to develop a sweet tooth. So... hmmm. In any case, these are awesome. I could even burn my cookies black and it wouldn't look like a mistake. It would look like a ninja suit. [I don't know what ninja outfits are called, but I'm sure there's a name for them.])

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e55a/

4. Not Boring Toaster. With capacity to produce toast bearing messages, like "Bite Me", that may prove useful to bleary-eyed zombies waking up in the morning with giant hangovers and too little sleep. You know, in case brain of the bleary-eyed zombie has not started functioning and bleary-eyed zombie doesn't know what else to do with his or her toast. I haven't quite deciphered what secret message the crazy-eyed toast face is trying to convey, but I can imagine trying to decipher said message would be quite entertaining while one sips coffee and generally tries to wake up. Existentialist message: "We're ALL Crazy Like Toast Face"? Ode to Laziness: "You Are Loco Like Your Toast Face For Waking Up So Early This Morning"? Sympathetic Understanding for the over-worked corporate drone: "You Think YOUR Job Drives You Crazy? Toast Face Looks Like This ALL The Time!"? The possibilities, and secret messages, are endless.


http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e76f/images/

5. Virginia Woolf Tea Towel. Though my kitchen makes do with a regular, non-literary inspired kain buruk, one could always use a bit of pizzazz by way of bookishness in one's kitchen. It would also be ironic that a key feminist text is emblazoned on a teatowel which belongs in a kitchen. Much like a woman would be expected to belong, if you weren't a feminist and still held such outdated beliefs. Trippy.

http://www.theliterarygiftcompany.com/virginia-woolf-a-room-of-ones-own-teatowel-1355-p.asp

6. I totally saved the best for last. I will be getting my hands on these suckers one day (hopefully soon, but not in the next few weeks, for I have gone overboard with the internet purchases and must rest my credit card and the weary company mailman who keeps delivering boxes of random internet purchases to my desk at work). YUMBOT CUPCAKE HOLDERS! Regular paper cupcake liners are a thing of the PAST. The robots have come to take over my baked goods, and I, for one, welcome our new cupcake overlords. Could be quite distressing eating their little cupcake brains, unless you are robot savvy like me and know that robots don't have brains and therefore eating the cupcakes in their heads won't actually hurt them. Would also not be distressing at all if you weren't like me and didn't try to anthropomorphize anything that is cute.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e559/

I Love Wedding Cakes

I have always known that, secretly, in my own sanity- and logic-defying way, Prince William and I were meant to be. Ever since the day seven-year-old me, already harbouring delusions of princess-y grandeur, laid eyes on William's shiny blonde hair in one of my mother's magazines about royals (yes, she is a British monarchist; no, I don't know why, though that doesn't stop me from blaming the Oppressive Forces of Western Colonialism and subsequent brainwashing of our pliant Eastern minds, and also Princess Diana because she was so stylish how could you not love the Royals if she was one of them).

Behold the shiny blond locks to which I refer.

Today, my belief in the fact that Wills and I were once upon a time meant to be, which has floundered of late due to Wills' receding hairline and dulling of said shiny blonde hair, the fact that I have found my own prince (aww let's all throw up together now) and the fact that I find the British accent really pretentious and obnoxious, has, however fleetingly, been reinforced.

The dude has ordered a CHOCOLATE BISCUIT CAKE for his WEDDING. Take a minute to appreciate how AWESOME this is. This is the gastronomical equivalent of releasing 100 white doves after you vow to forever love and cherish your spouse and promise that they will always win future arguments and get to pick which side of the bed to sleep on and having an elephant show up and wish you nuptial congratulations (if Nicole Richie can have an elephant at her wedding, I can dream about it too okay). Obviously and as usually I am exaggerating, but only slightly, because I love chocolate biscuit cakes too. Admittedly I am not as posh as the Windsors and call it plain old kek batik and only eat it during Hari Raya, but it is one of THE great rewards of fasting for a month (the other being... you know, getting to eat during the day again). So potayto potahto, William: it's primarily chocolate, unbaked, contains crushed biscuit pieces (it's ingenious, those biscuit pieces!) ... we are lusting over the same thing.


So now you see, Wills and I were clearly meant to be united over our love of kek batik, and WE could have had a chocolate biscuit wedding cake. The only real problem with this theory is that I actually don't really want to marry him at all (anymore... one can only be so enamored of shiny blond hair for so long, and love of shiny blond hair a relationship does not make). I actually just want the chocolate biscuit wedding cake. Inside chocolate biscuit cake, outside, like this:

... as inspired by this. Not that I've spent any time thinking about this of course, but there are some things a girl has got to know about herself, and one of those things is what you want your wedding cake to be like.

Singapore: The Good, The Bad and the Pretty

The Good:

1. Yakitori Chicken Skin at the ION Orchard food court.

Which I am personally not into in large quantities, but which Goosey says he can eat by the bucketloads. I am sure this is a lie that, if tested, would end with a tearful vomit-ty boyfriend revoking such a ridiculous claim, but unfortunately for me and fortunately for him, I will not try to prove it.


2. Ayam Penyet at Confused Cook? (Deliberate ?, to denote the Cook's confusion, not mine)

I like ayam penyet and sometimes wish I was Indonesian so I could stake a claim to it, but really, who am I kidding, if the tempe and tahu are goreng-ed, I will automatically fall in love with you and then eat you, and it doesn't really matter what else is on the plate.


3. I Love Meat Sandwich, Confused Cook?

Goosey's sandwich, thus his hands all over said sandwich, trying to figure out how best to put all three meat layers in his mouth at one go.


4. Blackforest Profiteroles, P.S. Cafe

MAGICAL. Like chocolate ice cream cherry pastry MAGIC in your MOUTH.



The Bad:

1. The National, who, by the way, was the sole and much anticipated reason for the entire Singapore trip, CANCELLING THEIR SOLD-OUT SHOW. Because of the tsunami and earthquake. Which happened in JAPAN. If they didn't make such beautiful music I would never forgive this terrible oversight in geography and swear them off forever. As it is, I am swearing them off for a minimum of two weeks.

2. Falafel Wrap, Marmalade Cafe

Did not taste like falafel, but like bland mashed potatoes in a wrap.



The Pretty:

1. These books.


1. This bag.


Somehow it is easier to justify being a crazy book lady than a crazy bag lady (it might have something to do with the whole reading books imparts knowledge thing), but both are equally pretty.

Brunch; Home

Omg, I love my new iPodch.



I also loved the scrambled eggs and burger bits brunch Goosey made this morning (all by himself! And okay it was really afternoon, but it was a Sunday, so that fact is both expected and forgivable).

So when you combine both those things and they culminate in a picture of this brunch that I took with my iPodch and edited with my iPodch and am posting in this blog with my iPodch, the conclusion is omfg, I LOVE my iPodch.

Sang Har Mein (Fresh Water Prawn Noodles); Madam Kwan's, Bangsar

Let me introduce you to my newest Favourite Thing of the Moment. You may insert your own drumroll now before the big reveal (sorry, it's no longer 1998 and I'm no longer 13 years old so cannot justify inserting little midi thingies on my website... umm, not that I ever did, of course):

CRISPY. NOODLES.


Technically it was on the menu as just Fresh Water Prawn Noodles and there was no mention at all of it being crispy, which is not only deceptive but silly, because why would you exclude describing the key selling point of the product you are selling, do you hate profit Madam Kwan's? (Rhetorical question because Madam Kwan's clearly does not hate profit, judging by their prices.) BUT these are, indeed crispy noodles, though not explicitly described as such, and they were crispy noodles drenched in egg sauce, and accosted by two truly gigantic prawns, and they were GOOD.

I realize this is probably not revelatory at all to anyone else, but after having crispy type noodle numerous times at numerous consecutive Chinese New Year lunches, I have suddenly been converted from an Ignorant Of The Existence Of to a True Believer In Crispy Noodles and felt the need to preach it.

Also worth preaching about: my other recent Favourite Things of the Moment:

1. Parks & Recreation
It took me a while to get into it, but it's GOOD. And extra points for Amy Poehler's character, because she is so pretty and so funny and so feminist. Like a blonde Liz Lemon, but more organized. She even has a hyper-masculine male boss as her foil like Liz does: Ron Swanson = Jack Donaghy - the intense good looks + a lot more 'stache.

2. Sleepmasks
I don't care if they're unsexy, because lemme tell you, they ARE, even if you try to buy the cute and colourful ones so that you will look cute and colourful in your sleep since sexy is clearly a foregone option-- if you live with people who sleep at odd and insane hours of the night and early morning, sleepmasks are GOOD and I don't know how I went so long without them.

3. Wedding Videos
My new guilty ex-secret pleasure, to the point where I don't even have to know who the wedding people are, they just made me feel warm and fuzzy and GOOD. I have become quite the wedding video critic now, and am able to pick out trends. For example, Bruno Mars' Marry Me is soooo 2010. Don't use it for 2011. (I have more pearls of wedding video wisdom but they're actually quite good so no point spilling it for free here.)

4. Vacation Days
I am in desperate need of some.

Eggs Hollandaise; Fleur-De-Lys Bakeshop, Brunei

I shall kick off 2011 with a Metaphorical Pictorial Breakfast, because breakfasts signal fresh starts! The invigorating promise of a new day! Energetic mornings that may or may not slowly deteriorate into lazy afternoons! Who cares that we are already 10 days into the new year thus rendering this breakfast not too metaphorically fresh after all! In light of that fact we shall call it brunch, which I have always much preferred because brunch allows one to have their sleep and eat their breakfast too!


Exclamation marks aside (!), I don't believe in new year's resolutions (anymore, conveniently, because I suffer from a chronic lack of resolve and without fail fail to stick to any resolutions at all). So instead, I present my List of Things I Strive to Accomplish in 2011:

1. Read more. My bookshelf is already sagging and overflowing, but the goal for 2011 is for me to be forced to buy another bookshelf. So I have two, I mean, not by breaking the one and then having to replace it. Related point: must also try to read Middlemarch, which I have been resolving to do since I was 15 years old. This means I have been stuck on Chapter 3 for 11 years.

2. Sleep more. This does not mean hibernate on weekends. This means sleep at a decent hour each weeknight. (Decent is relative according to amount of interesting nocturnal distractions though.)

3. Get a Malaysian driver's license. It is appalling that I am still using my Bruneian driver's license. It would be more appalling if I had ever been pulled over by the police and asked to produce my driver's license, but thank the jeebus, I have not. So basically it's just appalling how paranoid I am every time I drive and see a cop car. This paired with my general unease in cars does not bode well for other people on the road and in my car.

4. Write more. It's therapeutic and I have a shitty memory, so venting in a blog seems like the appropriate thing to do.

5. Exercise. More. Okay fine. Exercise, period.

6. Bake more. I should say cook, so that I cover savoury foods as well as sweet, but the prospect of doing culinary-like things to chicken and meat and potatoes just isn't as appealing and playing with sugar, eggs, cream and chocolate, so... bake more. Cooking once a fortnight = bonus points.

7. Eventually turn the entire inside of my handbag pink. I've got a pink ipod, card case, blackberry cover, wallet and various pouches. But how pink can I go? I really want to find out. Please stop me before I become a crazed Hello Kitty fangirl though.

My goals! They are so great and lofty.