get a pet. get a toy. get a condom. whatever.

Today’s going to be a depressing post. I was having dinner with my lovely grandmother (who was dressed from head to toe in red, yes red! and still managed to look nice! how does she pull it off? Who needs those gay queer men teaching me how to dress when I’ve got my very own fashion guru.) Anyways, I was having dinner with my lovely grandmother and a trendy looking woman walks up to the table next to ours. The man sitting there greets her and then looks shocked and asks “Where’s our son?!” And the woman looks back at him, also shocked and exclaims, “What? Isn’t he with YOU?” The man and the woman then get into a very verbal argument about who was supposed to pick up their son two hours ago. Oh, and their son is still waiting at the kindergarten because the man ends up calling the school. Wait there’s more, after yelling at each other abusive names, the man also yells into the phone at his son saying “Why didn’t you call me or mum? Why are you so stupid?”

I just wanted to get up right there and punch them both in their faces. STUPID? Seriously? They are calling their kindergarten-aged son “stupid” for … for expecting his parents to pick him up? What is going on in the world these days?

I often hear women saying things like, “Oh, I don’t want kids cos the labour and giving birth is just so painful!” Well, I have a different opinion. I don’t think the giving birth part is the hardest. I think the child rearing part is much more difficult. I think the adjustments and sacrifices that parents need to make are the hardest. Why have a child if you can not prioritize? 

To me, that’s the biggest hurdle to wanting a child. I always say that I don’t want children. Yes, I often joke that they’re annoying and noisy and prevent you from having a life. But really, I am not sure I am capable of being selfless and loving and sacrificing enough. It is so much easier to spoil your child, ignore your child, abuse your child even…than to actually teach and love your child. 

I pray for all parents in the world. Quite frankly, I think being a parent is probably the hardest job on earth. I’m not hating on bad parents, because I don’t believe anyone consciously tries to be a bad parent. But really, if you are not going to love your child, then please….just get a pet; get a toy; get a condom… whatever. 

the social network

Last night I watched “The Social Network”. I must say, it was better than what I had anticipated. It was fast-paced and eventful and I’m even surprised at how Mark Zuckerberg was given such a negative limelight. Afterall, he is named by Vanity Fair to be the Most Influential Person in the computer age.

After watching the movie, it got me thinking…Why are some people’s lives so extraordianry? So … different? And I’m not just talking about the founders of Facebook.

I’m talking about the twins. Man, they are a 6ft2” spitting image of 220 pounds of muscles. Then they went to Harvard! Who cares what they majored in or whether they even studied at all….but Harvard, dude! Then they “had the idea for facebook” which was “stolen”. Who cares if that is true or not, they ended up with millions of dollars. Then they even went to Beijing for the Olympics. WHAT THE HELL? Can you be any more normal please?

I would not have believed any of those events to be true if it weren’t for my sources. Yea, Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s like the answer to life’s questions. It’s almost just as good as IMDB. Anyways, after cross-checking on both sites, man, it is true and their detailed biography is interesting enough to have a whole TV series made on it. Who needs Gossip Girl anymore?

Talking about movies…..I also heard they’re making sequels, that’s right, it’s not a typo, there is an S after sequel to indicate plurality. Yes, sequels to MATRIX. I wonder…just wonder….

Have a safe flight, Mum!

My mum’s visit will be over in just a couple more days. Living away from home makes you appreciate those wonderful family moments much much more. I cannot explain how wonderful it feels. You come home tired and cold at night, and before you stick your keys in, the door opens and you are greeted by your lovely smiling mother. You walk into a home that’s brightly lit and warm and smelling of heavenly aromas. “Dinner’s almost ready!”, called out from the kitchen where your mother is frantically dishing food out. The house is clean. The laundry is done. The TV’s on. Your house is now a home.

To thank my mother for being her lovely wonderful self, I baked her a cake! I don’t exactly have a name for it, but it’s so super chocolate-y that I might name it…… “Jimmy’s Amazing Chocolate Everything”. What is it exactly? Starting from the bottom, there is a dark chocolate biscuit bottom, then a dark mud cake layer, then a chocolate mousse filling, and on top is a layer of chocolate cream garnished with some strawberries. 

I don’t even have a recipe for this, I kind of made it as I went along. I had a packet of chocolate biscuit crust, so I added some melted butter and layered the bottom of the cake tin. Then mixed up a batch of flour, cocoa powder, chocolate buttons, eggs, butter, sugar and poured it in.

 After about 20 minutes, the cake is done. Whilst it is cooling, I started making the mousse. Beat some egg yolks with sugar until it looks foamy and whitish. Then pour in some heated cream and whisk it. I don’t have a real whisk but being a Chinese, there is this innate ability to whisk absolutely anything with chopsticks. Then I poured the mousse filling over the cake and into the fridge it went.

 In my tiny kitchen, I have this even tinier sink. This was just half the mess. I had to wash all my bowls and utensils three times in the making of just one cake. Partly my fault because I’m too cheap to buy that many bowls and pans.

 When the mousse was setting, I made the chocolate cream. All I did was whisk together thickened cream with some cocoa powder and a tablespoon of icing sugar. I just whisked it until it had the same consistency as regular canned whipped cream. Then I covered the whole cake with it using a spoon. Yes, judge all you want, I do not have a spatula.

 I cut out some heart shapes out of baking paper and sifted cocoa powder over it. It’s my first attempt at decorating a cake, and the hearts are a little wonky….. then I cut strawberries and circled the cake, only to realize that the centers of the strawberries were very white and ugly….so I piped some cream to cover it. I might say, the more I tried, the worse it became.

 I found an icing pen that I had left over from Christmas (this one, I did buy it) and VOILA! my final product~

 Not too bad presentation-wise. I was afraid it might not taste good because I didn’t exactly have a tried and true recipe….. but, if I may say so myself, it turned out better than I had expected! Not bad, not bad at all….

i used to shop...

My dear mother can definitely be called “Shopping Queen”, hands down. No objections from ANYBODY whatsoever. I used to shop too. I can still remember those summer vacations when I’d travel to Hong Kong and my mum and I would seriously shop for three weeks and go home with our luggages hardly zipped up and 10 kilograms over the limit.

However, things changed. How and when? I cannot quite remember. Maybe it was a gradual process, so slow that no one really noticed. Until now. Since my mother came to visit, each time I’ve been out with her, I come home absolutely exhausted with backaches and almost a fever. All that’s left to do is wash my face and crawl into bed. What happened to me? I am my mother’s daughter, and I used to shop.

Now, grocery shopping excites me more. Oh. My. God.

Guess what I’m doing today on a Sunday? I went grocery shopping and am now making a cake.

Oh. My. God.

State the Obvious

Those who know me personally probably already know that I do not like watching TV. Without even knowing, you have already been sucked into hours of mind-numbing crap. I’d say my TV is more…a part of the decor in my house, rather than a useful machine. I’m not sure why I even have a TV in my house, but I do feel like a house isn’t a house without a TV (even though I don’t watch it). Just like Joey from Friends once said, “You don’t have a TV??? Then what the hell are all your furniture pointing at??” Yea, it’d just be weird without one.

Anyways, recently I’ve been watching a bit more TV since my mum has come to visit me. I guess she likes the noise? Well, watching crap on TV can sometimes be quite amusing.

Here are my top favourite lines I’ve heard so far: “There are only two possibilities here. One, the killer knows the victim. The second possibility is that the killer did not know the victim.” This is from a detective show where the main guy is supposedly a whiz at solving crimes. Oh wow, thanks for telling me that, I really wouldn’t have figured it out by myself.

"If he really is the murderer, then he has fooled the world. I would not have guessed him to be the murderer…." This is from another detective crime show also. How dumb are cops portrayed as?

"This man’s stab wounds are critical. Whoever stabbed him must have tried to kill him." This was said by a tanned, muscular doctor. Thanks sexy, but I doubt people stab each other just to say hi.

Well that’s it for now. I’m gonna go watch more life sucking soul draining tv in the quest of more dumb obvious lines. Good night folks!

change blindness

Do you know that there are different types of blindness. There is also change blindness. That is, we see what we expect to see and are somehow blind to even obvious changes. The human mind has always amazed me. Our will power can be so strong that it can even alter our perceptions, beliefs, our fundamental core. Talk about the wow factor. Maybe that’s why we are always caught by surprise when reality hits us so hard in the face that there is nowhere else for us to hide. Then it all comes with such tremendous shock. Of course, other people may say, oh you should’ve seen it coming. If that is the case, please tell those people about the different types of blindness that we are susceptible to. Thanks.