life, love, *motherhood, and then more
Archive for June, 2009
Blossoming Buddies
Jun 22nd
Today. I am blossoming. Again.
Eric would be super pleased. He says he likes me best like this.
I don't like me best like this. I like me best when I am normal.
This week
Jun 17th
I've been having lots of fun this week, and I wanna record some cool things I've experienced and heard over the past few days:
- I can finally eat bread and butter again. I've been allergic to it for a few weeks, no apparent reason!
- I found this awesome place in Kepong that serves super yummy ULU YAM LOH MEEN. Smackingly delicious!
- Had a fun training session this week – I loved the ultimate closing line: the silver rule of closing is: STFU and let the client sign your PO.
- We're having very fruity weeks at home these days. My fridge is stuffed with apples, oranges, dragonfruit (they call it pitera now, eh?) and kiwi!
- 'I love how you look these days, Choo Ki.'
- I had someone flirting with me just now. Its nice, when you're happily married to the love of your life, and still get flirts. Even though he probably was just looking for a fling. Ah. haha.
- TRANSFORMER's COMING UP next week. I can't wait!!
- Eric's coming home bearing huggy hugs tonight (he's in Singapore right now).
- I am meeting someone very important tomorrow at around 11 am.
- And then going to Tenji at noon tomorrow where I can binge.
All weeks should be so fun.
Chilling with the chicken
Jun 12th
I've been rather stressed out lately, and my close pals tell me it isn't too good for my psyche. Ok. Shall take their advice, except… these few weeks are totally hectic and I'm back-to-back with trainings and meetings. July will fall in extra early this year so its going to be a busy second half of the year.
Ironic, because just a few months ago I was bitching over how boring it was to be where I was. Well, never complain about where you are.
I was checking out my archives again and then I found this set of photos… of my favourite impress-em-at-potlucks special: The Simple Baked Chicken. I got the recipe from the super cook Adeline from BLC, and have been faithfully relying upon it each time I get invited to 'contribute' a dish.
It always, always impresses.
Now I'm not very good at documenting recipes but this one should be blogged. So here goes my agak-agak something like that version:
Ingredients:
1 Whole Medium chicken, cleaned with feet, head and wing tips cut off
Potpourri of ROOT VEGETABLES:
2 Medium Potatoes, cleaned and cut into cubes
1/2 Small Pumpkin, cut into cubes
1 Large Green onions, cut into 8 pieces
(you can throw other types of root vegetables in, but I stick to these)
1 Whole lemon, skewered with a satay stick
Marinade:
1 small cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon paprika powder
3 tablespoons chopped chinese parsley
1 tablespoon coarsely grained black pepper
So what I do is I mix the marinade up and rub it all over the cleaned chicken (I massage it even under the skin of the chicken. Then I leave the chicken for about 4 hours in the fridge to soak up the marinade. Sometimes when I'm lazy I do this a day ahead, and the chicken gets to bathe in the marinade overnight.
When I'm ready to bake the chicken, I heat up the oven first, at about 200 degrees Celsius. I layer my baking dish with the root vegetables. Then I get the chicken out, and with whatever marinade's that dripping left, I pour it all over the vegetables. I take about 1/2 tablespoon of Himalayan Salt and rub it all over the chicken (under its skin as well), stuff the lemon into the chicken cavity, rest it on the vegetables, pour half a cup of water into the side of the baking dish (so that the vegetables won't dry up so soon… and then I chuck it into the pre-heated oven for about 45 minutes.
At 45 minutes, the bell will ring, but I don't take out the chicken immediately. I let it rest for another 10 minutes or so, take it out, cover with alumimium foil, place it into a nice basket, and I'm off to impress my buddies.
Nehehehe— Baked Chicken is a good trick to show off at potluck meets!
The fight to stay blind
Jun 10th
Well, I can't say I didn't expect a 'majority' to strongly oppose the government's consideration to make it compulsory to pass English to get the SPM certificate. After all, Malaysians have proven too many times that when it comes to making certain difficult, but necessary decisions, we'll vote to stay ignorant for as long as we can.
So you see, that's probably why so many concerned factions desire no change in the status quo of continuing stupidity. All in the name of not burdening our students (in the rural areas) further with the need to pass English in order to get an SPM certificate.
After all, in their eyes, this country doesn't need to grow. This country doesn't need to move with the rest of the world. Never mind that Hong Kong is considering to revise their curriculum and to reinstate English as the teaching medium for Science and Math. Never mind that corporations across the nations are lamenting on the quality of English amongst Malaysians up and coming bunch of 'highly employable' workers. Never mind that we have thousands of people scoring straight As and crying foul because 'boo hoo I can't get to become a Doctor, and I don't care that its because my results can't verify how good I am, I deserve to be a Doctor cos I got 20 As for SPM damn it!'… well, the 'increasing' number of splendid scorers in the country proves that we are a developing nation of on-print geniuses.
So by the time, the next bunch of inept people come out with an A in their SPM English paper, and you wonder why they're fine with saying 'I is very happy today', without blinking and eye, and that they have no idea what 'grammar' really means, you can't blame them. Nah. We have a caring bunch of older adults who can speak and write proper English, NOT willing to allowing an already inept government to do something right for a change.
I think the next time we want to blame the government for their stupid, illogical tactical decisions, we really want to stand back and pause for a moment. They're never allowed to make right decisions anyway, so who cares? Me? Given the choice, given the situation, if I were the government, since the people won't make me do anything right, I'll do my best to be as corrupt as possible. It's what they're rooting for anyway.
Faith
Jun 8th
Belief in God is faith confined to a structured understanding of what and who God is, where God originates, and what God requires of practitioners.
Peace is providing everyone else his/her space to live by the tenets of their own beliefs.
Faith is trusting that God has already resolved all the issues in our lives, even the ones that we don't see happening yet. Even the ones that revolve around contradicting beliefs in God.
