the last entry triggered this entry, because there are a lot of things that i wish i can do in my life, that in the past i used to confuse myself with the idea and reality.
for instance, i love to cook. but i'm not that great like Nigella Lawson or Julia Child or Martha Stewart. i like the idea of cooking because it's very therapeutic. i love the smell of freshly baked goods like cakes and breads, and i love the idea of rolling the pastry to make croissants from scratch. but then, reality only stops at baking and cooking for survival - because even though i know how to make croissant, the thought of folding the pastry for a few times makes me cringe. plus, i must have ample time to do it.
and i love the idea of having a garden. when i was in terengganu i would buy a lot of plants - i used to have asters, roses, dianthuses, water iris, petunias and chrysanthemums. but that's just it. i just love the idea. at that time, my late mother would point that out to me and told me to stop buying plants.
and i love the idea of having a cat. i used to have a lot. my most beloved cat would be Fluffy, who died on 25th march 2007. he's a persian and was so adorable. but then i had a maid to feed him and clear his litter. for almost a year now i've been toying with the idea. but then i had to take a reality check. i can't take care of a persian on my own now.
and the greatest idea? to travel and have unlimited financial sources in order to do it. that'd make my day.
ah, the idea, the idea...
Monday, February 22, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Tiring Monday
thank god yesterday's the second day of Chinese New Year. the road was virtually empty (that's a dream coming true for every KL driver). there weren't any firecrackers either. wait, there was once in the night when i heard it for probably less than a minute.
anyway, the holidays means that i can do some spring cleaning. abang najib said he's coming over to get rid of the bushes at the back of the house, but he and kak dah cancelled. so it's just me and me. the problem of staying here is the maintenance, which i'm not really good at. that also extends to gardening, and because both abang najib and kak dah have masters degree in horticulture, they used their knowledge in designing the small garden with a fibreglass fish pond. i come from a family of green fingers, and i often joke that our ancestors must have been farmers planting vegetables in China, but then - i only love the idea of gardening. not the actual gardening. this my late mother knew so well because back in terengganu in the happier days, i would buy loads of roses, dianthuses, asters, chrysanthemums - but i had a bibik to take care of them.
so you can just imagine how pathetic the garden looks now - abang najib's manicured lawn isn't manicured anymore, i'm just waiting for those bangladeshis to come and mow the lawn. his usually well-kept well manicured bougainvilleas are nothing of the sort, you can see a few long branches here and there. at the back of the house, some vines have creeped on another bougainvillea and the tiles were dirty.
so guess what i did? took the scateurs and snipped, snipped and snipped. the bushes are still there though, that's a man's work. and i washed the dirty tiles. and i'm proud of myself.
i wanted to sweep and mop the floor, but by that time i called it a day, showered god knows for how many times because of the heat, and watched Glee.
in the evening, Sazi came over after her meeting with Linda Jasmine and Dr Fazley, and she watched me bake a sponge cake and later we went to have an early dinner at my favourite indian stall at jalan ipoh. ah, a nice place to have puri with fish curry. divine.
anyway, the holidays means that i can do some spring cleaning. abang najib said he's coming over to get rid of the bushes at the back of the house, but he and kak dah cancelled. so it's just me and me. the problem of staying here is the maintenance, which i'm not really good at. that also extends to gardening, and because both abang najib and kak dah have masters degree in horticulture, they used their knowledge in designing the small garden with a fibreglass fish pond. i come from a family of green fingers, and i often joke that our ancestors must have been farmers planting vegetables in China, but then - i only love the idea of gardening. not the actual gardening. this my late mother knew so well because back in terengganu in the happier days, i would buy loads of roses, dianthuses, asters, chrysanthemums - but i had a bibik to take care of them.
so you can just imagine how pathetic the garden looks now - abang najib's manicured lawn isn't manicured anymore, i'm just waiting for those bangladeshis to come and mow the lawn. his usually well-kept well manicured bougainvilleas are nothing of the sort, you can see a few long branches here and there. at the back of the house, some vines have creeped on another bougainvillea and the tiles were dirty.
so guess what i did? took the scateurs and snipped, snipped and snipped. the bushes are still there though, that's a man's work. and i washed the dirty tiles. and i'm proud of myself.
i wanted to sweep and mop the floor, but by that time i called it a day, showered god knows for how many times because of the heat, and watched Glee.
in the evening, Sazi came over after her meeting with Linda Jasmine and Dr Fazley, and she watched me bake a sponge cake and later we went to have an early dinner at my favourite indian stall at jalan ipoh. ah, a nice place to have puri with fish curry. divine.
Monday, February 15, 2010
visiting the family
on saturday (while i was attending a boring and unnecessary course at school, and it was the first day of the Chinese New Year hols for god's sake!) inas called me to say that zek was holding a tahlil at his new house in denai alam. i was excited, and promised her to go.
i called kak sham to ask if she's going, because i'd be lost if i went alone (i've never been to denai alam, and though it's not as jin bertendang as ijok jaya, i know i'll just cry if i'm stuck there on guthrie highway). kak sham wasn't keen on going, and only after she heard that kak dah was going that she changed her mind. i was to come to her house at kelana jaya at 9am, and from there we would proceed to denai alam.
well, we got lost. the names there are all scientific terms like elektron and neutron and metafasa. don't have any aesthetic value, do they?
but finally we found the house, like my brother in-law said with a straight face, "look for the house with many mercedeses parked outside."
my brothers were there, except for my favourite brother who's currently in madinah, and also my eldest sister in-law's family and her mother, who reminded me so much of my late mother. the mc for the tahlil was my nephew didi, who abang mi dubbed as "the gentle bear".
the food was superb, of course, and i enjoyed the food tremendously (don't i always). there's nasi tomato with the works and also daging dendeng, and of all the food that i had, i was impressed with the cake sandwich i had. it's just a simple cake, 2 layer-cake with strawberry jam. i like it so much that i went on my fav recipe sites to find the recipe. it's not a dense cake, therefore it's not a butter cake, so it can't be the usual victoria sponge sandwich, so i think it's a sponge cake made with sponge mix. and i intend to try it one of these days.
kak sham wanted me to tag along to a wedding, but she went too soon, and i found myself in kak dah's car going to abang halim's house at sg buloh. abang halim loves the rustic life, so he has a house in a kampung, with fruit trees all around. he loves doing the DIY projects and at the moment he is tiling his house himself. i knew he does it himself because i could see the smudges on the black tiles at the gate, and he told us that as he was tiling the house he found out that his house isn't perfectly horizontal. it was noon and very hot, and so we had a mat spread outside and lounged on it while sipping iced cold ribena and eating sweet mangoes.
it was later in the afternoon that i made my way back to ampang, feeling too full with all the rich spread. the gym was closed, so i had to do my own workout without the help of any machines *sigh*
i called kak sham to ask if she's going, because i'd be lost if i went alone (i've never been to denai alam, and though it's not as jin bertendang as ijok jaya, i know i'll just cry if i'm stuck there on guthrie highway). kak sham wasn't keen on going, and only after she heard that kak dah was going that she changed her mind. i was to come to her house at kelana jaya at 9am, and from there we would proceed to denai alam.
well, we got lost. the names there are all scientific terms like elektron and neutron and metafasa. don't have any aesthetic value, do they?
but finally we found the house, like my brother in-law said with a straight face, "look for the house with many mercedeses parked outside."
my brothers were there, except for my favourite brother who's currently in madinah, and also my eldest sister in-law's family and her mother, who reminded me so much of my late mother. the mc for the tahlil was my nephew didi, who abang mi dubbed as "the gentle bear".
the food was superb, of course, and i enjoyed the food tremendously (don't i always). there's nasi tomato with the works and also daging dendeng, and of all the food that i had, i was impressed with the cake sandwich i had. it's just a simple cake, 2 layer-cake with strawberry jam. i like it so much that i went on my fav recipe sites to find the recipe. it's not a dense cake, therefore it's not a butter cake, so it can't be the usual victoria sponge sandwich, so i think it's a sponge cake made with sponge mix. and i intend to try it one of these days.
kak sham wanted me to tag along to a wedding, but she went too soon, and i found myself in kak dah's car going to abang halim's house at sg buloh. abang halim loves the rustic life, so he has a house in a kampung, with fruit trees all around. he loves doing the DIY projects and at the moment he is tiling his house himself. i knew he does it himself because i could see the smudges on the black tiles at the gate, and he told us that as he was tiling the house he found out that his house isn't perfectly horizontal. it was noon and very hot, and so we had a mat spread outside and lounged on it while sipping iced cold ribena and eating sweet mangoes.
it was later in the afternoon that i made my way back to ampang, feeling too full with all the rich spread. the gym was closed, so i had to do my own workout without the help of any machines *sigh*
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Julie/Julia
i've been meaning to watch the movie ever since i saw the trailer somewhere on TV...can't remember what's the programme. anyhow, i watched the movie on this lovely sunday morning (because we only have one day to rest this weekend, thanks to the school day replacement yesterday) and i love it! who wouldn't? it's a movie about Julie Powell who set a deadline for a year to cook the entire 500+ recipes from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. it was 2002 and Julie Powell wrote her culinary experiences in her blog, which was quite a novelty way back then (i mean blogging). the blog is still available, should any of the readers want to read it http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/08/30.html the movie is about 2 stories - from 21st century US, portraying Julie
(played by Amy Adams) and her life and 1949-50s Paris portraying Julia Child 
(played by Meryl Streep, who does a good job of talking just like Julia). i love the part when Julia arrives in Paris and takes in delight when she eats fish cooked in butter. and i love it because Julie finally undergoes a self-discovery through her cooking, inspiring people to do what they love and to learn from it.a must see for all foodies. you'll be inspired.
p.s. wish i could enrol in that le cordon bleu school in paris
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
it hurts!
When another teacher at school lost a considerable amount of weight in just 3 months, i felt very threatened. well, she didn't go on a crash diet. like me, she goes to the gym. but unlike me, she has a personal trainer. that's the difference.
and so, i feel very dissatisfied with my body (duh, when do i really feel satisfied in the first place?). i'm not going to pay rm1.2k for a personal trainer, so lately i've been doing a lot of reading about workouts on the net. i know i should do something with my still-bulging tummy and also my butt. and legs. i just found out on Oprah that i have what is called "cankles". in other words, not so defined legs. that's why my legs look more like tree stump than a ballerina's graceful long legs.
and so today, armed with workout pics saved in my handphone, i made my way to the gym, determined to alter my workout.
for starters, do u know that walking up the hill is one of the best exercise for your butt? the gym equivalent of it is to walk on incline mode and to increase the % of the incline. that's what i did, and not long after i hit the scale 6, i had to decline since i was huffing and puffing (though not that vigorously). i did some other lower half body workouts, and at that time i did with such fervour, hoping that in time my thick thighs and legs will be smaller and toned. i was satisfied with myself.
but a few hours later, the aftermath is quite unexpected. my cheeks feel so sore (not the cheeks on your face) that to sit on a pillow of soft cushion or feathers will be very nice.
my nephew zainal called it "a literal pain in the a$$"
and so, i feel very dissatisfied with my body (duh, when do i really feel satisfied in the first place?). i'm not going to pay rm1.2k for a personal trainer, so lately i've been doing a lot of reading about workouts on the net. i know i should do something with my still-bulging tummy and also my butt. and legs. i just found out on Oprah that i have what is called "cankles". in other words, not so defined legs. that's why my legs look more like tree stump than a ballerina's graceful long legs.
and so today, armed with workout pics saved in my handphone, i made my way to the gym, determined to alter my workout.
for starters, do u know that walking up the hill is one of the best exercise for your butt? the gym equivalent of it is to walk on incline mode and to increase the % of the incline. that's what i did, and not long after i hit the scale 6, i had to decline since i was huffing and puffing (though not that vigorously). i did some other lower half body workouts, and at that time i did with such fervour, hoping that in time my thick thighs and legs will be smaller and toned. i was satisfied with myself.
but a few hours later, the aftermath is quite unexpected. my cheeks feel so sore (not the cheeks on your face) that to sit on a pillow of soft cushion or feathers will be very nice.
my nephew zainal called it "a literal pain in the a$$"
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