chronicles of young

When I watched footages of how animals we eat without much thought were slaughtered so we can have delish food on our plates, I felt a sense of horror, but still could push this away when faced with meat on my plate. I have been an omnivore like the majority of us all my life and I can say I love animals. I mean, I don't eat excessively and can't stand wasting food, but still, I think I need to tackle the issue of where I stand in my eating. Firstly, perhaps you can say this is shirking back? But it really is hard to stop if one has been eating meat so naturally all her life. Today I was all prepared (so I told myself) not to order anything with meat in the canteen. But at the snack store, deciding what to eat, I ordered char siew pastry just like that. I didn't even know I was eating pork (like you know, thinking I'm eating the meat of a pig that probably squealed before its impending doom) until after the first blissful mouthfuls. The truth is, it is all too eas...

I am posting this so that I can immortalise these memories. The other day while at BSS Henderson, I lost my wallet at the void deck. I was in the classroom for only 10 minutes? before I realised it, but by then it was gone. Well it contained so much sentimental value. It had secondary school mugshots of my classmates, dorky faces and all, notes from friends which had been in my wallets throughout the years plus all those loyalty cards. Okay this is not the point. It sounds quite unexceptional when I am thinking of how to put it in words now. Aye, how can I ever convey the warmth I felt for the aunties and uncles that tried to find my wallet? After I ran back to the coffeeshop where I was before, most of the coffeeshop staff knew of my plight. They were so sympathetic and I had to turn down repeated offers to lend me money to get home. There was also this uncle at the table where I had lost my wallet that helped too.  Don't tell my mum but I was thinking it was...

It's not a book review. Coz I haven't finished reading it yet. Look at muh giraffe its still halfway through the book. And yes this is the first time I took NOTES while reading a book. Coz it's really quite profound (but not uncomprehensible) and well, wanted to share my thoughts while reading this book here. Okay, short introduction of what is this book roughly about. Mark Rowlands had Brenin the wolf for 11 years, and throughout this span of time, he came to formulate (for lack of better word, sorry) and comprehend many truths about man. He called this 'the clearing', the space made by the wolf from which these thoughts emerged. One of the reasons why I love reading this so much is because it really verbalised the view that was within me, which I was pondering over it but not knowing how to express it. When I was particularly depressed over it, I called it our inhumanity towards other people. Mark Rowlands had it all nailed down: In his book he used '...

I have this urge to just fill this line with smileys. These cupcakes are like my first creations! I'm always thinking of new stuff to make, but this is one of the rare times where I decided to just bake and see instead of theorising whether it will be a flop. Essentially, I made a firm chocolate dough and pressed it down at the bottom, then baked it for 5 minutes before plopping the orange batter in. Orange-speckled beauties. The zesty orange flavour didn't come through as strongly as I hoped, perhaps adding orange essence or a dash of Cointreau might help.. You can dress them up easily by making orange flavoured icing with orange juice. After shaping the cookies for baking I was so tired that all I wanted was to lie down and close my eyes. So they are just plain ol' cupcakes sitting snugly together now. The cookie dough left over can be easily rolled out and shaped. Testimony to this: Look at how teeny-weeny those alphabets are! You counting the times LOVE i...

Here ends a week of sore legs from standing for hours at one stretch, agonising over the taste and aesthetics of the cookies throughout the week, or the cake yesterday. Prior to this week we had 2 days of Chinese New Year baking. New family tradition I helped create since I developed an interest in baking.  Less butter this year,but still oily nonetheless. And still in search of a good recipe for those almond cookies.    Almond cookies Same good  melt-in-your mouths this year, except I reduced the butter to 250g. Our class had a bake sale on Friday as part of the CNY street market, and what was good was that all profits went to Breakthrough Missions, a halfway house that provides rehabilitation to former drug offenders. To be honest, I was so so tired after coming home late from baking that I almost dreaded going for the next session. But once we started, I was in my element again I guess. Failures dressed up...

Before both date and year changes simultaneously. I'm not going to state my resolutions here; I think I will figure them out next year as time goes. What shall I write about then? Honestly I do not know. (hey it sorta rhymes!) These days have been pretty mundane. But I've come to the age where this mundanity brings about a kind of bliss, where you know the memory of these days will be that of bright sunlight and fluffy clouds, a kind of neutral contentedness and thankfulness that God has given yet another nice day. *** It has taken me 6 minutes to write this. You know when I heard Don't Stop Believing for the first time, it really felt like me? Or basically everyone drifting about in life. "Everybody wants a thrill" cos they don't know what they want. Aargh the intellectual, or rather school-trained mind automatically snaps "You are making a sweeping statement!" But I think its true though. That people would deny it could prove that its tru...

Normally I will start the post with a title first but today I just had the urge to blog but had nothing in mind I wanted to put here. Anyway since I don't have an obligations to blog regularly and on common themes, I can blabber all I want. America is really a place of possibilities. You can really do what you want and get support for it too, and the only things that stand in your way is your lack of talent or God's will. Mebbe that's why we all (by that I mean Singaporean teens) want out, to varying degrees. But I'm secretly scared I won't survive overseas. Once I was in the airport and some Caucasian asked me something and took awhile for me to realise he was speaking English. Asking whether there's rice in Macs. Dumb. But I felt dumb instead. I hate feeling dumb. (Especially in guitar class) Okay, I don't know why the post became like that. It was supposed to be letters to people I really wanted to write to, but somehow couldn't. In this weird, so...