Kitchen update:

1. Things got really busy at the Loft's kitchen the day after I wrote that blog. It was like an answered prayer. :D Andi taught me how to make poached eggs too, and I made my first couple on Saturday.

2. I cooked the leftovers of the rump, and it was simple, yet divine. Butter, garlic and thyme - all you need for the perfect fry!

3. I decided it was finally time to break my morning cereal and milk routine, so I woke up early this morning to head to Coles to buy eggs and cream.

Watered-down.

I've always thought that was an adjective of negative connotations. Watered-down ideals are perhaps the most disappointing characteristics a person could ever have. After all, what's the point of having convicitons that will never convict you? What's the point of having ideals that don't need effort to be attained?

I thought about that word for a bit today though, and realised that it isn't all that bad. It can't be, because water is life. Potent, concentrated and hardcore ideals are best to be pursued with a little bit of water; that is, a little bit of the experiences that life teaches us. Because ideals mean nothing if they are not borne out of love and compassion. And all these things combined form the beauty of the human experience.

If there's one place I always seem to find myself when I'm stressed or bored, it's the kitchen. I think it started when Enzo was born and we'd put his playpen in this small space between the fridge and the light switches. I'd go there to play with him, chew on ice, or sit in the fridge for a couple of seconds to cool myself off on the hot summer afternoons.

I remember how this cooking thing started though. It was all because Tintin showed me how to make garlic and tomato pasta. I forget why she was in my house, but I remember being hungry and having nothing to eat, and Tintin magically concocting something with the few ingredients we had in the fridge. Her pasta was divine, I kept trying to recreate it: once with hot and spicy Century Tuna, which I served out to Lok, Gabby, Nika, Pat and Bianca (I THINK) and the second time with asparagus when I brought some with me to Real. Both were disasters my friends can never seem to forget. Lok reminded me of it a couple of months ago, and I forgot, as usual, until he described how spicy they were, and Josh who won't stop teasing me about how overcooked the asparagus was.

When we moved to Vancouver, I'd hang around the kitchen to de-stress. I experimented with a bunch of recipes. There was the "Mmmmm... this is good..." from my family with my yogurt with chicken for grilled chicken tandoori, and lemon, parmesan and cream for lemon linguini. (Yuck, now that I think about it, those were incredibly disgusting). Then there was the "ATE, MAKE SOME MORE!" or the "Nikki, gawin mo ulit yan pag nandito si Tito Mon!" which would always make my heart skip a beat. I can remember a couple of my hits: prawn and ginger dumplings, baked salmon, adobo flakes, tiramisu, various cookies, opera cake, chicken caesar salad and prime rib roast. The kitchen has gone from de-stressor to sanctuary for me. It's one of the few places I can forget about everything else, and just concentrate on making something, anything that will serve as an addition to the Ignacio family recipe book, if we ever do come up with one.

I've been going crazy over the past 36 hours because I can't stop thinking about the macarons I had at Lindt cafe. It went from "Ohhh, this is so good" to "Hmmm... Lemme google the recipe and see if it's do-able" to "I can't wait to go back to Vancouver and try this out!" I really want to make macarons. I can't stop reading about it that I've practically mastered the technique this food blogger from Vancouver wrote about in her blog (Macaron war, she likes to call it). Make the almond meringue mixture, let it sit for 20 minutes while heating the oven to 310C, macarons should form "feet" after 8 minutes, turn heat down to 300C once this happens.

And since I just found the brochure of the macarons they have at Lindt cafe, I just know that I can make something close to as good as the ones they serve there!

I miss my kitchen terribly, and I want to get my hands on a jar of fleur de sel. :(

My flatmate is a bit of a hippie. That was the first thing that popped into my head the first time we met. We met on a Friday, if I remember correctly. That was my fifth day of intense flat-hunting, and I was getting desperate. I had a couple of options -- 1) Broadway with the creepy landlord who has keys to all the bedrooms and takes the liberty to show them off to potential rentors, 2) Newtown, with the gorgeous couple whom I so wanted to live with, but I doubted my chances, given that they were looking for people who could stay the whole year, 3) the "studio" in Ashfield which was more of a stuffy shack in a backyard and 4) Newtown, with the queers. I had been going around Sydney that whole week, meeting people, trying to present myself as the best flatmate you could ever have, but as with most things, there's a lot more than that involved. There's your lifestyle, sexuality, careers, etc, but I digress.

Like I said, my flatmate is a bit of a hippie. You can tell with her choice of couch colour: deep purple and warm red. The house is adorned with exotic-looking greeting cards, woven baskets, pictures of old people, flowers and coloured vases with peacock feathers. I immediately wanted to live with her. After all, it's what you like that matters.

We've lived together for over three months now. After all the alternative meds, herbs, yoga, organic toothpaste, soothing salts, dead sea soap and barley soup, I realise that I don't think I have what it takes to be a real hippie. Being a hippie isn't just about looking like one, it's also about living with downside of being one (eg. being plagued by coughing fits because your herbs aren't working).

Thus, I am a Sportsgirl -- a just want to look like one.

I'm in my room typing away on my keyboard with a missing Y only after five minutes of getting home. I've had possibly the busiest three weeks of my life, and now that it's over, I feel as though I have to keep moving. That I have to keep typing and thinking and thinking again about what I'm going to do next. I'm blogging now, because it was the first activity that I thought of. Now I think I might start doing Pilates right after this -- twenty minutes. Perfect. Kuya should have finished cleaning up by then.

This has to be the most beautiful hymn I've ever heard:

Breathe on me, breath of God,
Fill me with life anew,
That I may love what Thou dost love,
And do what Thou wouldst do.

Breathe on me, breath of God,
Until my heart is pure,
Until with Thee I will one will,
To do and to endure.

Breathe on me, breath of God,
Blend all my soul with Thine,
Until this earthly part of me
Glows with Thy fire divine.

Breathe on me, breath of God,
So shall I never die,
But live with Thee the perfect life
Of Thine eternity.

Words: Ed­win Hatch, 1878

Junjun is a friend like no other. And by that I mean, he's the only person that I've barely talked to face-to-face, on the phone or chatted or texted with for long periods of time, yet I still consider him a very good friend of mine. It's weird, I know. And I think the weirdest thing about it is that a big chunk of our friendship is based on our interactions in the cyber world.

The thing is, even our cyber exchanges aren't so direct. I remember how I used to read his posts on genrev.net a lot, and how they'd always fall under music or the poetry section. I remember wanting to be his friend after reading all his posts, but I didn't really know how I could do that, given that he lived a couple of islands away from Manila. So I'd leave a few comments on genrev every so often, as I had become a fan of his work.

Despite the lack of frequency in our exchanges, there's something about my friendship with Junjun. I think it's to do with the fact that I know he gets me, without having to talk to me directly. It's probably through his poetry or something.

I think I'll end off here. Junjun will have gotten what I'm trying to say by now.


Happy birthday. :)

Postcard 2: Sydney on a rainy day

After an entire week of studying up to 8pm in the State Library (and up to 11.30 at home), there I was, in the Wentworth lawn, twenty minutes away from facing my Trade midterm. I've never studied so hard for anything in my life.

I knew it would be one of those tests that I could never really study enough for. So I kept pressing on. Re-solving every single problem I was given; re-reading all the slides and models until my A4 handouts were no longer the crisp and smooth sheets they had once been.

Mark and Alex handed out the papers to the class. I sat on the first row, away from the main door, as usual. I always sit in the front row whenever I take tests. We were given ten minutes to read through the two problems we had to solve in an hour. And it was the longest ten minutes of my life. My brain raced through the solutions I needed for the questions, whilst controlling my hand from writing everything I didn't want to forget.

"You may start," Mark tells the class.

I freeze. I stare at the first problem, and nothing. I struggle to write the words Australia, China and Thailand. How do I get the comparative advantage again? What does the price of machinery over the price of rice = 4/3 tell me? So I skipped the first question and moved to the next. How do I solve for output? X=Y. Yes. Price equals cost. Oh Lord. I'm in trouble now. I've never choked on a test this badly.

I crawled my way through #1, and found that I only had thirty minutes to answer the harder #2. I stare at the question again. Nothing. I play around with the equations I know. Nothing. I stare the ceiling and get distracted by Mark and Alex whispering to each other and giggling every few seconds. I try another equation. Nothing.

At ten minutes to the hour I get desperate. If I don't get this question, I'd be blowing half the test. I try another equation. I'm getting something. I keep at it and I end up with a whole number. I write faster and faster and before I know it, Mark says, "Okay that's it," as I hear sheets of paper ruffling through the air. Alex stares down at me with his Cyrano de Bergerac nose. Two seconds later he taps my table, as I struggle to write R-y-b-c-z-y-n-s-k-i on may paper. "FINISH! FINISH!" he pokes at my patience as he taps even faster on my table. I eased my paper forward without looking at him, stood up, walked towards Fisher and plopped onto one of the benches as I scrambled through my problem sets for the solution. I couldn't let it go. The temptation to agonise myself with my mistakes was too strong. I found the problem, but the solutions were different. I spied the guy who semi-helped me out in Alex's office hour, but he was talking to someone else, and was too far to chase down.

I retreated to Fisher, where I had originally planned to go to get some work done before heading to Chinatown for dinner. Then I saw him. The guy with the Schwarzenegger accent from the office hour. I dither around the fourier before deciding to go after him to ask him to put me out of my misery.

He was about to lay on the grass using his blue canvas bag as a pillow when I said, "Excuse me, you're in trade right?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, so what did you get for part two!? Do you remember the output?" I asked, as I ploped my bag, and myself on the grass, like tea cups in a Chinese restaurant. I was on a mission to sever the section of my brain that made me choke.
"Two and half and seven and a half?"

I clapped my hands in glee. It was an awkward clap. One and a half to be exact. I suppressed this expression of glee because I never clap when I'm happy. Let alone with a stereotypical German, with the particular shade of blonde hair and blue eyes that you only get from Germany, whom I just met. And yes, he did put me out of my misery - I didn't bomb the test. We ended up talking like we've known each other our whole lives for an hour and a half.