Moving house I’ve moved - Sweet Milk* is now at dolcelatte.wordpress.com. See you later. Cookery Lesson #1 Ingredients for a stew: Garlic, finely chopped Onions, sliced and/or quartered Carrots, chopped Potatoes, chopped and parboiled (any other root vegetable you fancy) Celery, chopped Couple of sprigs of thyme and rosemary tied together (or not) 2-3 bay leaves Meat (beef, chicken, lamb, etc) Stock/water Wine Directions for a stew: 1. Heat up some oil in a large-enough pot and brown the meat once oil is sizzling. 2. Transfer meat to a plate for the moment. 3. Heat up more oil if desired. Throw the chopped garlic into hot pot, wait till fragrant then add the onions. 4. When onions are soft, put meat back into the pot along with the vegetables, thyme and rosemary. Stir everything around so that it’s all mixed up, then stick bay leaves in. 5. Add enough stock/water and wine to about half the level of contents of pot, cover pot and let stew on low heat, stirring occasionally. Top up liquid with stock/water or wine, as you wish. I find the higher the wine to stock/water ratio the better, but that’s just me. 6. When everything is soft and tender, the stew is ready for eating. Serve with bread, rice or on its own. It’s been a while, darlings. There’s just so little time to fit everything in and have some to spare to write about it. It’s also probably not so great that I’ve been averaging somewhere around 55-hour-weeks for the last month. Still, it’s Summer and things are always amazing in Summer. There are bbqs to attend, garden parties to go to, babies to play with, beaches to sit by, etc. Quite a lot to do when I’ve only got the weekends to do them, plus do all the boring stuff like housework. Which probably explains the state of my flat. Eugenio, you genius. I love the gorgeous photos from Eugenio Recuenco. You WILL be impressed. In Beijing! Have Beijing blog - travels with my barang-barang. Am hungover. Till next time. managed to get a lot of things off my chest. it was for the better, and now i feel relieved. maybe it is true, that i should take responsibility for how i feel and manage that, rather than expect someone else to have crazy-psychic abilities to *know* what i’m actually trying very hard not to admit. anyway, so honesty is the best policy and all that shit. and we’re all clear where we are now. or rather, i’m pretty clear where i am and where i stand in relation. and it’s perfect timing - staged, perhaps, but still, staged for perfect timing - to get some perspective by disappearing for a bit and re-assessing. i’ve taken to sitting around in my coat while at home. It seems appropriate. three more weeks before I move to Beijing. Have I packed? No. Have I thought about what to bring? Nope. Am i getting freaked out? Not yet. there’s too much going on right here right now. I’m working on it, but really it all comes down to this – I want, but cannot have. Due to logic, reason, rationale, the goodness of my heart, the milk of human kindness, grace and god(s) above. So I’m working on it. In the meantime, I stand here and watch. As time ticks slowly by. by request wool kimono jacket. it sheds and requires vast amounts of dry-weather optimism.but i love it, nonetheless. 沉默年代或许不该太遥远的相爱 1. Going to Beijing in February for 4 months. 2. Sitting on my sofa in my coat and scarf and everything. 3. Tonnes of thoughts running through my mind, but they’re intersecting at high speed and I can’t untangle them. 4. I am still loving my job, even if the hours are shit. In short: Man, how do i love thee? Let me count the error of my ways. on the one hand, i’m concerned and want to know what’s happened and how things are, whether you’re okay. because i still care, even though i really ought not to. on the other, i’m afraid because the involvement might be too close, and i won’t be able to disengage myself in time - that i’ll watch myself, in slowmotion, crashing the same car. like a crash test dummy. distractions, distractions. can’t seem to get my head down and just get on with work. tres annoying. From ‘feminism, (open) marriage and fucking’ , at Bitch Ph.D: So, better sex and better relationships through entitlement: this, at least, is true for me, and it is what I’m exploring right now with by fucking around. With someone who I am not married to, who I do not have to deal with next week, next month, next year, I can feel free to try something embarrassing; I can feel free to be, frankly, as whorish as I like; I can feel free to be entitled, goddamnit. This includes entitled to say no: no, I won’t do that, no, I won’t pretend to believe that your wife is just frigid. With my partner, I am afraid–not to say no, I am halfway to feminist perfection–but to say yes. What if I do something that he thinks is freaky, or that he finds so very titillating and erotic that I have to do it from here on out, forever? So, sticking strictly to sex, what one gets out of it is a chance to explore things in a less-fraught environment; ideally, one then processes that shit and brings it home and expands one’s sex life with one’s partner. Still here. Nothing much has changed since, and yet something in the air has. Just slightly. I can’t put my finger on it. But I’ll let you know when I find out. singapore’s a great place to be on holiday. all i do is sleep till a disgusting hour (usually lunchtime), go shopping or have long leisurely lunches at various places, wander around in a heat-induced semi-consciousness till sundown, have dinner at delicious dining places with delectable dates, and then stay up watching cable television till 3 or 4 in the morning. i’ve also come to quite a few conclusions (all on my own!): 1) it’s not worth it trying to become a singapore-qualified lawyer – dipSing + pupillage + plc = too much time ; 2) some people don’t deserve my attention – unappreciativeness + lack of effort + idiocy = waste of my time ; 3) i must seriously stop ordering red bull mixers as a fallback position. will be back in good ‘ol blighty on saturday. yippeeboohooray? so, i went and watched SATC. it reminded me of the night i spent at R’s place, sitting up watching episodes back to back through till morning, leaving just as the sky turned a light blue-grey and the air smelt of dawn. it also made me think of other things. and other people. it felt like bunking off school. like when we used to sneak out the back gate of the mount sinai campus and walk hurriedly across the hdb estate and over the bridge, heaving a sigh of relief only when we reached the bus-stop or holland village. but yes, just like bunking off school. except it was work, and i had permission to leave the building since no work was going to be done while the lights were flickering on and off and the data connections were on the blink. so i went shopping – a new pair of shoes, some new shirts and a pair of wide-legged trousers for SS08. all done in under an hour. impressive, non? and then there was the picking-up of lunch from carluccio;s and delivering them to a man who was laid up in bed with ‘general grottyness’. eating lunch and reading the newspapers in bed, chatting and doing things on the internet (him) and reading a book rather unsuccessfully (me). very decadent indeed. and also so much fun. it was a stolen afternoon. so many free hours plucked out of the air so suddenly, and so coincidental a matching of free time. we have PLANS, my friend and i. parisian plans, berliner plans, moving in together plans. but the best plans we’ve made so far are the ones involving red wine and good food. oh, and endless cups of machiato made by real italian men. There’s been some foreign adventures. Easter weekend in Paris on my own was liberating, although after a day or two, I started to feel as if my throat was getting rusty and I couldn’t enunciate properly anymore. It didn’t help, of course, that I didn’t speak any French and was therefore relegated to observation-only, rather than being involved in any exciting conversation. My hotel was on the rue lepic, on Montmartre just up the road from Pigalle and on the same stretch as the café de deux moulins (i.e. where Amélie worked in that eponymous film). Montmartre was beautiful, and I loved how a 5 minute walk transported me into a completely different world where the swarming hordes of tourists vanished and I could peek into windows watching artisans doing antique furniture restoration and painters and sculptors in their workshops. Of course I did all the touristy things as well - Tour Eiffel, Louvre, Jardin des Tuilieries etc. But half-way up the Champs-Elysees I got bored and turned my back on the Arc de Triomphe. I could see it from where I was, but I lost all interest in seeing it up close, so I went to have a café crème instead. Jim Morrison’s grave at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise was similarly disappointing - I was more excited that I’d chanced upon Balzac than the cheesy circus that was Jim Morrison’s. And obviously, all the best patisseries and cafés were to be found on the back streets, hidden away from the main boulevards and tourist attractions, through doors that stick and with menus written on the chalkboard behind the counter. And the tiny bars filled with parisians, huddled around tiny tables drinking wine and beer and sharing hunks of bread and pate, cold meats and cheese served on wooden platters resembling a chopping board. Next time I go (yes, I’m already planning a next time), I’m going to try the credit-card-operated bicycle rental scheme, and also do some clothes shopping. Thinking back now, I was ill-prepared to confront the boutiques of le Marais, but now that I’ve got some experience of the area and of the stores, I know exactly which brands I like and where they are. So now the plan is to start budgeting for those 100% cashmere jumpers by Zadig et Voltaire and the linen-and-silk dresses by Ba&Sh. there’s a coffee@ on the way to work in the mornings, and i stop there to get my small soya cappucino, a quick glance at the morning headlines and and bit of the chat to the baristas (and baristress?). i get along particularly well with one of them, a girl from auckland. this evening i popped in on the way back to buy some food to supplement my dinner and she popped her head out and ran towards me and gave me a high-five exclaiming that they’d found the PERFECT flat in highbury islington. i was genuinely happy for her, and we stood around the counter chatting about this place she’d found. it made me smile, as i walked out, thinking how amazing it really is, this intersection of our lives - we’re not complete strangers, we can talk about her new flat, and yet i still don’t know her name. or she mine. y’know, it’s been a strange weekend. but tomorrow i go back to work and routine returns, at least until friday night. as much as i think i like excitement and adventure, maybe all i really want is a hot chocolate and a lie-in under the duvet with a good book. maybe. or maybe i’m just not sure about myself outside of work, where there are clear boundaries and where i know i’m perfectly capable of carrying out the tasks given to me. or even if i’m not, it’s okay because i’m not expected to be good at anything. people are much harder to be certain about. - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - but anyway, i was sitting on top of my duvet on my bed with the papers spread out all around me and the sun just hitting the top of my head. and it appears out of the blue, this memory of rob, his friend who is an actor (matt?), and i on primrose hill sledging down the slopes with canteen trays on our bums. we’d stolen the trays from our halls of residence, took the bus and walked through regents park and climbed that hill with those trays in our hands, like so much armour against the cold. when we reached the top, the kids all had way cooler stuff than we had. but it was fun, and we had a snowball fight and then took the bus back again when it got too dark to see. that was my first winter in london. how far we’ve all come since. A Softer World i love this series. photography and dark humour. honestly, what else could be better? 1. i’ve moved into a room in a house with 5 other random strangers 2. it’s in peckham 3. i’m not dissatisfied with life at the moment 4. work starts soon - i am woefully unprepared for its reality 5. banoffee pie is still one of the best things to cheer me up on a winter’s day. especially after a night out in the company of too much rum and dancing. yum. it’s funny how it takes time to hit you. you go around thinking it’s okay and everything’s fine, and that it’ll take much more than this to reduce you to tears. and then something happens, completely unrelated, and it all comes down like a sledgehammer. but i guess it’s about getting used to it. there’s been a shift, almost imperceptible. partly inevitability, partly understanding. realisation takes many forms, and enlightenment comes only from stepping away from the minute details. but they’ve (it’s?) fallen into place, just, while i was playing pool with the boys strangely enough. i’m not even sure what it is. i just know that i felt a calmness settle, and a sudden feeling of knowing. although i don’t know yet what i know. it might be a new year thing, anticipating the resolutions i’ll be thinking about while on the flight back to london. but then again, it might just be a leaving thing. doesn’t matter, though. it’s all a means to an end, and the end right now is very clear. it’s the path there that’s obscured. i’m ready to leave. i woke up the other day with that thought in my head. i didn’t know why, it must have been my sub-conscious telling me what i’m only consciously discovering several days later. it’s time to get on with it, time to begin the next phase of my life. the problems here (and there), they’ll remain unresolved and probably will for a long time more. but then again, i’ve lived with them for a long time now, so there’s no real rush to force a solution when there are other much more important things to deal with. like housing, work and my future. i feel like i’ve done what i can, and there’s not much more i can do without giving it up completely. so, right now i’m perfecting my handover procedure and everything will be complete. -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- 你那天讲对了 －－ 有时辛福比快乐重要。 从今我会用心寻找辛福，若辛福能与快乐合濒那当然最完美。 若之内没你，我就也得接受这一切只是上天安排的一场长绵游戏。 但她也说得对啊 －－ 快乐不也是一种辛福？ -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- i’ve been trying to change my flight, but so far all i’ve got is a latenight flight on the 31st (so i guess there’ll be no new years celebration for me with anybody but the airplane) or on the 16th of january which is cutting it just a bit too close to when i start work. considering i’m homeless and all that. but i’m on the waitlist for other dates as well so who knows. i’m doing my hardest to sort things out but everything’s still all up in the air and i realise that new year’s is only 2 weeks away and honestly, i’m already starting to miss singapore. that familiar achy feeling of loss and loneliness that begins every time i leave somewhere for an extended period of time. i guess everything just takes getting used to. but after 4 years of impermanence, i still find it difficult to say goodbye to [ ] and [ ] and [ ] and [ ]. and this time around,it’s going to be even harder. and then sometimes old friends surprise you. it’s funny how our lives intersect at various stages, and how we’re all part of the same web. there aren’t very many people who i feel this comfortable with.