A busy quiet Sunday

I was online at home on Saturday night after the cooking demo and my friend was like: “Why aren’t you out? It’s Saturday night, you should be out.” And he was right. But maybe it was the heat, maybe it was all the food we ate, maybe it was just the weekend after a long, hard week, I was just absolutely drained and more than happy to have a quiet night at home.

I was planning for a quiet Sunday as well, and it was pleasant albeit somehow packed. Yoga. A museum visit. Some thinking and reading at a café. Church. And an evening outdoor concert in the park.

The exhibition at the Museum was of a Story of the Image: Old & New Masters from Antwerp.

Now, I’m no art critic and I can appreciate something like a Rubens masterpiece. But some of the modern art pieces are a little deep for me.

However, I found Berlinde De Bruyckere’s In Flanders’ Fields (2000) bizarre yet absolutely fascinating.

I’m not sure if it was the awkward poses of the horses in death, or my interest in the world wars including Flanders’ Field, or simply because the sculptures had real horse hides, but were curiously featureless and that reminded me of the banal-but-funny Internet meme, Charlie the Unicorn. (My deepest apologies for comparing the stark suffering of a battlefield to Charlie the Unicorn, but that’s really what went through my mind.)

The outdoor concert at the Botanic Gardens really drew the crowds. Little wonder because it was the New York Philharmonic playing. The Principle Brass to be exact. Which was just five members. Still, it was a good show as they played music from New York, including compositions from Irving Berlin and, inevitably, a medley from The West Side Story.

The Singapore Chinese Orchestra, which opened for them, put up a great performance too. I heard they had to extend their performance due to unexpected delays as the members of the New York Philharmonic were late because their flight had been delayed.

Again, it might be me bringing my own personal experiences into an event, but their highlights of Carmen brought back memories from Prague, when my friends and I caught the opera from the nosebleed standing section of the opera house. (Thankfully, Carmen isn’t just one of the more easy to digest operas, it’s also one of the shorter ones.)

Anyway, in spite of the crowds, I still found both concerts a pleasant end to an unbusy weekend. It had to be the relaxed state of mind I was slipping into. The afternoon of art and nature does wonders, even if briefly until the week begins again.

Lovyn’ the cookyn

Attended a cooking class on Saturday. Well, the programme said “class” though I think it’s more of a demonstration. And with twenty women in an enclosed space, with ample wine at our disposal, at some points it seemed more like the final mark down at a Jimmy Choo sale than a kitchen.

Fortunately, Mervyn — that’s our cooking instructor (he doesn’t call himself a chef, just someone who’s passionate about cooking) — was well prepared for situations like these.

He’ll ring his handbell loudly and sternly, a signal that us over-zealous Nigella wannabes should put our knives/wooden spoons/wine glasses down and listen to his tip of what spices to use on the 60 king prawns we’ve skewered.

(Tip: Soak your wooden skewers in water overnight; this way they are less likely to burn on the grill.)

Anyway, demonstration or class, it was still a great way to spend a sunny Saturday morning. Mervyn took us through 5 recipes, from a starter, a side through to main course and pasta, and dessert.

He described the steps, showed us briefly how it was done before passing the knife/wooden spoon/spatula to us. There was only one kitchen counter and stove, so we all took turns cooking. How hands on you wanted to be was up to you. Mervyn also had a barbecue grill out on the balcony.

(Tip: Press your forefinger to your thumb and touch the fleshy area of your palm under your thumb. That’s about how tender a rare steak could be if you pressed it. Press your middle finger to your thumb; that’s medium rare. Third finger is medium. Pinkie is well done.)

We ate what we helped to prepare.

The tuna carpaccio is the easiest yet looks most impressive. The gnocchi was the most fun (okay, so we had a little bit more of a Play Doh moment than necessary), and we did a bacon version as well as a Chinese sausage version, which means now we have learnt one fusion dish as well. Hah.

The tenderloin was amazing. The mustard he served hails from Pommery, France and is available in a local gourmet mart.

The warm chocolate lava cake the yummiest and the most sinful. One thing I discovered about baking and making desserts is: you never realise how much sugar and butter and cream goes into them. Makes you wonder why we bother to watch our calories on every other part of our meals if we’re only going to have dessert to ruin the best laid plans.

By the end of the session, we were so full we couldn’t move. Slipping into a food coma, for sure, but a happy and contented one.

Highly recommend everyone to try these cookyn parties with Mervyn. Pull some friends together for a session or make a couple thing out of it. The ingredients he uses are quality and the preparation is easy. If twenty of us can cook well enough and not poison ourselves to call in sick for work on Monday, so can you.

www.cookyn-with-mervyn.com

Happy Diwali

It’s Diwali, the Festival of Lights which signifies the victory of good over evil within every one of us.

Planning a slow weekend in search of peace and quiet, I caught a documentary about Varanasi, the City of Lights and their celebrations for Diwali. It is a holy city filled with history and religion, no wonder as it lies along the holy river Ganges. 

Fascinating. India is one of the places I’ve not been to yet. For sure it’s on my list. I would imagine that it’s another world altogether. No number of visits to Little India, by far the most exotic district of our tiny island, will come close to preparing one for the real thing. Even to Indians born here, visiting India is an eye opener. Jun and I want to go backpacking there. Eventually. Hopefully not alone — it’s doable for women to travel in India but it’s a well known fact that at some point, they’ll get groped by the locals. (Maybe if we bring K along, we’ll be safe only because no one will want to grope us. Hee.) Seriously, I wonder when I’ll finally get to visit.

So many places. So little time (and money).

Grounded

I haven’t been writing because I’ve been antsy. (Well, there was the stomach flu last week, too, but that’s another story.) I’ve been antsy because my mind’s all over the place. My mind’s all over the place because everyone is all over the world, but me. I’m feeling grounded. No, not grounded like I did something wrong and have been confined to my home. Though it sure feels like it. But grounded in that I am here, suffering wanderlust, but unable to satiate the craving. London. Shanghai. Phuket. Sydney. Taipei. India. Iceland. New Zealand. Quebec. Seoul. Tokyo. The South China Sea. For work or for vacation, practically everyone is on the road. Even my mother is going to Hong Kong and Macau for a long weekend. Oh, bother.

Chilling beauty

I’ve seen pictures of icebergs before. But few as breathtaking as these, by David Burdeny (Canada). Imagine if you were there and these majestic structures were right before your eyes. One of the reasons why explorers to the Antarctic bring oxygen tanks along.

There are more spectacular shots as well as the photographer’s bio at the Young Gallery. Take a look. Stunning icebergs. And penguins.

I’m writer, copy writer.

It was a dreary start to the week. Bad news and fighting fires.

The highlight (and saving grace) was when I was roped in to help out in a wild goose chase mobile treasure hunt. I had to tweet clues and players had to solve them and locate me to win.

Exciting, but a little bit stressful at the start because you want the game to play for a while and not have it finish at the second clue.

What was that movie with Brad Pitt as the spy? What was the logic of that? I thought the point of these spies was to blend in and not stick out like the world’s sexiest man… (Ditto with those debonair men on Her Majesty’s Service…)

Anyway, I can’t say I didn’t relish the thrill.

Of having to stand at the designated checkpoint for long enough. Of furtively tweeting secret messages and trying to not be conspicuous, especially when I’ve already identified some of the players searching for me. Of moving from one location to the next, melding into the sea of faceless office workers out on their lunch hour.

At one point, I was sitting on the bench at one of the locations when a player approached one of the decoys a metre away from me, thinking she was The One. Just like a spy movie, I perfunctorily got up and left the scene, swiftly but not too immediately, casually and not to deliberately.

Gotta stay two steps ahead of them. Gotta blend in with the lunch crowd. (Actually, quite easily done, if you know me;  I’m no Bond, and no Bond girl either). Gotta keep moving and keep the game going…

Finally, after enough excitement had passed, it was time to be discovered and give the prize away.

Being a secret agent might be quite an exciting career. But as far as “interesting” jobs go, advertising’s not too far off (even if it’s a lot of deadlines and fighting fires).

No two days need be the same. And the game’s still changing.

“Wow, stomach flu diet. You’re amazing!”

Stomach flu on Tuesday. Gastric on Thursday. I think it’s gastric. It could have been an alien virus invading my intestines and wreaking havoc on my digestive system. Between hunching over and emitting strange low frequency noises, I have no idea what hit me.

In any case, I lost almost 1.5kg in less than two days. Wow, stomach flu diet, you’re amazing!

The power of Stefan Sagmeister

Here’s a post not really about doing nothing, but the opposite — taking time off to do even more things than you could do if you had a day (ha!) job and deadlines to meet.

The Power of Time Off, by Stefan Sagmeister filmed in July 2009 at the Ted Conference in Oxford, England.

Not everyone has the luxury of being in a line that affords a practice like this. (Will our clients kindly not advertise their shampoo for a year?) Not everyone has the wealth and means to do something like this. (“Yeah, you see, on that rent cheque/mortgage payment/…”) And I wouldn’t even go near how one would broach a topic like this with one’s spouse…

Then again, not everyone is Stefan Sagmeister.

Still, one dreams. And buys a lottery ticket.

(That said, if anyone would like to contribute to my sabbatical fund, please feel free to drop me a line below. Thanks.)

A day of doing nothing, brought to you by the stomach flu

Doing nothing is hard. With today’s urban lifestyle, time is such a luxury, idling is harder than some might think. Work, working late nights, deadlines, meeting up with friends, family time, work, chores, laundry, books to read, dragon boat training, yoga class, work, did I mention work?

I was down with a stomach flu today. Took a sick day and thought I could do some writing and idea thinking from home. No such luck. I felt pukey and slept all day. (Still, it was better than last night when I felt pukey and must-stay-within-ten-steps-of-a-toilet crappy at the same time.)

Still, if you have better luck at doing nothing, here’s 10 to try:

10 Ways to Enjoy Doing Nothing
by Tom Hodgkinson

Advice on how to switch off — no thoughts of your to-do list — from a man who has devoted his career to the idyllic art of idling.

One morning, nearly 20 years ago, I was lying in bed. It was late. I was supposed to be working, but I seemed glued to the mattress. I hated myself for my laziness. And then, by chance, I picked up a collection of writings by Dr. Samuel Johnson, the 18th-century wit and the compiler of the first comprehensive English dictionary.

In the book were excerpts from a weekly column he had written called The Idler, in which the great man celebrated idleness as an aspiration, writing in 1758, “Every man is, or hopes to be, an Idler.”

This was an epiphany for me. Idleness, it seemed, was not bad. It was noble. It was excessive busyness that caused all the problems!

So I got out of bed and started a magazine called The Idler, in order to remind people of the forgotten, simple pleasures of doing nothing. I even wrote books about it. And, yes, you could say that idleness became my life’s work. So, based on all those years of tough-going research, here are my top tips for people who find it difficult to just be.

1. Banish the guilt. We are all told that we should be terribly busy, so we can’t laze around without that nagging feeling that we need to be getting stuff done. I rejected my guilt upon learning that Europeans in the Middle Ages felt no shame for lolling about. Their favorite philosopher, Aristotle, had praised the contemplative life, and the monks spent a lot of time just praying and chanting. Guilt for doing nothing is artificially imposed on us by a Calvinistic and Puritanical culture that wants us to work hard. When you understand that it hasn’t always been this way, it becomes easier to shake it off.

2. Choose the right role models. Most of the great musicians and poets were idlers. So feed yourself a diet of John Lennon, Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, and the like. Carrying a slim volume of verse in your purse or pocket can be therapeutic―something from Keats, who wrote of “evenings steep’d in honied indolence,” or Wordsworth, of course. (What could be more idle than wandering lonely as a cloud?) It’s delightful to read a few lines while you’re on a bus or a train, then stare out the window and ponder their meaning.

3. Sketch a flower. If you are new to idling and feel compelled to be purposefully occupied, sketching a flower at the kitchen table can be an excellent way to bring some divine contemplation into your life. The act of drawing makes you observe the bloom in a way you never have before. All anxieties fly away as you lose yourself in close study. And at the end of it you have a pretty little sketch.

4. Go bumbling. Bumbling is a nice word that means “wandering around without purpose.” It was indulged in by the poets of 19th-century Paris. They called themselves flâneurs and were said to have taken tortoises around on leads, which gives you an idea of the tempo of their rambles. Children are good bumblers. Try making a deliberate effort to slow down your walking pace. You’ll find yourself coming alive, and you’ll enjoy simply soaking in the day.

5. Play the ukulele. The ukulele is the sound of not working. My wife hates it for that very reason: The twang of those strings means that I am not doing something useful around the house. I keep my ukulele in the kitchen and play it at odd moments, like while I’m waiting for the kettle to boil.

 

Okay, the article’s not mine (but the pictures are) so I’ll end here. And really, I just wanted to get to the ukulele part. I used to have a ukulele at home when I was a kid, but I don’t know where it’s disappeared to — a telling sign of how things have changed.

The whole article’s from Real Simple, so you can read it all here.

In a House called Hope

Went to a House Party for Hope last Friday, a sort of simultaneous worldwide event to raise funds for Kids with Cameras, through the screening of the Academy Award Winning documentary Born Into Brothels.

The documentary centres on several children who live in the red light district in Calcutta, where their mothers work as prostitutes. Without any help, these children, especially the girls, will most likely be prostitutes as well.

By arming them with cameras, New York-based photographer Zana Briski hopes to ignite the children’s imagination, build their self-esteem, and thus help them break out of the cycle of poverty.

And it is heartening to find some success stories. Such as that of Avijit, who is currently a film student at NYU.

The organisation is currently building a haven called Hope House, Asah Niwas, specially for the kids of Calcutta’s red light district. Here, up to 100 girls can come to live and develop the strength  and skills to change their own circumstances while remaining connected to their families. The children will receive free education through high school, courtesy of Buntain Foundation, an international organisation dedicated to helping the impoverished in India. 

Kids-with-Cameras.org