Okay, baking-type people, help me out here with this conundrum. I tried to bake cocoa-based brownies the other day (I prefer cocoa brownies to chocolate because they tend to come out fudgy, which I like, rather than cakey, which… well, I might as well bake a cake then, right?). I popped my butter, cocoa and sugar into a bowl, and set the bowl in a wide skillet of warm water to melt together. Only it didn’t, not properly anyway. Instead of the smooth melty substance I was expecting I got a kind of lumpy, half-solid mush, and nothing ever really melted. Sugar grains definitely didn’t. I attempted to bake it anyway, and predictably, it emerged from the oven like… hot lumpy half-solid mush. The taste was fine, but the texture was completely wrong. I could feel the sugar grains and cocoa powder separately, and the butter kind of leaked all over the place as a greasy mess.

What went wrong? I’ve made this recipe before with the exact same method and measurements, with good results, so it can’t be the recipe. Unless I grossly mis-measured something, in which case – what would it have been? Sugar? Cocoa? Or was it that my hot water bath wasn’t hot enough/water level wasn’t high enough? I really like this recipe and want to re-attempt it, so if anyone has any idea what can cause your ingredients not to blend properly like that, please float them. I’m baffled. (I am not a baker by nature, I’m more of a throw-random-things-together kind of cook…)

post-blogathon: still groggy and disoriented, but feeling good, mostly. i want my hour back :(

Live! Now!

PUT OUT THE FIRES

SEE YOU THEEEEERE.

i have no luck with hot surfaces. have got three separate burns this week alone from three different cooking appliances ;____;

From the fantastic Spring Awakening, which I finally got to watch with Nic yesterday afternoon, my favourite number, delightfully entitled “Totally F***ed” (I suppose they couldn’t really print expletives in the programme):

WARNING: do not watch this anywhere near parents, colleagues or easily offended people (unless you have quiet headphones or co-workers with a healthy sense of humour).

Speaking as someone who generally, rather prudishly, disapproves of the liberal use of swearwords in any media… this song is absolute genius. Honestly. It is possibly the best musical song to appear on the scene since “The Internet is for Porn” (and blasphemous as this might sound, I felt more of a high watching this than I did “Defying Gravity”…!).

The days vary a lot, now. Sometimes I feel I’m fighting a steep, steep uphill battle on all fronts; I have to remind myself every second not to lose heart, that it’s not personal, that there are many reasons why, that all I can do is keep plugging on. I don’t really want to carry doom and gloom around constantly though, so I’m glad that there are those other times when I am grateful for what I have (like, I don’t know, leave to remain? terribly important that) and for the support and encouragement that I have got.

I’ve been catching up with old correspondence – where “catching up” means “making a tiny, tiny dent in a massive backlog” – sending out whatever job applications I can, making plans to meet people, prepping for my blogathon, doing loads, or what feels like loads, of housework… it’s amazing how quickly chores build up, especially when you live alone and there isn’t a handy housemate (or two, or many) to help clean stuff. I’ve also been attempting to wrangle a new microwave out of my landlord for a few weeks now, watching copious amounts of GTO (anime and live-action) and rediscovering the joy of being able to take time in cooking now that I haven’t got to rush to work. I do still have a bit of a lingering “I’m an office drone” mindset sometimes, except my office is home and my work is, well, finding work.

With my strange, newfound freedom I also found time to finally plow through a few of my library books (which have been renewed 4 times and still aren’t finished) as well as read Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, which recently won the Newbery :) what can I say about it that hasn’t already been said? It’s Neil Gaiman, and it’s one of his best. I have to admit that much as I enjoy Neil’s work, it can be a little hit and miss sometimes. Not everything sticks with me and makes me feel like I’ve just experienced something special – Sandman did, Neverwhere did, Anansi Boys and Stardust were good fun but not quite so impactful. The Graveyard Book, however, is that rare thing which is enjoyable, thought-provoking, AND feel-good without being cheesy in the least, the last factor being increasingly rare these days when it comes in combination with the first two. I loved it to bits, so go read it if you haven’t!

Some days, I feel really evil. The thoughts that run through my head, the emotions I find myself feeling, really shock me; I wonder when I became a hardboiled cynic and opportunist, when I got so impatient, when I got so intolerant. :(

My old girlfriends are still the best. A day-long chat with Steffy and a half-hour phone call with Christie, which would’ve been 4x as long if overseas phone bills were not a factor, did wonders – not just for my mood (that’s putting it too mildly), but for, well my everything. I felt more grounded and more energised for having touched base: the sound of Christie’s voice was just so, so cheering, and somehow Steffy telling me “well, this is your life now” as I whined that I just want my passport back so that I could get on with life was… encouraging, and sympathetic, rather than overly blunt. I suppose only old girlfriends can get away with that, huh. And, I felt heartened by their belief in me -

山重水复疑无路,
柳暗花明又一村

Thanks Steffy. Post-it on my wall. :)

I never would have guessed it, as I’m actually a really lazy person who likes taking the easiest way to just about everything (it sounds weird but that’s why I always started essays so early – it is FAR less work and SO much easier to start early!), but – unemployment doesn’t agree with me at all. I feel really restless. Late mornings and afternoons are the worst… I find myself wondering what to do, where I’m going next, repeatedly refresing my email to see if any job prospects have got back to me, repeatedly refreshing job portals, repeatedly refreshing just about anything I can really, looking out the window and thinking I should be out there.

Maybe I’ll go out for a jog after I hit “Publish” on this.

The hoops I have had to jump through to sort my passport out – let’s not even mention the visa which I HOPE is contained therein – are unbelievable.

The week before I was due to trip off to Stratford for 2 weeks, I had a distinctly uncomfortable feeling that my passport might be posted back to me while I was away. The local Royal Mail branch only holds recorded items for one week before bouncing them back to the sender, so if they sent it in the first week of my being away, I would miss it entirely. I was torn as to what to do. I debated the merits of running back from Stratford to London over the first weekend on the off chance that I’d find a Royal Mail card about my passport in my mail tray. I agonised over costs (missing either a day at work or a weekend visit from Xin Hui, splurging on a ticket, spending an exhausting 5 hours on trains, the bloody Tube on a weekend) and benefits (possibly, my passport might be there?) and decided in the end to chance it and stay in Stratford.

Fast forward to me getting back to London, and wouldn’t you know it – of all the weeks, and all the days, that the Home Office had to post my passport back to me, it had to be the week I was dreading. Even more unbelievably, nobody seemed to know where it was. The Home Office said they hadn’t received it back, and Royal Mail said they’d bounced it back to them on 10 March. I must have spoken to at least 5 different personnel from these two agencies over today and yesterday. I was freaked out. I was a ball of nerves. And I still didn’t (don’t) know if I even have this visa!

Eventually, someone from the Home Office finally had the decency to call me back and acknowledge that, yes indeedy, my passport had indeed bounced back to them (after one week?? by recorded delivery?). It’s being re-posted to me again today (so they say) so fingers crossed, I should know by Thursday… And then, I’ll know at the very least where I’ll be for the rest of the year. There’s something to be said for little certainties.

Numbers thus far are: 5 job applications sent out over last week, 2 firm rejections, 2 unspoken ones, and 1 “we’ll be in touch”. On my to-do list: 3-4 other prospects.

It’s not me, it’s them, isn’t it? Seems this is the order of the day. Chin up, chin up, onwards and upwards… as best as I can.

i will catch up on correspondence soon, reply emails and messages i owe, and send new ones – promise promise, honest!

I have no idea what this mood is. Maybe it’s a buildup of my 2-week solo nomadism in Stratford, a phone conversation with my mum, the music I’ve been listening to, an introspective, much needed base-touching weekend with Charmain and Kevin ♥, and suddenly finding myself on a Sunday night in my room with no job to go to in the morning – but I’ve been drifting in and out of a static, comatose daze pretty much all evening and feeling really, really strange.

I feel nostalgic. Perhaps I should blame it all on the takoyaki at Camden Market, which set me awash with a whole flood of memories suddenly – summers (winters) in Sydney spent with my sister at Chatswood having takoyaki in the sunshine, nearly burning my tongue on takoyaki at Animania 2008 with my siblings, my dad bringing takoyaki home on Thursdays, and beyond that, the Tako Pachi stall in Taka which is as strong a symbol as any tying me to secondary school days and times spent hanging out in the Taka basement with the girls who’re still my best friends today. I don’t know why it’s stuck with me so much; I don’t even adore takoyaki or anything… I guess it might’ve had a similar effect if I’d spotted Beard Papa in the middle of Brixton Market or something. But Beard Papa doesn’t have all the additional familial connotations that takoyaki, for some reason, does.

And then I came back and spent a good couple of hours doing nothing but look at photos, which is always a dreadful idea when you’re already in a horribly nostalgic mood. I literally felt paralysed – not in a bad way, just, kind of – frozen in the moment, frozen in looking over my shoulder. I know I shouldn’t, I keep reminding myself not to be so clingy when it comes to the past, and others keep reminding me as well. But like a trainwreck, I couldn’t help myself. I kept looking, and looking, and clicking, and freezing in front of picture after picture.

Jump back to the present, and I can’t put a name to this feeling either. I feel like we’ve come so far, everyone, you, me, you and I. Even within a matter of short years, months, weeks, days, I feel like I’m not the same, that many people, many things are not the same. I feel like so much is circumstantial, I wonder what life would’ve been like had one little thing been different along the way and circumstances hadn’t transpired to unite us in the way they did. But I guess I’d be having speculations like these regardless, wouldn’t I?

There’s this incredible – I don’t know – outpouring of appreciation, maybe, for being here, for having met who I met along the way, for having built the relationships I did; suddenly it all seems really precarious and there are so many butterfly effects along the way that could’ve caused them never to happen, and I feel like I have to hang on, hang on desperately. I feel like I have a lot to say to a lot of people, but I don’t know how to. A part of me is still afraid of being honest with my feelings, a part of me is still speechless, a part of me still can’t say what it really wants to without waffling through it and padding everything with long-winded, self-referential verbiage, hiding the real message beneath a sea of words (if it’s even there anymore).

Most likely I’m going to wake up in the morning feeling bright-eyed all over again, read this over, and wonder what on earth I was smoking last night to have spouted all of the above. But right now, it is inescapable – this strange, strange nameless feeling, nameless mishmash of feelings, perhaps, rather than just one. I don’t know what it is. All I know is, it makes me feel like I need to run to you right now (you, reading this, you), and tell you everything I ever wanted to, and then pinch myself and hope I wake up to find that it was all just a dream (so I still have my secrets safe – shhh).

I know I’ve lapsed. I do have an excellent reason though, which is being completely internetless in Stratford-upon-Avon for two weeks, except when I was at work (and it really isn’t ideal to be blogging from work, is it?).

I’ve had a really good fortnight – and a really good 4.5 months of work experience, generally – but… I just have so, so many things on my plate now. I’ll post about it all some other time, I promise.

In the meantime, I am still blogathonning for a worthy cause, but have pushed it back to the last weekend in March instead because I am exhausted and will probably drop dead if I attempt it next week! I will send out an email to everyone soon. Keep your eyes peeled and donate if you haven’t. /blatant

(I wrote the stuff below while on the train back to London yesterday. It was very cathartic, and probably a bit incomprehensible, but hey.)

Some days I feel like I can do anything. Looking out the window now, with “God Knows” playing on my iPod and rolling Midlands countryside passing me by, I’m hit by this overwhelming feeling of loving it all – flocks of sheep, deserted stretches of road and railway track, quaint little rows of houses, wide green-brown acres of land, factories, industrial sites, bare trees, grey clouds with patches of blue peeking through – everything. It’s good to know travel hasn’t lost all its romance for me yet. And I feel, here in the heart of England with a suitcase and backpack next to me, that I have the world precariously perched in the palm of my hand. Fragile, yes, but there.

Some days I feel like I’ve done a lot in the past that I regret, and I regret not doing a lot of things too. Sometimes the guilt is still overpowering. I’m overcome by thoughts of what I should’ve said and done, by the choices that have passed me by, and I think, hey, I thought I was past all this sort of wistful hindsight, but I guess I’m not after all. Maybe I won’t ever be. I guess I would be losing quite a big part of myself if I ever truly became so.

I think I’m just hopping, kind of, from lilypad to lilypad right now, trying not to drown and looking for the next safe place to leap over to. It’s not really a lifestyle I’d want to lead in the long term, but for now (for now) there’s still something ever so slightly edge-of-your-seat about it all that gets my pulse racing a tiny bit quicker. We’ve just pulled into Bicester North and a big sign reads “Alight here for Bicester Village”. It reminds me that there’s a lot of the world I haven’t seen or experienced. I doubt I’ll ever find an occasion to alight at Bicester North and visit Bicester Village, but they’re there, aren’t they? These little pockets of the new and unfamiliar.

With my knuckling down and starting to look for a full time job, it feels a little like I’m coming to an end of sorts, the end of this period of wandering. I have to settle down, for a while at least. And I’m looking forward to having some certainty and stability (if a full time job ever comes). But I think I’ll miss the restless roaming, in a way.

it’s my own design
it’s my own remorse
help me to decide
help me make the most of freedom and of pleasure
nothing ever lasts forever
everybody wants to rule the world

I guess I have to keep looking forward, relentlessly forward, but there’s always going to be something sepia and magnetic about what’s past. And I think, maybe, I can live with that.