Call This A Mix.

So this is going to probably be a mix of photoblog/rant/off-the-cuff thoughts and what else have you. I’m in a bit of a thinking mood at the mo.

So last weekend. Let’s start there, shall we?

Didn’t get particularly much done. But I did head down to Welly and the French Lady was kind enough to give me a lift down. ‘Course, the company was much enjoyed as well. And no, Sociologist. Don’t make pukey-faces. This is not supposed to be a romantic statement.

After I put this picture up, I realised that most of the pictures that I took over the weekend are food pictures. Oh well. Deal with it. +D

So we started off nice and healthy at Maccas with the usual Kiwi Big Breakfast.

See the irony in that statement?

And as much as I like the convenience of breakfast being right there and me not having to cook it, I looked at the contents and my first thought was, “I could do better than this. Any day.”

One of the things that was mentioned to us as both French Lady and I were the first customers of the day was that we were getting fresh eggs used for our scrambled eggs. We thought that this was a nice touch but then, the staff decided to really prove to us that fresh eggs were used in the making of our breakfast.

 

After taking two bites, the French Lady soon discovered that our eggs were indeed, fresh. So fresh that we needed that extra calcium carbonate to kick start our morning nutrition. She complained but got nothing. Sucks. Although I did kind of hear the poor boy who was the chef getting an earful from the manager about the eggs so I guess they were at least proactive about the whole thing.

I turned up here after about 2.5 hours drive on behalf of the French Lady who put up with my incompetence regarding map reading. And to think I lived about 15 minutes away from here 2 years ago. I think I was definitely in the wrong school/university.

Now these were a nice touch, I must admit. It was bright and sunny and the windows were awesome and it just all kind of hit me as to what I might have potentially missed out on with not doing dance as a career and instead, walking steadfastly to the hospital 5 minutes further down the road everyday.

I walked in and the whole thing was a bit of a dream come true. Imagine what I could have done with my talent if I had worked/studied in this place. The place was modern, airy, funky, gym-like. They didn’t have classes. They had dance halls and speakers and sound systems all ready for your laptop or iPod to blast your song of choice. Students, both male and female, clad in singlets and shorts or cargo pants or tutus or skirts or leggings mingling outside the studios, stretching, chatting, practising spins, turns, jumps, leaps, pirouettes, and poses whilst inside, students rhythmically followed music doing incredible stretches and splits in time with a more limber-than-usual instructor. Pianos galore in the corner and ballet barres await in front of gleaming mirrors, ready for the day’s work and sweat and tears.

Oh, why and how did I end up doing physiotherapy again?

Posters proclaiming the latest performance by drama artists and dancers alike. Beats lecture and lab schedules any day, if you ask me. Bleh.

Location: Drama Four. The Choreography was going to happen here.

And stepping into the studio felt a bit like coming home. I’ve always been used to dancing with mirrors and to have a proper dance floor and the right music/speakers/shoes/gear just made everything click in place.

I had my reservations, though. There was a whole bunch of people that I hardly knew that I was going to be spending pretty much 12 hours of practice with and the only person that I was familiar with was Mama Salsa. But I, being obsessive compulsive regarding dance and everything to do with it, told myself that I was here to learn a choreography first of all and secondly to get some socialising in place. If I felt like it. Which I don’t, usually.

Spot the token random Asian guy in the group. Talk about feeling out of place. Good fun, though. I think I work better when I’m on the move.

The choreography was hard, no doubt. Especially since most of us only had the basics of the dance in place rather than more moves and we were expected to do some really hard and complicated choreography. A comment that I passed on to someone else was that if I had known that the routine was going to be that complex, I wouldn’t have done it in the first place. But all good now, though. We’re getting there. Slowly but surely. I’m tempted to put the name of the team here but I’m wondering how much publicity we’re wanting to get at the moment so until further notice, this bunch of dance vigilantes shall remain unnamed.

As much as this looks like a rubbish bin, its not. That’s lunch. Shredded chicken with some peanuts, a large orange and a large apple. I pretty much had the same thing two days in a row for lunch and honestly, that kept me dancing for hours. Good thing to have, really. Didn’t feel tired at all and I think I mastered the routine quite well. Initially, Mama Salsa had inquired whether Cleopatra and I were keen to debut the choreography earlier on in the year but team decision was that it was done as a team. Sucks to be me but it was a fair call.

And this is where this picture came in. During lunch and I got bored and noticed that when I pointed my camera phone at the sunspots on the floor, the entire thing darkened to show only this. Artsy-fartsy shot. Just because I thought that someday, I could even try my hand at some amateur photography.

And this was Lefty of the ole faithful pair that lasted me throughout the weekend, holding my aching feet up and allowing me to do spins, dips, slides, and the general whole dancing action footwork.

And the rest of the team goofing off during lunch half hour. This was taken on day 2 of the weekend so half of them were nursing hangovers and some totally decide to pass out from tiredness/not sleeping enough from the drunken antics of the night before. Convenient that there were mats in the corner. The rest that were still conscious decide to catch up on gossip.

Notice the angle of the shot. I’m away from the crowd because my social skills aren’t particularly the best and I’m more comfortable taking photos from my vantage point than to try and figure out what everyone had done when they were alcoholically biased last night.

The French Lady had questioned me about what on earth did we as Malaysians eat. And so thus, still trying to hang on to bits and pieces of what remained of my patriotism and the whole Malaysian pride thing, I decided to take her to the only place I knew in Welly that served half decent traditional Malaysian food. For those of you reading who live in Welly, you probably would know where that place is.

And if you look carefully at the above picture, you can see the French Lady’s right arm. +D That’s all we’re showing today of her, folks.

*picture was taken courtesy of my trusty but soon dying Sony Ericsson k800i because the French Lady likes old decaying funky buildings. I personally think there’s something really bohemian and hip about living in a place older than my great-grandma.*

So I started off with, what else? Starters. Typical normal stuff you’d get back home. Um. Typical is debatable.

Maybe this wasn’t a particularly traditional Malaysian dish. Fried wontons? Please. That’s to satisfy the Western crowd. We Malaysians like our wontons soaked in soup and filled with minced pork. But this was chicken and I was hungry and this was a good shot with the macro setting on.

And what could be more Malaysian than good ole satay/sate. Though this wasn’t traditional either. Good satay/sate should be slivers of chicken/beef stuck onto wooden bamboo skewers and barbecued over hot coals while an elderly pakcik/makcik fans the dying flames and get the meat to a nearly but well controlled burnt crisp. We had chicken cubes lightly grilled and then probably skewered post-grill, making it a bit too chunky rather than mouthful-by-mouthful like the meat slivers back home. The sauce, though it didn’t look too bad here, in reality resembled baby puke from my perspective. The French Lady took one look and said it had the consistency of cat puke. Well, at least we agreed on the puke bit. But there was no peanut butter involved, only actual peanut bits that were a tad too clumpy and didn’t really coat the satay well. Good try, though. I commend them on their attempt to make satay sauce from scratch. It still needs a lot more work.

The mains were a bit of a toss up. I personally had my own favourites of what I would call typical Malaysian fare. Roti Canai, for one. Cha Kway Teow would be the next. And for die hard Sibu-rians, Kam Pua Mee is a must.

But adapt I needed to and adapt I did. After browsing the menu, I decided that the best way to get the French Lady to share the love of Malaysian food (haha, tour guide me!) would be to get nasi lemak and Hainanese Chicken Rice.

So we got the usual rice cooked in santan, beef rendang, one half boiled egg, cucumber slices, peanuts, and sambal. Only thing missing was probably the sliced fried squid ring-ish things and ikan bilis – salted anchovies fried with the peanuts. Not bad, although the rice was a tad plain. Fragrant, though. The French Lady thought it was nice but she wasn’t a big fan of spicy. I wanted to show that a true Malaysian can take any degree of spicy and ended up dabbing my forehead with a soaking wet napkin due to overproductive sweat glands and chugging down water by the bottle. In short, she found it highly amusing while I was dying on the inside from the heat.

This was a dish I was really looking forward to. Even back home, this was one of my favourite dishes whether it was authentically cooked by an actual Hainanese person or whether it was from the Singapore Chicken Rice (SCR) franchise. Things missing out that I would have liked seen was the sweet pickled cucumber slices and the mandatory (like duh!) bowl of chicken stock/soup that the chicken and the rice had been boiled in.

And the chili sauce? Totally underestimated. I spent like 2 minutes trying to save the remnants of what was left of my tongue after the sambal sauce. Again, macho-ism= EPIC FAIL.

Met up with the Sociologist and MediMart to introduced the French Lady to them and we went to this really neat bar where I had an alcoholic drink which made me understand why I stuck to generic mixers of rum-and cokes. My already tortured-to-bits tastebuds and actual proper decent alcohol don’t get along too well. All I tasted was the alkie.

*Just realised. It seems as though I’m doing a restaurant review update thingie. THAT WASN’T THE PLAN!*

Oh well. Hee. I did mention that most of the pictures were of food. Forewarned is forearmed.

Welly. Ah. Dear Welly. As much as you promise nice and wonderfully clear weather, I don’t think I can ever believe your big lying mouth again. Especially when we go from the above…

To this. In a span of less than 8 hours. Honestly.

So while you’re still salivating from the awesome pictures of food, here’s some more.

The French Lady and I were hunkering for breakfast and we thought we’d try this spot. It wasn’t particularly well known as a breakfast location but we hoped for the best.

It is more well known for its desserts and the luxuriousness of its dessert menus but we wanted to carpe diem and pray that they would at least match their reputation for sweet stuff in their savoury department.

They didn’t disappoint.

Piled high with kransky x2, tomato halves x2, mushrooms x2, bacon x3, poached eggs x2, hash browns x2, toast x2. A veritable Noah’s Ark of breakfast plus an extra bacon slice stowaway. It sank down nicely, aided by a cup of tea.

Yes, that is 2 sugar sachets. Yes, I’m going to die of diabetes. Shut up and drool.

Tea was a bit bland. We suspected trim milk as the guilty party. Trim milk and tea ≠ not good. After all, you’d want full cream goodness in your cuppa, not some half-arsed watered down version of cow’s breast milk.

And before we headed back to good ole’ Wangy, there was only one real place to go for dinner.

I remembered asking her whether she had ever been to Lone Star before and when was the last time she had BBQ ribs. Following answers were no, never, and the last time was ages ago where the ribs were home cooked. Incredibly tasty and with lashings of love as per usual with home made food but as I had not a clue where on earth to begin, I introduced her to Lone Star ribs. She’s obviously never stopped ranting about them since.

French Lady says: I can never be a vegetarian!

Classic.

We’ve been to a few different Lone Star restaurants and I’m sure she’ll agree with me, the one we had up in Not-So-Old Plymouth was still the best one thus far. The coleslaw was brilliant, the ribs, divine, potatoes slightly battered and crispy-ly hot.

Though I’m not quite getting why the ribs and the coleslaw/potatoes had to be separated when we were served here. The first time we had them, the ribs were piled high on top of everything else and the rib sauce drenched everything beneath it so it was rib-flavoured throughout. This was a tad annoying to have to eat off two plates rather than one. Not only that, the ribs weren’t even smothered properly in the rib sauce! But perhaps its just us being pedantic about these things. Lone Star Not-So-Old Plymouth still gets my vote of confidence.

My dish. I was craving a steak. And I ended up having two ribs as well as French Lady got full. Gotta love being the human food/waste disposal unit. +D

And what a way to end an awesome meal. This got French Lady moaning about how good this was all the way back to Wangy. But I must admit, this was a good dessert. Of all the times I’ve eaten dessert here back in ‘08, I don’t think I’ve ever been that impressed with it until now. As we were both waddling from the previous meal, we split this one in two. Thank goodness for that because if we actually had a plate each, the dessert would have split me in two.

And the moon was bright that night. And this ends the weekend tale.

Honestly didn’t expect to write that much.

And moving on to the rather more mundane/emo-ing bits. You’re more than welcome to close the tab/window right now if you wish.

Pharmacist M and I were discussing about whether we thought that life was ours to control (as in we held our destiny in our choices) or whether life was fated to happen (as in no matter what you do, there’s no way in hell you could escape your fate in life.) After much discussion, we ended up with the solution that there were elements of both self-controlled destiny as well as life’s fate in reality. However, it depended strongly on which one we believed in more. I favoured the “I control my own destiny” approach whereas she thought that “life was pre-determined” and there’s nothing she could do about it.

Dory had decided to write a similarly entitled post so I thought that I’ll link on to it and let y’all decide for yourselves which is which.

I thought to myself today in my quiet moments about what I had imagined my life to be. Or what I had wanted it to be.

Somehow, my focus on this primarily has been around what my future home would look like. I had envisaged something minimalistic, chrome and metal and silver. Hard and soft edges blending together. Something like this.

I’m a sucker for a modern, minimalistic apartment.

I would be sitting on my couch with my feet up on the table, blow good manners. Latest laptop on lap, me typing away, creating wonder after wonder of my own successful dance business. I’m wanted, at the beck and call of men. I don’t answer to anyone, people come to me. And at night, I would draw back the curtains and look out over the city skyline, the sparkling lights, and get dressed in the finest tailor-cut suits with pure white linen shirts to head out for a night on the town.

And then I get woken up by a huge dose of reality and the fact that I’m living in a wooden house and apart from my two suitcases and two boxes, I basically own nothing else. Talk about wow factor, huh?

The Higher Authorities rang earlier and talked about work/life/dance/etc. Just the usual. They continued to encourage me to “hold on” and that things will be okay as long as I kept my head up and kept working away at it.

And after all the pep talk, I remembered one defining moment during work the week before where I pondered quietly to myself regarding my job and my career.

Its sad when you hate your job so much at that point in time but yet, you keep your mouth shut and the lies pouring like fine wine when the Higher Authorities ask you how its going and you tell them that things are fine and dandy because honestly, if you tell them the truth and what you really want to do with your life, you know that it will break their poor hearts. So you keep your mouth shut and you don’t utter a single word. Isn’t that right? Just to keep the peace, boy, just to keep chaos from breaking loose.

Smile and no one will know the difference – Poet, 2007.

In a conversation I had with the French Lady earlier this week, I mentioned that I had a look at my contract. And realised that there was no end date for my position which basically meant that I could leave anytime I want, as long as I provided a month’s notice.

She kind of looked down at the floor and shrugged as in to say, “Well.”

And in that moment, I would have emptied my wallet to know what she was thinking.