tell me about it

A dose of humility, empathy, guilt and chastisement.

Thank You, Lord.

These crockery by Jill Rosenwald are simply gorgeous. I wouldn’t want an entire set, but a few bowls or plates as centerpieces would look really fabulous. These are hand-thrown and hand-painted, and cost a lot of money. But they are so pretty.

Sighs with pleasure.

Gasp! You don’t need a tandoori oven to make good tandoori chicken! (I should have known this – my previous workplace made amazing tandoori chix with nary a tandoori oven in sight.)

4 skinless chicken thighs
4 skinless chicken legs
1/4 teaspoon fresh saffron or saffron powder
1 tablespoon boiling water
3/4 teaspoon coarse salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon paprika (I used pimente d’Espelette)
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder, depending on how hot you want it
10 turns fresh ground black pepper
1 cup whole milk plain yogurt
juice of one fresh lime
1 tablespoon finely-minced fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely minced

1. Soak the saffron in the boiling water for five minutes. Meanwhile, with a sharp knife, score the chicken flesh deeply, each piece slashed three times. Put in a large zip-top freezer bag.

2. Add all the remaining ingredients to the bag, including the saffron (and the water) and express out most of the air, then seal the top. Massage the bag to mix the ingredients and coat the chicken pieces.

3. Refrigerate the chicken overnight.

4. Remove the chicken pieces from the marinade and fry the pieces with the thick marinade clinging to them, in a hot oiled grill pan until dark on one side. Flip and fry until darkened on the other side.

Slip a knife in the meat and make sure the chicken is cooked through. If not, add a bit of water to the pan to loosen any caramelized bits, and place in a 350F (180C) oven for about 10 minutes, or until cooked through.

Recipe from the irrepressible David Lebovitz

Maybe it’s because most of our friends are well-off and don’t have to worry about money. It just gets to me that they don’t understand how we’re struggling to make ends meet, that he has to work extra hard to earn that extra cash so we can pay for the house and furnishings. Maybe money comes to them so easily they don’t know how hard we work to make enough to live by. Maybe they’ve forgotten how much “just” a few hundred dollars can buy.

Because when I say that we’re not going on holiday this year because we need to save money, and you scoff and say “It’s barely going to cost you both a thousand dollars!” I want to drag you to a chair and sit you down and give you a full, annotated list of exactly what a thousand dollars can buy us.

Maybe to you, a thousand dollars is a new pair of shoes. Designer sunglasses. Barely enough to buy a ticket to the States. But a thousand bucks is a hell of a lot to me.

A new refrigerator. A dining room set. Bookshelves and tables. Part of a new kitchen – a hood, a stove, an oven.

Plates, to eat out of.

Yes, we’ve already got it better than most people – at least we have enough money to buy our own place. At least we eat well, we have a comfortable future. But it irritates me that my friends don’t understand the value of money anymore. So they can afford to drop a couple of thousand and fly to Paris, to Tokyo, to America. I have never been able to afford that. I scrimped to fly to Bangkok, I stay in budget hotels, I eat from street vendors. No macarons from St. Pierre, no Coach bags, no holidays in cold countries. Ikea furniture, not Barang Barang. A Samsung fridge instead of a Fisher and Paykel. I shop at This Fashion, for crying out loud – I don’t treat myself to Kate Spade shoes or even think of doing so – it’s just not on the cards. I’m not complaining. I know my capabilities and my budget, I don’t hanker after branded goods (lucky for my baby!) and I’m completely happy to live surrounded by Ikea furniture. I won’t live with loans and bills that I don’t need.

You know what else I don’t need? I don’t need your pity, or your distaste, or your flippancy over a few thousand dollars.

Save it.

I find this an interesting question. Apparently Americans wear their engagement rings on their wedding ring finger (ie the fourth finger of the left hand) and normally stack their rings, which is why they often obsess about getting wedding rings that match their e-rings.

But I’ve always thought (mistakenly?) that the e-ring finger is the middle finger of the right hand. Apparently in Eastern European countries they do wear their e-rings on their right hand.

It’s confusing! Which finger do Singaporeans use?

Not that it really matters, because I’d want it on my middle finger anyway. It balances the hand out, I feel.

Where do you wear your engagement ring?

Possibly one of the funniest things I’ve seen on etsy.

Now you too can crochet yourself a Kali made of yarn! Just like you’ve always wanted!

Sold by melbangel on etsy!

There’s nothing better for warming the heart than touching your nose to the cheek of a baby and inhaling that sweet, sweet scent.

This book was one of my absolute favorites when I was a child.

(No, contrary to popular belief I am not quite a child anymore.)

And this made me squeal and made me feel warm and fuzzy all over.

They got the Wild Things and Max’s outfit completely right.

It looks amazing. I can’t wait to watch this!

Yay!!!

“Now children,” I lectured solemnly, eyes wide and finger wagging sternly in the air for emphasis as I strode up and down the aisle, “you know that song, “Love Will Keep Us Alive? Well, it’s lies. LIES. You can’t survive on love, kids, even though the fairytales say you can. That’s why they’re stories. Love is all well and good, but like it or not, you need MONEY.”

Forty pairs of awestruck eyes gazed at me in fascination. “And that,” I concluded, “is why Romeo and Juliet didn’t just run away together. That’s why Juliet couldn’t get up the nerve to go to Mantua to join her husband.”

And then I felt the first pangs of guilt. I’m supposed to be getting married in six months. When did I become such a pessimistic realist?

In Slumdog Millionaire, when Latika asks Jamal what they’ll live on if they run away together, Jamal replies, with hope burning in his eyes, “Love!” as if it’s a foregone conclusion. Anticipating that line, I let out a huge, derisive snort. Yeah right, I thought. Riiight.

I used to label myself a dreamer, a hopeless romantic, a fantasist. But over the years, things have changed. I suppose I became a realist out of necessity – if you only expect the worst, if you don’t expect your dream to come true, then you can’t be let down, you can’t mire yourself in a swamp of disappointment. And if something good happens, it’s a bonus – you wouldn’t feel unhappy that even then it had not lived up to your initial hopes.

I treasure my happiness very much, and being outwardly realistic helps keep me happy.

Yet I hate reality. I hate that one cannot live on love alone. The parable of the glass balls tells us that love, family, work, etc are balls that we juggle on a daily basis, and that we’ll find that love and family are balls of glass while work etc are balls of rubber – that some balls you can let drop because they’ll come up and bounce, while others we cannot afford to let slip lest they shatter in irretrievable pieces.

So they say.

But I’ve found that in real life, family, love, personal time – those are the rubber balls. Because you eventually find that their limit for forgiveness and acceptance can stretch and stretch and stretch, while your boss has a glass ceiling for tolerance. Tap that glass ceiling once and it might hold, but another time will easily result in that ceiling coming down around you. And who can juggle rubber balls amidst a shower of glass?

Truth be told, the reigning mindset is that we dare to drop our rubber balls because the people we love are much more likely to forgive us when we disappoint them. Because man cannot live on love alone, we don’t dare to let the work balls slip. We rationalize that we’re working for the people we love, because we love them.

So I understand when I have to play the role of that hardy rubber ball, allowed to drop and bounce and roll, because I know work has unforgiving deadlines. Yeah…I know. I understand. But it isn’t easy.

Sometimes it’s just impossible to dial down your expectations when the dream you’re holding in your heart is so big.

Honesty would have been nice.

Some things are just not joke material.

Ok maybe people think I’m more sui bian than I actually am.

Dunno lah ok whatever forget it.

But now I know how D feels…wah. I’m sorry! I NOW FEEL LIKE D’S SISTER IN WEIRDNESS.

:/