The geriatric road trip. And other stories.

I've had a preview of what my next 10 days is going to be like.

Dad: " Can you come home from work earlier? We need to have dinner at the airport before we get on the plane."

Me: "I can't come home earlier. I'm working. Why don't you all eat first before we go to the airport?"

Dad: *makes annoyed tsk-tsk sound* " But Mummy needs to have dinner and there's nothing at home. We need to leave the house at 6."

Me: *rolls eyes* "Mummy can eat at home. She's not the hungry one. You are. We can't leave till 6.30."

This goes on for a while until my Dad realises that there's no way he'll get his way because the sheer logistics of it cannot be pulled off.

My family loves the airport. Going to the airport, even just to pick up or drop off someone, warrants the amount of operational planning as though the army was going for a field exercise. Incessant phone calls about what time we're leaving, who's driving, what should we eat etc. etc. Grandma will pack a fleece or a scarf in her handbag as though it was winter because the air-conditioning at Changi is "freezing".

We're going to New Zealand on our annual family vacation to spend Chinese New Year for the next 10 days. The excitement boiling under the surface and of the impending trip to the airport is threatening to erupt and scald everyone.

It'll be me and 4 other geriatrics / semi-geriatrics. I'm the trip planner, driver, secretary. I'll need to read the map, drive the car and feed the hungry mammals in the car. And at specific times too, mind you. Breakfast at 9, lunch at 12, coffee at 3 and dinner by 7.

Otherwise, the flood gates of caffeine / hunger-deprivation will open.

Example:

Dad: "Ay! It's 3 o'clock! Mummy is hungry!"

Me: *looks at Mum* "Mummy are you hungry?" Mum shakes head.

Dad: *momentarily flabbergasted* "But I need my coffee! And cake! Mummy needs to have cake!"

My Dad has a great penchance for using my Mum as an excuse to make everyone stop and fulfil his gastronomic needs. Never mind that we will be driving through the great plains of New Zealand, surrounded by lush greenery and lots of sheep and cows, with no coffee shop in sight.

We might as well bring our own coffee powder and milk the cows directly along our drive as and when Dad needs his coffee fix.

New Zealand is famous for its caves, natural formations and beautiful scenery. So of course it would make sense to visit one of their more famous caves.

I hunt around trying to find one that is wheelchair-friendly or at least accessible to people with limited mobility.

Grandma hears about one of the caves that has a boat ride as part of the tour. We haven't decided to visit this particular one yet.

Grandma: (in Mandarin) "Huh? We have to take a boat? Don't want lah! Don't take boat!"

Never mind that the boat in the middle of this controversy is more like a mini sampan that goes at like 1 km/h on a little stream that flows through the cave. And she's worried that she'll have to bust out the sea-sickness patches.

In the meantime, I decide that I should go and try tandem sky-diving while my robust heart can still take the excitement.

Family's unanimous response: "Huh?? You want to jump out of a plane??"

And then all the chatter as I valiantly (though not very effectively) try to explain that I'm jumping while attached to a professional, we'll land with a parachute and that the risk of any unfortunate ending is really quite unlikely.

Try pacifying their over-active imaginations. Tough.

Oh well. It should be rather amusing if I keep a zen mindset.

If all else fails, I'll climb out of the car and into the farm with the sheep and cattle for company.

The breakfast club. Wild Honey.

There’s always a queue outside Wild Honey at Mandarin Gallery.

Seems people can’t get enough of all-day breakfast/brunch. And they’re prepared to wait at least 30 minutes or more for a seat, to get a choice of brunch plates from around the world.

Don’t expect to find anything particularly surprising on the menu – they’ve taken the usual pancakes, eggs, sausages, waffles, paired them up in different combinations and given them a belonging to a certain country.

The dish I enjoyed most at Wild Honey was actually not any of the breakfast plates but the Goat’s Cheese Salad.

Fresh salad leaves accompanied by beautiful deep-fried slabs of goat’s cheese. What’s not to like?? (Unfortunately I lapped up my salad before remembering to take a photo. Oops.)

I’m also a huge Eggs Benedict fan – which they call the European. Unfortunately my poached eggs came a little overdone, which kind of ruins the whole point about Eggs Benedict really. But the Hollandaise sauce was nicely done and the ham was a bit more like prosciutto than the usual sliced meats. 

The European - Eggs Benedict served on brioche

The Tunisian breakfast is supposed to be rather popular, but it turned out to be maggie-mee-seasoned tomato sauce in a pan with eggs. And some chilli. Not so great after all.

However, Wild Honey does a very soothing honey, vanilla, cinnamon drink, served warm, called Nature’s Remedy. It’s the perfect antidote to a long day, or a non-alcoholic nightcap to clear a stuffed nose or revel in warmth.

What irks me, though, is the semi-self-service format – they don’t take reservations so you have to wait to be seated. But then ordering is self-service at the counter, and you pay upon ordering where they charge you service charge although they haven’t done much “serving” up to that point! Subsequently, the food is served at your table but none of the wait staff are particularly warm and welcoming.

It’s a very strange not-here-not-there way to run a restaurant. I’m ok if it’s novel and it works. But I don’t think it actually adds value to anyone’s experience really.

Pity because the place is actually quite cozy with cool art-deco-type furnishings.  

All in all, I doubt I'd be back often, unless I'm craving a fancy-ish meal, mediocre service and prepared to wait for them.

Le gâteau d’amande Parisien

I adore macaroons.

Those French little crisp, round, slightly imperfect-looking almond sweets that melt in your mouth and come in every colour of the rainbow.

Good macaroons are pretty hard to come by.  Macaroons are really difficult to make well, because of the skill required to keep the almond pastry at a consistent temperature in order to achieve that light, fluffy, yet crisp texture.

My friend, KK, was passing through Paris en route to Singapore, so I requested for a box of those pretty little sweets from an established Parisian pâtissière - La Durée.

The macaroons came wrapped in an exquisite decorative pale green box, carefully encased in tracing paper.  KK said that La Durée even offered different coloured boxes for their customers to choose from – red, blue, green etc.

As I carefully unwrapped my prize, those colourful jewels stared enticingly at me from the box....they looked so pretty in their casing that I couldn’t bear to take them out to eat them!

But temptation gave in.

I picked up the signature caramel one and slowly bit into it.

Crisp exterior gave way to a soft, chewy texture just underneath, which quickly led to a smooth, creamy caramel centre.

The sensation was indescribably heavenly.

My dad happened to see me entranced in mid-macaroon-savouring-pleasure and promptly came lusting after my new sweets.  It took a lot of quick reflex and agile on-the-spot feet-swivelling and hand-swiping to push the box out of sight and convince him he must have been mistaken.

Later on that night, while my family was tucked away in their rooms, I deftly ran into the kitchen, dug out my La Durée box from its secret hiding place inside the fridge and picked out the pretty pink raspberry-flavoured one.

I must have looked crazed sitting in the corner of the kitchen, protecting my little box of macaroons with an oh-so-satisfied look of utter delight on my face.

I am NOT sharing these! J

It's that time of the year. The "new" part of the year.

New Year resolutions are overrated.

Well at least I've always thought they were. And the best I've ever come up with in years gone by is a feeble aim to lose 10kg or a number close to that. I blame the old Singapore school system for ostracising me in that horrid TAF (Trim-And-Fit - don't laugh!) club when I was in Primary 1. Look at how it's scarred me forever....!! *roar*

But I've decided (after some internal procrastination and self-conflict) that I really should get down to putting some real goals down and hold myself accountable to them instead of fluffy weight-loss attempts.

After all, 2011 marks several milestones in my slightly-over-quarter-life-crisis life.

It marks the 10th year since I started college as an innocent, doe-eyed freshman. That was the start of a major transformation in my life, opening up an entire intellectual and social fabric previously unknown to my protected little head, and the experience of which would mould much of my adulthood (thus far anyway). 

2011 is also my last year of being in my twenties! I don't know why people celebrate the big THREE-OH when they have the next decade to celebrate all of that. We really should be celebrating the end of the TWO-OHs and embracing auntie-hood!

Although I still struggle when friend's kids call me 'Auntie'. It's 'Jie Jie' dammit.

And this year will also open up a possibilities of new opportunities for growth - both personal and professional. After signing my decade of twenties away to an organisation when I was barely out of teenhood, I can almost smell the whiff of a new-found freedom within grasp.

That being said, it's not like I was ever really a prisoner in any way. In fact, I think I got along quite well, much better than most, some would say. I enjoyed a lot of what I did, and grew tremendously in many ways that only on hindsight are recognisable.

The problem is, now that I do have the chance to pursue anything I wanted with all my time and even the rest of my life, what do I do?

It isn't so straightforward as I would have thought.

I used to want to save the world, armed with the idealism of world perfection that only a fresh grad could have. I had grandeur plans of making my mark on society, making a difference to real people's lives, pushing for change and development where the world needed it most. Heck if I had to steamroll through barricades, fight tooth and nail with guerillas - I was going to make things happen.

Do I still want to save the world? Yeah, I guess, why not? But somehow, reality has jaded me to some extent, I know how unfair the world can be, be it socioeconomically, politically or culturally. And I don't have the anecdote to save it from itself.

I'm also scared. Of what, I can't quite put a finger down to it. I can only attribute it to growing older, becoming a little bit wiser, and therefore also more afraid of change.

I could so easily fall back into my comfort zone, meander along in familiar settings and manoeuvre a structure that I've adapted to over the years. Find some new challenges to sustain me and grow them over time and hopefully make some sort of an impact somewhere.

The irony for my generation (yes, that probably means you too who are reading this) is that we were given a whole new world of opportunities that our parents never had. We were pushed into a world without borders, we were given licence to create our own dreams and live them out in any way we saw fit; we were empowered with education and doused with ideals of new world orders, new frontiers, new everything. We could be anything we wanted to be.

And that's precisely the connundrum. I could be anyone I wanted to be, do anything I wanted to do if I set down to it, but I have so much choice that I don't know what I want anymore.

But that is no excuse nonetheless for not getting off my butt and doing something good for myself and the people around me.

So, here I am, about to create the first substantive resolution list in the longest time ever. And may the powers that be hold me to them!

2011 Resolutions
1. Figure out my direction in life. 
2. Pray more.
3. Take at least 2 travel adventures to places I have not been before. 
4. Do more community work.
5. Learn more photography. 
6. Spend more time lindy-hopping. 
7. Complete another 10km race.
8. Love my size. (as opposed to attempting to lose weight all the time!)

So there it is. Black and white.

Wish me luck.

The Story of the Pencil

By Paulo Coelho.

A boy was watching his grandmother write a letter

At one point he asked;
'Are you writing a story about what we've done? Is it a story about me?'

His grandmother stopped writing her letter and said to her grandson:
'I am writing about you, actually, but more important than the words is the pencil I'm using.
I hope you will be like this pencil when you grow up'

Intrigued, the boy looked at the pencil; it didn't seem very special.
'But it's just like any other pencil I've ever seen!'

'That depends on how you look at things.
It has five qualities which, if you manage to hang on to them, will make you a person who is always at peace with the world'

'First quality: you are capable of great things, but you must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps
We call that hand, God, and He always guides us according to His will'

'Second quality: now and then, I have to stop writing and use a sharpener; that makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, he's much sharper.
So you, too, must learn to bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make you a better person'

'Third quality: the pencil always allows us to use an eraser to rub out any mistakes.
This means that correcting something we did is not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice'

'Fourth quality: what really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside.
So always pay attention to what is happening inside you'

'Finally, the pencil's fifth quality: it always leaves a mark.
In the same way, you should know that everything you do in life will leave a mark, so try to be conscious of that in your every action'