Where and when is human sense of survival being limited to total obedience? (i.e. You have to obey us in order to survive!) Where and when is human sense of survival forcing people to be entrepreneurial and creative? (i.e. We have to overcome the situation using this, this, and this in order to survive)
I found Haloumi cheese in the grocery, and the reciple on its wrapping tempted me to give it a try. Besides, I need to increase my daily intake of calcium for my baby. Hence, today I cook this Grilled Haloumi Salad with Hicory Smoke Bbq Sauce. Unwrap Haloumi and rinse with water (I found out later that Haloumi is quite salty, and this can be overcome by immersing it in milk for a while, if needed). Season the cheese with pepper and herbs, set aside. Don’t put salt, since the cheese is already quite salty! As for the grilled salad, prepare any kind of vegetable that can be grilled. In this case I use asparagus and carrot. Lightly smear the pan with butter or olive oil, and grill the veggies until it becomes more tender, season with a pinch of salt, pepper and herbs. Then, grill the cheese, until it becomes golden brown. Don’t add salt. The cheese won’t melt, instead, the outer skin will become a bit crispy. The inside part of the cheese is rubbery yet spongy, really, a unique texture. It is really rich! Meanwhile, prepare the sauce (or you can use any other kind of salad sauce / bbq sauce). In a saucepan, combine tomato ketchup, red wine, herbs, salt, sugar, and chopped garlic and onion. Add liquid smoke for hickory smoke flavor. Simmer until garlic and onion becomes tender. When necessary, add a bit of water in order not burn the sauce. Combine the two, and serve!
After months of searching, we finally bought cow tongue. It is quite xpensive, but we managed to bargain with the seller, reducing the price from $18 to $15 perkilo. We’ll cook cow tongue stew tonight, and we will invite Wicak to come & enjoy the delicacy!
Lemme just quote a paragraph from Absolut Badalu on the place called home. ,Indonesia isn’t without flaws either. The endless problems with discriminations, pollutions, poverty, corruption, hipocrisy, political turmoil, education, etc. (still a long list to go). But what makes a difference is the people. They are so warm, welcoming, nice, friendly. The landscape is gorgeous. So many untouched beaches around. And I can do whatever I want. I can do more significant things. There is always a way to reach the comfort level if you fight hard (really hard, I mean!). Indonesia is considered “a developing country” (according to the western term) and it’s growing. There are spaces for changes. I’d like to grow along with it. Europe is too established. No more real challenges to encounter. I would like to agree with him on this one.
i think nobody wants to get jiggy tonight but us.
I find Singapore similar to a theme park. The path you walk is designated, not allowing you to deviate. The activities are well contained in specified spaces and places. The “system” are laid down for the people “to ride on a specified track”, just like “It’s A Small World” ride in Disneyland. Everything happens in a highly predictable manner. Most of the time people’s appetites are satisfied and sometimes people are made to be excited a bit. Everything looks fine and dandy in Singapore, the great big theme park. Or more appropriately, Singapore the great big Truman Show world?
Great architects are not democratic, they’re authoritarian. They exert themselves in a such insensitive way to their surrounding Perhaps that’s why Chandigarh failed, Brasilia failed, and Koolhaas’s Seattle Public Library also doesn’t do very well. Not to forget the EMP Building, also in Seattle, which performs very poorly and does not fit its urban context. It’s easy to sense and feel if one architecture piece is ‘democratic’ or ‘authoritarian’. Just sense it, and feel it, particularly through the scale of the architecture and the circulation path. In my opinion, the Esplanade is one example of an authoritarian architecture, where the scale of the space is never right, and I felt forced to walk within its specified pedestrian path. It is not a compelling piece of architecture. Hence, does ‘iconic’ have to be ‘authoritarian’? And does architecture reflect a (conscious / unconscious) political intention behind it?
My sister-in-law wrote: Isn’t it amazing how little kids are so fascinated by the littlest things that barely catch our attention? Every chance he has, my 3-year-old son takes the time to stop and look at flowers, trees, butterflies, ants, spiders, grass, birds… even some funny-looking rocks. To encourage his communication skills, I often ask him about the color, size, and other simple facts about the objects that he sees. I also ask him to greet the critters he sees. I don’t know why I do this, but it has the most pleasant effect on him. He smiles whenever he says, “Hello, ants!” or “Good morning, birds!” or “Hello cute butterfly”. It doesn’t upset him at all that the critters don’t greet him back, but rather fly or crawl away and mind their own business. A genuine friendliness is shown in his face. He’s happy and content in the friendly little world that he created. As he turns his attention to other things — although he seems oblivious to what just happened — his smile and good mood linger. I tried to understand his simple yet profound happiness, to put words that could explain how and why and what I find amazing in such a naive mind of a child. Maybe it’s the openess of the mind; the simplicity it craves, away from the wants, the plans, the worries that clutter our daily lives; maybe it’s the feeling that we get when we accept things the way they are and be grateful for them, such feeling we get when we take the time to stop and greet God’s creations… or maybe, it’s just good to be friendly. As I was sitting in my car waiting for the stop sign, an orange butterfly fluttered across my windshield. My son wasn’t there in the backseat to point at it and greet it, so I say, “hello, butterfly”. I know I didn’t look cute talking to a bug, but who cares, it made me feel good.
To continue with our previous posting of “mediocre service” in singapore, somehow this week we were all cursed with getting bad service all the time. First, when we were having pizza hut in Jurong East. The waiter forgot to get his notebook to take down our orders, and even that, he still repeat our orders three times, and never get it completely right! Then when the meals came, he did not put it in front of us. He just put the food on the edge of the table and expceted us to pass on the plate to the right person. Then when we were running out of water, he did not immediately fill out our glass until we ask him to do so. Second time, when we were having lunch in Cafe Galilee, Jurong East Regional Library. First, the food is expensive, relative to the quality and the quantity of the servings. Second, the service is damn slow. It is so slow, so that Indi decided to cancel his order. And the response of the waitress was, “Oh you can’t cancel your order, we have made it, and it will be ready in no time. Please understand, we are having a lot of orders right now, that is why your thing takes a long time”. Oh Cmon! if you can’t handle the orders, don’t set up a cafe! What a lame excuse for bad service…”having too many orders”??? Better close business! And third, in a taxi. We were so tired working overtime, so we decided to take a cab home. When we arrived, we paid the fare accordingly. Few seconds later, we decided to ask for receipt. To our surprise, the cabbie started to grumble, “Next time, ha, when you want receipt you better say it quickly! I almost press the button to cancel your receipt, because you take so long to ask for it!” Wah, amazing isn’t it? A provider of service who get angry and blamed the customer? Hence me, being too tired, freaked out immediately. I blasted out at him, roughly like this, “Don’t you talk like that to your customer! What is wrong with asking the receipt only later? What a bad service you are providing, you should never blame a customer, because customer is king!”. Of course i added some swearwords to it too. But, i mean, what is so difficult of printing a receipt? Moreover, the problem is so trivial, that you would not need to be angry at your customer! What a pathetic service. I wished I took down the cab number so I can put it on the web for everyone to see. What is wrong with people here, why is it so difficult to provide a good and courteous service? we are always amazed to find good service here, because it is a bit rare in here.
Last weekend we experienced two contrasting treatments as customer. The first instance is in Akashi Japanese Restaurant, Citylink Mall. It’s an upper-middle-end type of restaurant ($20-40 perperson), so we kinda expect the service to be up to par, or to have Japanese kind of friendliness and politeness. To our surprise, the service turned out to be really crappy. All the girls who works there, seems to be very depressed with their job. They do not provide service with smile. Smile, is a basic thing that should absolutely be available in service industry. When we enter the door, they screamed some kind of Japanese word that I presume it means “welcome!”. However, it was not done with any smile, friendly gesture, or eye contact. When we sat and start to flip through the menu, they were not responding well to questions we posed on the menu items. When the food were served they were rushing to put the trays on the table. They spilled the green tea on the floor and did not even apologize. We had to ask them to mop the floor, and when they do, they did not even ask for permission. It is not that they are not doing their job, but it seems that they just want to get their job done and over as soon as possible. They don’t have the sensitivity and friendliness towards their customer. For this kind of upper-end restaurant, I would expect the service to be more than fulfilling orders. However, we were disappointed to see that the service was… only mediocre. Even though the food served were high quality, we were not compelled to return to this place due to its bad service. On the other hand, Maison de Fontaine was a reflection of excellent service. And it’s more affordable compared to other French restaurant in Singapore! The food was excellent, I can say, it was work of arts. I was having pan-seared escalope of foie gras with tomato timbale, port wine, & balsamic reduction as entree, continued with grilled beef tenderloin (160y) with sauce bearnaise & pot gratin (which tastes great, but i am not really into the sauce bearnaise), and was closed with freshly baked apple tart with vanilla ice cream. Indi was having baked oysters w/ cheese (really tastes great!), whole spring chicken w/ madeira wine sauce (the chicken was amazingly lean, fat-free), and for dessert he was having creme brulle with berries. We came to the restaurant a bit late at night, and we stayed there until past the closing hour. Amazingly, the restaurant manager did not try to kick us out of the restaurant even though we stayed there until half an hour after the closing hour. The manager was really courteous. We are looking forward to having another great dinner there!
Yesterday morning i saw three baby birds lying dead on the grassy ground near jurong east mrt station. They were very young, the feathers haven’t even grown. Apparently they fell from their nest, which was built at the edge of mrt platform, 10 meters above the ground. Death, what a sad scene to start my day. By this evening, the dead birds are no longer there. Maybe stray cats ate them.
If I am undefined by the mainstream, then I have to set out to define myself, and present myself to existence.
I met the friendly bus driver when I boarded 191 bus from CSC to Hang Jebat. Apparently he still remembers me as a frequent rider of his bus on my way home. He insisted that i need not pay for the bus fare! I’m touched by his friendliness, and we started to chat a bit!
Muslim WakeUp! Main seems to be an interesting site. I haven’t had a chance to really read it, but it seems that it’s a quite open-minded Islamic site, quite liberal. This is my first impression because there is an article in the website quoting Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle, who argues that Islam do not condemn homosexuality. I’ll read more about this website later.
