Last Dinosaurs at the Esplanade

Didn't mind catching Brisbane (Oz) indie rock trio Last Dinosaurs that night. I missed them the last round when they played in Singapore last November, brought in by Symmetry Entertainment. Now, five months later, I'm surprised that they're playing at the bigger Esplanade Concert Hall, courtesy of Esplanade Presents. The early bird tickets were affordable and gave us a good view of the stage.

This is still a tour for their fourth album 'From Mexico With Love' (November 2022), a homage to Japanese city rock. They've always got a session drummer on this sort of tours. When I first saw them maybe seven years ago, I was rather tickled. They were so so so so young. OMG. The band formed in 2009, and sounded exactly like what they were — a high school band. The guitarist and vocalist Sean Caskey is only 21 years old this year. Lead guitarist Lachlan Caskey is only 18 years old. 

Tonight, they sounded like a college band. Hurhurhur. The band is wayyy tighter than they were 10 years ago. Their songwriting has matured significantly. The music is less grating and not as exuberant (i.e in my face); by this fourth album, there're some layers and complexity lent to the lyrics and the melodies. However, I feel that the guitar work is still middling.

It's amazing how the childhood friends and brothers are still together and making music, and they're not even 25 years old! This explains how they're reaching out to an audience of a similar age group. The band has got their shrieking fans; I was quite amused by how enthusiastic the Singapore audience was. 

Also, I think at 45, I'm really old liao to be sitting among the youngsters at gigs like this. Okaaaay, standing, not sitting. Nobody bothered sitting down at these gigs, not even if it's at the elegant Esplanade Concert Hall. I didn't need to sit, obviously, since this was only a 90-minute gig. 

Cubano Buns at Beastly Girls

I don't make it a point to go for brunch at cafes even on weekends. I do that if it fits my schedule. Happy to do a random brunch at Beastly Girls that morning. Even found a parking spot right in front of the cafe. Of course it was crowded, but we didn't have to wait long for a seat. What took really long to arrive, the food. Even if you get it to-go, your wait for food is at least 20 minutes. 

On a busy weekend, although we got there before noon, they had ran out of the beef tongue sandwich and what I really wanted — tofu nuggets and slaw. Dohhh. So I had to settle for the kaya toast with what looks like 63°C eggs, and a side order of hash browns. I'm not exactly keen on kaya, but I'll live. I was looking for a sandwich that doesn't use sourdough. There is an option of toasted Cubano bun. I like those! There was chilli sauce to go with the hash browns, so I was very happy! The man had to take a fried chicken cutlet on a Cubano bun with Peruvian sauce, pickled chilli and Korean lettuce. 

Go before 10am if you can. The small 10-seater cafe is ridiculously HOT from 11am onwards. The sun beats down on the tables in the corridor, and directly on one table in particular. There are ceiling fans, but it's insufficient against our brutal humidity. The single table by the wall of the next shop is sweltering because there aren't any fans above. The coolest seats might actually be the high chairs at the counter. Those were exactly what I opted for. It was at least cooled by the fans or air-curtains in the shop. 

The dog was happily snoozing in the heat, and she wasn't too uncomfortable since there was moving warm air. She wasn't even interested in chilled water since she drank some on her walk earlier before settling down at the cafe. 

Aniba's Beautiful Fishes, Dips, Veggies & Spices

N and B gathered us for an easy dinner at Aniba. It was rather dimly lit. Hahahah. Well, I guess it's supposed to be a bar. I had use extra lights to read the menu. We ordered bit by bit because we didn't know how much stomach space there was. It was full house, but the kitchen delivered speedily, and superbly. Had starters of pani puri, avocado ravioli, hamachi and watermelon tartare, and Caprese burrata with smoked eggplants, dried olives and Ortiz anchovies. Decided that we had more space. 

The people behind Miznon and North Miznon intended for Aniba's more Mediterranean menu to also showcase loads of vegetables and herbs, and seafood. At this moment, the menu doesn't carry any chicken, duck, beef or lamb. Of course there wouldn't be pork. 

Food prtions are definitely for sharing, but depending on stomach space, some of the mains might not be enough for four people. That Jerusalem bagel with labneh and za'tar was delicious. We don't have many decent restaurants that churn out Middle Eastern food at this standard. I'd say that this restaurant offers the best dips and mix of spices, so far. It is pricey. But it has warned us that it's meant to be fine-dining and at 6 Battery Road, of course. The quality of ingredients, spices and umami in its food kinda justify the prices, for now. 

We took two fish dishes because there were four of us. The fillets wouldn't be sufficient if it was just one dish. We were right. Two orders of different fishes kept our stomach full and tastebuds intrigued. This $72 portion of 'Married' sardines with Jerusalem artichokes, pine nuts. lemon-cumin stuffing, yuzu-yoghurt vinaigrette, and habanero, was GOOD. The $89 fillet of butter blanched halibut had lovely kohlrabi, spinach and chervil. 

We went for broke and finished with a vegetarian pappardelle. That $57 pasta was gorgeous! It was freshly made and tossed with haricot vert, spinach, grilled savoy cabbage, hazel nuts, pangrattato, lemon zest, and reggiano. Mmmmmmm. Every dish was beautifully spiced with loads of nuts and vegetables. I love it. They aren't flat. 

We had complimentary desserts! A Mont Blanc of chestnut mousse, rosemary toffee, porcini meringue, brown sugar crumble, chocolate ganache, vanilla ice-cream, puffed buckwheat, coco tuile, and a Malabi of malabi cream, plum and warm spices compote, strawberries, raspberry sorbet, caramelized shredded filo tuile, pistachio hibiscus powder & dried rose petals. 

We went easy on the alcohol because nobody wanted to be drunk. And we carpooled, so we needed to drive everyone back and take care of one another. Heh. One drink each was perfect. My Oban 14y.o came in a gentleman's pour over a tiny square cube of ice; it melted down beautifully, so I was pleased.

Dogs & Coastal Management

Came across Ben Goldfarb's essay in The Atlantic that opined 'dogs are a beach's worst nightmare'; it was titled 'We're in Denial About Our Dogs', published on April 16, 2023. It was first published in Hakai Magazine on April 4, 2023, and titled 'Gone to the Dogs'.

The writer is an environmental journalist. He flagged that while many dogs are happiest at the beach, they are also a menace to shorelines and its inhabitants. Dogs also crush eggs, dig up nests and maul sea pups and chicks. 

These are just the packs of feral dogs that roam shorelines. But the culprits are also domesticated dogs whose owners allow them to run amok, or if the humans can't stop them in time while sprinting off the leash. 

In response to these harms, coastal managers have implemented leash laws, seasonal restrictions, and even outright dog bans. But limiting when and where our mutts can move invites controversy. After politicians enacted a partial dog ban on one Australian beach, aggrieved pet owners claimed that they’d become “criminals in [their] own backyards.” Other people gripe that even strict laws are rarely enforced: In San Diego, where beach dogs are subject to a passel of regulations, vigilantes seem to take perverse pleasure in videotaping scofflaws. But although our pets are the nominal causes of these conflicts, the real culprits aren’t Akitas or Airedales. They’re us—and our mastiff-size blind spots around our furry family members. The dogs, of course, are just being dogs.

.....................

In fairness, coastal managers aren’t blind to dogs’ impacts. Not long after I visited Tasmania, the state government raised the fines for owners whose dogs entered penguin colonies up to $5,040, a measure that was intended to dramatically reduce the rate of attacks. Still other beaches require dogs to be leashed, restrict the hours when they’re permitted to run loose, or are altogether dog free. Oregon, for instance, bars even leashed dogs from snowy-plover nesting grounds from March 15 to September 15. After an off-leash dog killed a young piping plover in Scarborough, Maine, in 2013, the town hired plover police to post signs and educate beachgoers about leash laws. “I was expecting to be getting a lot more negativity,” a plover cop cheerfully told reporters.

Many countries have banned dogs along certain stretches of beaches, and along certain seasons of the year. That's to protect wildlife as they nest or hibernate or simply resting while on their migration route. Singapore doesn't have a beach ban on dogs. I'm not so sure about the wildlife destruction since our beaches are way polluted or artificial. It's the dirt, glass, garbage, et cetera that I'm concerned about, and of course stepping on dog poop and pee in the sand. This is why I never go barefooted on sand anymore. 

Our Singapore dogs have no endangered or nesting migration birds or penguins to chase, or even turtle eggs to disturb with their penchant for digging. Coastal management doesn't seem to be a thing here when it comes to dogs and beach wildlife. Many a crow and a mynah have been mauled or maimed by the dogs. I don't feel very sympathetic towards flying rats. 

I like how the writer ends this piece. For many domesticated dogs, it's up to us — owners, the humans who should know better, and not fail our dogs.

Ultimately, it’s hard not to conclude that the furor over dogs is a red herring—the real problem isn’t our mutts but our cognitive dissonance. Just as we forgive the foibles of our human relatives, we ignore the casual harm wrought by our four-legged children. (“Sure, those other dogs might chase birds, but my Duke would never hurt a fly.”) Perhaps because our dogs’ behaviors are a direct reflection of us, we harbor the delusion that they’re under our control; I recently saw an off-leash collie take a healthy bite of a jogger’s butt even as the animal’s owner yelled at her to stand down. We rationalize their misdeeds, overrate their training, prioritize their pleasure over other beings’ right to exist. Love is not only blind; it’s blinding. 

As much as I believe in protecting the natural world from our pets, I’m as guilty of this myopia as anyone. Earlier this winter, a year after Kit experienced the Pacific Ocean, I took her skiing near our new home in Colorado—unleashed. For a few minutes, she trotted beside me, sniffing scat and eyeing squirrels; as always, I felt joy to see her happy and stimulated. Then she veered into a jumble of windblown logs and scrabbled at the snow with her paws. I slogged over and dragged her away, but it was too late: She’d unearthed and killed a hibernating vole, soft and warm as a newborn’s cheek. I felt grief, then momentary anger at Kit, but it wasn’t her fault—she was merely doing what her ancestors had been bred to do. The responsibility was entirely mine.

Irori & Oden at Hearth

Finally popped by Hearth for dinner. The irori and oden restaurant quietly opened in end December 2022 and was fully operational by end January 2023. So I waited for a bit before going. As usual, the restaurant doesn't bother much with socials, and reservations are done via WhatsApp for now. Zzzzz. Helmed by Chef Koki Miyoshi (who used to be at Kamoshita), the items off of his stone irori and oden pot speak so well to my stomach. 

It was really warm in the restaurant though. Six AC units didn't seem to cool the place. The heat of the hearth and stove was quite something. It was also a tad stuffy. So I wonder if their exhaust fans were well-placed. Of course I had a highball. Three glasses. Wheeeeee.

Oden is fast enough. Ahhhh..... daikon. Mmmmm. I particularly dislike the fried tofu, because of the peppercorns. and how it generally tastes like tau kwa. Hahahaha. But at least they only put four peppercorns and not eight like what Kamoshita does. Fish cake was delicious. Lovely dashi.

The art of irori is slow. Be prepared to wait. Have a drink and have a good chat with your dinner date. But we went early enough, and food didn't take long to arrive. The small firefly squid were too cute! Loved how they grilled it and kept it tender. 

J couldn't resist the miso-marinated grilled salmon. She couldn't eat as much as she wanted tonight because sniffles set in. We'll come again and we'll order that grilled pork shoulder. Heh. No more stomach space tonight. I wish they had more cabbage in the grilled pork and cabbage, and less of the eeky green vegetable. I had the braised sea bream head with tofu. It was every bit as delicious as I had expected. It was a cute portion that I could finish on my own.

Spam & Fuwa-Fuwa Rice

Do I have to keep a food log too? Hahaha. No. But I do consciously count the number of times I eat spam. It's not the best thing, and I don't take it often. Maybe once in a few months. Now that I have the donabe, I use it so much, and I must have spam on fuwa-fuwa rice, topped with an egg. 

Set about cooking rice and opening up a can of Hormel Spam Lite. Hurhurhur. The cravings were totally satisfied tonight. OH YES. 餐肉蛋飯. The satisfaction index for this meal went through the roof. Yup, eggs all around for everyone. A sunny-side up for me, and 63°C eggs for Choya and the man. #ImpieCooks2023

The man's meal portion was healthier. He was going to go carb-free. Then he couldn't resist 120g of fuwa-fuwa rice + a sprinkle of furikake, and two pieces of spam. The man didn't need to have the chicken breast seared. I simply sous vide it with spices and a touch of soy. It was tasty enough. I also opened up a tube of egg tofu and seared it. So with meat protein and egg tofu, his nutrition requirements were all met. He's the one who still dutifully logs his calories and carbs in the Lumen app.

It was just as well that we stayed in for dinner because there was some weird lightning and thunder that went on all night, with no rain. It was hot af. Disgusting. Smol Girl wasn't too terrified since the thunder was far away. She managed, and ate her dinner just fine. She loved her allocated bit of sous vide chicken tenders.

The man's healthier portions with egg tofu and sous vide chicken breast.

胡椒豬肚湯

Thanks to the nifty donabe, cooking beautiful short-grain sticky rice has never been easier. I've been eating wayyyyy too much fuwa-fuwa rice. It's irresistible. Gotta control that high-GI and high sugar intake. 

Had a leisurely window between churning out work papers. Decided to cook up a pot of fluffy rice for myself and some food. I intended to keep all extras in the fridge for the man's lunch or nibbles the next day. The man was supposed to head out to the office, but in the end, he chose to work from home too. All right then, everybody eats a homecooked lunch.

I had bought pork ribs and bones, chicken chunks, and the star, pig's stomach. Soaked, turned it inside out a few times and washed the shit out of the stomach, literally. I'll spare you those photos. Oof! I wore gloves to wash the piece of offal. Then I boiled it to remove all remnant stench, sliced it and kept it in the fridge. It would be boiled into soup today. 

I have a craving for peppery pig's stomach soup. Few restaurants can  cater to what I'm looking for. This is a soup I can do well, so I might as well boil it up myself. Except that this was the first time in years that I've done it. Hehhh! The soup turned out great. It tasted exactly how I expected it to be. It was deliciously peppery and full of flavors. I am pleased. #ImpieCooks2023

Of course I didn't cook that chicken. It was too much effort after prepping the soup. Hurhurhur. The whole braised soya sauce chicken (chopped up) was procured from Hawker Chan. That was the main source of protein for the man. He went low-carb for lunch, but he couldn't resist 30g of fuwa-fuwa rice too.

Had to have easy greens with the meal. The omelette was an afterthought. But it went well with the meal.  This omelette held no salt because fish sauce would be drizzled atop. Seared a sunny-side up for Smol Girl's dinner, but she came out of her room asking for a snack. So after eating her breakfast at 10.30am; three hours later, she ate a snack while we had lunch. Hahaha.

Butter Chicken, Cantonese Soup & A Chocolate Egg

Happy to know that the friends had a well-deserved break in France and the UK, then we found a date to catch up properly. It was a lovely evening of conversation over a table full of food and wine.  

Our plans to get food from Newton Food Center were ruined by the 5pm storm that arrived on cue. Grrrrrrrr. (Next time then, sambal stingray and white savory carrot cake.) By the time it petered off, the queues at the stalls would be way too long. Disgusting weather. Luckily we had an inkling about it, so we made vague Plan B to get food from restaurants in a mall. 

Since L had a craving for butter chicken, food was procured from Shahi Maharani, and I also wanted a soup from Asia Grand Restaurant. That's the best part about getting takeout in this city. You could mesh everything you want. Who cares whether the dishes complement 100% as long as they sort of do... 50%. Heh.

There were vegetable pilaf, fish masala, mushroom masala. There were also Penang fruit rojak and grilled chicken wings. The man also decided that he should go for broke with the carbs, and got mutton biryani; ate a few scoops, and tapau-ed the rest home. Hahaha. The Cantonese soup of the day was a pot of watercress and pork ribs. The man bought a medium-sized portion! We drank it all anyway. It was so very satisfying. 

The friends brought home Easter eggs! These are from Fortnum & Mason — half a dozen eggshells filled with dark chocolate hazelnut praline. The hen eggs were painted in that shade of robin's eggs, or what the brand terms as eau de nil. Too cute. I cracked open one to eat, and half regretted it because it was solid chocolate, in the size of an egg. Gave the man two bites. He loves the hazelnut praline. I ate this one all up anyway. Kekekekek. It was so filling! 

Rattled By A Voicemail

I thought to myself, 'who uses voicemails nowadays?' I don't even have voicemails saved from before since I don't actually bother about it, and it wasn't a thing for me. I hate voice calls and voicemails. I turned off that recording function and never bothered with voicemail inboxes. People can have stupid and unproductive arguments over voicemails. Dohhh. 

And what have lanternflies and killing them gotta do with the story? So I read 'The Ferry' by Ben Lerner published in The New Yorker on April 3, 2023.

The narrator received voicemails from someone (apologizing for what he did) who obviously got the wrong number. He went about his day. He dropped off his daughter, Ava, at school. Then he went to work. He is an archivist at the city library, selecting old photographs for digitization. 

When the narrator had a moment at lunch, he did what everyone would normally do. he texted the caller that he had the wrong number. The day went weird from thereon. In an interview, the author thought about letting the narrator go down a steep rabbit hole, and letting him wrestle his own demons. 

The narrator becomes preoccupied by the man who has left the message. He imagines scenarios that the man might be apologizing for. When he sends a polite text message pointing out that he has the wrong number, the man replies with a barrage of abuse. How upsetting is that response? If the narrator were in a less febrile state, would he have been able to dismiss it?

It would certainly have been healthier to dismiss it, but I guess my hope for the story is that it’s not entirely obvious how pathological or reasonable the narrator’s response to that threatening message is. (I mean at first; it’s clear that his response to Camila is beyond unreasonable.) It’s another instance where it becomes difficult to sort paranoia from a technological present in which a staggering amount of personal information can be accessed instantly by anyone. That earlier, more benevolent idea of a generalized apology and possibility of forgiveness gives way to a sense of exposure and menace.  

The unknown caller left a threatening message to the narrator's helpful note. It derailed the narrator's day. That was the very second he picked up his daughter from school. The narrator is spooked by the fury in the caller's tone. He went completely paranoid that the caller could find his address and family based on googling the phone numbers. 

The narrator was so rattled that he snapped at Ava and lost his train of thought. He had to calm himself down by going to the bakery, letting the girl get a huge cookie and did a loooong walk. His phone battery is dead. He couldn't call Camila, his partner. He would be two hours late in getting home. Camilia would be in a panic. 

I realized I’d had very little to eat, I’d barely touched my lunch, I still had my Kind bar, and so I interrupted myself to ask: Can you make enough for me? The incongruity—this man is after us, can you make me spaghetti—struck me as funny, and I laughed, it’s good to laugh at yourself, but it sounded off, wild, and still she said nothing. It was kind of crazy to ask if she could make enough for me when the pasta was halfway done. I tried to explain that I hadn’t really eaten, though Ava had had this giant cookie—why withhold it—and that’s what Camila responded to, in a surprisingly quiet voice she confirmed: You bought Ava a giant cookie?

I was astounded that she was ignoring everything I was trying to say about the messages and how exposed we were as a family but couldn’t pass up an opportunity to dwell on how I’d violated the dessert policy. She herself let Ava have scones from the place on Fort Hamilton all the time, which I pointed out to her. I pointed out that it was pretty fucked up for her to try to “score points” with the cookie thing, but she’d gone silent again. She opened the refrigerator door to get the cauliflower, which Ava liked to eat raw.

The narrator and his partner are separated, but seem to be amicable enough, and are co-parenting Ava. I don't know whether he's a responsible father. He has loads of mind stress to deal with, as if he can't quite handle the nitty-gritty of day-to-day living in a hectic city.

The narrator was definitely in a fragile state of mind. He wasn't the type to remain calm, and he kinda went into the deep end in his mind, and couldn't really function. Is this the result of living in a huge scary metropolis with mad crime rates? I hate voicemails. 

Oh, at the end of the story, I still didn't know what the lanternflies were about. 

Billy Bragg in Singapore

Never thought I would go to a Billy Bragg concert that was held at UCC, NUS. They had a pre-concert bar at the foyer, but no drinks were allowed to be carried into the theatre. I even sat at the stalls, right in the center of the hall at Row F. I wondered if this stop even made money. Judging from the filled hall, I guess it sorta did. To my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed the show.

Billy Bragg is one of those charismatic performers who I rarely see anymore. He comes across as sincere and genuine. At this age, his entire life has been laid out for audiences to judge. His fans grew up and aged along with him. He put on a great show in Singapore. He's a consummate storyteller, brilliant singer and plays the guitar beautifully. It's not easy to put on a solo performance. But he did it. The easy banter took us through a too-fast set of 70 minutes.  

He covered Marvin Gaye's 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine'. He told us the tale of how Paul Weller asked him to stop playing that because he played it till it sounded like 'Smoke on the Water'. Hahaha. And it really did. He played the last three chords of the song mischievously so. 

Why did the singer and activist (visibly so) bother with Singapore? I didn't figure him to be someone who cares about Singapore's audiences or her politics. While on tour in Australia in March, he joined ABC staff on the Sydney picket line. He did the same in New Zealand in February. As vocal as he might be about industry action and strikes, he obviously wouldn't do it in Singapore.

The seasoned musician knew exactly what to do in a solo show. This is his first time performing in Singapore, and he read his audience right — largely British in the late-forties to 60-something age group. This wasn't a show whose audience would wave phones and record songs or take loads of photos. I had to surreptitiously do so. Hahaha. Well, let's just say that loads of people in the audience took photos with the flash going off rather often. They genuinely didn't think that their phones could take shots without the flash. Okaaaay.

 

The show was peppered with anecdotes from his life, performances, and snippets of family interactions. Everyone apparently knew the lyrics to 'A New England' (from the very first album in 1983 'Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy'), and the theater sang along at each refrain.

In his encore, he sang 'Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards' ('Workers Playtime, 1988). The 1988 got a rework on chords and phrasing, and he revised the lyrics to throw in Elon Musk and podcasts. Too fun. What a delightful night. So aye aye, we're all pretty enough, still hip and very relevant. 

Smol Girl Goes To Many Places

I have been toting the Smol Girl around everywhere. Well, she's only 7kg, very tot-able and very quiet. She's also very adorable. Importantly, her quiet temperament and easy nature make her the perfect companion to the daily tasks as long as the venues (and my clients' offices) accommodate her. She's very proud to be out and about with her Momma, and DGAF about other floofs or humans. Mostly. 

I don't know if Choya tries to make me happy. She tries so hard to gain my approval — she wants to do everything according to my expectations. And those mostly center on her behavior at home and outside, and her optimum gut health. 

That day, she came to a new-ish studio with me in the morning, as well as a meeting at the office. Then we went out for lunch in the area. Didn't book a table at anywhere of course. I'd be just early enough to avoid the bulk of the CBD lunch crowds. Found a restaurant and asked for a table for one. Didn't mention anything about a dog. They can obviously see her. Hahaha. She settled down to watch the world go by, and then snoozed. Nobody noticed her unless they really looked. A thick glass of iced green tea and an easy negitoro-don hit the spot.

Smol Girl has come to be a perfect fit for my lifestyle (it isn't magic; it's both positive training and reinforcement, time, and bonding), and my personality. The man is very tickled by us — he says that somehow, Choya has taken on many of my personality traits. Dohhhh. She is Momma's girl after all. I've finally come to love this Smol Girl. She's like my little heart trotting around.  

The BFF Turns 45

Celebrated the BFF's birthday at her restaurant of choice, Anju. We took an 8pm seating so that we would have plenty of time to linger over the meal. Wisely skipped all the soju and chungju; opted for a makgeolli. It came in the form of a 550ml bottle of cameo makgeolli from Nakcheon, ABV 6%. Perfect. We weren't intending to get drunk, although we put away two bottles. Oof.  

The domi was super appetising — cured red snapper with endives, apples. arugula leaves, kombu, ssamjang and ginger dressing. The tomato naengchae is for people who love tomatoes. We do. The slices of beefsteak tomato was robust and juicy, and sat on a bed of thinly sliced tasty beef (cooked, like bulgogi) with candied walnut and plum dressing. The squid ink battered oyster with pickled fennel and flying fish roe dip was quite tasty. It went well with the makgeolli!

I couldn't resist the yukhoe. I love beef tartare, and as far as this goes, the Korean iteration is gorgeous. This one came with egg yolk, pureé, crispy seaweed, Korean pear, mustard seed, shiso and caper. The crispy seaweed went beautifully with the beef tartare. So perfectly savory. Its ratio of ingredients is soooo good. I would say that it's one of the best in town. 

The greedy peeps wanted the abalone gim angel hair pasta with perilla, pickled shallots and seaweed. Okaaaay. It was nice, but I could do a better version. Heh. The thing about these fine-dining Korean restaurants, there isn't any complimentary banchan served. Whatever you might want, is chargeable as a side dish or an appetizer. We had limited space for food, so we only ordered a side of baek kimchi with radish and red dates. I'm not fond of red kimchi, but I like white kimchi because there isn't any gochugaru used. 

That sotbap was great. Scorched rice with dried radish leaves topped with charcoal-grilled seabass. As the server split up the fish to mix into the rice, I idly wondered about bones. :PPpppPP As such, I picked through every mouth of rice rather carefully. Hurhurhur. I wanted to get a portion of the sotbap to-go, but it was a limited quantity dish (stated on the menu), and didn't have a portion of that as a takeout. Too bad then.

The galbi jjim was beautiful. Beef short ribs with potatoes, carrots and mushrooms. I'm not a big fan of it, but the BFF and the man loved it, so they really went for all the beef. Ooof. It totally complemented the sotbap.

I was curious about the desserts. There were only two options on this menu. The hwachae of watermelon sorbet and juice, yuzu jelly, fresh fruits and honey tuile sounded really good. But I needed some space for a candle, and only the sweet potato dessert had the space to hold a candle. The other humans had no interest to have two desserts. Hahaha. Okay. Ordered the sweet potato. It came in a brown cute heap of salted caramel, sweet potato ice-cream, brown butter crumble, charcoal curd foam and roasted sweet potato skin powder. The BFF loved it. Ahhhh good.

Happy Birthday, BFF! Life is so much more fun when we do it totgether. Here's to many more good years of laughter and being silly. To your strength, health and humor. 🥂♡

An Empty Pilates Studio This Afternoon

The 26-week pregnant pilates instructor isn't letting up on the intense exercises for both herself and clients. She's keeping super active, and making sure that all of us are keeping up with her. She's also gotta even better at isolating muscles to reach muscle fatigue quickly in any given set of movements. I'm having mild DOMS each week after a class. Dohhh. 

The thing about not traveling — I don't have anything to train for — no hikes, no skiing, nothing. So in that sense, maintaining the fitness level is a tad tiring. I decreased the intensity for February and March. Now in April and May, I'm upping it again before the instructor goes off for her maternity leave. 

Now that we're in inter-monsoon, before the rains of the Southwest Monsoon return in June, the man and I aren't bound to take turns to stay home with Smol Girl. Time to schedule everything I want to do in the day! I asked for an intensive few weeks at the studio. While sufficient and productive enough, the instructor's home studio isn't as well equipped as a professional studio, of course. 

So we swopped out to the movement studio where I get to play with everything! And the bigger space also lends a different vibe to the classes. The studio was empty this afternoon. What a rarity! I was done with the class, and scored extra alone time on the equipment. Yay! 

Ice Cold Beer!

We took a trip down the memory lane with the friends who just flew into town. They needed to get some items at the Apple store, so we went with them. Then we took a stroll to Emerald Hill and had afternoon drinks at Ice Cold Beer. 

OMG has it been around this long? Like two decades???! We hadn't been here for ages!!! The decor and interiors remain the same. Nothing has changed. Well, we have changed and we can no longer drink as much as we used to. But a pint each is still fine. Nobody's getting drunk before 5pm. We had a dinner to get to with other friends and sobriety is required since there would be more alcohol later on. Hahaha.

The table ordered ICB wings and pizza. Hahaha. Goodness. How would they squeeze in dinner?! Isn't indigestion a concern nowadays? I wasn't going to have those. Ugh. I only took a nibble from the man's portion. They aren't bad, but pizza and wings aren't my favorite things. I assiduously avoid them.

We sat outdoors of course. It was a very cloudy day. If it rained, it certainly didn't rain in this locale. It was bloody humid but at least the sun wasn't blazing. The cloud cover made the heat somewhat bearable. We took a table right by the door where the cool air curtain reached us still. Heh. 

'How Kyoto Breaks Your Heart'

Bought a hard copy in support of the author, but I also got a digital copy because I didn't want to have to wait to read it. Heh. Digital copies are available in Mobi and EPUB. The hard copies aren't arriving from UK that fast, notwithstanding the expedited shipping I paid for. That's Tokyo-based Florentyna Leow's 'How Kyoto Breaks Your Heart' (2023). 

Published by The Emma Press, the book is filled with stories of the author's experiences as a tour guide in her early years in Japan, and the two years spent in Kyoto. Readers are reminded of the over-churned tourism industry in Kyoto, and are taken to have glimpses of Florentyna Leow's personal life experiences in the city before she moved back to Tokyo, and became a writer. She now writes full-time and shares updates via IG. 

The collection of 12 short stories shared vignettes of Kyoto. The author talked about why she left Tokyo for Kyoto, and why she ditched Kyoto and moved back to Tokyo. She met people, made friends, got a life partner along the way. But she also grappled with the loss of a sort of long-term friendship during the two years in Kyoto.

The first story is titled 'Persimmons' and reminisces about this lost friendship. The author moved from Tokyo to Kyoto, and worked with a friend from university. So they were colleagues and also housemates in this single storey house. Her room in a shared house looked at to Mt Hiel in the distance. The house had a maple tree, and a persimmon tree. She had so many memories of cooking with persimmons, just so not to let the fruit go to waste — jam, chutney, custard, and dried them as hoshigaki, vinegar, anything. 

It was the first time I had lived up close with an actual fruit tree. The autumn bounty felt miraculous and impossible, these mounds of beautiful imperfect fruits with their bruises and webs of blemishes, so different from perfectly square supermarket persimmons suffocating in their plastic prisons. Without any effort the tree simply grew, year after year, a gift unasked for. It felt a bit like my life: a job, a friend, a tree, a roof over my head, all of these things I hadn’t asked for but had received like a benediction. It took years to stop feeling guilty for all this good fortune.  

A year and half later, this friend and roommate quite her job and left the country. The author assumed they would stay friends. But they didn't. The persimmon tree had been cut down to make way for a studio, and the friend-roommate never got in touch again. The author too, never quite ate persimmons the way she did again. 

It occurs to me, as I write these words, that I still have two bottles of persimmon vinegar in my pantry. They travelled with me to Tokyo in a large paper bag, and the vinegar is now a five year-old vintage, rust-coloured, rich and mellow. This is what I have left of the house, the tree, and of her.

She talked about her favorite shōtengai (商店街) in Kyoto and the stores in there, a dimly-lit jazz kissaten with questionable standards of coffee, her most disliked restaurants and temples, and even Arashiyama. None of these places are designed to host the large numbers of tourists visiting today.

It's quite an enjoyable read, absorbing all the things that she's saying, framed into vignettes. Writing these earlier and then sitting on it for a few years, and then revisiting them again make for a different sort of reflection, methinks. She could think about her years in Kyoto, and of course, the one lost friendship that still hurts when talked about today. It's still raw to her.  

The last chapter is titled 'Egg Love'. I don't know how the author tied eggs to love. But I suppose I see it. "We leave broken eggshells behind us all the time; the point is to make them count." In her mind, eggs are happy things, but eggshells aren't quite it. 

There’s no love quite like egg love.

I’m talking about knowing how someone likes their eggs. Do you really know someone if you can’t say whether they prefer eggs fried or poached? My father loves his quick omelettes, cracked straight into the wok and flash-stirred until just tender, streaked yellow and white. His ideal half-boiled egg has whites slightly firm and cooked but a gooey yolk; my mother’s is closer to three-quarters than half. Mine is closer to onsen tamago, as is my older sisters’; but I douse mine with lashings of white pepper and too much soy sauce. My sisters and I watch in fascinated horror as our youngest sibling stirs hers until uniformly coloured, not a trace of white permitted to remain. A half-boiled egg tells you everything you need to know about a person.

私の真新しい土鍋！

J was utterly spontaneous and random. One night when she was in a shopping mood (at home), she simply announced that she bought me a donabe and it would arrive in a week. Say whuuuuttt. I was at a dinner. I looked at the glass of sake in my hand and wondered if I was drunk or she was. 

Said donabe arrived. It was gorgeous — a Banko (萬古焼) double lids / 2-go capacity, compatible with electric induction hobs. It actually indicated that it's dishwasher-friendly. LOL! Well, I could do stew, but to cook rice in a donabe, you need double lids. I have tried cooking rice in a Staub cast iron. It works. But I would always prefer a donabe. This is a proper donabe for rice. OMG. The is such a magnificent gift. あれまあ! どうもありがとうございます！

The instructions said that this pot didn't have to be seasoned. Okaaaay. Let's go! I haven't cooked rice in a donabe for five years. I need to understand the heat of this donabe and my hob's heating properties. The pot held lines within, not just for the design, but it's also to help us figure out water levels without having to stick a finger in it. 

Of course I used an old batch of rice as a test batch. I have to remember that 1-go is 180ml / 米1合は180cc (180ml) です. Double-checked that. If the water levels are wrong, then everything would be screwed mushy or burnt. 

The first batch held a bit of a burnt bottom. But not charred black, thank gawwd. No burnt smell in rice either. Totally edible. I considered whether to throw out this test batch. It would be a waste, but it's a test batch. Scooped out a small bowl. Seared a sunny-side-up too. Then I sprinkled furikake and fried shallots on the rice. That was lunch. A very delicious lunch, really.

The man said he was coming back from the office and was going to get a late lunch, and asked if I had any fluffy rice left. He would get a meat and side dishes for himself. So I dried the donabe, took out a 180ml of rice grains, and cooked him a second batch. 

I died laughing when he came back with the food— he had chicken tikka and dhal. Do these go with Japanese sticky steamed white rice????! He said they do. I was like...... NOPE. NOT FOR ME. 

The man ate a small portion of the rice clean with furikake, and with the egg first. Then he took another portion of rice to go with the chicken tikka and dhal. loved the soft texture of the rice with the spices. 

My rice is ふわふわ ! 😍

The donabe is so easy to whip out and cook rice with. TBH, it's easier than using a rice cooker. It's tastier, and a pot is easier to wash over removing four parts from the electric cooker. I'm going to designate this donabe to do rice. Japanese rice and claypot rice. I can do proper claypot rice now!!!!!! For only two persons though. Maybe three small eaters. 

I haven't bought 新米 last year. I still have rice left and can't justify throwing it out without actually eating it. My current pack of rice is from... 2021. Hahahaha. We really don't take much rice at home. One pack goes a looooong way. I guess I should buy a pack soon, or wait till August. Sure, the soft and fluffy rice is everything. But whether I got the science for this particular pot, I think the bottom of the donabe is proof. 💫

This pot can do 鍋巴. Oh YES.

Overnight Oats in a Jar

Ran out of rolled oats and didn't bother to do overnight oats for a bit. I was too lazy to use steel cut oats. Must boil lah. Hahaha. I finally threw in a pack into the last delivery of groceries. Now I have rolled oats. 

Regular rolled oats will do. Although we switch around with different brands, I don't bother with those labeled 'organic'. I honestly can't tell the difference in taste and erm... mouthfeel. Hahaha.

Made a few jars for breakfast over the week for the man. I like mine as brunch. Or even as lunch. As long as you like cold things, you could throw in anything you like. The man likes his soaked in low-sugar soy milk over full cream milk. I dislike soy and prefer the full whammy of a rich Japanese milk. He wants peanut butter, I don't. He puts in a tablespoon of maple syrup, I do half a tablespoon. 

We must always have fruits in it. That's the deal breaker. It doesn't feel like a luxurious jar without fruits. Strawberries, blueberries, kiwi, dragonfruit...... whatever. Bananas are standard inclusions since they provide extra protein and potassium and can fill tummies. A generous amount of chia seeds and nuts are a must. I don't need to soak the nuts, and I could simply top up with granola the next day. The man doesn't totally care about granola in his jar.

The man counts the calories that a jar of overnight oats provide. He said the Lumen measured it as a total of 700-800 calories consumed. ½ cup of rolled oats amounts to 140 calories. The rest of the ingredients will top up the necessary calories. So I guess this jar is a fairly substantial breakfast for him.

A Reasonable Mutton Dum Biryani

The friends took us out to dinner at Anglo Indian Cafe & Bar at Chijmes. None of us knew it prior but the food at these outlets were pretty decent! The friends had been to the branch at Asia Square and didn't mind it at all. We were joking that we would just end up at Samy's again, because chicken liver masala, so S and D love it and they always get lunch dates at Samy's. Okay, not really joking. LOL

We made it to a 6.30pm and were pleased about it. Food was served fast; we ate fast, had a great time talking and we were done before 9pm. Perfect. That suited all of us for a 6am the next morning. The friends stepped in 10 minutes after we did. Mind you, they weren't late at all. We were early! Hahahaha. 

We placed orders first even without consulting the friends, and somehow, we apparently ordered the 'right' dishes and all that they wanted. We didn't go overboard with the food. Easy items. 

There were onion bhaji, a platter of grilled chicken, channa masala, dhal bukhara (makhani), Madras prawn curry, missi roti, garlic naan and mutton dum biryani. These were more than enough to fill our stomachs. I really don't like paying $70 for biryani, even if it uses top quality lamb with the best basmati. There's a bit of a difference in the fragrance of the rice, but I don't need to pay S$50 for that difference all the time. $26++ for a pot of mutton dum biryani is perfectly acceptable. 

I passed on dessert. I can't deal with Indian sweets and desserts. They're just wayyy sweet for me. They ordered a rasmalai of soft milk squares and cottage cheese soaked in saffron milk and garnished with pistachio. There was definitely rosewater in this one. Ugh. I couldn't. Neither could N. We looked at each other with the same grimace on our faces and stuck to our very delicious and crisp iced lime soda. 🤪

Hot Sauces Challenge!!!

The man also binge-watched 'Hot Ones'. The difference between he and I is — he is most interested in all the hot sauces available, and to sample them. I'm NOT. I'm not a fan of hot sauces because they're too similar to Sichuan peppercorn, of which I abhor. Just give me chilli padi and sambal please. 

This box from Heatonist goes down as the best birthday gift this year from D and N. OMG. She totally knows how to pick out presents. When we went to retrieve the gift from the ParcelSanta locker, it was in a nondescript brown box. But it was heavy and one look at the sender sent both of us squealing, and D and N probably heard us from their home 7km away. 😂

He set up a wings date with K and Y, and laid out all the hot sauces. K is as keen on hot sauces as the man. Not quite a challenge, just a tasting, they both said. Nobody is slathering the hot sauce marinade on the wings American or Korean style. Hurhurhur. We got wings from Chic-A-Boo and Wing Stop — fried chicken crispy skin version, and standard marinated wings. 

I liked the coleslaw and mash from Chic-A-Boo. Uncomplicated old school flavors. Next time I shall go and get a big tub of coleslaw to inhale it. Hahaha. I don't like chicken or wings, so I got myself fried tofu instead. Hahahaha. Smart right? If I had ingested all these fried items, my IBS would have been spectacular. I also had siew mai and fan choy in the fridge so that I could have them for supper. Which I did, at 11.30pm while waiting for the washing machine and dishwasher to be done. 

This box holds Hot Ones 10-Pack Hot Sauces from Season 20. It included a printout describing the 10 hot sauces and their respective Scoville Heat Units (SHU). 10 bottles! #1 The Classic Chili Maple Edition (1600 SHU) tasted milder than Lingham's Hot Sauce. We even found it sweet. 

The table really liked #10 The Last Dab Apollo (no SHU advised). The rest were okay, but nobody liked #8 Da Bomb Evolution (135,600 SHU). It was simply bitter and tasted horrible; nothing to do with the heat numbers. This is already the 'retail-friendly' version. Ha! The show uses the version with pepper extract. That would taste like battery acid. *shudder

I prefer flavorful hot sauces over the fiery quotient. The heat is nothing if I'm just sampling. I'm not even eating a whole plate of it. I'll never do that. Dohhhh. My vote goes to #2 Shaquanda's Banjhee Ranch (6200 SHU) and #4 Hot Ones Los Calientes Verde (36,000 SHU) and #7 Angry Goat Dreams of Calypso (101,000 SHU).

Nobody needed milk or yoghurt or apple juice. They only needed iced water, like two glasses each. Not too bad. Nobody got burnt. Dessert was made up of bonbons and a chocolate mousse cake from Janice Wong, and chilled bubbly to cleanse the palate!

Debby Roe's Story Is Many Women's Pain Too

Glanced at the title that flew by as I was scanning the magazine. Bookmarked the story and returned to read Mary Gaitskill's 'Minority Report' published in The New Yorker on March 20, 2023. This is a follow-up story to the author's short stories collection 'Bad Behavior' (1988), written 35 years ago. A companion piece. Wow. 

Do you remember the film 'Secretary' (2002) starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader, directed by Steven Shainberg? The film describes a dominant-submissive BDSM relationship? The screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson is adapted from 'Bad Behavior'. 

In an interview with the magazine's Deborah Treisman, Mary Gaitskill explained why she didn't just write this new short story as a sequel, but also retold the earlier story before following the protagonist Debby for the next 30 years.

Your story “Minority Report” returns to an older story of yours, “Secretary,” which was first published in 1988. Rather than writing a straightforward sequel, you retell the earlier story, and then follow the main character, Debby, through the next three and a half decades of her life. What made you want to go back to “Secretary,” and how did you settle on this form of retelling and extending?

The story came out of a conversation I had with some people who wanted to make “Secretary” into a play; a number of different ideas for an ending were discussed, and, to me, the best one was a final encounter or confrontation between the man and the woman. The other people weren’t so into that idea—they wanted it to be all about Debby, and, anyway, what could happen in that confrontation? I couldn’t answer that question in the moment, but I decided to write a story and see how it evolved.

I felt that I had to start at the beginning—that is, with the events of “Secretary”—in order to fully situate the reader in Debby’s experience; it would not be the same if she were just summarizing it as a much older person. I wanted the reader to inhabit her naïve and innocent perception, her very modest hopefulness, and her acceptance of the limitations of her environment. I think those things are crucial to what happens and to how she develops. I also wanted the shock and arousal of what happens to be fully felt. I didn’t think I could get that effect if I told it in flashback.

Protagonist Debby Roe doesn't belong to the majority or hold similar opinions with other people. Her experiences are uniquely her own. She doesn't disagree with them, but she doesn't share their experiences. Her sexuality and its complex awakening shaped her life forever. If I said Ned Johnson's abuse scarred her forever, she definitely didn't think of it that way. She decided that her experiences with him defined what she wanted as her sexual satisfaction.

Years later, after she left this job, her ex boss ran for public office. I guess word got around about him sexually abusing his staff because once he stepped into the limelight, it was open warfare. Reporters dug up his history, and reporters got her contact and called her for comments, and for anything that might blow up into a story. Nobody said anything, and old boss Ned Johnson won the elections and became the mayor of Westland.

Debby never quite found anyone who shared her BDSM sexual inclinations. Her partners didn't quite last. She never found anyone whom she could fully 'love' or 'want'. Decades later, the revelations about Harvey Weinstein came out, along with #MeToo. 

At first, I felt sullen about it. I didn’t even know why. It just felt like these girls were complainers. Like they wanted to let everybody know how desirable they were, how men were always trying to kiss them or touch them or fuck them. Because, if men want you like that, it means you have value. One night I woke up and thought, If he’d raped me I could’ve told people and they would respect it, or at least pretend to. Because rape you can at least understand. But he didn’t rape me. He wasn’t interested. He said so. I was too worthless even for that. If I’d reported it, I would’ve been reporting my lack of worth.

I sat up and put my hands on my chest, quieting the pain. Except it wasn’t pain—it was anger. I thought, He did this to me. It seemed outrageously simple, so simple that I was astonished I hadn’t thought of it before, so simple that my mind veered away from it. I thought, I don’t want to give him that much power. Then I thought, But it wasn’t me who gave it.

In the morning, the anger, like the pain, was far away and vague.

Secretly, I came over to the side of the women who didn’t want to accept or tolerate any more. But it was too late for me, and not just because of being old. The thing was inside me and I couldn’t make it go away without making myself go away. 

Ned Johnson kinda disappeared from public office. There were failed runs for state senator. He returned to his old law offices to practice. Debby finally found the courage to google him, and then to meet him. He had plagued her dreams and her life for decades. She had to put an end to it. She scored an appointment and went to meet Ned Johnson at this office that she worked at decades ago. She met with him.

This is how the story of Debby Roe ended,

I was halfway home when I realized that I was hungry. I headed to Meijer’s—they had a store where the A. & P. used to be—to pick up something for dinner. I thought about Clarice, at Detroit Magazine. I imagined her invisibly listening to my confrontation with Ned Johnson. I imagined her frowning mouth when he said that he’d covered my hand with his, and that I’d held his finger. I pulled into the Meijer’s lot. I took my phone out of my purse. I thought, if the story came out now, everybody was going to ask, “Why did you wait so long?” People would joke about it; they’d masturbate over it. And I could hardly blame them!  

I smiled, sort of. Because at least I’d hit him in the head. I put my phone back in my purse. I would think on it again tomorrow. Tomorrow, the waking world would finally have its say. I got out of the car and went to get dinner. I was starving.

煮炒月光河粉

For some odd reason, the man has been thinking about having a plate of hor fun — fried rice noodles. He didn't know what it's called, but after he described it, I realized that he likes the 'moonlight hor fun' 月光河粉. I don't bother with beef hor fun anymore unless a hotel cafe happens to serve it. Most beef used at these eateries that serve hor fun gives me funny textures and flavors. Yucks. I rather it be a vegetarian hor fun or have it come with pork.

We went to Sin Hoi Sai at Tiong Bahru for dinner. I like its back alley vibes and convenient location. Importantly, they have a seafood and pork moonlight hor fun. Yes, it's the dry hor fun with a raw yolk atop. The man was ridiculously happy with this plate of carbs. Bamboo clams, steamed tofu, and salt and pepper prawns gave him the proteins that he needed.

I haven't been here for ages. I rarely want to eat zi char because of how greasy the dishes can be. Sure, I can ask for less oil and less salt, but still, the nature of the wok-fried things make it hard for any dish to go lighter. Even its vegetables can be drowning in oil if the kitchen doesn't bother. 

I was pleasantly surprised by the food tonight. The dishes were still a tad greasy, but not as bad as I had expected. The kitchen has indeed gone lighter on using oil and salt by default. I had bravely ordered a pork rib and watercress soup. It might a tad salty for some people, but it tasted great to me. We didn't order the one pot at $43. We had one that's >$10; it came in a giant bowl sufficient for 3-4 persons. Wow.