Still hooked

4.30am is no time to start reading a book. Unless you finished the previous one at 4.25am.

OK, I learn fast. Halfway through Stieg Larsson Book 2, I went out and got Book 3. I was not going to be left hanging again in that deprivation mode when I finished Book 1 overnight, with hours to go before the bookshop opened to get a serial fix. The reason why I had to go out twice, to two different bookshops in two days, was because the bookshop where I bought Book 2 did not have Book 3. So 24 hours later, I took the train downtown to a bigger bookshop to get Book 3 -- while reading Book 2 on the train there and back. I think I haven't slept properly for the past 72 hours. L thinks it's a good thing that Larsson stopped at 3 books -- if he'd gone on for more, that would be a good week without any sleep.

And this is why I hardly ever start reading trilogies. You know you're starting on a long haul because you're never going to stop with one book. It's like the literary equivalent of opening a bag of potato chips, you're never going to stop at one chip. But sometimes -- like Tolkien, and now Larsson -- they're worth the long-term commitment .

The problem now is that Book 2 isn't the same edition as Books 1 and 3, so I haven't got a matching set. When I bought Book 2, I just grabbed the first edition I came across, like a junkie needing a quick, desperate fix. It didn't matter then that Book 2 didn't match Book 1. And now my copy of Book 3 doesn't match Book 2.

This sort of thing only bothers OCD people. And people who are proud of their matching Terry Prachett Discworld paperbacks. :)

Austen industry

I've just realised that my Jane Austen related books are fast outnumbering the Austen books proper. And these are just what I have, which is a small fraction of what's out there, plus what I've borrowed from the library. I'm not even including trash like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

I wonder if Austen ever realised that her name and plots would kickstart a whole new genre?

Hooked

L had one piece of advice before I embarked on the reading spree -- leave the Stieg Larsson till when I'm on leave and can afford the time because I wouldn't be able to put it down.

Well, I started the potboiler at a Starbucks, and went home, got into bed that night with it, and stayed up till 7am till I finished it. And that's not the end of the story. I slept for a few hours, then leapt out of bed after one cup of caffeine (normally, it takes me three cups before I can even crawl out of bed) and headed straight out for the mall -- to get Books 2 and 3 from the library, and if not, the bookshop. I hadn't even showered (but at least I brushed my teeth and washed my face!), I was in that much of a hurry to get my hands on the next two books in the series.

L laughed me out of the house. He's going to stop laughing when he realises that he's going to have to wait till I'm done with the sequel before he gets his hands on it.

Rock n roll is everywhere

Reading material

Home this week, clearing leave days and planning on staying in bed with two dogs and reading. Oh, OK, at the most, I could schlepp to the sofa.

I've already finished the Prachett. The Larsson I've always been meaning to get round to reading, same as Che Guevara. Hilary Mantel I got on the strength of The Economist's review and winning the Man Booker Prize. Look at the heft of that volume, it's definitely bedside reading material and not something you can slip in your bag and fish out at Starbucks.

Sumer is icumen in

Lhude sing cuccu.

Yeah, I know it's kinda cuckoo to go on about summer when you're living one degree north of the equator, and there's watermelon available year round (don't hate me, R, I remember what you said last summer about watermelon being an indication of the season). But the supermarket signs of summer -- such as imported stone fruit -- is really something worth singing about. Guess I'm not about to count my food miles there.

Oh, the poster is a mailer of a restaurant's seasonal menu. It's too pretty to consign to the recycling bin with the rest of the mailers that I get, so I'm sticking it on my wall for the colours. And the laidback effect that it gives me everytime I look at it.

Murie sing cuccu!
:)

Love, etc

My husband loves me too. He went and got Blutack when I realised that we didn't have any in the house. So that his wife could stick postcards of her crush at her desk.

Feed a fever

I love my friends, and I think they love me. They spammed me with pictures of Diego Forlan when they knew of my World Cup crush. Then one of them turned those pictures into postcards ("you only get eight, any more would be a shrine") when I went into post-World Cup post-Forlan withdrawal (yes, I know Spanish La Liga starts next month, but I'm not likely to follow it -- I'm smitten but I'm not stupid enough to follow a league where I only know one player).



And even the one who then spammed me with pictures of Forlan's model girlfriend, in an attempt to jolt me back to post-World Cup reality. Why do footballers always have to date models? Life is unfair enough as it is.

Saturday night out

... feeding my Forlan crush at the Kopitiam's free screening of the World Cup third and fourth placing.

We knew that they would stop alcohol sales after midnight so we brought along our own liquid picnic.


PS: I have realised that the drawback to watching with one's husband a match featuring one's crush is that every time Forlan got possession, L would elbow me, "Eh, your boyfriend!"

If only.

Yummy

A weak attempt at food blogging -- which is to say, I want to show off what I did for dinner over the weekend. It doesn't look anything as food porn as Chubby Hubby though. But then again, he's a pro.



We usually have a packet of frozen roti prata (Singaporean Indian pancake, usually eaten with curry) as a staple in the freezer, and one day, instead of heating a prata in a non-stick pan on the stove top as I usually do, I stuck one in the oven because I had it going for something else. To my surprise, the flat pancake crisped up and puffed up into layers like flaky pastry.

That sparked off ideas of what to do with prata, mostly along the lines of using it as an easy pastry substitute. It's more restrictive than pastry because you are restricted to working with a circle of frozen dough which you can't roll or manipulate. But it is a lot more convenient, and doesn't involve getting out the rolling pin and pastry board. And I thought pre-made pastry was already convenient. This beat even that.

The easiest thing to make was a sausage roll, I simply rolled a prata round a sausage and popped it in the oven. Last week, prata became the pastry topping for a chicken pot pie. That worked out quite well and it was dead easy because you could just place the circular prata over the pie dish and fold it down over the edge.

Then I got adventurous. Prata became the dough for a pasty. It was an ugly-looking pasty, because unlike malleable dough, I couldn't pinch the pancake neatly into a decorative plait where I sealed the ends, let alone decorate it Martha Stewart-like with pastry appliques on top. But hey, looks doesn't matter because once you cut into it, it will just crumble away into flakes anyway, and it tastes just as good.





Oh, that dish in the corner, it was a vegetable soup.

Dog's breakfast

Well, it sure looks better than mine!

Gone Chopin

It's funny how I hated Chopin when I was a teenager with piano lessons and practice sessions forced upon me. Chopin then was all trills and trouble, more stress than soother. But now, it's the Chopin CDs I automatically put on when I want soothing music.

This year's installation of the annual piano festival had a largely Chopin theme, in line with his bicentennial. I missed most of the week-long concerts though, as I work weeknights, and could only go on the final night, which had little Chopin. But it was OK, that night featured Piotr Anderszewki and he played Bach (English Suite No5) and Beethoven (Piano Sonata No31), my favourite B-boys.

I had the last seat at the end of the row, and on my left, an empty seat separated me from the guy who sat two seats away. It was as if he had bought three seats for himself, he had a nice space of an empty seat on either side of him. In a full house, at that. Halfway through the Bach, I was amused to see him playing air piano along to the music. He got up to leave even before the lights came on for the intermission. And he never came back. Strange guy.

There was also Schumann in the line-up, and it wasn't until I leafed through the programme that I realised Schumann was born in the same year as Chopin. Which means that this year is also Schumann's bicentennial. But he's been completely overshadowed by all the fanfare over Chopin. I knew it right from the start, that guy was trouble.

It's all in the brain

I knew there had to something more to straight women getting along with gay men than just shopping for shoes together. We've both got more nimble brains.

Still in the spirit

Succumbed to football fever and got dad a birthday cake in the shape of a pitch. He was delighted. He pointed out though, that the goal posts were missing.

That there are cakes in the shape of a football pitch already says something. Actually, Pizza Hut has a rectangular pizza also decorated with toppings that makes it look like a football pitch. But it would be too much to give dad fast food for a birthday meal. Even though he would probably like it too. :p

Spirit of the season

I found this book lurking on the library shelf in the economics section. A most serendipitous find, given World Cup season. Or cuppo mondiale, as a friend calls it, because it sounds more grandiose that way. (But then again, he's an English prof so I guess they talk like that -- hi, J!)

The book does explain tribalism and all that hooliganism stuff. What it doesn't explain is why any human with a Y chromosome on this planet is currently obsessed with the World Cup.

At least I'll have a good book to read when L is watching football.

Bag boy

I left my bag lying on the floor as I sat at my desk, and was going to start packing it with all the things I needed to take in with me to work. Rupert came into the room and decided that he was going to use it as a cushion to sleep on. I couldn't interfere with his comfort. The bag will probably smell of dog tomorrow, and my colleague sitting next to me may even wrinkle his nose. But I'm letting this sleeping dog lie.

I want more

To have the Academy of St Martin in the Fields (ASMF) play here is already a big deal. To have Joshua Bell perform, an even bigger deal. To have Bell lead ASMF, well that just about caps everything. And two for the price of one, at that.

The first time I heard ASMF in a live recital was more than 20 years ago when I was a teenager (well, maybe a little bit more than 20 years ago then). I don't remember them as a large orchestra. They were a chamber group then. Perhaps there was woodwind but I don't remember a brass section then, and definitely no timpani. Well now, they're more like a symphony orchestra, quite capable of taking on Beethoven -- Symphony No 7 on opening night, and Symphony No 4 on the second night -- "angry music", as L calls Beethoven.

We went on the second night. It was a lovely concert but ended somewhat abruptly -- no encore, no nothing, despite a standing ovation at the end of the evening. A gentleman sitting next to us said that he was there the previous night, and not only was there an encore at the end of the evening, there was also one at the end of the first half of the programme, before the intermission -- which is pretty unusual. L thinks that Bell wanted an early night. Or maybe he thought we were Philistines -- there was scattered applause in between movements in the pieces. At the end of the night, there was a queue for autographs but signing was restricted to just 30 minutes. Yup, the man probably wanted to knock off early. Can't really blame him -- he didn't so much lead the orchestra, but danced to them. I still can't believe that he's my age, he looks like a 20-year-old kid!

We enjoyed the concert very much, but were rather disappointed -- cheated, even -- that there was no encore. When I first heard ASMF all those years ago, it was the encore that stayed with me over the years, whatever else they played has been long forgotten. The encore was Pachelbel's Cannon, and I remember that they dedicated it to someone in the music world who had passed away then. I had heard the piece countless times before then (and I've heard it countless times since, mostly as a wedding processional, and only lately, at a state funeral for a former deputy prime minister -- which will probably do it in for the next person who wants it in a wedding). ASMF was the first time that I heard it live. You know what they say about snapshot moments -- that one vivid moment that will stay in your memory throughout your life. ASMF and Pachelbel was one of those moments for me. It was then that I realised how much a live performance can add to a piece that you only knew as a recording. When you're a teenager still trying to decide whether you prefer Bach or Bon Jovi, that can leave a lasting impression.

I still like both Bach and Bon Jovi, and I even see a Bach structure in Guns n Roses' November Rain, much to the amusement of a professional rock musician I once told that to. But that's another story.

I finally geddit

To stay topical on the World Cup:

Off-side Rule explained for women (courtesy Bill Shepherd)

You're in a shoe shop, second in the queue for the till. Behind the shop assistant on the till is a pair of shoes which you have seen and which you must have. The 'opposing' female shopper in front of you has seen them also and is eyeing them with desire. Both of you have forgotten your purses. It would be totally rude to push in front of the first woman if you had no money to pay for the shoes.The shop assistant remains at the till waiting. Your friend is trying on another pair of shoes at the back of the shop and sees your dilemma. She prepares to throw her purse to you. If she does so, you can catch the purse, then walk round the other shopper and buy the shoes. At a pinch she could throw the purse ahead of the other shopper and, *whilst it is in flight* you could nip around the other shopper, catch the purse and buy the shoes. Always remembering that until the purse had *actually been thrown* it would be plain wrong to be forward of the other shopper.

We win

Dad was going to have one of his mates over to watch the World Cup opening match on Friday night. At the last minute before the guy was coming over, he phoned to ask if his girlfriend could come along. Of course. And could she bring her girlfriends? Sure.

Then dad thought to remind him to tell them that two dogs live in the house, so they could come as long as they were OK with dogs. Then one of the women suggested to dad that he shut the dogs up in another room.

Dad erupted: Why don't you sit in another room? The dogs live here, you don't.

Nobody came. Mexico and South Africa drew. The dogs won.

Everybody's Irish

The food court next to the shopping mall down the road has a somewhat international flavour -- there's Japanese, Korean and Italian food, alongside the local Chinese, Indian and Malay specialities.

But O'Braim Aneka Selera? Would that be Irish Malay food? FWIW, they were offering mee siam (all right, I'll translate for my overseas friends -- hi B and M! -- vermicelli in a tamarind gravy) andtahu goreng (deep fried squares of tofu with a peanut sauce dressing). Those dishes on the display counter are different types of epok epok (deep-fried half-circles of short crust pastry, with different fillings of sardine or curried potato). (Hungry yet?) Not a whiff of Guinness.