I hope they didn't use Australian broccoli when they filmed that MV, the price has gone back up to 80 cents per 100g and that was a large head of broccoli.
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This article caught my attention today. TL; DR: If you want to spend more time with your family than the average working mum, it is unlikely that you will be able to maximise the earning capacity bestowed on you by your university degree, and when your kids finally start asserting their independence*, you will have fallen behind your peers who chiong-ed during your child's formative years when you either didn't work, chose to go part-time or take on a chill job with predictable hours. That's a price you have to pay, but hey, you can't have your chai tow kueh and eat it too.
You get the drift.
*From what I recall of my teenage years, this is a s**t period of time where you feel like your children are the most ungrateful brats to ever walk this earth and you wonder constantly WHY you decided to have them. But if it's any consolation, prayer and faith in God on my parents' part, especially my mother's, show that miracles do happen.
These are issues which I have been going over and over and OVER again in my mind. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) for FBC, it does not appear that I am one of those mothers who can spend all his waking hours babbling away with him in Whale/ Seal and other such maternal doings. We did dance to the Unbelievable song together today though, FBC chuckling delightedly at my deranged imitation of Chen Tian Wen's dance moves.
What really resonated with me, however, was the last paragraph of the article. It said that one of the mothers featured (who, from the article, is working part-time, flexibly and from home, for a not-for-profit arts company) had a "new focus", viz., running marathons.
That got me thinking about my own "focuses". Before I delivered, I toyed with the idea of doing a full marathon if I really took a year off (despite having agreed with Jon after the last one in 2011 that I wouldn't do them anymore). Of course now that I've taken the year off, I think I'll stick to training for a half - the thought of 42.195km at one shot, with hips which still feel a teensy bit off-kilter at times, is just too painful. Also, after I left private practice, working out and being fit became really important to me, and because there were some Issues at my new workplace, it got easier to just go to the gym during lunch so I could avoid people at lunchtime. Weird, I know. This changed once I got to know the lovely R (whom I then bullied into going to the gym with me at lunch so nothing really changed).
The point I'm trying to make (and I may be making assumptions) is that once you take away something which one used to strive for, to work really hard at - in this case, one's career - something else needs to take its place, and it seems that that something comes in the form of endurance sports. I'd already started long-distance running in university, but later, in 2012, it definitely felt like the best outlet to channel all the energy I used to expend on trying to and hoping I bettered my peers at work, worrying about whether the correct draft of a letter had been sent out, whether I could meet (in retrospect, unreasonable) deadlines, whether I could meet my billing targets, etc. Okay, I'm weird. But we already established that in the preceding paragraph.
Also, while this doesn't seem to be such a big thing in Singapore (or I may just not be reading the right blogs), when I was pregnant I came across quite a number of blogs by angmoh SAHMs documenting their pregnancy and post-partum running experiences. Runner's World did a great and encouraging feature on this as well, and there are even blogs dedicated to reviews of jogging strollers**. I think quite a number of them must have given up careers of some sort to stay at home with their children, but since I don't know them in real life and didn't click on their earlier blog entries to determine this, it's mostly conjecture on my part. But I don't think I would be that off the mark.
**If you're interested, we use a BOB Revolution SE Stroller which I purchased secondhand from a Brazilian SAHM for S$350. She'd advertised on stexpats.com. Seeing as this was an amazing bargain (it retails for about US$450 on Amazon, and that's before you include the shipping cost), we couldn't be too picky about the colour and so FBC has to put up with a purple jogging stroller. Not that he cares.
Anyhow, since we are talking about running - I haven't done a timed run for a fixed distance for a while, but I know that I'm definitely stronger and hopefully nearer my sub-2 goal for the GEWR 2015.
Sometimes I don't know if I'm veering into Too Concerned About My Fitness and Appearance Territory, and making the excuse that I have nothing much else in my life to focus on. But that's another story for another day, perhaps.
***
Since we had a huge box of Tie Guan Yin languishing in the kitchen cabinet, I decided to make tea-smoked chicken! As our laptop has just informed me that it cannot read my phone, meaning I cannot upload a picture of said chicken, you will just have to take my word that I tried the recipe. Here is a link to the same. I substituted 1/4 cup of Tie Guan Yin leaves for the black tea, and also added about a tablespoon of Szechuan peppercorns to the smoking mixture and omitted the coriander seeds. Because I was loathe to use so much aluminium foil, I only lined the bottom of my wok (where the smoking mixture was placed), and stoppered up the steam holes in the lid of my wok with little scrunched up bits of aluminium foil. The lid fit snugly, so no smoke was lost. Apologies, but you may have to use all that foil if you have doubts about your wok.
You can take it from me that the recipe works, and the results are yummy. Although the chicken is cooked through and can be eaten once it's finished smoking (I used a mix of drumettes and mid-joints), it is a lot tastier (and better looking!) if you take the extra step of broiling it thereafter. I found I needed about 10-15 minutes of broiling with my oven to achieve that lovely brown colour and crispy skin, but if your broiler is more efficient than mine then good for you.
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