Saturday

I last wore the combination of my pink Reebok singlet, grey FBT shorts and blue Nike sports bra  at the Angkor Wat International Half-Marathon 2013, which was also the last long-distance race I ran before becoming pregnant with FBC. Jon had pushed back the operation to remove his tumour by a couple of days so we could go to Siem Reap as planned; after all, we had been told that it was probably benign and leaving it there for another couple of days wouldn't do much harm.

It was about two weeks after we returned from Siem Reap that we were told the tumour was actually malignant. I couldn't wear my pink Reebok singlet and grey FBT shorts again after that, because they served as a reminder of what life had been like before it All Went Downhill. So they remained folded in my drawer for over a year and a half, and after I signed up for the Great Eastern Women's Run (GEWR) this year, I decided that I would wear them again, together with my blue Nike sports bra, because, well there is no reason other than that I decided, why not? and it was significant because it was my first half-marathon post FBC. It may also well be my last long-distance race for some time (we are not expecting again, yet (haha), but committing to training was really painful, especially because I had absolutely no control over the quality or quantity of my sleep).

***

During the run, at the 16km mark, when I knew that if I forced myself to continue running all the way I may have vomited or even fainted, I decided that I would take things easy and walk a little, even if it meant that I wouldn't hit my desired timing. Because making myself sick just for the sake of hitting a timing, meaning I couldn't see to the laundry and cooking and miscellaneous household matters for about a week thereafter, just wasn't worth it. I was a little disappointed despite the fact that I had objectively clocked a decent time, but I realised that as I made my way painfully to the finish line, I had come to accept that life as a parent means Being Responsible, and sometimes (often, actually) that means making choices where you put your spouse and child(ren) before yourself. And then you realise that putting others first isn't such a bad thing after all, in fact, it is a good thing and brings them and you much joy. (In case I sound like Pollyanna-Does-Motherhood, do note that I came to this realisation whilst in a state of severe blood sugar deprivation. I doubt I will ever attain that level of selflessness where I will joyfully and willingly always put their needs before my own. In fact, I spent most of this afternoon simultaneously reading Elizabeth George's latest Inspector Lynley mystery and "playing" with FBC.)

***

I am thankful that the haze miraculously cleared up for the GEWR, and even more thankful that Jon has been cancer-free for the past year or so. Long may this be the case. I thank God for all that He has blessed us with these two years, for the growth we have experienced as people and in our walk with Him. 

Oh Cecilia, You're Breaking My Heart

That song has absolutely no relevance to anything in my life right now (I don't know any Cecilias, therefore my heart cannot be broken by anyone named Cecilia), but it is 10.56pm on a work night (GASP!) and it was also the very last track to RPM 67, so - nope, still irrelevant, but I'm trying to keep with a theme here.

***

I decided that I had to blog about my first week of work because I managed to cook dinner on my first day of work (1 October, Thursday) and from the Sunday which followed that (4 October) to the Thursday after (8 October). Yes, I wanted (needed!) to hao lian, but I must also give credit to our new family member, whom I purchased with some Robinsons' vouchers I found lying around on the study table.

A cousin of our new family member, who looks exactly like him

Credit to random website which came up on Google

This was what I cooked. The menu for the work week starting on 5 October was inspired by The Kitchn's roast chicken meal plan.  

1 October: Slow-Cooker Vietnamese Roast Chicken from A Year of Slow Cooking. The night before, which was also my last night of no-pay leave (when I should have been vegetating in front of the TV for the last time), I stuck a layer of sliced onions in the bottom of the slow cooker insert, put about 8 or 9 small to medium sized Sakura skinless chicken thighs on top of those in a single layer, then poured the marinade over them. I stuck the entire insert into the fridge, and at 3pm that afternoon I sent my mother a message and told her to stick the insert into the slow cooker on "Low". When I got back around 6.45pm the chicken was lovely and tender and had that nice caramelised fish sauce aftertaste.

We went out for dinner on 2 October. One of the things I missed the most about working was anticipating going out to town on Friday night. Since we didn't have cell group, we went to Vivo City where we proceeded to eat a bit too much, but we HAD to get llao llao to celebrate my return to work. 

On 4 October, I roasted a chicken (seasoned it with just salt and pepper). Now, the NTUC fish counter aunties who can cut up the chicken for you and discard all the yucky bits like the head and feet never seem to understand me when I say "butterfly" (I have to pronounce it with a distinctly auntie accent, viz., bah-terh-fly). After having the chicken cut open at the breast bone and the chicken cut in two with the backbone still attached, I took to asking for the feet and head to be cut off and thrown away, and only the backbone removed but returned with the beheaded and de-feeted chicken... which came back to me with the backbone removed and cut in half. 

It actually does make a difference when roasting the chicken, to have it intact and not in two halves - the breast meat doesn't get as dry when the chicken is whole, but since the butcher service saves me from spraying my sink with chicken germs, I can't complain. Anyhow, so I roasted my two chicken halves, and we ate most of one half for dinner along with some roasted broccoli and cous cous. I saved the chicken bones.

On 5 October, I took the drumstick and thigh and chicken wing off the half chicken, shredded the breast meat, cooked some 2.5 minute soba (I threw in some thinly sliced kailan when the water first came to a boil and let that cook for a bit), and added the shredded chicken towards the end to warm it through. The soba cooking water was really tasty so we drank it after dinner, but dinner was essentially soba with chicken and kailan, and I stirred in some ginger scallion sauce (plenty of recipes out there, it got trendy after David Chang included a recipe for it in his Momofuku cookbook). All chicken bones were saved, together with the drumstick, thigh and chicken wing. 

On 6 October I made Niku Miso don with an almost hard-boiled egg (each). There are also plenty of recipes on the Internet which you can adapt to your liking, I just fried up some minced onion, garlic and ginger (you can grate it so you don't really see it after it's cooked), then added a tray of minced pork. After the pork was cooked through (you may need to add a touch of water), I set aside some for FBC before adding a sauce comprising soy sauce, miso paste, mirin and cooking sake in a 2:3:1.5:2ish ratio. Err, just taste as you go, miso pastes come in different levels of saltiness. After the sauce thickened I drizzled some sesame oil over it all, placed thinly sliced kailan on top, lowered the heat and covered the pot so the kailan would wilt in the residual heat. We ate this with rice. 

On 7 October I finally got round to making slow-cooker chicken stock! Again there are plenty of iterations of this out there (I think it started trending after Smitten Kitchen published a recipe for it). I just stuck all the chicken bones from my 4 October roast chicken and some chicken bones from another roast chicken which I had frozen into my slow cooker along with a sliced onion, about 3 small cloves of garlic, two bay leaves and half a carrot, roughly chopped. I used around 8 cups of water, which I think was too much. I cooked it on Low for about 12 hours, and it tasted a bit diluted to me when I got home so I took the lid off the slow cooker and turned it to High for a while. The evaporation did help to give it a more concentrated flavour, but I ended up adding about a tablespoon of tomato paste along with salt and pepper to give the stock more body. I also added in the remaining chicken parts I had saved, skin and all, so that helped the flavour as well. We ate this with mini fusilli and the remaining chicken parts, and some blanched broccoli.

On 8 October I Googled recipes for baked salmon, found this recipe from Natasha's Kitchen, decided parsley was too expensive - one box would cost almost the same as a coffeeshop meal - and so headed out to the mini-mart opposite our place when I got home, bought some stalks of coriander to use in lieu of the parsley, and some potatoes, and had dinner ready by 8.20pm. I was quite pleased with this achievement, and clean-up was minimal. Alright, I know not everyone will agree with that but there was just the bowl I used to mix the vinaigrette-like marinade in, the pot for the mashed potatoes, the potato masher, and my plate and utensils. Jon came back late so he had to eat from the mashed potato pot. 

***

Let's see how long this cooking thing lasts. Next week is pork week; tomorrow's dinner sits in the slow cooker insert in the fridge, waiting to be put into the slow cooker tomorrow morning. 

It also helps that my new workplace is about a 15-20 minute bus ride from my house, and we are going to buy a bicycle so I can cycle to work via the park connector. I am thankful to God for this posting, which literally materialised out of thin air when I was bopping up and down outside Kim's Family Restaurant at Lorong Kilat during an early Mother's Day celebration with Jon's family, trying to get a sick FBC to sleep.

***

Having finished haolian-ing, I have a thought that I want to share, which is the primary reason I have stayed up so late writing this (really!) although FBC is running a slight temperature and I really should go to bed because I forsook a nap in the afternoon to continue rereading American Gods.

Now and then, although FBC is already over a year old, I feel bad that I stopped breastfeeding so early. The bad feelings are mostly a combination of guilt and fear that I have disadvantaged him in some way; I was relieved when he started walking around the same time as other babies of the same age, and he also doesn't show any signs of obesity or being developmentally slow. It's all in my head, I know, but it's hard not to compare, to worry. 

But whenever I start working myself up about this, I remember the circumstances leading up to FBC's conception and birth; after everything Jon and I had gone through the year before, what was the point in continuing if our relationship was deteriorating because of someone who was meant to (and did, and still does) bring us so much joy, who was a clear sign of God's faithfulness in our lives? What did it matter, so long as he was well-fed, happy and healthy? 

***

Going back to work has been S. H. I. O. K. I know why I didn't go back earlier, but I'm still going to say it anyway: WHY DIDN'T I GO BACK EARLIER? 

What's Going On?

Two and a half days before I'm back at work! I can't believe I survived an entire year and a bit as an SAHM. Can you?

***

Thank you for hanging out with me here, if you've been keeping up with my posts since I decided to start blogging again. I think I would like to write about being a FTWM, so maybe we'll meet back here in near future, who knows? 

I suppose I should be waxing lyrical about how much my baby has grown (and feeling wistful at how fast he has grown) and how much I've enjoyed witnessing his milestones - FBC is now big, fat and noisy, weighing about four times as much as he did at birth. He babbles in the full belief that we understand him and he is having an actual conversation with us. He sings along with his encouraging singing helicopter which Jon's parents got him for his first birthday, also in the full belief that he is carrying a tune and not just babbling some more. He has started taking a few tentative steps unassisted, though he is a bit of a scardey-cat and lurches towards the nearest stable piece of furniture the moment he realises that he is actually walking. 

In all honesty, the past year has already melded into a blur of diaper changes and having sung Be Thou My Vision one too many times. Perhaps I will have tender memories of this period of time when FBC is older - it was only recently that I started to marvel at just how amazing it is that Jon and I (with God's blessing, of course) gave life to another person. Better late than never!

***

Being parents has led Jon and me to reminisce about our childhoods. It's funny how all these things I didn't even know I remembered have been coming to mind. 

I remember my father bringing me to West Coast Park to play before dropping me off (late) at kindergarten, and also him buying me the 'one ball one ball' ice cream in a cone. I remember that for everyone's birthdays for a good few years we had the lurid green kaya pandan coconut layer cake from Bengawan Solo, and "Happy Birthday" would be iced in clashing, festive, bright pink icing across the top. It was delicious but I'm not sure I would eat it today; would I eschew it in favour of a more "wholesome" Cedele cake? I remember hiding the cane with PoBe (Jon has similar memories), I remember being made to write lines and trying to finish them more quickly by going down the columns - for instance, if I had to write "I will do my homework before watching TV", I would write all the I's, followed by the will's, and so on and so forth. I don't remember actually completing all the lines, and that method resulted in some alarmingly crooked sentences. 

I remember listening to 'Top Of The World' on my father's hi-fi set in our old house, remember being scolded for getting 77/100 for a Math test when I was in primary three, remember turfing my father out of my parents' bed on weekends so I could lie there and talk to my mother (this carried on until I was quite old). I remember feeling upset with my mother whenever we went shopping because she would say that shopping centres gave her a headache and she would always want to go home before we bought anything, how come other peoples' mothers bring them shopping and they have so many nice clothes and now I am the one having headaches and dreading bringing my child(ren) to shopping malls on the weekends in the future, all the time wishing that I could dress them in Uniqlo forever and be done with it. I could, of course, if we just had boys, but I think it would be nice to have a little girl. Until she reaches puberty.  

The quarrels, the cuddles, the countless meals my mother cooked. The things which I am only now beginning to realise I took for granted, because that is the way of children. Such is the stuff memories are made of. 

***

FBC will not, of course, have any memory of his first birthday party, but I definitely will! I made everything from scratch as a birthday present to myself, from the crackers to the hummus (Googled and adapted so no real recipe) to the chicken curry shepherd's pie I spent nights dreaming up (I was fearful it would be an absolute failure but it was lovely), to the cake (yes, FBC was allowed to consume that much sugar), the mini pizzas which were topped with a riff on FBC's favourite butternut squash tomato puree and lots of cheese - because what is a kid's birthday party without kid-sized pizzas? - and the garlic and lemon pulled pork I cobbled together at the last minute because I feared there wouldn't be enough food. 

I intended to post recipes regularly when I started blogging again and this would be the perfect time for a recipe spam, this farewell to SAHM-hood (for now) post but firstly my phone up and died on me so I can't post pictures, and secondly, I'm feeling lazy. Drop me a line in real life if you would like to discuss anything I made, I'd be more than happy to do so. 

***

I also wanted to blog about my path back to pre-pregnancy fitness but it seemed a bit odd to do so, it not being a very me thing to do, somehow, so I stopped. Since this is a round-up of the past year, I'll just say that I've actually been keeping up with yoga videos and yoga regularly, if I can't get to a yoga class I do yoga at least once a week at home. In terms of overall fitness I think I am stronger than I was before I got pregnant (from lugging FBC around, inter alia), I can maintain about 6:00/km for 10km or so, with my fastest split being about 5:51/km. All it takes is being ever so slightly obsessed (running at 4pm in the blazing heat because there is just no other time to do so), and a healthy dose of vanity. One thing I've learnt as well, that I will try to force myself to put into practice with my next pregnancy when it happens, is to be PATIENT with weight loss and getting back fitness. What's more there will be two babies (three, if you count Jon - haha) to look after and as obsessed and competitive as I am, there is no point pushing oneself that hard (but ask me again after I have no. 2).  

As much as I will miss being part of the Tai Tai Gym Gang (I made that up, it doesn't really exist and everyone at the Tai Tai Time spin classes looks at me as if I am either a university student or an errant employee), I am glad to be going back to work and being a Lunchtime Gym Rat again. And who knows, maybe this new place I am going to will afford me the flexibility to sorta kinda be part of the TTGG. 

***

Before I go, I know I said a few posts ago that I would write about discipline after I had given it some thought, and my views on it are that: (1) we agree with spanking; and (2) I can't wait until FBC is old enough to understand the concept of a naughty corner. It does get easier to tell when they are being naughty as opposed to just being babies - a couple of weeks can make all the difference. 

Till we meet again, it has been nice sharing my SAHM journey with you. 

Beautiful Day

Four more Wednesday morning spin classes and I'll be back at work full-time. It seems like just yesterday I was at the gym staring at the bottom of the swimming pool right after my no-pay leave was approved, wondering how on earth I was going to survive the many months ahead not being gainfully employed. 

***

It's the last day of August, and it is evident that I haven't felt much like writing the past month. I cooked many things - as I went through a severe spate of boredom at the beginning of August, I decided that we should host a pizza party at our place over the SG50 public holiday. I made oodles of pizza dough and pizza sauce (I used half a teaspoon of ground fennel and crushed canned tomatoes instead of tomato sauce) and while the guys were playing soccer, I expended lots of eye power directing the wives and girlfriends in the rolling out and making of many thin crust pizzas which were devoured with suitable appreciation. I also made a humongous shepherd's pie, macaroni and cheese, and Xinjiang spiced chicken drumlets and mid-joints, in a bid to prevent the guys from ordering the special spicy National Day chicken from KFC. The mix of spices I used can be found here, and I also added some soy sauce to the marinade. You can bake the chicken in a 170C fan-forced oven for about 25-30 minutes. If you're using bigger drumsticks/ chicken parts and making a smaller batch as per the original recipe, you can dredge the chicken parts in cornstarch before sticking them in the oven. Roast them for about 15 minutes on one side, then flip them to the other side and roast for 15 minutes, then flip them back and roast for about 10-15 minutes or until nicely golden brown. 

The beginning of August also saw Jon going for three weeks of reservist. Just before it started, he was confident that he would be able to come home early for dinner every day and that it wouldn't be too taxing a programme. He was dead wrong, and this led to much unhappiness and quarrelling during the first week. To top it all off, FBC was sick that week, finally succumbing fully to whatever he had picked up during the Home Improvement Scheme with EASE ("HISWE", and what an inaccurate name for something which was not easy At All).

The period during which FBC was sick was one of the lowest points of this entire SAHM journey thus far. I was exhausted from having to constantly clean up after the HISWE took place in our flat, and was recovering from whatever virus it subsequently transpired FBC had caught as well, despite my hoping against hope that it wouldn't escalate. 

There is a Thursday which stands out in my memory, it must have been the week after the SG50 public holiday. I'd dropped FBC off at my in-laws', and when I picked him up, was told that he had been as good as gold when he was there, and had eaten all his Heinz baby food without complaint. When we got home, it was as if someone somewhere had turned on a cranky switch, and he refused to nap or be left alone. When it came to dinner time, he refused to eat any of the food I had prepared. It would be apt, for dramatic effect, to say that I had prepared it "painstakingly", but as I had the use of my thermal pot and really, tasty porridge is all a matter of time once you have one of those, I shall not toot my own horn (seeing as I have already done it when describing our SG50 pizza party. Hur hur hur). He spat out whatever I could get into his mouth, which included some bits of spare rib which I later found rolled into a short, thin, grey roll on the living room floor. 

In hindsight, the virus was probably beginning to take hold and FBC had probably just been too distracted at my in-laws' to unleash his unhappiness at being ill. But I didn't know - babies can't bleddy communicate with adults in a way the latter understand, can they?! - and I felt bitter and outraged because I felt like I had done so much for him but he couldn't even behave himself properly at home.

Of course, FBC also woke up about twice that night and was inconsolable. Usually he is quite good and goes right back to sleep if you give him a bottle, and he sleeps through the night unless he is going through some growth or other developmental spurt. 

This did nothing for my mood, and because I still refused to believe that he was falling sick, when he refused to take his mid-morning nap the next day and kept making noise and wanting to be carried, I was so frustrated and angry that I left him in his cot, went to the kitchen, and swore in a loud, angry whisper (can a whisper be loud? Thankfully, I still retained enough of my sanity to exercise some self-restraint). I also declared in the same tone that I hated being a SAHM, ****** this ******. I leave it to you to fill in the asterisks with your choice of swear words (the ones I used don't require six asterisks. FYI). 

After that, repentant, I went back to FBC's room, gave him a hug, asked for his forgiveness, and prayed with him. I asked God to forgive me for losing my cool, and I asked Him for patience and understanding. I told FBC that I was trying very hard to understand him but I just couldn't, unfortunately, and I prayed that even though I didn't know what was wrong with him, that God would comfort him in his distress. And of course, I prayed that FBC would just SLEEP. Which he did. 

FBC only developed a fever a day or two after that episode and a few more nights of wailing and having to be carried and sung to for hours on end. Which was when I realised that I had been terribly unfair to him, and that he had just been sick all that time. But that's looking after a baby, and human nature, for you. What can we do but strive to give it our best, and depend on God's grace when we're spent?  

What this experience taught me was not to take what babies do so personally. Most of the time, they have no idea that certain things they do hurt their primary caregiver (especially if you're their mother), and they are just unable to express that they are feeling uncomfortable and distressed in a language other than Inconsolable Crying (a dialect of Whale and Seal), in actions other than Carry Me Or I Will Continue This Horrible Screeching.

I think it is good that I have reached this understanding, especially since it has enabled me to see other things more rationally, for instance that ALL caregivers should be working together for the good of the child and my unhappiness that FBC sometimes prefers his grandmothers to me (wouldn't you, if you had a mother who left you crying unhappily in your cot while she went to the kitchen to whisper swear?) has no place in this scheme. Also as a parent, my job is not to be liked all the time. Which brings me to the issue of Discipline, and that I will share about when I've thought about it a bit more. 

***

I met B on Saturday, and she asked me what I missed about working life. I said that I missed interacting with adults, but what I missed the most was probably having time to myself and not having to worry about someone else... And as I said it, I realised that I would never not be worrying about someone else ever again. There's a double negative there, so what I mean is that I will always be worrying about FBC, and I miss the feeling of not having him to worry about. 

***

I took the bus home from lunch with R and Z today, and as FBC banged his head against my chest, eyes closing, I looked at our reflection in the plastic panel in front of us and smiled wistfully at myself, already nostalgic for these languid, sunny days where we had the luxury of these long bus rides together. 

Why Do Babies Do THAT?

If I knew, I'd be a millionaire on your money. #(!$#(*@#*&!!!%!^!

SAHM Survival Guide

(No helper, mum-centric edition)

I thought I would compile a list of things I found were essential during these 4 months of paid and 6 plus months of unpaid maternity leave, for your reference in case you were thinking of taking a similar or longer time off with your child (two more months!). I have caveated above that this is mum-centric, so if you are looking for proper activities involving your child, i.e. not of the taking long bus rides and going to the supermarket variety, ask Google again.

1.       Supportive Husband

I have mentioned many times that I have no illusions about marriage, in particular with regard to how helpful husbands are around the house – so what may constitute “support” to me may not be to you. If you have a husband who cooks and does the dishes and cleans the house, good for you!

Jon really did put in his best to help out by washing FBC’s milk bottles and doing the dishes occasionally. While his other efforts at housework sometimes resulted in more work and consequently more nagging from me, I think he deserves an A+ for effort, patience and emotional support. Also for being as chill about being a parent to FBC as I am, and for never denying me sashimi although it’s expensive and I’m not working.

2.       Someone to leave your child with while you do your own thing for a few hours

Much thanks to my mother and my in-laws. I went to the gym mostly, and once to the dentist to get my wisdom tooth removed. Whatever floats your boat. 

3.       Part-time help

No further explanation needed as to why this is essential, although I still do all the laundry and most baby-related things myself, as well as cook. I have done the floors myself in the weeks she couldn’t make it – it is doable, but annoying because babies will insist on trying to get at the vacuum cleaner and when they can’t because you have imprisoned them in their cots, the resulting ruckus is even louder than the vacuum cleaner. Zzzz.

4.       Books

I purchased a Kindle from yoursingaporeimporters.com just before I started my maternity leave, which was about one to two weeks before FBC’s arrival (it was actually medical leave as my gynae decided that I needed to stop being so active due to my amniotic fluid index readings getting progressively lower). You can also purchase Amazon gift cards at a premium from them, which helps with buying books if you’re not big on VPN and anonymous browsing and whatnot.

Because of this, I have read an astonishing number of books in the past year – my Kindle home screen puts the number of items on my Kindle at 89, so taking in to account the fact that I like to download samples of books, as well as some classics Jon downloaded, I would put the total number of books I’ve read at about 40. While this has been useful in keeping my mind active and my grammar from going down the drain, I can’t say that most of what I’ve read has been the most intellectually stimulating. I’m also on a Kindle fast because reading too many books on it has made me unable to properly focus when I’m reading paperbacks, and I’ve got Kate Atkinson’s latest novel, A God In Ruins, and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere sitting on my bedside table, both of which I would like to read properly.

Some authors I liked were:

• Elizabeth George – The Inspector Lynley series. Not all of the series is well-written. I picked and chose based on reviews. Also (spoiler alert), Helen dies and I wasn’t interested in reading about Helen dying because I liked her too much. The books I enjoyed included: A Great Deliverance, Well-Schooled In Murder and In The Presence Of The Enemy.
•  Fannie Flagg – I first read Fried Green Tomatoes at The Whistle-Stop Café more than 10 years ago. Her books in general are easy to read, heart-warming and filled with interesting characters. Welcome To The World, Baby Girl! And The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion are good too.
• Liane Moriarty – I read The Husband’s Secret in paperback on our babymoon. It was okay, and I saw the secret from a mile away. The book of hers which I really enjoyed was What Alice Forgot, which is apparently being made into a movie. Jon says I only enjoyed the book because Alice forgot everything after falling off her bike at a spin class.
• James Herriot – I would consider All Creatures Great And Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful and All Things Wise and Wonderful proper Literature and perhaps best read in paperback. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
• Gary D. Schimidt – Excellent Young Adult Fiction. I read Okay For Now and The Wednesday Wars.
• Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game (also a young adult book). Creeped me out and kept me awake, but the ending was totally un-creepy and very nice.  

5.       TV

Ah, TV. If you haven’t switched to Starhub, please do so.

Cooking/ food shows

•  Bake With Anna Olson and Fresh With Anna Olson. Anna Olson must be one of the most boring TV cooks ever, but she does have pretty good tips, especially on the former show. Her recipe ideas on the latter aren’t bad either.
• Giada At Home and Everyday Italian. Giada de Laurentiis has a big head and sometimes I wonder if she can really cook, but she is so neat when she cooks, and her gestures are so compact. It’s quite therapeutic watching her, really. Plus her shows are good for gleaning ideas for dinner.
• Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Home Cooking. Gordon Ramsay cooking in his own kitchen (I hope it’s his own!), with appearances by his kids. Need I say more?
• The Great British Bake-Off. Season 4 was meh, but I am really enjoying Season 5 (BBC Entertainment is lagging, I know, but what can we do?)
•  Any show Nigella hosts. Because Nigella. Personally I find she uses a lot of fat, e.g. butter and cream in her cooking so I don’t really like her recipes, but. See previous sentence. 

    

     Korean dramas (dramafire.com)

• The Producers – best Korean drama I’ve watched so far this year. Good writing, believable characters and plot. And Cha Tae Hyun,
• The Time We Were Not In Love. Because Ha Ji Won (!!!!). I know this show has its fair share of detractors, but it’s not over yet and so far I am enjoying the story because Ha Ji Won and Lee Jin Wook are doing a great job portraying characters who are REAL and NORMAL.
• Cheongdamdong Scandal. Couldn’t commit to it, but because it was SO long, every time I needed something to watch when I was doing a bit of ironing or feeling lonely whilst cooking dinner, it would be showing when I turned on the TV to Channel 820 for a good 2 months or so. It’s not half bad, and based on what I’ve read online, it is particularly satisfying watching the evil mother-in-law’s comeuppance. You could consider watching it if you are really bored.

***

I'm probably giving SAHMs a bad name (too free, becoming auntie, etc.), but hey, we all deal with staying at home in our own ways. 

As to activities with FBC, besides lots of singing and peek-a-boo-ing, I have taken many bus rides and walks with him to meet friends for lunch and to the supermarket, and we have enjoyed them all. I will miss the feeling of having him close to me, small and snug, exploring the world from his carrier. It is these moments I treasure the most of all, and I hope he does too, even if all he remembers of these times is the feeling of being loved and cherished, and security in a world he is only just coming to know.  

True Believer

FBC has just expressed his displeasure at The Economist's view that euthanasia should be legalised by ripping the cover and front page of that particular issue of said magazine into shreds and leaving the draft from the ceiling fan to scatter them around the living room.

Jon finds this behaviour endearing, and speaks fondly of FBC "nesting". I find it a nuisance, which should be unsurprising to you because guess who has to clean up FBC's "nests"? 

***

P asked me at dinner last night whether I she3 de2 go back to work (do excuse the ungrammaticalness of that last phrase and word, there is sometimes no better way to put things). I answered with a resounding YES. When he said that his wife felt sad leaving their 7-month old and returning to work, I told him that maybe she should have taken two more months off, because I have found for myself that the marginal utility of being a SAHM* reaches zero around the ninth month (just about equal to the period of gestation!); beyond that, the law of diminishing returns sets in.

*I refer, in this regard, to the pleasure the SAHM derives from being a SAHM.

This article had its day of shares on Facebook recently, which led to a friend pointing out (and I may be paraphrasing her response a bit too simplistically) that most mothers in this day and age, especially in Singapore, have a choice as to whether to stay at home to look after the kids or go back to work, so perhaps SAHMs should complain a little less about being un/ under-appreciated. After all, it was YOUR CHOICE. While I agreed in general with her point (and "Liked" her Facebook post on this to indicate my agreement, hardee-ha-ha), I did caveat that it would be nice to be shown some appreciation now and then. True appreciation, which to me would take the form of rinsing beer bottles after you're done and taking them downstairs to be recycled, or doing the dishes without being asked after meals, for instance. 

Then again, that's life for you - marriage and raising a child was never going to be a bed of roses; it may sound tragic but I have ren4 ming4, i.e. resigned myself to my fate, and can finally start counting down the days (weeks! Two-and-a-half months!) before I return to work (it wouldn't have made sense to countdown before now, there were just too many days). 

Was choosing the SAHM path, even if it's only until FBC turns one, a good choice for me? After ten months of ups and downs I honestly don't know, but I do think it was probably the best choice for our family at the time, and therefore the best choice for me ("best" being different from "good"). And while I haven't gone batsh*t crazy from being a SAHM (yet! And hopefully when the law of diminishing SAHM returns dictates that it's time to begin my descent into batsh*t crazydom, it will be time for me to return to work), I have learnt in these 10 plus months or so that temperamentally, I am definitely not suited to SAHM life. I think I could do it long-term if push came to shove and I didn't have a choice, but firstly I don't think I believe enough in the modern SAHM model to be one (point one of the Huffington Post article sums this up very well). As I'm typing this, FBC is standing in his cot dropping his empty milk bottle to the ground and bouncing up and down making noises for me to pick it up so he can repeat it. And if you follow my Facebook and Instagram feeds, I'm always thinking about what to cook for dinner, proceeding to cook dinner even if it means leaving FBC unattended to "nest" in the living room, or watching Korean dramas - sometimes with FBC. Which is a big No-no.

Or maybe, and I know this is what people may secretly think, I am just lazy, selfish, and unwilling to make sacrifices so that my child can have the best. To my credit, though, when FBC chuckled loudly when L put his arm around Ha Ji Won in episode two (three?) of The Time We Were Not In Love on the pretext of reaching for her mouse to help her find something on her computer, I immediately turned off my laptop in horror, told him that he must not do such things to girls next time, and persisted with singing him to sleep*.

*Which takes anything from 15-20 minutes. Sometimes I just lie down next to him and sing both of us to sleep. I must've sung Be Thou My Vision, and all four verses at that, about a hundred times in the past 10 months. Coming in a close second is probably My Beloved Is Mine, And I Am His.

People say over and over again that you should bring up your children in the best way for your family and beliefs - and then proceed to give you all sorts of unsolicited advice about what is the best way, usually based on what they believe in. Sometimes, of course, being suckers for pain and perfection, we solicit advice ourselves, usually from parenting articles with clickbait titles. No matter how lax I may seem about things, in the long run, the pressure I would put on myself to be someone I'm not would probably be unhealthy for the family, especially my relationship with Jon.

Also, nice as it is to see your child's smile first thing in the morning and witness his "achievements", the latest being discovering that he can climb onto the sofa and coffee table unassisted (not sure how I feel about this, but so long as FBC can clamber back down in a civilised manner, I suppose it's still okay to leave him unattended?*), there is, for me, a limit to the pleasure such things bring. 

*Just to clarify, I am being tongue-in-cheek. I'm not sure there are many mothers out there, including my own, who appreciate my sense of humour in this regard.

I hope, when I go back to work, that I will continue growing and maturing as a person and as a Christian, so that I will be able to show FBC (and our subsequent child(ren)) what it means to be a mature, God-fearing person. And I hope and pray that I will be able to be there for him/ them whenever they need a listening ear, a hug, or just someone to watch TV or a movie with.

***

FBC fell out of his Ikea high chair recently because I neglected to buckle him in and he managed to stand up and then decided that it would be interesting to explore the kitchen floor, which he is usually not allowed to crawl on. My first thought was Wah lau, so mafan. Need to go hospital anot? After he'd stopped bawling and gotten over the initial shock, I rang a doctor friend who told me to just monitor him for signs of lethargy (ugh, first time ever that I was worried he was napping) and/ or vomiting. After ringing said doctor friend, I decided to ask Google what other parents did when their kids fell off high chairs, and came across a blog post where a mum said she cried her eyes out because she felt so bad when her 10/11-month old rolled off his Ikea changing table (only slightly higher than the Ikea high chair). You can imagine how bad that made me feel. 

I am sharing this in case some other mother has like me asked Google the same thing, and if you are that other mother and Google directed you to my blog, the fact that your child fell from his/ her high chair/ changing table/ wherever and/ or the fact that you don't feel flustered, just an overwhelming sense of troublesomeness, doesn't make you a bad or uncaring mother. That being said, every fall is different, and I think FBC actually landed on his side first. So please, get your kid to A&E if you can see that something is really wrong.  

***

FBC has, in the time I've taken to write this, managed to drag an entire pack of Stage 4 Pampers from underneath his changing table and to the living room (amongst other monkey-like 10-month old behaviour). I leave you now to clear up another nest, and will hopefully be back in this space soon to share some things I've cooked lately. 

Treasure

It's been a while, but I did say I wouldn't blog unless I really had the feels about something and wanted to write about it. It took me some time to recover from looking after FBC, after which I fell into a sort of disgruntled-I-want-to-go-back-to-work-NOW funk where I felt unappreciated, and funnily enough, overworked (the irony of that is not lost on me). And it was then that I realised that looking after a baby is kind of like any other job, in that it is possible to get burnt out. The only problem, of course, is that one cannot take leave or quit.

***

I've been thinking lately about what I've learnt these past almost ten months of looking after FBC. Topping that list at this point in time is probably the fact that I've come to see how much he is his own person, and should be given the space and freedom to develop accordingly. As I told R, I feel like having a child is like welcoming a new friend into your life and getting to know them, except that you gave birth to that friend. And there is the very pressing issue of deciding when one's child should be disciplined. When they can't really communicate with you, it's not easy to decide when they're being truly naughty, or just being babies. I hope that with God's help we've been doing a decent job of this so far. . . But in any event, FBC won't remember any unwarranted spankings he received at this age, will he?

Coming a close second and third respectively would be levelling up on cooking skills, and inculcating the discipline and determination to get housework done. No kidding.

***

Last night, at a friend's wedding dinner, I misunderstood something another friend was trying to tell me, and I inadvertently brought up something which would have been better left unsaid. I felt really bad as soon as the words left my mouth and I realised that that wasn't what he was trying to talk to me about, and I felt terrible all the way home and when I woke up this morning. I remember how it feels to hear things you're probably better off not hearing, knowing things which cannot then be unknown (sort of like the plot of Gone Girl, or any of Gillian Flynn's three books. It's just not possible to read them with the same excitement again). I don't like the feeling of knowing that I've upset someone, or put a damper on what should have been a fun, carefree night of after-partying.

After I'd apologised and thought about it some more, I remembered when I found out something about Jon from someone else which I would definitely have been better off not knowing. It used to matter so much, and was something I felt so insecure about for days and months and years, but in light of our three years or so of marriage and our almost ten months with FBC, it had become insignificant, something I couldn't unknow but not something I kept knowing, either. It's like accepting that this thing happened and will always be a part of one of the people you love most in the world, but it's no longer part of your definition of them. 

I shouldn't have said what I said, and I definitely know what it's like to hold on to things one should have let go of long ago. But as things cannot be unsaid and facts cannot be unknown, I hope that we will in time come to see how little some things matter and live past them, finally grasping the contentment and joy our immaturity momentarily, inevitably, prevents us from reaching. 

No Place I'd Rather Be

The past two to three days mark the first time that FBC's been properly sick. The poor thing was likely to have caught the virus I just recovered from, seeing as he's going through the same stages of sickness that I was. Thankfully, it seems he's at the last stages of it; unfortunately, this is also when it's the most uncomfortable, being marked by hacking coughs, and as he is but a baby, he can't get rid of the mucous as effectively. 

I am currently home alone with him; he is sleeping and I am watching Bake With Anna Olson and trying to decide if it'll be worth my while to stay up to watch Cheongdamdong Scandal, which starts at 10.15pm. Jon's gone for a gathering alone, as we decided after FBC's afternoon nap that although the Iliadin had done some good in getting rid of the mucous, he needed to rest. 

I think this is the most maternal I've felt and been since I became a mother: not minding when I'm woken up at an unearthly hour, finding it in me to speak gently and patiently to a crying child at said unearthly hour, carrying said crying child at said unearthly hour and rocking him to sleep - you must understand that having been spoiled by nights and nights of FBC sleeping through, more often than not, I've greeted his unearthly hour cries with yells of frustration and smacks on his bedroom door, in a bid to get him to stop yowling. I AM GETTING YOUR MILK STOP IT NOW. 

There's something about hugging a small, wriggling person close to you in the dark when no one else is awake or around, snuggling into the plumpness of his cheeks and feeling the warmth of his body, which relaxes as some of his distress dissipates. Before you know it, your t-shirt is covered in milk vomit, tears, snot and drool, and you're struck, suddenly, with the realisation that this is a moment to be treasured. Against your better wishes, your mind fills with all manner of cliches about how your baby won't need you forever, yada yada yada, but you decide that you won't feel ashamed of yourself for it or for the fact that you will later go on to write about that moment in cliches. So you immerse yourself in it, feel an ever so slight prickling of tears at the back of your eyes, breathe in your child's wonderful baby scent, sing him softly to sleep, and thank God that He has blessed you with the privilege of being a mother. 

What a joy it is, to love a child; to be able to comfort him in the fragility and helplessness of his babyhood.        

Angel In Blue Jeans

In case you didn't realise (okay, you probably didn't), most of my posts this year have been titled after RPM tracks. It's a bore having to think of titles, having decided that I would do it for ease of linking, and the songs are usually playing in my head at some point anyway. Train's Angel In Blue Jeans is the first track from RPM 66, which I quite like. But the song is totally unrelated to this post, which is about ideals. Would you have read it if I had titled it "Ideals"? (I wouldn't, if I were you. Thought Catalog much.)

As I was saying.

In an ideal world, I would blog regularly, especially about all the cooking I've been doing. Which, for the record, is the most cooking I've done since I took that four month break after leaving practice. I must say that I think I have improved tremendously since then (self praise is no praise, but someone's gotta do it). 

In an ideal world, I would have enough energy and inspiration every week night to cook delicious, healthy meals for Jon and myself, at a fraction of what they would cost at Cedele or some other "healthier choice" eatery. Every single meal I cooked, whether or not I had gone through the cooking method and seasonings in my mind before I started cooking it, would turn out well. It wouldn't have to look pretty, as we've already established from previous posts that I'm not too concerned about that aspect, but it would taste good.

Alas, Tuesday's dinner, which I cobbled together at the last minute because Jon and I simply couldn't face the dinner of baked karaage chicken (Not Quite Nigella's excellent recipe) I had originally planned, was a Major and Epic Fail. I have not had such a kitchen disaster since we first got married (potato chips which refused to crisp in the oven, saba wrapped bacon etc. On that note, saba is evidently not the same as the mackerel used in mackerel-wrapped bacon. Saba wrapped bacon equals a terrible salty aftertaste on your tongue which even the fact that you ate bacon cannot cure).  

I blame Tuesday's dinner fail on one HST, who insisted we order Hansang's latest fried chicken offering* at dinner on Monday, which meant that as the two most greedy people at dinner, Jon and I had to finish said chicken because everyone else was stuffed. When we got home I looked at the chicken I had planned on marinating and decided to defrost some salmon belly instead - which was the only fish we had in the freezer. 

*It's not half bad, you should try it.

I'd originally planned to use said salmon belly in a salmon belly miso soup reprise, which would have been perfect in yesterday's thunderstorm, but as I couldn't muster the willpower to hot foot it to NTUC to purchase salmon bones and white radish - yes, I know it's not strictly necessary to make a fish stock first, seeing as the miso and sake provide more than enough flavour, but I just felt like staying true to the spirit of the dish, you know? Since I have time (as if) - I decided to bake the salmon belly instead. So I cut it into strips the length of my finger and used some kitchen paper to soak up the excess moisture - I left the strips covered in kitchen paper for about 2 hours in the fridge - and then laid them skin side up on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

So far so good. 

The time then came to season the salmon belly. Now, right before doing so, I'd been watching The Kitchen on Food Network. I know that kosher salt is usually used on these shows, and the hosts season everything they cook very liberally - all that salt whooshing down on the food makes for pretty television, and there's something so professional about picking up salt with one's thumb and forefinger and sprinkling it over food. 

Anyhow, inspired by said TV show and against my better judgment - I use kosher salt in my cooking, and truth be told I've never found that I needed much of it to season a dish, although it's supposed to be less salty - I proceeded to have a good time raining salt down on the salmon belly strips, feeling professional in my very own kitchen.

I'm sharing my cooking process because it actually cooked up really well. I gave the salmon belly a further sprinkling of lemon pepper, drizzled three scant teaspoons of olive oil over the lot, and stuck it in a 140C oven for about 10 minutes. I then cranked the broiler up really high - about 220C on my oven, and broiled the salmon belly until the skin turned brown and blistered. I took them out a bit earlier than I would've liked, but if you don't have a fidgety seven and a half month old you're trying to feed at the same time, you'll probably get a better finish because you can watch the oven more closely.

To his credit, Jon finished his portion and kept assuring me that it tasted all right... But he then made us go for ice cream even though it was a cold and rainy night and I NEVER eat ice cream when it's cold and rainy because what's the point?! Desperate times call for desperate measures though, and we both had headaches and felt funny in the tummy despite having drunk copious amounts of water. A cup of strong tea without sugar at 11pm finally did the trick for me. FYI, in case you ever have a too much salt mishap.  

***

I feel better now after telling you about last night's dinner in too many words. I suppose I could have just said that last night's dinner was a Fail because I over salted the baked salmon belly, but the point of a blog is that you can go on and on and even if no one reads it it doesn't matter.

I hear FBC stirring from his pre-dinner nap and I would like to feed him before he gets too hangry to eat his dinner properly, so I can't share in too much detail about a recipe which I felt was a win. 

Here is a picture of a curry I made about a week and a half ago:

I think it's probably some variation on a shakshuka, sans eggs, and it was so good! I also had no choice but to make a curry because my mother foisted a small bag of curry leaves from her garden on me.

Chicken Curry

From my imagination. No link to that, sorry.

Although my mother said otherwise, I decided to do an oven braise because the chicken was not at a fall off the bone tender stage when I realised that the bottom of the curry was starting to burn. Maybe my stove top skills are lacking; if yours aren't, go ahead and finish it on the stove top.

Ingredients

• Four chicken legs about 200g each (i.e. thighs with drumsticks attached. You can use a mix of drumsticks and thighs)
• One 410g can of tomato puree (Leggo's had an offer)
• About half a cup of minced onion
• About two tbsp minced garlic
• About three heaping tbsps of curry powder - I made my own blend, as follows: 2 tbsp ground coriander, 1 tbsp ground tumeric, 1 tbsp yellow mustard powder, 1 tbsp ground chili, 2 tsp cayenne pepper, 2 tsp ground cumin, 1/4 tsp cardamom powder, 1/2 tsp ground ginger and 2 tsp ground black pepper. You could of course Google and find another blend, most recipes I found included cinnamon, cloves and fenugreek but I wasn't keen on those flavours - especially fenugreek. Ugh. And I still have an almost full bottle of fenugreek capsules. 
• A large handful of curry leaves (optional)
• Oil for frying
• Touch of salt (to your taste!)
• About three large potatoes, cubed into large cubes (if there was a more elegant way of saying that, let me know). I used Russets.

Method

1. Make sure your child, if you have one, is sleeping soundly. This is necessary if you would like to sear your meat and like me cannot abide having an oily stove and work-top from the resulting oil spatter. 
2. Decide if you would like to sear your meat. If you would, and your child if you have one is sleeping, heat up the oil in a large Dutch oven until it shimmers. Sear your meat, and remove from pan. If you decide not to sear your meat, just start the recipe from the step which follows.
3. Fry the onions and garlic in the remaining oil and drippings until fragrant and brown. Add three heaping tablespoons curry powder, stir around until toasty. Add curry leaves and give them a fry around too. 
4. Add the can of tomato puree. Bring mixture to a boil, then add the chicken. You may have to add about a can of water (use the tomato puree can to measure) so that about two-thirds of the chicken is covered.
5. Let it all cook for about 20 minutes or so on the stove top (I let mine go for about 40 minutes, whereupon a slight burny smell emanated from the kitchen and told me that my initial oven braise instincts were right), then transfer to a 170C oven and let it cook for an hour to an hour and a half, adding the potatoes only when there's about 30-40 minutes of cooking time left. The chicken should fall off the bones when you're done.

Edited to add: If you seared the chicken, wipe up the oil spatter carefully after sticking your Dutch oven in the oven.

*** 

I've done this yoga video twice now, and although I can't do ALL of it, the interval training parts and the sheer number of vinyasas you have to do make for a good workout on the days one is disinclined to leave the house but needs to exercise due to having eaten too much fried chicken. 

I am going to go ahead and make Not Quite Nigella's chicken for dinner tomorrow. Try it, it's easy and delicious and if you don't already have the ingredients (except the chicken wings) in your pantry, get thee to NTUC NOW! 

Stun Like Vegetable

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. 

***

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. 

People

Who need people

Are the luckiest people in the world

***

We went to Y and C's house for dinner last night, and encouraged FBC to "play" with Baby O on their grey chevron Parklon playmat (we have just placed an order for the alphabets one from Agape Babies. S$10 off!) by leaving them to stare goggle-eyed at one another on the said playmat until one or the other let out prolonged cries of distress in Whale (the official baby language, their Mother Tongue being Seal), or the arm swiping and/ or attempts to crawl looked like they may have resulted in an eye or two being taken out by accident. In which event whichever parent was not occupied with dinner and/ or alcohol rushed forward to admonish the culprit, and in my case, tell FBC that he should be ashamed of himself for letting a girl make him cry. 

In his defence, he cheered up after having his milk, so the tears were probably due to hunger. Or Liverpool's crushing defeat by Arsenal. 

Of course, as the night wore on and more exchanges were had in Whale and Seal and Manchester United demolished Aston Villa, FBC grew more and more excited and when we finally left Y and C's, only to have Jon miss the CTE exit which resulted in us going all the way to Changi to get back on the PIE, I figured it was going to be one of those nights we were going to Have a Hard Time putting FBC to bed. We got home at around midnight, went through the bath-bedtime routine (we still have not changed our derelict-parent ways), and an hour-long sleep battle promptly ensued.

The nth time I trudged into FBC's room and saw him sitting up again despite my having seen him close his eyes after I'd sung the choruses of some of his favourite hits (解脫, 忘记你我做不到), I heard him let out a small burp, after which he lay down and fell asleep without any further fuss. It reminded me very much of my own sleep time habits, especially when I'm sick - I have to keep sitting up to blow my nose - and when I was pregnant or had too much to eat - I have to keep sitting up to try and burp, and get comfortable before I can fall asleep.

It's nice when your baby is old enough for you to see that they're all just little people, really, with their own habits and personalities. They're people we've been given a whole lifetime to get to know, and we're people they've been given a whole lifetime to get to know. Isn't it funny to think, however, that we didn't choose them and they didn't choose us? You can ignore people in real life and mute WhatsApp group chats, but you have to try your darnedest to understand what your little person is saying in Whale. Or Seal. And respond accordingly, even if you don't know what you're saying either. 

Threebute

12 March 2013

Our trip to Hong Kong for our first wedding anniversary brought back memories of my first few times there, which had been for business. My long walk with M through the streets of central Hong Kong, for instance, which took us to the world's longest escalator and part of the Peak. To this day, a part of me still cannot believe that I walked the streets of central Hong Kong with a partner from one of the Big Four, carrying on a normal conversation as though she was a relative, perhaps an older cousin I didn't meet very often but nonetheless got along well with. Gawking at the lobby of the Four Seasons Hong Kong, wheedling my way to eating at a cha chaan teng with another partner, who gamely slurped up a bowl of beef brisket noodles at the main Tsui Wah branch. Looking back, he'd wanted to bring ON and me to an atas Japanese restaurant - maybe I should have agreed, but the stress and lack of sleep made me feel that it would be amusing to see whether he would rise to the challenge of eating such plebian fare.

How different the circumstances when I returned almost two years later. Riding the Peak tram with someone, like you're supposed to, actually walking around the Peak, instead of fitting a visit there alone in the hours between the time one woke up and the time one had to catch a flight back to Singapore (to continue working ...) Almost getting lost in the forest whilst on the Bride's Pool walk, spending the night in said forest with only a Snickers bar, four fingers of dark chocolate Kit Kat and a bottle of Watson's water a real possibility (until we met a group of hikers who got us out just as the sun set). The two of us in the middle of nowhere, some way off the Dragon's Back Trail, sitting on a rock, our only intruder an empty can of San Miguel beer left behind by another hiker, feeling the breeze from the South China Sea, able to pretend, almost, that we were the only two people in the world.

What are you thinking of, I'd asked, in that perfect, romance-movie worthy moment. Because I'm thinking I need to pee.

My NS call-up, Jon replied.

And later, sitting on the sand in our jeans, taking off our socks and shoes and paddling in the cold, cold water.

I didn't realise before our trip that it would take a while for me to get used to spending an extended period of time with Jon again, although it shouldn't have been surprising seeing as we usually went almost all 5 weekdays without having more than an hour's conversation, usually about due diligence reports being due, clients who didn't know what they wanted, and other standard junior associate topics.

It was after our hike at the Dragon's Back Trail, when we were walking around Lan Kwai Fung, that the topic of some better left unrehashed in a public forum university happenings cropped up. And in that instant, as we laughed at how young and silly (Jon, not me!) had been, it felt like we were on the holiday we'd never taken when we were still in university, before people started hitting the +852 or the +wherever for the weekend, just to eat and shop and get away from the humidity. I said so to Jon, and he said yes, he was even carrying a backpack (my red Eastpak one, used circa 2001), but the difference was that we had more money now. We subsequently ate what the menu at Tsui Wah called "chilled organic kale", which was really just blanched kai lan on a bed of ice, Jon complaining after every mouthful that some foods weren't meant to be eaten cold.

I remember knowing that something had clicked during our shared laugh about the unmentionable topic - it was the resurfacing of an almost forgotten feeling of oneness, borne of our shared past and what we had gone through together, reminding me at what was on hindsight a fragile time in our relationship, of one of the many reasons we had gotten married.

***

I have said before that for various reasons, chief among them being work, I don't think Jon and I had a very typical or ideal first year of marriage. That's when you're supposed to learn about the hitherto unknown idiosyncrasies of your partner which can be revealed only by a period of living together; it's when you're supposed to be the craziest about each other, when you fight then kiss and make-up with reckless abandon (you know what I mean, this is a PG blog).

Not very much of that happened for us, and so it is only now, on the occasion of our third wedding anniversary and after a trying 2014 and the arrival of FBC, that it finally feels right to share my thoughts from our first. I would have shared them earlier, except that it didn't seem appropriate in light of LKY's passing.

***

The Z-monster and I have finally won Naptime War 10348378 (time to cook tonight's dinner!), and as I haven't been taking many pictures of my cooking of late, I'll leave it to next time to share anything interesting I've made. 

I Like to Move It (Move It!)

We like to - Move It!

***

I've never forgotten the first time I heard Knowing You. I was 15, insecure, and coming out of a "depressed" phase where I cut myself and essentially acted in a way designed to draw attention to the fact that only I could see how trivial life truly was, and it saddened me that my shallow schoolmates did not see this. Kind of a more intense version of my 17-18 year old self, and infinitely more annoying (that's why I used those inverted commas. If you knew me back then, I do apologise. But I do think I was quite fun to be around at times? Anyone want to give me some reassurance?).  

The song was introduced to me by my Secondary Three Chemistry teacher. I forget, now, whether she was my form teacher as well - she might have been - and I remember her for this incident: I had badly wanted to be on my house cheerleading team for the PCCG camp. Of course I wasn't wanted, because I was a choir girl and not athletic - and other girls did make it clear that this was so, but I wanted to do it anyway. 

Anyhow, I was eventually (and grudgingly) accepted. One of the key cheerleading practices was scheduled for an afternoon when we had choir practice, I think I was on my way to becoming Soprano One sectional leader then (I eventually was in Secondary Four), so missing choir practice was a no-no. I told this teacher, let's call her Mrs K, that I would be late for practice because of the cheerleading rehearsal (Mrs K was also in charge of choir). She told me it was up to me to choose which activity I would go for, but her tone implied that it would be the Right Thing To Do if I chose to go for choir. I knew this as well, of course.

I eventually chose to attend choir practice, which meant I eventually did not participate in the cheerleading performance during said PCCG camp. One of the girls made a stab at asking me to skip it, but I think she was secretly relieved - and Mrs K, when she saw me, was really pleased. And proud of me. I could tell, even though all she said was "What about cheerleading practice?" To which I replied "Ah, I skipped it". Flippantly, as though it didn't matter, when it really did.

(I also topped my class in Chemistry that year. Not THAT big a deal, seeing as I was in a 'B' class, but yeah, it was a nice feeling.)

Knowing You wasn't sung much at the church I attended then, and my parents had a strict no Internet policy, so I never knew the lyrics to the full song until I was 18 and Q and I chose it for the last worship session of our junior college lives, which worship session we led. But throughout the intervening years, I always remembered:

All I once held dear, built my life upon

All this world reveres, and wars to own

All I once thought gain, I have counted loss

Spent and worthless now, compared to this:

Knowing You, Jesus - there is no greater thing

The poignancy of the first two lines, especially, struck me deeply when I first heard them; at this stage in my life, I cannot agree more that people "war to own" things which are ultimately worthless when compared to the wonderful knowledge of Jesus.

***

I alighted at Raffles Place MRT station for the first time in months yesterday afternoon, and coming out of the gantry, I was struck by how much I didn't miss it. I've always liked the CBD, especially watching the lights over the river and walks by the Esplanade at night; the feeling of being young and alive and with so many things to do, being a part of the multitude working, earning money, contributing to society.*

*Essentially, a rat in the rat race.

Yesterday, I felt out of place in my shorts and tank top, baby strapped to my front, amongst all the well-heeled, made up ladies clacking and yakking their way around. But I didn't quite mind that I was no longer one of the youngest members of the workforce, that I would never again be an Eager Beaver, checking my BlackBerry all the time, always with some place to go, something important to do. That being said, I still spent the bus ride back (to NTUC) contemplating how much my attitude towards my career has changed, and wondering about it until my head hurt from thinking. We won't know how our experiences will shape us until we've experienced them, but I definitely didn't think I would ever feel this way about my career when I first started, to wit, I am not too concerned about what I'm doing so long as I am engaged and earning a sum of money reasonable and proportionate to what is expected of me.**

**In case prospective employers chance upon my blog, I am a hard worker and desire excellence in all I do. But it's equally, if not more important to me, to make it home in time to cook dinner for my husband and feed my child his. Please would you consider a part-time arrangement?

I remember the day after I got approval for my no-pay leave to be extended, I went for a swim and thought to myself: man, there is a long, long way to go until I'm back at work. But a friend asked me yesterday whether I preferred being a SAHM to working, and I replied that although I couldn't say I did, it was quite nice to finally see that your baby likes you, and more importantly I enjoy it because I know Jon is thankful I'm home and there for him. If you ask me what I think I should be doing with my life now, being there for Jon probably tops the list. Not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually - and that in some way includes me being at home to take care of FBC. I think I've finally come to a place where I'm willing to do my best to embrace and enjoy this time I have as an SAHM, instead of plotting my return to work. 

***

So, I made a trip to NTUC yesterday despite having a fairly well-stocked fridge because I decided to make chicken noodle soup for dinner. It's adapted largely from this recipe by Smitten Kitchen, save that I didn't make chicken stock separately. I simply put 8 Sakura bone-in, skinless chicken thighs into my thermal pot along with:

• 1 yellow onion, quartered
• 1/2 a large, long carrot, sliced into rough sticks
• 3 cloves of garlic, smashed (we have talked about how small the China garlic cloves are, so I used 3 - feel free to use less if yours are big)
• 1 bay leaf
• ~1 tbsp tomato paste
• Pinch of dried thyme
• Pinch of dried red pepper flakes 
• ~3 litres of water. My thermal pot has a capacity of about 3.6 litres, and it was almost full (not a good way to cook but we deal)

I brought it to a boil (it overflowed slightly, of course) then took it off the stove and let it sit in my thermal pot for about an hour or so. I omitted the salt and pepper at this stage because I wanted to take some broth and mix it with rice cereal for FBC, but you can always add salt and pepper at this stage if you wish. Just taste and go. 

I removed the chicken thighs, took the meat off the bones and returned the bones to the pot, and brought it to a boil again. In another pan, I fried in olive oil the remaining half carrot, which I diced, and a leek, which I thinly sliced (reserving the thick green part for stock, as Google recommended), then added a bit of stock and let it simmer for a bit so the carrot and leek would cook through. I set aside the remaining stock in my thermal pot for another hour or so.

I cooked the pasta separately, but feel free to cook it in the soup. Whilst cooking the pasta (which I did only after the hour or so I wrote of in the paragraph above), I strained the stock into the cooked carrot and leek mixture and added the shredded chicken meat to it, and let it simmer so the chicken would heat through and the carrots and leeks would finish cooking.

Divide pasta into serving bowls and pour hot soup with lots of ingredients over it. I had enough soup for a hearty lunch today. 

FBC liked the unsalted, unpeppered broth mixed with rice cereal. So did I. It seems that the secret to good, flavourful chicken soup is a touch of tomato paste and a pinch of chili flakes. 

***

Last week's run was what Jon calls a FamiRun at the Marina Barrage, so he forbade me from using RunKeeper. I dragged myself out of bed at 6.15am on Wednesday (amazingly, FBC only woke up at 6.30am for his feed) for a run and was in no mood to time it (would YOU be?), but I left the house at about 6.45am and made it back just before 8am, a total distance of 11km or so plus waiting time at the traffic light. Yay!