blast from the past

excerpted from a blogpost on 24 june 2008:

it's been 7half weeks since i left home and there's 2half weeks to go but i'm already feeling that dreaded, sinking feeling of the impending end of a holiday. i don't want to go home :( so much for trading a year on exchange for 10wks of unbridled adventure this summer. kena cheated - a year is much longer than 10wks. that said, after skinning and removing the seeds from 1kg of grapes, i do miss having grandma around :) it's been an exponential curve of sorts, this whole learning to be domestic thingum. don't have much of an opinion of it. it's almost de rigeur for people for live without familial support for an extended period of time to have an epiphanic 'oh i'll never take home for granted again!' moment but truth be told, i've yet to be truly house-trained, as one would an insolent puppy.

what i've come to realise, however, is that self-insufficiency is a luxury. how absolutely ironic. we spend our whole lives trying to be self-sufficient and once we are, we miss being cared for. well, i do at least. for as long as i remember, there's always been grandma, or porpor, or some maternal figure making sure i've enough to eat / drink and have regular bowel movement, the latter being of utmost importance. i'm unabashedly spoilt in that respect :) but suddenly, this time away means no more outpourings of familial love in the form of basic necessities. if i starve and die, it's all my fault.

so i left singapore with this fantastic notion that i was martha stewart incarnate. machiamdomestic goddess-and-bringer-of-limitless-fun rolled into one. 7weeks on, i still cannot cook. my very limited repertoire involves omelette of whatever's in the chiller / random meat marinated in even more random packet mix / rice. oh tell a lie, it's not omelette but scrambled egg because i can't even flip the darn thing. but rice! my one gastronomical success to date has been learning to cook rice the primitive way i.e. in a pot. the eternal optimist in me, who carted files of recipes and the trusty heirloom of a cookbook that my great-granny used, is convulsing in despair somewhere under the pile of plum peel. the realist, however, who has always known deep down that her place is not in the kitchen, is clutching her ghostwritten essays and gloating in secret. there is a certain inherent duplicity, in what you hope you are and what you know is you.

although i do console myself with the thought that i can't fulfill my potential in the kitchen because it doesn't have an oven so i can't bake or proper dishes (hence i am unable to make lasagne / tiramisu / anything vaguely interesting). also, it doesn't make sense to have a well-stocked kitchen because you'll never use everything up. i could've killed for a grater, but the joy it would've brought me the few days i'm in leuven and even fewer that i'd to cook for, apparently wasn't worth EUR4 -_- little things like that, you know. i did wonder what chubbyhubby&wife would've done with the same limited resources - what could they have rustled up?! think i asked that and he retorted, 'they'd have eaten out.'

began on the premise that i was invincible, that cooking and self-sufficiency were easy. i stand humbly corrected. prefer being the sous chef because chopping is therapeutic, because i like arranging everything according to colour (before the chef chucks it all together in the wok :(). on an absolutely unrelated note, i realise exchange leaves you with circumstantial friends. not that there's anything wrong with being friends out of circumstance, but the social dynamics really change. sometimes you've to be chummy with people you wouldn't necessarily be chummy with back home. just because they live next door. or because they don't mind travelling with you heh. what if they're not nice?! then how :( but i guess there's good circumstantial too.

aaah so withdrawal symptoms. just 2 more days in leuven then it's off to prague and greece before going back to sunny singapore. looking forward to visiting the prettiest city in the world then it's back to athens, followed by mykonos, santorini and crete. this summer's been whirlwind, have seen almost all i wanted to see in europe, and more with the spontaneous solo trip(s) and accepting that once it's over, it's work work work. then again, there's hk and hopefully bintan to look forward to. oh, and at least a year together in the same country. keep forgetting that he's actually going to be around from now on.

and just so i don't misrepresent leuven, here're some photos of it showing some signs of life. there was a midsummers' night concert next to the town hall. apparently there was a fair too. but in true belgian fashion, the fair started late and ended in the early evening. because it was midsummer's and nightfall would have probably been around 5pm. so it made no sense to stay open longer. nope, none at all.

my favourite statue in leuven. it's a student pouring beer into his head while studying. ocular proof that there's absolutely nothing to do but binge drink or study. sometimes both at the same time.

mass of people. whoodeedoo.