lunch en route to honke bankyu

there's a funny story behind our commute to honke bankyu. the planner supreme looked at the map and saw that sanraku and honke bankyu were practically side by side. little did we know that there was a blooming mountain range smack in the middle. which meant that the journey from sanraku to honke bankyu was a lot more complicated that anticipated. we had to take the bus to the nasushiobara station, a train to A, another train to B, get out of station and walk to next station 700m away, take the train to C before changing one final time to ride the train to D. upon reaching D, it was another 40min by bus. all in all, it took over five hours door to door. quite the hike! the alternative was, of course, going by chopper. but where's the adventure in that :)

so these photos are from lunch at a little mom&pop shop near the station we walked 700m to.

next up, the home stretch to honke bankyu was particularly picturesque. i hope you like it too!

wise words

"There is no dignity quite so impressive
and no independence quite so important
as living within your means."
- Annise Parker

i hear you!

words of wisdom

My mom’s advice on how to get a guy’s attention:

Mom: Think when you little you chase a squirrel, the squirrel will run fast away. But if you stop, the squirrel will stop too, he may also peek on what you doing.

Mom: Do not scare the squirrel 

(my mom is a fob)

i do believe that's what my mama told me too, but in better english.

swedish supermarket woes

(angst courtesy of nick holmes)

my exchange friends have heard this one before. but just bear with me.

there's something about supermarkets that bring out the worst in people. similar to communal laundry rooms and the road (i.e. road rage). so there i was, minding my own business at a check-out lane in lidl (the cheap supermarket where the largely unsophisticated masses do their groceries) and after this lady in front of me had emptied her basket onto the conveyor belt, i left a respectable distance between her stuff and mine. 

apparently not waiting until she plonked down the divider sent her ballistic as she started berating me in svenska and violently threw my groceries off the belt. remember being half-asleep, as was the state i usually went to the store in and was too stunned to react. might've just rolled my eyes at her and might've growled 'you've gotta be kidding me...' with a  -_- face. point is, i didn't understand the overreaction. then again, swedish strangers are weird. maybe something about me annoyed her. maybe she yelled at me to go back to china (haha) but the happy ending to this diatribe is that the cashier told her off and made her pick up my stuff. 

what a crazy.

it's been awhile

since i went grocery shopping with a backpack

(and walked 15minutes to get home from the t-bana)

but it was de rigeur in stockholm where i'd make my weekly trek to lidl along radmansgatan in a valiant attempt to put the lidl children through college. or so went the joke A would crack. i'd load up for the week with many kilos of fruit and veg in a vain attempt to assuage my conscience about eating frozen chicken. i hate frozen chicken. but fresh chicken cost an arm and a leg and my prc flatmate taught me how to cook frozen chicken so it would taste like fresh chicken so i saved my kroner and went shopping instead. if you're curious, frozen chicken has its blood drained after electrocution (maybe he was making this up) so you're supposed to cook it differently to maintain the elasticity of meat. ok typing this out, i realise how silly it sounds and i was probably con-ed. oops. but the resident squatter from hyderabad taught me how to chop chicken and i soon got pretty darn handy with the chopper, minus the suggestive grunts they claimed i'd make. blush.

and when i got home, i'd gleefully unload my backpack, pleased that i was saving the earth one unnecessary plastic bag at time ;) although when the parentals visited i did request that they bring me 20 ntuc plastic bags for me to use as bin liners when it was my turn to be the kitchen slave.

the point to this is - i brought my backpack to the grocery store today and the mere action catapulted me back to the tunnelbana and stockholm. and exactly why i did groceries with a backpack will be revealed this weekend.

(almost) annual pilgrimage to HK

was in HK in the beginning of 2006 and because it was a social visit, we stayed in what was, to me, the fanciest hotel ever. met with friends, wine and dined and it was a very comfortable trip.

returned in the middle of 2007 with 15 college friends. this time, the planner sourced us an apartment in hai fong mansion, off nathan road and just opposite tsim sha tsui station. we squeezed into 4 rooms in this misnomer of a building that was anything but a mansion. we'd the dubious honour of sharing a floor with massage parlours, syed baba worship centre, kumon, a karaoke bar and music school. remember sleeping like sardines, sharing a single bed with a girlfriend for 5 nights. shudder. but this particular trip to HK was special to me for two reasons. on our last night, as we sat by victoria harbour looking across the bay, i saw the hotel i stayed at the previous year and i felt a sense of pride surge within me, because i was back in HK on my terms and at my own expense, having ceased to receive parental support soon after high school. i'd brought myself to HK on hard-earned tuition money and the satisfaction was priceless. also, while i'd just 'roughed out' 5 days in less than luxurious conditions, looking across the water, i knew that one day i'd be back at the first hotel, on my own. the second reason is a little more personal, because while i was in my tiny room at hai fong mansion, i sprung awake one night certain that something was amiss and 30 seconds later, my mobile rang. and all it took was one X life-altering phone call and we've not looked back since :)

in summer 2008, we went to HKwith our favourite couple to celebrate his birthday, approximately a year after that significant phone call. this trip was different again, although i did get to revisit some of the haunts i liked from the previous year. this was especially special because we'd just gotten home after 10weeks together in europe. we travelled highlands and iceland (from london to belgium to scotland, drove around the whole of iceland), back to leuven, the it was off on a sand and sea leg (nice, monte carlo, cannes, road trip around corsica, toulon, avignon, marseille, lyon before heading to morocco - casablanca and marrakech). after that we met up with my folks for a mediterranean cruise (athens, kusadasi, ephesus, santorini, sarande, split, venice). he went back to leuven for exams and i solo-tripped to dublin and then amsterdam. when he was done with exams, we flew to prague then his parents came over and we met them in athens (our second time in a month!) and sailed to mykonos, revisited santorini in a more leisurely fashion then explored crete. surprisingly, after 10 weeks of non-stop travel (which concluded his year away), we weren't vacationed out and still made it to HK! being the sentimental sap i am, HK a year on and with him was a poignant reminder of how good the year had been.

skip 2009 and i was back in HK mid-2010, back at the first (fancy) hotel. sadly, it wasn't as fancy this time as i remembered it. semi-concerned that i've grown increasingly discerning (he says spoilt) but it was good to be back in my old stomping ground yet at a different stage all together :)

day 25

wednesday 2 june 2010 skavsta to barcelona girona

hit the ground running bright and early on wednesday. took the 7am flight out of skavsta and was in central barca by lunch time. had a 5pm tea date with someone C (swedish friend) had very kindly set me up with so i familiarised myself with my hostel (mixed 8 bedder - initially shudder-inducing by not quite after i got used to it) and eased myself into the idea of solo trippin', for it was the first time i'd planned to be alone for such a long stretch. true, did 4 days in berlin all by myself (yay me!) last november but i helped house-sit a friend's empty apartment. this time, i was alone in a hostel. haha it's such a big deal for my sheltered psyche but yes, young girls travel by themselves all the time and i'm not really all that special, except in my head and to myself :) made friends with gustalvo the brazilian dude working at the hostel and went in search of food with my trusty map once i'd left my backpack all padlocked under my bed. see? paranoia knows no bounds.

tea date went swimmingly, and before i knew it it was time for dinner. most unfortunately, i'm a self-confessed glutton who lives from meal to meal and after dinner i briefly flirted with the idea of joining the hostel bunch on a pub crawl, but my aching bones weren't up for the trauma. although i did, very bravely if i may add, head out to buy some water from a nightshop 3 blocks away. past midnight. brave or stupid, i don't know. but i was staying on the main street and stuck to the big roads, kept my wits about me etc. still, cheap thrill if nothing else :)

thoughts

i graduate tomorrow.

yes, i've gotten used to the idea, having first finished my final paper in early may, and then i got my results by text while in stockholm (sitting in my kitchen surrounded by my housemates from last year - whoops all round, thank you very much. and then they tried to get me drunk on my own pear cider. not happening.) and then again when i began the post-grad course yesterday.

so why oh why am i suddenly immensely humbled and increasingly overwhelmed at the thought of traipsing down a stage in my cap and gown? even if for some reason i oversleep and skip commencement all together, i'll still have my qualifications... so it's not about the ceremony, really. but how it signifies completion, coming-of-age and unceremonious release to the big bad world. gulp.

that said, i'm determined to wear my booties with the gown. hehe.

and, on a more sober note, thank you god for opportunity.

self-improvement

it's less than a week to take off but in this one week i endeavour to brush up my thimble of french, teach myself espagnol from scratch and learn to take photos that look like this.

because my current photo quality really pales in comparison to the photos proudly displayed on the website. this disparity frustrates me no end because i feel so inadequate being unable to capture the scene as i see it.

(top two photos from official website of the resort we stayed at a fortnight ago, last photo is sadly mine)

baby steps

i spent the night sleeping at the bus stop outside cityterminalen (main bus terminal) last november. was taking the first flight out of skavsta (airport for budget air carrier) and so planned to take the first bus out of stockholm (to skavsta). wrongly assumed that cityterminalen would remain open through the night so i took the last train into the city, only to find myself locked out and without a place to go till my 0430h bus. way to go! so i sought refuge at maccas until it, too, closed at 0100h and then huddled at the bus stop trying to keep warm and stay awake till it was time to board the bus. needless to say, it was one of my more memorable nights to date and a pertinent reminder of how blessed i am - to be homeless by choice and not by circumstance.

believe me, i'd tried almost everything to get indoors but there was no where to go. all the hotels in the vicinity were accessed by keycard only. fair enough i suppose, why would they want vagrants in their lobby? later learnt of the all-night kebab shop a few blocks away but having witnessed gang fights with crowbars at medborgaplatsen* in broad daylight, i wasn't about to wander around at night.

so the whole point to this is that i have a 7am flight out of skavsta this summer. however, i counted my pennies and booked myself into the skavsta hotel instead. yes, it's not going to be cold, yes, having survived a night at the bus stop it wasn't half bad, yes, i much rather eat than sleep my SEK505 but i told myself never again. money is meant to be spent, and earned back, anyway.

yay to progress!

*whoever said stockholm is a safe city lied. where i was staying, there were drug-induced fights and convicts hiding in the neighbouring forest. an acquaintance's smoke break at night was once rudely interrupted by a bloodied, battered man begging for help. patrol cars and dogs fanning out across the residence were a common sight. dead bodies in the lake, and we even had a ho killing her pimp in the very next block. not to mention the 'harmless' nonsense like blood poured into the washing machines at night. all true.

p/s oh i feel my love-hate relationship bubbling to the surface now.

all group meetings

should be like this one - pot after pot of coffee and tea, bowl after bowl of christmas cookies and chocolate-covered digestives, deep meaningful conversation and glogg. (macbook tutorial optional)

we were, very obviously, imbibed with christmas spirit(s) and at our unproductive best. needless to say, it was a blast and i wish we'd more time together.

moot court tomorrow, final on thursday and then it's home free!

vanity

is going straight from the airport to a facial.

pity the haircut has to wait till boxing day.

but i was prioritising and i can always wear a christmas hat through the yuletide merry-making. however, the masquerade party's only on new year's eve.

sold out

i'm guilty of frequently lamenting that there are no good chinese restaurants in europe. chinese restaurants (within my budget, bayswater notwithstanding) tend to get lumped together with random bits of asia's culinary offerings. on a not-so-unrelated note, as J petulantly pointed out, 'we've a restaurant in my hometown that doesn't know if it's japanese or korean. the sign says japanese but it serves bulgogi and sushi.' much ink can be spilt on this culinary phenomenon - the attempted assimilation of immigrants; adapting asian cuisine to the local palate; economies of scale but i'm not interested in deep sociopolitical discourse. well, not at 1043h anyway.

my lone point is this - i used to complain that there weren't enough specialised restaurants and the asian restaurants proliferating europe are sorry hodgepodge excuses that i wouldn't be caught dead in unless i'm on the brink of starvation. what in the world is kung pow chicken anyway? or chop suey? FAKE FAKE FAKE and in fact, probably how an italian would react in shenzhen. BUT when i invited J and S over for a simple asian night in i.e. dinner at chez moi, all i could offer them were spring rolls (not very asian) and chicken chow mein, the staple of any substandard asian take-out. limited kitchen and grocery resources would be a paltry excuse, seeing that there are asian grocers in stockholm and my little communal kitchen is surprisingly well-stocked, cleaniness of communal pots and pans aside. so there's no excuse really but my sheer sloth, inexperience (i learnt how to chow from youtube) and seeming ability to maintain a grip on my chinese culinary heritage. not that i ever had a good hold on it to begin with....

and in true student on a budget fashion, i asked for some help with dessert and they brought apple pie, ice cream and glogg. i just had the remnants of glogg for breakfast, which according to S makes me a first rate alkie but in my defence, the negligible alcohol it in couldn't have withstood all that stove time. also, tell a lie. i ate up the pie and ice cream for breakfast too. move over kelloggs, this' the new breakfast of champions!

pity party

my cheap ikea pot gave up the ghost about 4 months post-purchase. mid pancake-flip, the handle broke clean off. while i know that they're for different use in the kitchen and it's like saying i miss the vacuum cleaner when the washing machine's broken, i miss my dutch oven so bad. can't wait to get home and break it out for christmas cooking! mhmmmm :)

(note the deformed mutant pancake after unsuccessful half-flip)

malfunctioning pot aside, i persisted in pancake making, valiantly attempting to flip them with a knife instead (note knife gashes in pancake).

this looked more crepe than pancake-like. (note makeshift papertowel grip on pot side)

it did get marginally better with practice, although i can't say the same for the uneven heat distribution.

and i don't know why i didn't think of it earlier (actually, i do) but then P came and saw me struggling away and after laughing at me for five minutes straight, he suggested i try with a frying pan. well, here's a secret. i try to stay away from the communal pots and pans because they're generally biohazards but i was desperate and from the finished product, i think P was right. just this time.

to complete my pity-seeking story, on the way back to my room i managed to douse myself with a cup of chai. my nightshirt reeks of chai and i'm not scheduled for laundry any time soon. it's mornings like these that make me want to run right home :( am very very grateful for comfortable home to return to in less than three weeks. this' probably the last pseudo-independent stint in awhile and the novelty is fast wearing off.

p/s is it just me or does the pancake resemble prata more than those perfect cafe sirap creations?

berlin calling

spent four days in berlin on a whim. ry*nair had free tickets (literallY!) and i jumped at the chance to skip the country yet again. was fortunate that a family friend invited me to stay at his (empty) holiday home and i thoroughly enjoyed the sprawling apartment. can you imagine 1 x me in 300 square metres of space? i was rattling around the place :D

it's the longest time i've travelled alone and i managed to get myself all the way to berlin and back without incident, save the potential conman at the s-bahn, but more about him later. was initially a little apprehensive about solo trippin', especially to a brand new city. was in osaka on my own earlier this year but i'd been before and was familiar enough with the city. my thimble of japanese came in handy, too. berlin was a completely different story! hardly anyone spoke english and i couldn't read the menu :( obviously my biggest concern was not being able to communicate effectively in case of emergency but filling my tummy.

that said, i went on an alternative berlin tour my first morning there to orientate myself with the different neighbourhoods and public transport and save talking to some american tourists on the same tour, i didn't talk to anyone else the rest of my stay. before you think i'm a hermit-in-the-making, i did talk to the girl in the bakery where i bought breakfast in the mornings but all very practical interaction, nothing voluntary or social, if you get what i mean.

but, solo travel's an underrated concept. i really enjoyed being alone and the time out i got in berlin. haha, as if my time in stockholm's in such great demand when really, it isn't. yet it was great to be footloose and fancy free, exploring a vibrant city without a care in the world. plus, i'm glad that i'm secure enough to enjoy my own company. or maybe it's not security but an inherent misanthropy cultivated over years of being an only child ;) my mother was unamused when i suggested that maybe i was like those wolf-children, abandoned at birth and raised by wolves without any human interaction though. oops.

was pleasantly surprised by how affordable berlin was. even in the christmas markets where one would expect a blatant mark-up of the prices, capitalising on yuletide spirit and good cheer, the gluehwine / fries / currywursts /crepes were inexpensive and i ended up grazing my way through the city every day without a 'proper' meal because there just wasn't a need for one, although i probably ate more without realising it because a kebab / bratwurst mit brotchen / crepe every hour probably adds up to more than three square meals.

found authentic chinese food too and very happily ordered enough for four people. the waiter was horrified. and even more so when he cleared my empty plates. oops again.

so that was berlin! safely back in stocks and i'm thrilled that it's the last i've seen of skavsta in a long while. yay!

oh! i was telling you about the conman. so this random guy approached me when i was at the ticket machine (EVEN THOUGH THE ARE NO BARRIERS ON THE METRO, I STILL BOUGHT A TICKET *shoots meaningful look at my less scrupled friends*) and asked if i wanted to buy a ticket. well, duh. and he tried to sell me a ticket that had already been validated but he'd sneakily validated it upside down so the timestamp was semi-obscured by the print. couldn't fool my perfect eyesight though and i returned the ticket with a dirty look. the would-be conman then started exclaiming in mock embarrassment and repeatedly berated himself for being 'stupid'. needless to say, i ignored him and he continued to bang his head against my ticket machine. weirdo.

solo trippin'

off to berlin for:

1. strawberry yoghurt ritter sport

2. authentic chinese food

3. sleeping like a starfish

not your typical berlin finds, but we'll see.

photos and stories when i'm back!

international palate

food's never far from my mind and i just realised how blessed i am to have sampled different cuisine from my generous friends. have been the grateful beneficiary of much (predominantly) european hospitality and my tastebuds have done almost as much travel in stockholm as the rest of me has around europe.

because home is where the heart is, here's what i've gorged my way through in no particular order.

Kj's kladkaka, a sticky chocolate cake

Kr's tandoori chicken

A-san's ramen

C's ratatoie

J's spaghetti carbonara with a french twist

M's penne con zucchine e panna

A's wursts with pickled cabbage and salted pork

S' pancakes (and pasta, on a separate occasion)

M's hainanese gai fan or chinese chicken as our friends christened it

J's zurek and other polish specialities

Z's torta

L's lemon meringue pie

and that's just off the top of my head. in fact, i'm positively shamed when i think about how the only dish i can muster up is prawn noodle soup and i have the bad habit of flogging the horse. every guest of mine gets prawn noodle soup! it doesn't help that when i attempted pad yum goong (and even that was with some packet help) for J, i accidentally served her raw chicken. add my litany of kitchen disasters to the equation and you can see why my friends are happy when i don't cook for them. gosh, the one time i felt most love coming my way was when my precious friends pretended to enjoy my pseudo-cheesecake that resembled brain, the type that drips out the nose of a potential mummy of the egyptian persuasion.

which's why i'm desperately looking for japanese mayonaise here so i can introduce them to the wonders of the orient. i need to find a way to redeem myself, any suggestions?

it's been awhile

and the past two weeks have been an absolute dream.

moving on, it's back to reality and yet another kitchen disaster presented itself this morning.

being the pack rat i am, i'd somehow acquired 2+kg of pork. half expired on 18 november and the rest expired today.

problem: 2+kg of soon-to-be rancid pork

solution: a cauldron of bak ku teh

and now i'm beyond gleeful at my ingenious use of potentially rotten pig. which doesn't say much about my culinary expertise or standard of living, unfortunately.

but yay to being chinese! and knowing how to make bak ku teh! the pepper and spice did wonders :)

new problem: single-handedly finishing aforementioned cauldron of bak ku teh. it's not that i'm selfish but my corridormates have negligible spice tolerance and K, my lone spice-sharing sympathiser, doesn't eat pork.

slut.

ode to autumn

1.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

well, the first stanza at least.

in unrelated news, i'm officially out of ritter sport. C very kindly carted 1kg of candy back from cologne for me which my lovely parents dutifully brought up with them when they came to visit. i'd been prudently rationing my little stash o' ritter sport until an inexplicable feeding frenzy and i polished off my last bar of erdbeer joghurt this morning. this is cause for mourning, until A's mother sends him more for me. along with the sausage and red cabbage he's going to prepare some farmer's autumn speciality with. thank god for german friends.

procrastination

it is only when i want to waste time that my room is fastidiously tidied and meals meticulously prepared.

and in a valiant attempt to use up the 2kg of butter that i somehow convinced myself i needed, i've been baking up a storm too.

thank goodness for a party a day and plentiful occasions to bring cake to. because my momma taught me never to go anywhere empty-handed.

now if only my knight-in-shining armour would rescue me from the dungeon of domestication that is fast closing in...