I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.

I didn’t watch a single episode of Korean drama today
And it’s certainly good to watch TV shows in English again. We had a lazy weekend, but we mostly spent it out, except for 2 hours in the afternoon when we came home to drop stuff off and I invariably had to have a nap. I’m a voracious napper. It’s a symptom of being an escapist. Napping is a great escape – a short reprieve, with the prospect of a good time in dreamland.

I set out to make Lephet Thoke yesterday, and ended up with a mess in the kitchen. I can’t imagine what the difference was – the lephet we had in SF just seemed crunchier and didn’t carry that bitter aftertaste (or weird smell) that I found with the lephet from yesterday. And after all the trouble of preparing the peanuts, and toasting the sesame seeds (which I managed to mess up). Not pretty. It’s now sitting in the fridge waiting for a very hungry KF to finish. I can’t bear to open the other 2 packs of lephet yet. The smell is still putting me off. I wonder if it needs to be boiled again or something.

And it took me a day to get rid of the smell of roasted peanuts in the house. It was good for the first ten minutes, then it got really annoying. I have to say those Ikea candles are really handy.

Today was slightly better, I made soba instead. Meidi-Ya is full of fun food buys, like Shiitake Mushroom broth, soba and dashi.

Here’s some trivia of the day: what’s the difference between jam, jelly, preserves and conserves?

Jam’s a spreadable fruit thingey. The British/Eurpoeans make a filtered, and unfiltered variety.

Jelly is American for a jam that’s made of a translucent fruit.

Preserves are jams with large fruit chunks in them. Obviously not filtered.

Conserves are preserves with a few contrasting variety of fruit in them.

And Marmalade is jam made from citrus fruit.

There we go – another mystery solved by Wikipedia.

Have a good week, and Happy Independance Day, America.

They’ve all sorts of flavoured Coca-cola
Cherry, Vanilla, Lime, Lemon (on Diet). Just not enough.

Here’s a list of coke flavours that would be nice – and would be as interesting as the kit kat flavours:

• Cinammon
• Mint
• Chocolate
• Sakura
• Orange
• Lemon Vanilla
• Grape
• Almond

Work has been crazy – things can’t stop for a minute. We try to regain our sanity at the end of the day by indulging ourselves in short games of Win, Lose or Draw – the movie edition. It’s been good fun all around, and we’ve had more than a few side splitting moments.

The things we do for a laugh these days get more and more complex.

2006 started badly for me
It started out with a bout of flu over the New Year holidays. Then it was getting caught in the unusually persistent rain again and again. The lastest in my growing list of problems – an ear infection.

Otitis media is an inflammation of the middle ear, and is sometimes caused by colds. Anyway, I had to go to the doctor, get set up with ear drops, antibiotics and a decongestant. And in a few more days, I’ll have to go back to get my ear checked out and flushed. How fun.

Passing time
Anyway, the weather hasn’t been all that great, so sick or not I’d probably be at home anyway. It’s actually nice this way – I get to catch up on some reading, laundry and hot chocolate.

During an extraordinarily fruitful session – I managed to finish Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah. The title pretty much tells you what it’s about, and the details read like a Korean soap opera. So it’s not something you wouldn’t have seen or read, if you’re in some way Asian.

What was interesting was the backdrop with which her tale of woe is set: growing up in Tianjin and Shanghai in the fifties, the world the author describes seems so old-world. Yet it was only a generation before mine.

It’s worthwhile to note that even though the author tries her darndest to explain how and why she was held emotionally captive by her parents for so long, it seems only someone from an Asian/Chinese family can truly appreciate. The complex, sometimes misguided Confucian values and priorities we inherit are at once what propels us to progress and what holds us back. I think when he thought it up his rules eons ago, Confucius really meant for it to simplify life. Generations later, as it complicates our lives and thoughts, you gotta wonder what he really intended.

In any case, it was an easy, relaxing, 8 hour read. I found the first hand accounts of the turmoil in China through the Cultural Revolution, and what the Chinese families who could afford it do to escape the red wave particularly interesting. Let me know if you wanna read the book.