it's my birthday!

well, it was on monday.

every year, my birthday also happens to coincide with pi day, albert einstein's birthday, and this.

so in an attempt to celebrate, i made myself a cake. now, rather than trying some preposterously difficult recipe that looked delicious, i decided to go with something tried, tested & true. i recalled making a cheesecake a while back from the hummingbird bakery cook book. it was a simple, new york style cheesecake with cream cheese & a crumbly base.

i also remembered it tasting DELICIOUS.

so my project was set. i found the recipe scrawled on the back of an envelope & away we* went. first we got everything ready.



then there was some mixing & stirring, as usual. and also as usual, it resulted in a very dirty jf.



however, midway through my baking project, i realised a horrible thing: the cake needed to be cooked in a baine marie, otherwise it would burn. not having a container large enough for it, we settled for a wok.

then we waited.





& waited.





& waited.




however, i am not a very patient person. so, after about an hour (i decided it was time to go & we would finish the cake at my boyfriend's house. so away we went - still wobbly, we wrapped the cake up warm & made the bus trek over. once we got there, he didn't have a baine marie big enough either, so we just settled without one, popped it in the oven & waited some more.

in the meantime, don julio & i made a mean linguine carbonara...

(ta-daaah!)



...played a board game with the don (ticket to ride!)

in so many ways, it was a perfect birthday. i even had a cake with candles (so what if i made it myself & it didn't quite turn out? a cake is a cake) :D

*: we= el presidente don julio & master houdini

marmalade

alright, i need to get one thing straight.

i was recently at the borough market. we were in the neal's yard dairy when i pointed to a lovely looking block of fruit jelly & said: "MARMALADE!" the lady behind the counter looked at me
funny. "that's not marmalade, dear."

certain in my conviction, i pointed at it again. "oh. it's not?"
"no, that's membrillo. would you like to taste it?" she handed me a piece which i greedily gobbled.
"MARMALADE!" it was exactly the very same substance i had been imagining made paddington bear sticky. it was what mum put into her christmas thimble cookies. it was delicious & sweet & went really well with peanut butter. or on toast. it was my marmalade.
however, that was wrong. apparently, in this country, marmalade is MASHED UP ORANGE PEELS. i don't like orange peels. it tastes bitter & slightly odd. you put it on bread that has been massacred in the toaster, rather than nice warm soft bread that doesn't cut up the insides of your mouth when you bite it.

so much do the brits like their marmalade they even have studies on how to eat it best. (i have my own theory on this -- eat my marmalade, er, membrillo. here is a study on how it is best consumed.
i seem to be having difficulties reconcilating things recently. especially my idea of things vs. how they really are. below, a photographic demonstration.

my idea of marmalade:


what marmalade actually is:

my affinity with paddington bear has been ruined.

in other news, my sister (el presidente don julio) has arrived in the uk. i promise not to feed her any 'real' marmalade.

tuesdays

yesterday was pancake tuesday, which i celebrated with pancakes. it also happened to be international women's day, which i didn't celebrate at all. i did however, find an old email in which i was accused of not being enough of a feminist for sending a chauvinistic video of women who can't drive. i think it's fitting to make the same argument again.

---

You are supposed to be a feminist! Don't ponder to a chauvinist who compiled (and titled) this video (funny as it may be).

i do not see how acknowledging even 'stereotypical' female faults (such as the inability to drive, or at least drive properly) inhibits me from being a feminist. on the contrary, one can only truly criticize and explore the female in the social hegemony after accepting and moving beyond their differences from the male, be they biological (a truism) or psychological differences. the conclusions based on such findings, however, cannot be accepted as normative. that's the problem of reconciling freud and lacan with feminist theory. feminism requires a rational critique that demasks the false claims of patriarchism, however, that is not all. on the contrary, it requires that we take these claims - be their true or not, such as the claim that women are bad drivers or that blonds are stupid - and cast the critical light upon them. second wave feminism in the states and simone de beauvoir accomplished exactly this. then we can proceed onwards. it ought to be noted however, that stereotypes exists precisely because they are generalities - they hold to some, perhaps even most, but not all. a single woman cannot fall prey to a stereotype because she is just a single woman. likewise goes for race, culture, age and so on. mind you though, often dispelling one stereotype only leads to its replacement by another. think about the term feminist - even that in itself carries certain stereotypes and presumptions, does it not?

---

i find women's day to be another one of those annoying 'feminist' ventures, whereby they try to gain equality by creating inequality. there should, justifiably i think, be an international men's day - straight men, gay men - if you have a cock (or wish you had one), celebrate it. yet surely, this would cause an uproar.

but in all honesty, i'm not sure how i feel about women's day, or feminism in general. i've held a vehement stance on both sides of the argument depending on who i was arguing with -- if it was my father, it was massively pro-feminist (pro-choice, pro-pill, pro-freedom), if it was to a boyfriend or in class, i'd make the case for redundancy or the self-congratulatory nature of an endeavor that no longer serves the purpose it once did - women's suffrage.

the problem is that women want the best of both worlds. we want all the beatification and exaltation of chivalry - having doors opened, our coats removed, always being on the inside of the sidewalk, being priased for being dainty & pretty & fair... and most especially, being chased & coveted after.

at the same time, we want to fix our own bicycles, drive our own cars, have our own salaries, be noticed for a our brains not our boobs, and especially allowed the same sexual freedom without being burdened with either the negative labels of promiscuity or a child.

somehow, these two things seem to be exclusive of each other - but i don't see how they are. we can be both feminists & non-feminists; one doesn't make you a harley-riding leather-wearing hardcore dyke any more than the other makes you a proper victorian lady in a corset with her face powdered.

i'm going to stick to both sides of the coin.

lemon drzzl (baking post no. 1)

from time to time something odd tickles my fancy & i decide to watch a program on bbc iplayer. as a general rule, i don't watch television - have never had much interest for it, and even less time - but sometimes i have the urge to 'get with society' and come out from under my rock so i turn on bbc iplayer with this incredible urge of finally understanding who doctor who is or why everyone at work is always talking about top gun or top gear or whatever it is. but then i see a video of sir david attenborough and i can't help but click. like dr strangelove's arm, my cursor involuntarily makes its way to the videos of lemurs or sharks or giant eggs. (i want david attenborough to read me bedtime stories. no, seriously. he is that golden).

this time, something else caught my eye. i had, by this point, either forgotten and given up my endeavor to be socially 'with it'. there was a picture of a grinning raymond blanc with a loaf in his hand. a famous name in these parts, his was sharing his kitchen secrets. & so i clicked : BBC iPlayer - Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets: Series 2: Cakes and Pastries

i have never seen a man so excited about his own baking. i was so fueled by his enthusiasm, that by the end of the episode i felt like a pastry sous-chef, ready to go, whisk in hand. monsieur blanc, here i come!

the first thing he made was a lemon drizzle cake. my boyfriend loves lemon drizzle, so i decided this was going to be my weekend project. (also, all the other things he made looked really difficult. lemon difficult.) i went to the store, bought some lemons &tc, and away i went.

i squeezed & peeled & mixed & sifted & cooled & glazed. ( i may add i sifter through a tea strainer. i couldn't find a proper sifter. after i did about half the flour in tablespoon amounts, i switched to a colander. of course i found a sifter once the cake was done) and came up with this:



this is what raymond blanc's lemon drizzle looked like:




now, how come raymond was able to make a lovely, loaf shaped cake with a smooth, clear icing, while mine was topped with some sort of strange, bulbous growth, covered icing that looks like something died & melted over the loaf, and was probably the ugliest baking project i could have imagined. that is not what i pictured in my head.

while the cake was in the oven i went through a clean ALL the things mode, daydreaming about my loaf. it was supposed to look like this:


it was supposed to be lovelier than raymond blanc's! it was supposed to be the loaf of all loaves! beautiful & perfect! it was supposed to be shiny & smooth & perfect.

but i had to make do with what i baked, & so i presented my monster loaf to my boyfriend, who greeted it with utmost enthusiasm, which made me happy. & guess what?

IT WAS DELICIOUS!

it was more delicious than the one in the picture. and the lemon drizzle was perfectly zesty. and the cake soft & moist. it was the most delicious lemon loaf ever! HURRAH!

with my baking skills confirmed, i will now work my way through raymond blanc's list of patisseries. next on my list is his chocolate eclairs. but first, i believe i owe someone a banoffee pie...

difficult, difficult, lemon difficult

making decisions is HARD.

i don't like it. at all. not just the important, heavyweight decisions. i don't even like the little ones. making decisions is the devil.

take, for example, this blog. i know metablogging is generally frowned upon, but there is a case in point here: it took me three days to choose a template background. i didn't even make the background, all i had to do was pick it. pick one, any one, start writing. but noooooo - i had to fiddle with fonts (upset at the lack of garamond), fiddle with colours (my inclination is to make everything green, even if it looks bad) and pictures. instead, this is what i ended up with.

the good thing about a blog is that you can change the layout. it's not permanent. permanent decisions scare me.

i consider getting dressed a permanent decision. i will have to pick out something that will keep me warm all day. occasionally, i want it to look nice. but usually, it's about temperature. i should note at this point, that i hoard all my clothes. things i haven't worn for years i can't throw out. i fail at this miserably - i always, always dress wrong for the weather. i usually freeze. or i walk too fast & get warm. but usually freeze.

i remember a recent trip into london where i wanted to look nice, so i wore a dress, with a cardigan and a leather jacket. MISTAKE. i spent the entire afternoon smiling (because my face had frozen that way) and clenching my lower back muscles in some vain attempt to keep my body warm. i ended up with a spastic back and a month-long cough and the bladder of a five-year-old with 2L of sunny D. i don't get sick.

but it gets worse. i get anxious. i start to bite my nails. i am not a nail biter. i was when i was little, and have taken great pride recently in being an 'adult' that has lovely lady-hands. except for when i have to make a decision, when i bite them off. now i have no nails :( i put lemon cream on my nails to stop it. it doesn't work.



today, i was writing an email to my housemates about A New Fridge. but first, i had to show it to my completely uninterested coworker, to confirm that i had written an okay email. he said he'd move out immediately if he lived with me.

sometimes i feel like a little dog. no seriously, like a stupid canine that does something and then looks blankly up at it's owner for confirmation of what it has done. good dog? bad dog? only i stare up innocently before actually doing something. undecisive dog. & if there is no owner, i'll find the nearest passerby.

it is as if the smallest choices (chocolate or vanilla? fish or chicken? black jumper or... other black jumper?) will have some sort of compounding impact on the rest of my life. i can't help but thinking of it as something that remotely looks like this:

my problem is that i want ALL the possible leave on this tree. or at least touch them. just once.
this, in the normal world, is not feasible. i would have to double up & go back in time. you cannot pick all the options at once, but i would if i could. all the little leaves. MINE!!!!

whatever bit of the brain is in charge of making decisions, mine is broken :(
it must have broken at some point in childhood, because i recall being completely retarded when it came to choosing outfits. i would pair all my green clothes together. green shoes, green tights, green top, green skirt, green headband, green jumper, green coat. i must have looked like a miniature leprechaun, but my mother knew better than to argue with my refined fashion taste. that was as far as my decision making skills went. everyday, green.

recently, i noticed something funny. my mother was buying my sister's flight and it took her a month. a whole month. she diddled, dallied, and god knows what else, until ticket prices soared up and her & dad were stuck either canceling my sister's visit or forking it out. they forked it out. but it is like this with everything.

a couple of weeks ago i was sitting in a cafe that is now around the corner from me, having a carrot & ginger juice, discussing sabaticals in italy with a friend, when he asked me about a certain cadence i had written: 'i will wait for you in cuzco, / will that make me the fool?' and i blanked. i had no idea what it referred to, or what i was thinking of when i wrote it. i knew it had something to do with pound (vaguely) and a poet-friend of mine (w.b.). cuzco remains a mystery.

this is not my first blog. it is yet another start-up project in a long lineage of failed endeavours; perhaps a gene for a weakness for public writing. or something. there have been many abandoned works, some were explanatory rants about a current mission of mine, some general blah-blah about the monotony of everyday life i so adore, some just filled with things i like. either way, something always got in the way - the mission aborted, too much information exposed, a lack of time. this time, i vow to be committed. at least once a week, for 30 minutes, i will make the time to indulge myself in my own thoughts, if only to never forget why it was cuzco, after all.

let's take my first online endeavour. it was a livejournal, the ideal venue for any moping, hormonally-inbalanced teen. i was 15, i loved the colour 'maroon' and wanted to play lead guitar in an imaginary rock band in which my best friend was the frontman. trapped in the convent walls of an abbey, i was rather pleasantly confound to my catholic-all-girls' school existence. self absorbed in endless issues of academics, school board politics and choirboys i found plenty to rant about. it helped to have a circle of friends with livejournals - we would post comments on each other's blogs, fuelling each other's 'talent'. our lj's had names like 'theholyseeinc', 'suchagoodexcuse', 'adyingatheist', 'dreamyambience', 'pretteepink'. there was 'meloise' who posted the most dreamy drawings & later went on to study art at OCAD, & 'fairyfetus' who is not living in a caravan with some hippies (i think). but for the life of me i can't remember what my own lj was called. i'm sure it had what i thought was a 'witty & clever' name, probably taken from some U2 lyric i was obsessed with at the time. maybe someone out there still remembers it. in the end, i deleted & purged it, which i now regret a little, dreadful as it was. there were posts about broken hearts coded as 'dusty roses' and posts about my favourite bands and 'artistically written' posts about the cute biology teacher i flirted with after hours. i snide at it now, but i remember those late nights procrastinating on msn & livejournal, agonizing over a boy or checking out new portishead songs rather fondly.

livejournal was also the first place i made 'online' friends. i would have been uncomfortable with the term then, but i couldn't resist the curiosity of what other people were posting. i specifically remember one chap, bluetouchpaper or something, who i met online. he would post photos of himself in a white peacoat - unusual for a chap, i thought, but trendy. we exchanged addresses (he lived in san francisco) and began to write letters. mine were always written in pencil (in case they got wet) and looked somewhat ephereal, they were so light & pale you could barely make out the lines on the page and the writing between them. they discribed the electric field just by my house and other trivialities of the oncoming autumn. his in turn were written on thick, manilla paper with field flowers pressed into it. he wrote in blue ink, heavily slanted to the right, with loopy letters but jagged ascenders/descenders. he told me about drunken nights in alleyways and parks, and a butterfly. there was one letter about a butterfly. years later, when i bought my first typewriter, i found these letters and decided to write (or rather, type this time) a letter back to see if he still lives there, and if not, to the current occupent. i sent it, but never heard back. but a connection had been made, even if ephemeral.

after i deleted my livejournal (i saw an as an immature reaction to Life and was desperate to clear my image of any immatury, as at the ripe age of 18 or 19 one tends to do) i didn't write for a while. i moved to paris & started a short blog that tied into my college online publication -- this one had an objective purpose: entitled 'fluctuat net mergitur' (i thought i was being clever) it served to detail my experiences of moving abroad to paris at 19 and living on my own. my first post was about a trip to a brocante where i acquired a new pair of opera binoculars - the perfect tool for my tiny 8th floor apartment. subsequent posts included a voyeuristic view into the apartments across the street; lives of the french, realtime. i did not see anything wrong with this. there were posts about another golden-voiced highly literate young chap i was crushing on back home. a few posts about the french patisserie downstairs (that i now regret not having used to its full capacity), a few about the french revolution, (and french men, and french cheese) and posts about my endless walks, flaneur-esque, through parisian streets. often i would come home at 3am, having been out walking with a friend, or alone. however, my hobbies soon faded, as did my blog. i have kept some of the posts this time, but no trace of it remains.

my next endeavour was a tumblr. i got one because my best friend had one. i could post pictures & songs and general useless shit that i happened to deem important because it tickled some fancy of mine, or appealed to a certain aspect of my oh-so-refine aesthetic. i recall what seemed like a never-ending flow of pictures of k.d. lang, who i was crushing on at the time. there were melodramatic imagined conversations, always one sided, always in first person. those spurred many individuals who narcissistically assumed the 'you' was them -- this was the end of my tumblr. posting personal affairs resulted in unresolved issues. and plus, i was 'too melodramatic for my own good'. i kept a few mementos, again, but that was all.

from there, i embarked on my latest project. i decided to stop indulging the 'general public' (usually about 5-10 readers who were all my friends anyways) in the affairs of my private life which they would hear me talk about in person anyways, and started a blog with a mission. my mission was to cycle across the uk, known to those that do it as 'lejog'. you can, i think at this point, guess what happens.