Saturday, February 26, 2011

A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR

The aroma of the spices waft around and give one of those rapper hand gestures to your nose which reels in shock while you're opening the packaging. It says cake on it, and you picture the cakes you're usually used to. Not this time though. 

An attempt to sample  the 'local' sweets of a faraway land, led us to purchase some 'cakes' and sweets while we were in the city of Colombo the day before our flight back to Malaysia. And of course a couple of weeks after sitting in the fridge (the whole family was down with some strange sort of stomach and digestive tract related illness after the holiday, sadly), we open the boxes of the cakes, and  assault our taste buds with cakes that are extremely sweet and spicy (Cinnamon, Cardamom, Nutmeg, Cloves,among others for those who are curious) all at the same time. 

While the rest of the family members seem to enjoy the cakes, I can't bring myself to enjoy them as I usually would enjoy cakes (and trust me, I am a fan of cakes). Firstly, they are too sweet (even for me), and according to a recipe I found online, 1/2 a bottle of rose essence is used in the recipe. And secondly, I've always associated spices with savoury food, and when the flavours were combined this way, I felt like I was being forced to take medicine. 

What do you think? Should spices be left well alone for curries and other savoury type dishes, or are you cool with vast quantities of spices in sweets and cakes? 


Sunday, February 20, 2011

GETTING BACK INTO THE GROOVE

is much harder than I thought it would be.

I can't say why I actually put a hold to my blogging activities since the beginning of the year. I could say it was because I was busy (but being busy never prevented me from posting regularly back in 2006, or even 2008 and 2010), or perhaps being busy led to the fact that I could not focus my thoughts to form coherent sentences (this part is true... of late, each time I get an inspiration to blog about something, my thought process is always interrupted by well, interruptions in many different forms, and probably bad feng shui. Don't ask. Besides, during the short blogging break, I realised that talking about myself had actually made me more depressed then I'd actually be if I didn't write about it, because you see, things happened as they normally would the past month and a half, (some good, some so bad and shocking that you'd think it's fiction), but because I hardly dwelt on them, they didn't have the opportunity to depress me, odd as it may sound.

So, I was thinking all this while... how do I continue writing, and prevent making it as personal as I possibly can? I tried to figure out a new format, a new name, a new URL even... but I figured it would be pointless without content. Perhaps, I should try to get back into the groove, blog about less personal stuff (for instance my trips to North Sumatera last year and a recent visit to Sri Lanka) first, get the writing mojo rolling, and give the fingers some exercise and then figure out what I'm going to do.

Meanwhile, I'll try catching up with what has been happening around your blogs....

IT's THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN

Time for the Annual Appraisal again.  It's a cloudy Sunday afternoon, and I had just finished giving scores to my subordinates on their ...