krisalis

I made triple chocolate fudge cookies on Sunday and fed them to myself, the husband and assorted friends.

They were extremely gooooooood.

Great article over at The Morning News about that noble profession of teaching.

I have about 18 months of polytechnic level teaching under my belt from my fresh-out-of-Uni early days in Singapore. There are things I liked about teaching, and things I really didn’t like at all.

Out of all the observations about teaching though, the following statement rings truest in my jaded ears:

What I didn’t anticipate was the monotony of their academic inquiry: ‘Can I go to the bathroom?’ ‘Do we need our books today?’ ‘Is this gonna be on the test?’.

Oh, and this:

I knew they couldn’t have been complete idiots, because when they wanted something – to leave class early, to be excused for tardiness or late homework – their edges magically sharpened. And though Romeo & Juliet never fired their imagination, the suggestion of my private life left them tantalized.

There are things I miss about teaching, and things I really don’t miss at all.

According to Jeff, the trailer for Return of The King will be available here sometime today (presumably whenever Monday gets around to arriving in the US ;oP).

And Mark – it looks like the special extended version of The Two Towers will be out on November 18th.

Sunday 21 Sept – 4km Terry Fox Run. Time: around 26 min. Feeling: OK, but sore quads afterwards.

Tuesday 23 Sept – run 31 min. Distance: about 4.5km. Feeling: good, fine afterwards.

Thursday 25 Sept – run 27 min. Distance: about 4km. Feeling: blah, but fine afterwards.

Saturday 27 Sept – run 54min. Distance: about 6.5km (around Bukit Timah Nature Reserve – so the terrain was quite hilly and uneven). Feeling: great at the time, but sore calfs, hamstrings and a bit of ankle twinge afterwards.

Stretching: The Ball of Torture. I got one of these fine thingmajigs and had a stretching lesson on Sunday morning. Oh. My. Goodness.

This is what I learned: 1) I need to stretch more 2) Ouch. 3) My posture needs some work 4) I need to stretch more. Ouch. OUCH!

Excellent mirror shot: Oktoberfest reflections.

Afghan hound racing – hair flying everywhere, insane look in his eyes – this looks like one crazy, crazy dog.

Smiling crabs – initially, it was suspected that an 8 year old boy had drawn the smiley faces on the crabs’ shells with permanent marker. However, time has shown that mother nature is the vandal responsible for the markings!

…and the neighbours are playing “The Macarena”.

Loudly.

On repeat.

These are both school passport pictures – you know, the ones that come in a pack with a large picture that is really too big for framing and displaying anywhere so usually ends up gathering dust in a drawer somewhere, 8 smaller pictures that are distributed amongst doting relatives to show how much you’ve grown, and 16 passport pictures that will be given to various friends and crushes, and stuck to school id cards, bus passes, swimming club membership card and the like.

I don’t remember much about the first picture. It was taken in 1981, I believe, which means I was about 6 years old. I know I used to like to wear my hair like that, because it’s tied back into a ponytail plait in the majority of pictures I’ve seen of myself aged 5-7. Am I wearing dungarees? Were they popular in 1981?Goodness me.

I remember considerably more about the second picture. It was taken in 1991. I was 16. I am wearing a black body – ie one of those all-in-one leotard top things, with the poppers at the crotch – and my favourite Pepe blue jeans (although you can’t see them in the picture) and a black leather belt, with matching flat black shoes. This was the height of high school fashion. My hair is artfully poofed up off the top of my head, using a plastic hair slide I nicked from my 5 year old sister, Lennie. I’m wearing two gold chains – one real, one faux. The real one was a 16th birthday present, and it has a crab engraved on the front, depicting my birthsign, Cancer. The faux one is a chunkier chain with a texture like rope, acquired from a weekend shopping trip to Bijoux One with my friend, Judith. I am grown-up and cool.

At any given time, I’m usually in the middle of at least two or three activities that could be considered ‘projects’ – current projects include training for the 10k and putting together albums from the wedding photos (this one has been stalled for several weeks and needs a kick start). I suppose that the very act of writing and maintaining a weblog is, in itself, a project, so it’s no real surprise that I have enjoyed browsing through 52 projects over the past few days.

There are some projects that really appeal – the key lime pie one sounds fun, and I like the idea of finding a picture of every place I’ve ever lived. There are also some projects which I have previously considered doing, but never gotten around to – like taking a series of pictures, one for every day of the month, or one a week for a year.

Some of the projects are pretty bizarre, or sappy, or just not me. For example, if I kept the shards of glass from all the glasses that get broken in our house, we’d have a hella lot of jars. Maybe we shouldn’t keep buying cheap glasses. Or maybe we’re just clumsy.

There are many projects which I found inspiring to contemplate, even though I’ll almost certainly never do them, such as hanging art in random places, or putting up random bill posters, just for the heck of it.

Now if I only had more free time…

It is strawberry season in Ausralia at the moment, which means that Singaporean supermarkets currently have a good and inexpensive supply available.

I bought some strawberries on Saturday, and tried this out this recipe. The recipe is based on a dessert that a friend had served while I was in the UK back in June. There are many variations on the recipe I used – some involving fresh mint, or ground black pepper, or vanilla pods, or other more exotic ingredients – but basically I used whatever I had on hand that I thought would taste good. The resulting concoction went with me to a barbecue, where it was well received.

The idea of putting vinegar on strawberries sounds weird, but it tastes great, especially with a little bit of cream to offset the tartness of the vinegar. Mmm.

Ingredients: 2 little containers of strawberries 10 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar 5 tablespoons of sugar (or more, if desired) 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Wash and cut up the strawberries into halves or quarters. Mix up the balsamic vinegar, sugar and vanilla. Pour over the strawberries and leave to chill in the fridge for an hour or so before serving.

To serve, spoon the strawberries into a dish and pour a little bit of cream on top.

Deeeelish. I’m going to make this again. Soon.

Last night, whilst sifting through a file of old papers stored in a shoebox in the top of my wardrobe, I came across my English jotter from January 1987.

I was in Primary 7, and we were reading The Silver Sword and learning about the Second World War.

The Silver Sword is a story about a group of brothers and sisters who lose touch with their mother and father during the Second World War, and decide to travel to Switzerland to try to escape the war and find their family.

I loved this book. It captured my thoughts and dreams for months after I read it. Suddenly, I was interested to learn about World War II. I remember asking my grandparents, Nan and Happy about their war experiences. I remember tracing the rough blue tattoo on the back of Happy’s forearm with my fingertips and listening to stories about his days in the Navy.

Here is what I wrote on February 3rd, 1987. All spelling and punctuation is as written by my 11 year old self:

On Monday 2nd February 1987 I ate Breakfast – Porridge, a glass of apple juice Break – a packet of crisps and a carton Lunch – a cheese sandwitch, a yogurt, a cream egg, 7up After school – a Fudge and a carton of juice Dinner – lasagne and salad and a glass of coke and fruit salad and cream

During the War food was in very short supply partly due to the fact that Britain is a small island and we import food from abroad. The German U boats attacked the convoys bringing food to Britain. Rationing was started and everyone was issued with a ration book containing coupons which were to be exchged at the shops for food.

I suppose the point of writing down what we ate was to show us how different our lives would have been back in WWII with the rationing.

Now, looking back, all I can think is “Man, I ate a lot of junk food when I was 11!”.