hamster: So, all this depends on whether your country will even let me in.
mokie: I don't see why we wouldn't. We love odd people. :D
hamster: Yeah, and I guess I am kind of going to City of Odd, USA.
mokie: True dat, yo.
hamster: Frankly though, whole time I was there, I didn't see one odd thing.
mokie: That's because you ARE odd. You are immunized!
hamster: ... you sure?
mokie: Pretty sure. I mean, I show you odd things and you squee in delight.

Maybe what I've suspected all along is true. Maybe I'm really normal, and I've just finally found a place where things are as normal as myself. I'm sure the possibility exists!

Back in April, Chiaroscuro started carrying a poem of mine called On a Beach. It wasn't written on my best day for titles, but I like the piece.

Terrible Beauty, Fearful Symmetry is definitely coming together. I expect I might be seeing the galley for Mosquito Story, which will be reprinted in this anthology, within the next few weeks.

Then, A Foreigner's View of the River has been confirmed for the last Monday of July at Fantasy Magazine.

Right now, I am in the middle of a move that more closely resembles far too much long distance travel. To afford the long distance, I've taken up every possible job I could get. When I am not working, I am off to the side, killing things in pixels so I can stop thinking.

In about a week, I will be heading to Kuala Lumpur to assist my parents in moving house, where I will clear out a room I lived in for ten years. I'll still be working, likely doing as many nights as I can handle, as I will be neck deep in furniture during the day. Two weeks after that, I will be heading to a much father away place, to handle my own move. And I will almost certainly still be working. I had originally hoped to finish about three pieces that honestly do require finishing before the end of the month. Two of these are aspects of Finches. The last is something I want to be able to write, sometime soon. A part of me still firmly believes the problem here is simply a lack of efficiency. Efficiency makes more things doable.

"I swear, at some point Asian mothers stopped saying 'Don't put that in your mouth!' and started saying 'Share that with your brother!', and that disturrrrrrrrbs me." - mokie

By way of comic strip!

Though I would be forced to explain to children that one puny knight cannot possibly defeat a dragon. Not with a sword. He'd get chomped like a gingerbread man.

You'd need a party of about 20 people to kill a dragon. Even then, there's no guarantee it'll work. They'd have to be 20 awesome people, and at least a few would have to be able to cast magic.

Preferably, you'd want to slay a dragon with an army.

And the dragon should eat about half of this army, step on the other half, and possibly just toast any remainders.

From a recent enlightened discourse about Amy Winehouse's Stronger Than Me, and its potentially scathing indictment of sensitive men:

mokie: I dunno. "What, are you gay?" as a line...
hamster: Scathing indictment of metrosexuals, Mokie.
hamster: Personally, I kind of prefer men a bit...assertive, myself.
mokie: *LOL*
hamster: I said assertive, not Huns!
mokie: STILL! :D
hamster: NO HAIRY CHESTS OMG.
hamster: No beards either. Beards iz freaky on men who are not ancient and wise professors.
hamster: Oh, and hairy bums. Hairy bums are terrifying.
hamster: Just, you know. Talldarkpalevampireassertivetypes.^
mokie: *scribbles* Prefers Naired men.


^ I'm dating one.

For one, they look so real.

Never mind that they're made in a facility "with free-range peanut butter slathered cats who may or may not be lactating," where, "Those with sensitivities may wish to laminate themselves accordingly."

Things that are wrong are, of course, good. Go on. They look edible.

I found out mid last month that the two stories I had published last year were nominated for Tin Ducks. I didn't win, but it's the thought that counts. I didn't even find out I was nominated until I was asked to verify my nomination by the organizers, and I was already very happy to know that some kind soul thought enough of me to nominate me at all. Kind soul, whoever you are, thank you.

Just had a tea that could save souls. Withered, broken, shell-of-human-being atheist souls of people who don't even believe in the afterlife. Tea so good, they must've ground one whole bush's worth of caffeine into a small paper cup, and slathered it in evap. Tea as it was made when I was young, and possibly still made as such in serendipitious places.

And then there was the traditional kaya toast, crisp and golden on the outside, and slathered in margerine and eggy, coconutty, sugary goodness down the middle. If I wasn't suffering from the dull, glorious ache of what happens when I have really good Teh C -- caffeine-induced migraine + SUGAR, I might actually go back and get more before I am forced to sit in a plane again for 15 hours.

Changi Airport rocks.

Also, it seems that, "Syok!", is a primarily Malaysian expression. Used it on the coffee maker when I tasted my tea, and it had to be explained. I learn new things.

I've wanted to say something about this for a long time, but most of my posts I began for the subject were false-starts. Why do I choose to write under my initials, rather than my full name?

When I first started submitting my work for publication, many years ago, I made an active choice to avoid suggesting either my sex or my cultural background by using my full name. I am, firstly, a writer. Anything else that I am is irrelevant to my occupation. I have no intention of, and somewhat disdain, promoting myself as a female writer. If a reader coming into my writing sees my name appearing beneath the title of my story, and reads it like just another piece of the text, with no assumptions of where I came from or who I might be, I consider my work done. If the reader makes any assumptions on his or her own, that's fair enough. But I like to think I contributed to that issue as little as possible.

The cultural issues surrounding my name are slightly more difficult. I have a Muslim name, which clearly states I had a Muslim upbringing, in spite of the fact that I left that religion 14 years ago. I should start by saying I have no intention of changing my name. This was a name my late grandfather gave me, and I bear no ill will towards it. But I come from a country where the choice of leaving my religion is virtually forbidden, and where the legal implications of leaving that religion would also mean giving up my entire ethnicity. I would not particularly miss the latter. As I am firstly a writer, I am firstly a Malaysian. Anything else that I carry in my ancestry is not as important as the culture that raised me.

I've spent my entire life being questioned about my ethnicity and my faith, by my own countrymen, on the basis of my name. I don't think I need or want to explain myself about it more than I already have. I don't need that questioning to follow me into the one medium I feel I have some ability to communicate in effectively.

Having said that, I have previously been published under my full name. Due to the individual policies of publications I've appeared in, I haven't entirely been able to avoid featuring my full name. It's not hard to find me online either. The nature of my non-writing work has meant that I will pop up at a few fairly public sites out there. I do still prefer using my initials whenever possible, and endeavour to keep doing so.

I would love to see a day where I could write the subjects I do handle, use my beloved initials, have people know who I am and where I come from, and be judged merely for my writing. That's never going to happen, and certainly doesn't happen even with the initials I use now. But again, anything I can contribute to minimizing the type and amount of pre-judgment that could occur is helpful to me as a writer. Now all I need to do is write something worthy of my crypticism, spread more rumours about me really being a fifty-something gay man, and find myself a tall thing to hide behind.


Negligible Trivia:

Fact: At least four editors who've previously published me defaulted into thinking I was a guy. Or just couldn't figure me out and went, "Hmmmm."
Fact: I once entered a chat room, helped hit on a guy, and the only other girl in that entire place immediately assumed I was a gay man.
Fact: Girl in chat room was semi-correct, with embellishments and elaborate scrollwork.

And with it, a fairly detailed review of Into the Monsoon.

Stir frying is one of the simplest, quickest, most gratifying forms of cooking I know. The range of foods that can be prepared with this style is far more extensive than virtually any other form of cooking, requires little effort, takes up a tiny amount of time, provides nutritionally-balanced one-dish meals and mostly saved me from starving on ramen throughout college. Please refer to the table of contents below for quick links:

( Table of Contents )

( A Basic Stir Fry (How to Go About It) )

( The Wok )

( The Meat )

( Fish )

( Marinading )

( Saucing )

We have a small pumpkin patch in our backyard I have been doing my best to keep watered and fed. I have an especial fondness for pumpkin shoots and flowers in my cooking. The flowers, in particular, are prized in Vietnam for stirfrying, and have a tender crunch and mildly sweet flavour reminiscent of the fruit. Unfortunately enough, although we finally had female flowers this year, I'd watch in horror as baby pumpkins shriveled up and died within days after the flowers wilted. According to sites I looked up, we had all the very worst conditions for expecting pumpkins: scorching heat, a drop in bee numbers (due to the heat) and not enough watering. The cure was to incite a kind of pumpkin bukake, using human hands to rub pumpkin penises against pumpkin vaginas. Yes, I know they're supposed to be stamens and stigmas, but these sound better.

Anyway, I woke up early enough for the job, when the flowers had all just bloomed, but was too lazy to leave the house at half past six, so left it until quite late in the morning, when the flowers were disturbingly starting to crumple in. Noticing this (the patch is directly opposite the bedroom window I work behind), I ran out with my box of three pre-chilled and collected pumpkin penises and a pair of scissors to finish what pumpkins clearly have no clue how to start on their own. It's like the giant panda argument -- how do you get them interested in each other? It's faster to artificially inseminate them. There were three freshly opened male flowers alongside the female one. I snipped the stamens of all three fresh flowers first, and did the rubbing and fertilizing stuff. There was a disturbing number of black ants. I suppose they helped the process along in nature, and were primarily attracted to the female flower, indicating it was a very sweet....female flower. I was initially worried the ants would cart off the pollen, but it didn't seem like they were into that. Many ants received facial shots as a result. Then, I took out the three chilled stamens I had on me and added the pollen from that to the mix. Quite frankly, if this female flower does not start coming down with child after six emasculated male flowers, I am going curse stuff.

After which, I harvested the emasculated flowers for lunch. Made a kind of halfway green curry chicken and threw them in at the end to be cooked by the hot sauce. I didn't have eggplant, but I did have zucchini centers, which worked a treat. The curry paste was supposed to be a pesto. Since basil pesto is nearly green curry paste without the onion, ginger and galangal, I thought, aha, we have a sauce. The pesto part comes in because I'd actually made a basil and rocket pesto. I also discovered that in the absence of chillis (our chilli plants this year refused to flower), young green rocket pods are an excellent substitute. The pods are strongly peppery, with a bitter rocket edge, but roughly have the same amount of heat as a medium-mild bird's eye chilli. There was also stewed sweet potatoes in soy sauce with wakame bits, konnyaku and some random tiny beetroot I recovered from the ground before it got completely eaten by pillbugs. (Just learnt that pillbugs are genus Armadillidium. How cute.)

I've been having issues with my left hand over the last three months. I've wondered if it's because I had to handle a large amount of water (predominantly grey water from the house I carry in buckets to the garden outside) that's affecting my joints. But my left hand numbs when I clench it or try to grip something with it. A few times a day, I'll do something with my hands and the pain carries from the back of my palm up to my knuckles. This hasn't made typing difficult yet, though one hand is always somewhat numb on the keyboard. Gets to me though, when I need to handle secateurs with my left hand, or snap off branches. I've also discovered I'm back to 38kg (85 pounds). This was my weight about 5 years ago. I haven't actually grown an inch since that time though, so I look the same. Things out here have been quiet, but frustrating. Trying to psyche myself up to write something. There are chores though. I need to cook a tree's worth of nectarines, before the birds, flies and cockroaches eat them all. There's going to be way too much nectarine crumble when this is done.

I got a recipe for these spicy biscuits off scanner_darkly a few weeks ago. It was something of a treat to myself at the end of the year. I love the way the dough makes my hands smell, and the way the baking biscuits let out this rich aroma of ginger and cloves. I ended up milling my own cloves, since we didn't have powdered cloves in the house. The smell of freshly pounded cloves in the mortar was itself especially pleasurable. It's a distinct sort of perfume cloves and anise share, which isn't by nature what one would instinctively call sweet. In fact, it is slightly sour, with a bite akin to disinfectant. Cloves and anise are the cornerstone of spiced syrups for me, masala syrup for example. The first batch I made lacked molasses, substituted with a mix of honey and maple syrup. In a further deviation from what I wrote down, I slurried the butter and sugar rather than creamed it, substituted half the butter for olive oil and refrigerated the dough hoping for the best. All of this, I can assure you, followed by apologies for messing up someone else's ethnic food.

This batch of biscuits came out delightfully thin and crisp. I found that in my oven, approximated to a temperature converted from fahrenheit to celsius, would, at the given cooking time, result in a chewy but probably undercooked bicsuit. Adding 5 minutes of cooking time, they seemed properly cooked, but may have ended up crispier than originally intended. They were, unfortunately, miserable at holding any shape worth speaking of. A little sweet, but within a range I liked. I couldn't stop eating my test cookies.

The second batch was made purely with butter and actual molasses. Unlike my previous batch of dough, this batch looked firm enough to shape properly, although I wondered at the start if I might've made the dough a bit too firm. Molasses implied a much chewier biscuit, and I baked the first tray to the original cooking time to see if I wound up with gingerbread. The dough still felt peculiarly undercooked. I'm not sure why I keep thinking this, though virtually every other pepperkakor recipe I looked up since then has a similar if not lower cooking time. Adding a tiny amount of cooking time resulted in a dough that tasted more cooked, but a texture that was semi-crunchy-chewy. It's a peculiar texture, but not inedible, although still remarkably different, I believe, from the original. I rubbed some brown sugar into half of the new biscuits, resulting in crinkly sugar toppings. It tasted great. I can't stop eating them either.

I'm already plotting coffee-masala variants. Being that I can't leave things well alone, I might try for a purely crispy biscuit again. Gingerbread's a delight, and chewy cookies are well and good, but give me a biscuit that breaks clean, with crumbs of shrapnel, and I'll be happy as a bee.

I slept far before countdown last night, and woke up earlier than most of my neighbourhood this morning. It was a cold, soft sort of few hours after dawn. I stared out of my window because I knew that, in a matter of time, the places outside would be blazing, and that horrible smell of clay and dust I detest so much would make itself apparent. This year started out quiet. I half-expected it to be completely worthless by the ending months. It hasn't. In fact, it has redeemed itself incredibly well. I suspect, by mid-next year, I might know if it could get better. I have been gifted with strong friends, and I am grateful for their walls at my back. Thank you for helping me survive mental things. Maybe you know who you are. But I do love all of you dearly, even if I am terrible at reciprocating how I feel myself.

My only two emails overnight had me feeling good. Work-wise, things are looking up. It's been doing that the past three months or so, and I'm glad to see the momentum might carry into the coming year. I worked through Christmas, and will be working right through the first week of the New Year. Work takes my mind off things. I am grateful for that too. I've found I still love languages, and the languages I work with, well into this year ahead. I kind of wished I'd write more too. But languages -- I seem to have an affinity with their needs to be retold and refolded.

I need to specially thank countlibras for the delightful letters and thoughtful gifts over the last year -- it was extremely sweet of you, petal, and such music! The gift of Blankey Jet City and Ajico will follow me for a long while; eekers, dear heart, thank you for the hamster cards -- you may be the one friend who remembers how much yoghurt drops cheer a hamstery soul, and you're a delight for it; mokie, without you I would go utterly insane, I'm sure of it -- thank you for the discourses and picking to death of where my writing falters; Cabbit, at some point, I will think of something worthy of the books, but no hamster should be without Creation of the Gods and by golly, I'll find something of equivalent cheer! scanner_darkly, a smile towards you, just because.

I have now heard from at least two friends I trust about a growing movement of people online who believe they might have Asperger's Syndrome. Back in the day, people thought they were depressed, and lots of people said they had terrible bouts of depression that made them think about killing themselves. They took a lot of online quizzes about that, and made long blog posts about how horrible the world was, and how absolutely bleak their outlook for the future was meant to be. They wore black. They listened to morbid obsesso music. They read Anne Rice. They roleplayed vampires.

Quite a number of them grew up to be pretty normal adults, with pretty normal families.

They never had day of therapy to their name. They never wound up in hospital after a failed suicide attempt. They never wound up in a box when their suicides worked. They just took online quizzes, and grew up. I hate how that works.

And now there are online quizzes for Asperger's Syndrome.

I'm just thinking here -- why does anyone even want to have Asperger's Syndrome? Patients with Asperger's Syndrome typically ruin the mental, emotional, physical and possibly the financial wellbeing of the people closest to them. It is like any other severe, life-changing illness. It brings severe life-changes. The irony being that for people with Asperger's Syndrome, as it would be for the autistic, these severe life-changes usually happen to the people around them, since, the patients themselves rarely have the kind of world view necessary to even understand they're sick.

( It is not about being clever. )

( It is not about being clumsy.  )

( It is not about being twitchy. )

( It's not about bad socializing skills. )

( It's not about finding it hard to fit in. )

They never stop.
They never think about others.
They can't perceive alienation on the inside.

Which brings me back to my original point: Patients with Asperger's Syndrome typically ruin the mental, emotional, physical and possibly the financial wellbeing of the people closest to them.

They don't care about the people in the wake of their nuclear fallout. They will only ever see their right to cause nuclear fallouts. They will only understand how to use, and never give back.

They are the ultimate assholes.

Asperger's Syndrome is an illness that creates assholes. Real assholes. Not assholes who will one day realize the error of their ways when the father who worked his fingers raw to send them to therapy their entire lives finally collapses in front of them in a stress-related heart attack. Not assholes who will weep over their mother's grave when she finally kills herself after psychiatrists, antidepressants and support groups combined could not save her from feeling alone -- raising a child who will never, ever say, "Please."

If you get your kicks out of making your spouses feel like strangers in their own home; if you get your kicks out of making your children feel like you are the parent they're never going to have; if you think it's awesome that you are going to grow up, and find that everyone hates you and you have no idea why, well... my god-shaped hole, you're one selfish fucker.

But you'd also not have Asperger's. A person with Asperger's Syndrome would encounter all these illogical, emotional responses, and not even know it.

So grow up. Take your fucking online quizzes, and grow the fuck up.

You are a freelance translator. You work from home. Due to the nature of your work coming in from different time zones, your typical day begins at midnight till three or five in the morning, with a second shift at noon to six in the evening. Supposing you had many things to do all at once, you may occasionally find yourself pulling a few hours spare both ways. You spend the hours between six to about eleven in the evening catching up on chores and preparing the food you may be eating over the next day. Any hours you have left, at any point in the day, you try to sleep.

You have a nineteen-year-old brother. At age nine, he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder and a variety of allergies. Careful diet restrictions early in his life have ensured he has grown up relatively free-er of his allergies, but the ADD and behavioral problems are not helped by lapses into poor nutrition. Like all Asperger's sufferers, he has a fixation, in this case, automobiles. It is predominantly the only topic he will really talk about, or will revolve his conversations around. He is currently a normal University student. He spends his time doing homework, chatting with his friends over the Internet till very late, attending classes, and crashing on deadlines. He has poor facial expression recognition, he has a poor understanding of metaphor and does not generally recognize different tones in speech for their emotional value. He passes off easily as a normal, clumsy late teenager.

You have been given the task of looking after your large family home, the accompanying garden, and the boy who lives in it. With regards to the boy, you have been given standing orders to provide one meal a day, usually dinner; ensure that laundry is done; dole out pocket money as needed and see to any emergencies.

You start your day by waking up from a short nap at about half past midnight. You walk out into the kitchen, and find every light in the house on -- your brother is scared of the dark. All the curtains are open, as are the sliding doors. You shut off the unecessary lights and shut the curtains. You bypass your brother's work area, where plates have been stacked five pieces high, because he does not bring them to the sink sometimes, and though you will sometimes remind him they're there and worry about cockroaches, you do not feel it is your responsibility to take dishes off his desk.

You made mushroom rice, miso soup, stir fried tomatoes and french beans and stir fried chicken and chives for dinner. You left these dishes in their respective pots or containers in the kitchen, expecting your brother to serve himself when he was ready to eat. Your brother preferred to have instant noodles for dinner, which he made himself. You find the colanders, strainer and measuring jug he used for this task on the kitchen counter. There are stains on the counter of the sauce mixes from the noodle's packet. There is a very strong smell of additional soy seasoning he added to his noodles. He has not replaced the bottle of seasoning he took from the pantry. The empty bowl and cutlery he'd eaten his dinner with is at his place on the dining table.

You begin by clearing the counter and washing the cooking implements he used. You do not care about his used dinnerware on the table. You wipe down the counter and pack away the food you cooked, as it will not keep in the open.

At half past one, you sit down at your computer to begin your first shift. In the next room, the first of your brother's five alarm clocks goes off at 3:30AM. They continue to beep, one after the other, at half hour intervals since then. It is a relatively slow day, so you're able to stop work at 5AM. Your brother has a midterm test that morning. Since it's a weekend, he might have trouble obtaining a bus, so you decide you'll drive him to school. He isn't awake yet, and while his alarms have still been going off, you decide to let him have a little more sleep.

Since your brother may have a long day ahead, and you're often asleep by the time he usually heads to school, you decide to make some breakfast for him to help with his test. You shred carrots for a vinaigrette. You know with his instant noodle diets, your brother has been skipping most of his vegetables. It's not altruistic -- you miss having salads and good nutrition too. You throw together an apple and lettuce salad. You defrost some chicken rendang your mother left in the freezer and heat up a portion for him. You reheat a portion of the rice from the night before, and miso soup. You don't feel like rice yourself, so you make yourself a bowl of noodles, with the same salad as a side dish.

At 6:00AM, you wake up your brother. He is angry he has been woken up inordinately late. He had intended to wake up at 4AM, both to catch a bus at 6:50AM, and to study (before and when he reached school). You reassure him he will arrive at school before 8AM, and the reason you woke up him later was because you would be driving him to school. He continues to grumble about the lateness of the hour as he gets himself ready.

( Read more... )

You are a freelance translator. You work from home. Due to the nature of your work coming in from different time zones, your typical day begins at midnight till three or five in the morning, with a second shift at noon to six in the evening. Supposing you had many things to do all at once, you may occasionally find yourself pulling a few hours spare both ways. You spend the hours between six to about eleven in the evening catching up on chores and preparing the food you may be eating over the next day. Any hours you have left, at any point in the day, you try to sleep.

You have a nineteen-year-old brother. At age nine, he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder and a variety of allergies. Careful diet restrictions early in his life have ensured he has grown up relatively free-er of his allergies, but the ADD and behavioral problems are not helped by lapses into poor nutrition. Like all Asperger's sufferers, he has a fixation, in this case, automobiles. It is predominantly the only topic he will really talk about, or will revolve his conversations around. He is currently a normal University student. He spends his time doing homework, chatting with his friends over the Internet till very late, attending classes, and crashing on deadlines. He has poor facial expression recognition, he has a poor understanding of metaphor and does not generally recognize different tones in speech for their emotional value. He passes off easily as a normal, clumsy late teenager.

You have been given the task of looking after your large family home, the accompanying garden, and the boy who lives in it. With regards to the boy, you have been given standing orders to provide one meal a day, usually dinner; ensure that laundry is done; dole out pocket money as needed and see to any emergencies.

You start your day by waking up from a short nap at about 1AM. You walk out into the kitchen, and find every light in the house on -- your brother is scared of the dark. All the curtains are open, as are the sliding doors. You shut off the unecessary lights and shut the curtains. You bypass your brother's work area, where plates have been stacked five pieces high, because he does not bring them to the sink sometimes, and though you will sometimes remind him they're there and worry about cockroaches, you do not feel it is your responsibility to take dishes off his desk. You do, however, straighten out the couch he mangled while watching television the night before. You wash the wreckage of items he did leave on the kitchen counter, because you need the counter.

You sit down and begin your shift by working from midnight to 6AM. At the end of your shift, you remember that your brother wanted to be woken up early that day for a class. You were not informed what time he intended to head out that day, but you understand that most University classes begin at 8:30AM, so you let him sleep in till 6AM. At 6AM, you wake him up. He is angry that you have woken him up very late indeed. He preferred to be woken up at four in the morning. He complains all the way to the bathroom, where you can hear him grumble over the loud fan he runs to keep cool, though it's about 24C that morning.

Since neither of you has had breakfast, you reheat some rice porridge you'd made the night before. The boy comes out of his room, still grumbling, at 6:30AM, and takes another half an hour to pack up his bags. You indicate that breakfast has been heated up, should he want it. He doesn't want it, as he wants to go in an hour before class, scolds you for waking him up late, and needs to catch the bus. He leaves the house.

After your breakfast, you leave the pot on the stove so he'll have something to eat when he comes home. You sleep until noon. When you wake up, you start work again, and keep at it until around 6PM. Your brother arrives home at around this time. You ask if he can bring in the mail on his way inside. You go to the kitchen to make yourself some tea -- your first tea of the day. You are relatively exhausted, and would like to think about dinner. He comes back with the mail, and yells at you from the front door that letters from the car dealer have arrived. He believes they might be servicing notices for one of the household's cars. He believes this is important, because the car in question is not Japanese, and is apparently very fragile, because it will shatter into a thousand pieces if you do not service it the moment you get a notice. You acknowledge that letters have arrived, and you'll open them after you've had your tea. He wants you to open them right this instant, because if they are servicing notices, it's important that you know when you need to service the cars. You reassure him that the car won't explode if you have your tea first. After all, even dealers have to expect that people will sometimes have holidays and business trips that may last weeks. He insists that the car is like a Citroen or a Renault that requires servicing now or it will die in flames. You remind him that you'd like to finish your tea first, and you'll read the mail later. You have a headache, and it would be nice not to discuss this right now. He goes into a long exposition about how your family car is not going to survive waiting on servicing, and certainly not some holiday of weeks as you've mentioned, earlier. You open the mail, and find advertising brochures from your dealer rather than servicing notes. He takes the advertising brochures.

As he leaves the room, he does not stop about how important it is to service cars on time. The car that your family owns is prone to severe failures if it is not serviced within a week of its service notice. He is a keen participant in online forums about your family's car's make and model, and has friends who own the same car who have had great difficulties when they missed their servicing times for any reason. This goes on for about five minutes, as you mull over your tea and would like to think about dinner.

You tell him to, "Shut the fuck up."

( Read more... )

I completely bungled my last announcement post up. I'd meant to announce A Foreigner's View of the River was going to appear in Fantasy Magazine early 2008, and Into the Monsoon will be in the final printed issue of the same publication (Fantasy Magazine #7) later this month.

In the meantime, a review of the Bandersnatch anthology, which debuted at the WFC, has gone up at The Fix. I suddenly feel quite more elusive. It's not a bad thing.

Some of you may remember me announcing this earlier in the year, but Mosquito Story was purchased by DarkHart Press for a reprint in its upcoming Terrible Beauty anthology (April or May 2008). The difference now, of course, is that the anthology finally has a name and a cover!

In other news, Into the Monsoon will be appearing in Fantasy Magazine for an upcoming issue (I do believe later this month).

Blame it on my severe love of tinned cream of mushroom as a kid, but cream of mushroom soup is one of those things that just really tingles my toes and comforts my ills. I usually like to make a large batch of soup and freeze it, so I can slowly gnaw -- I mean slurp, yes, slurp -- my way through the stash for weeks. Button mushrooms are the standard for this recipe, but you can really substitute this with any other kind of mushroom, or even mix them around. Oyster, portobello, golden or even straw mushrooms add variety and texture to this soup. One of the benefits of leftover mushroom soup is that it also makes a great base for most creamy mushroom sauces and gravies. It is very possible to throw some soup onto pasta, for example, to get an instant al funghi. Put it over some pan-fried meat or fish for an instant mushroom sauce. For a real lazy person's delight, stir in some cooked rice and meat (or an egg), throw on some shredded cheese, warm it all up in the microwave until the cheese melts, and you have a functional casserole. (The last dish featured at least once a week in my diet between the last two years of high school and the first four years of college.)

I made this by adding herbs I found around my garden into the stock -- not exactly a bouquet garni, but it definitely added flavour. You may use any variety of herbs you prefer, including chopped herbs and pre-mixed powdered herbs. I used the coriander stalks leftover from the leaves I retained for garnish, some bay leaves and a stalk of marjoram as a bouquet garni. The idea is to get flavourful herbs that will make the soup taste better the longer the soup is stored. If you are using powdered herbs, add them to the mushrooms and skip 3 and 5. It is further possible to vary this soup by chopping in some chives, potatoes, chicken or white fish meat to add texture and flavour.

( Cream of Mushroom Soup )

Afi's Mushroom Toast

Compared with mushroom soup, mushroom toast was a relatively recent innovation in my diet. It is still another form of comfort food though. It makes a great snack, and makes a nicely filling quick meal too. The mushrooms can be variegated or substituted with tomatoes, avocadoes, preserved artichoke hearts, bell peppers or tinned fish or meat. Once again, button mushrooms are the standard, but you can substitute this with oyster mushrooms or portobello mushrooms, if you prefer. In case you're wondering, this was my dinner tonight.

( Mushroom Toast )

Now here's a bit of breakfast food I tend to miss quite a bit from back home. In Malaysia, you may be able to purchase lodeh with nasi himpit (compressed rice cubes -- think of them as a square, tighter form of onigiri without the vinegar) for breakfast from the same places that sell nasi lemak. I still remember how I'd have this when I was a kid every time I had to visit the old National Registration Department in Shah Alam. The basement of the complex the NRD was in had lots of breakfast places, because the NRD office would require one to line up for queue numbers at something like seven in the morning, so everyone would head there for a number and a form, and find breakfast in the area. There was this one place we'd go to that specialized in nasi lemak and lodeh. I loved getting my rice cubes, scooping on my vegetables and then topping it all with the most gloriously oily deep fried egg. It's that sort of fried egg that only a place with a hot, greasy skillet or wok can pull off, edged in the most delightfully crisp lace of brown carcinogens. This is, by the way, my favourite method of cooking an egg.

Lodeh itself is a real comfort food. The gently stewed soft Chinese cabbages, carrots and slightly jelly-like texture of the glass noodles, in a milky gravy that's just gorgeously creamy yellow from the turmeric, makes it a very kind dish on the stomach when you can't take much else (and had it up to here with rice gruel and soups -- nice though those dishes are in themselves). Originally, one would use a mixture of water and coconut milk, which can be hard on the cholesterol, and unfriendly to people with allergies to coconut. I prefer to use a combination of dairy milk and a bit of coconut milk for flavouring, which offers a mild, sweet flavour. It should further be possible to substitute dairy with soy, which would work out well with the tempeh and tofu that can be added to this dish. This dish can be as vegetarian as one wishes.

Nasi himpit refers to a Malay dish of boiled rice compressed into squares. After cooling, it is further cut into cubes and usually served with curry or rendang. It is derived from ketupat, which is made by weaving a square case out of coconut leaves (giving the cooked rice the fragrance of coconut) and generally served to guests during festive occasions. I found this pretty nifty recipe for simple nasi himpit using a square baking tin. Alternatively, Adabi makes instant nasi himpit, which can be easily boiled in water to create enough impressive (and authentic) nasi himpit in abundance. Finding instant nasi himpit might take some work, however, as one would have to look up a pretty complete Asian grocer carrying Southeast Asian goods, or alternatively purchase this product online. You don't really need nasi himpit to go with lodeh though. Regular steamed rice will do just fine. I've also tried this with molded and cubed polenta, which turned out to be awesome. The custardy polenta holds it shape well when served in the thick, creamy stew.

( Steamed Rice via Microwaving )

( Sayur Lodeh )