Jolly Folly, Mighty Morphin'

I am getting reticent really. Writing more often here seems to ignite a departure from reality, a drift into a web woven by words. Upon landing, it gives great comfort and even a greater bounce back into where I come from.

I hope it's just "one of those days", where you just don't want to listen to anyone, where you wished the world understood, where you wished that you didn't have to try. It's like everything doesn't fall into place - the shower doesn't come on hot, you've over-eaten again, there's so much work but you have no motivation.

My chin resting precariously on an empty bottle, my body arched forward. In a position I don't want to leave... I swear I could close my eyes and fall into a deep sleep right now.

Just watch me.

Posted by Brandon at Friday, March 27, 2009 | Permalink

Why every meal should end with dessert

Chefs sometimes bust their heads thinking of new entrees. It seems like the longer the name (topped with xxx, drizzled in xxx sauce, with a tinge of xxx), the more it makes the menu sound more sophisticated. Well, for the unpretentious dessert, it's the other way round. Green Tea sorbet. Chocolate Pralines. Flourless Chocolate Torte.

I think it's because dessert is functional. It definitely is sweet. It seals the palatte. It signals the end of a meal. But this simplistic view of desserts does little justic to the shocking variety of flavors that desserts come in.

Sometimes, I feel like my meal should be the dessert. I bite into my greens because I have to. I have to eat some potatoes and rice because the food pyramid tells me to. But I have dessert because I live to eat it. It is the climax. It is the full story itself without the decorative lead-ins or denouement.

Desserts lose their form easily - ice cream melts, glaces soften, dry ice fizzles out. Because it is so hard to catch it in its greatest moment of splendour, it becomes a concise story, a book which you close the moment you open it. Now, that makes it valuable to the palatte. What your eyes can only catch in a split second peek-a-boo, the tongue wants it even more. A dessert is never the full-stop, it is the sentence. It hides at the end of the line, but it is the star. Just that the paparazzi has been snapping photos of the wrong celebrity, that's all.

People always feel sick after dessert buffets. Coz it's like eating the goose so as to savour the eggs that have yet to be laid. You can never get enough of desserts, but you must, because like a story with too many climaxes, you feel drained at the end, so jaded at repeated works of beauty that they no longer appeal to the senses anymore.

I could use a cheesecake right now. Just a slice though.

Posted by Brandon at Thursday, March 26, 2009 | Permalink

The night falls and all I can hear is the spinning of the fan on my flapping wet clothes.

The recent food-to-eat is butter. I never would have thought that it would be my cup of tea, but yea, butter on rolls are hell good. No, I'm not becoming "angmoh" to quote Shazzy, but sometimes you cling on to sensations that excite something new in you, something that has been hiding in the closet for a long time.

Butter brings me on a wave. It has to be cold, but not too cold, for it will be solid like rock. As it nestles on your tongue, there is no taste, but as it spreads, it oozes such flavor. Quite ineffable, but if you could imagine yourself being hauled up to the crest of a wave, to a point of milky saturation, to a point of oily clunkiness, then being brought down to the calm of the sea, as it maneouvres the carbs it's on and slides down the gut. Absolutely stunning experience.

Posted by Brandon at Sunday, March 22, 2009 | Permalink

Today, it dawned on me that having a purpose-filled life can sometimes take the fun out of it. We always gawk at perfection and there's no point where we humans aim to backtrack on our paths. It's always BOOM! let's go, forward, no looking back!

I envy the angmohs for being able to go home during Spring Break (one-week). Even the Singaporeans are travelling around, eating good food and snapping pictures, and fleeing into the arms of warmth. Me? Stuck in this icehole rowing twice a day. I woke up today, but could barely lift myself off my bed. Coz my back was aching like a heartbreak and my arms were heavy as an elephant.

I have no complaints coz I chose to do this. It just came as a major disappointment that I only made it to the second boat instead of the first, for this spring's race season. It's almost like all the extra training I've been putting in has come to naught. Something I've worked for, for a good half a year, pulling my ass off 6 am in the morning, biting the bullet. I guess there'll always be someone better out there, someone stronger, more experienced and luckier.

There's this moment in a race rowers call "the wall". Basically, you hit it, you just have nothing left in you. And this happens usually 3/4 into a race. Trust me, when I say nothing, I really mean ABSOLUTELY nothing left. I've done marathons and the pain is nowhere near. Which means that last 1/4 is sheer torture. Worse still, it's torture you force yourself into.

Coz if you let go, you crush the dreams of another 7 people on the boat. Coz if you let go, that hard 3/4 that you had taken will go down the drain.

It's such an irony, but up till today I STILL BELIEVE that this is the one thing that keeps rowers rowing. That last 50 strokes, the blade piercing into the water in unison, that internal hell of a scream imploding. Then the calm. Turning to the guy behind you, proudly holding your arms up in the sky and saying,

"We did it."

Posted by Brandon at Thursday, March 19, 2009 | Permalink

Today I had lunch at a cafe. I can't really qualify it with an adjective because honestly, I don't quite know how to classify it. It has a clearly Japanese menu, with the usual ramen, udon, soba, don entrees... Yet it boasts a display of the most tempting American sweets like cheesecake, molten lava cake, brulee, all sitting beside transparent packets of chemical-green mochi. Its menu board is scribbled untidily in luminous ink - with buzzwords like frappucino, waffle cone, fudge - yet still lending a casual sense of frivolity. A really old computer monitor sits on the cramped bar top, one doubts if the "Free Internet" is indeed working.

But I must say it's really an accidental aesthetic success from the quaintness of it all, the past sitting within the present, the traditional scattered amongst the new, and the laid-back atmosphere strongly prodding you to slink back into the lazy post-meal laziness. Ain't that what cafes, whether alfresco or indoors, are for?

The food was awful though. Miso Ramen is supposed to be simple. It perhaps was too simple, lacking the precision of presentation and flavour of a good broth that the "cuisine-ego" of the Japanese should manifest. The char siew was ridiculously square in shape and strangely lean, in other words, it lacked bounce in the bite. The fishcake (pink and white slice) was a perfect semi-circle, so perfect that it totally did it injustice. At least jagged edges or some variation to show some effort on the chef's part, but alas, no. Broth and noodle came together pretty well, bland almost.

As I sipped my mocha ice-blended with jelly and pearl sprinkled with chocolate chips and coconut shavings (inhale), I still finished my ramen, coz I was really hungry as always. The chair I was on creaked precariously as I shifted in my seat. Reading my newspapers under the dim candy dish lights above me, an incongrously loud song was playing in an almost empty cafe. The pictures in the cafe warranted a wipe soon, coz you could almost feel the dust falling into your already not very good food.

I left, pretty unimpressed, with a mind bursting with ideas on how to make this cafe succeed. It's just all a waste.

Posted by Brandon at Thursday, March 12, 2009 | Permalink

Till today, the only two females that have caught my eye onscreen is Sarah Jessica Parker and Maggie Q! These two...really... make me do a double-take for their freshness and outstanding features. Today I saw someone in person from the corner of my eye and she was literally my Sarah Jessica Parker personified (I'm not saying Sarah is an object... but you get what I mean)... It was like the spotlight went on and the wind started to blow in her direction. Picture-perfect.

It made me wonder WHY we as humans literally "can't take our eyes off" good-looking people. Does getting another glimpse provide another proportionate morsel of contentment? I see no logic. Is it awaiting the lift of an arm or some titillating action to better that image of perfection? WHY!

Maybe in the hope that you catch her eye and she walks to you, but you know in your heart that you would be speechless by then? Or just plainly, that there's nowhere else your eyes would rather be, when you are surrounded by average-lookers.

Sweet dreams people.

Posted by Brandon at Monday, March 09, 2009 | Permalink

Ever looked at an old photo, where you are beyond recognition?

And the strange, equally unidentifiable people around you, worse. But you look more closely at each one of them. Each one is like a box brimming with nuggets of stories. Just looking at it, opens it. It takes a while for the moment to unfreeze, but somehow, it all comes back... whether the first thing that hits you is that shared burst of laughter outside the locker room, or that distinctly foul fart in the canteen that choked the cat. That person has a link to you through an intangible thread. Somewhere hidden in the recesses of the brain.

That person has left that moment in time when the photo was taken, taken a path different from yours, frozen in space by yet another snapping camera and moved on yet. And when our paths converge again, and we choose to eternalise that moment in a snapshot - the new face, moustache, pimple, satorical style - brings a whole new meaning to that box, which can no longer contain those nuggets.

I reject these nuggets. They fall into the drain.

Posted by Brandon at Wednesday, March 04, 2009 | Permalink