Work In Progress

We have been in our little flat for almost 3 years now, it's a cliche but time does fly. Our renovation and upgrading works thus far were:-

a. before moving in, basic and minor renovations - we were very eager to move into our own place!
b. about 1 year + upon moving in, upgraded shower fixtures and replaced the sink in the common bathroom. We had also replaced the stove from the stainless steel one to a glass one and repainted our kitchen cabinet doors from a plain pine to a baby blue and changed the handles. Finally hung up the 2 mid-century space ship lamps purchased online from Holland.
c. very recently, hung up more artworks and created a sorta salon wall with smaller pictures in the living room (I say "sorta" because they were under threat of removal by the Boy but I think they work and he's left them alone since).

However the one area that always felt neglected to me was our bedroom. We finally put double-glazing in and wooden blinds and that improved our sleep quality. But apart from that, we hadn't done much. The space (bedroom cum office) was functional but soulless. We have a couple of nice vintage furniture in it but that still didn't do anything for the room.

So this time round, we are focusing on our bedroom cum office. We will finally:-

a. get rid of the much-hated platform parquet floor in the office area, legacy of the last owner. It was a dumb, impractical feature but we kept it because of the speed we needed to move in 3 years ago. We made it more practical by switching the sleep and work areas, so you don't fall over the platform stumbling from your bed to the en-suite loo in the middle of the night. 

b. flatten the indentation in the 2 big end walls and make them into feature walls. I am the creative director for the bedroom area while the Boy is responsible for the office. Dark, heavy drapes will divide the 2 areas. We will be laying wooden floors on the newly-leveled surface. 

c. hack the wall separating the bedroom/office from the rest of the house, opening up the space. We will however be putting in a sliding door to block off the private space from the dining/living rooms when needed.

So we are now awaiting the contractor's quotation before we give the go ahead and I am excited to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and have a bedroom which says style rather than just function.

Tribute to Some of the Loaves I've Made

There is something satisfying about making your own bread, not just because you save a ton of money not paying for mediocre bread at exorbitant prices at delis and gourmet bakeries, but also the fact that you are actually making something very basic with your hands to feed your family. People feel a loss of satisfaction with the Industrial Revolution, that's a fact. Making something with your hands counts for something...

 The back story to my bread-making was when the New York Times came out with its wonderfully simple No-Knead Bread some 8 or 9 years ago, I was intrigued. Bread-making always seemed to involve a lot of hard, manual work and mysterious workings of yeast and leaveners. Until this No-Knead bread recipe burst out on the internet. The only drawback was it required a cast iron pot or a Dutch oven. I lusted after a Le Creuset cast iron pot since then, frequently checking the prices during sales. However, nothing could make me part with S$500 for a pot, Le Creuset or otherwise, not even bread.
Then fast-forward to 2010 when I started going to the US regularly for work. The opportunity to get my much-coveted Le Creuset Dutch oven arrived. For a little less than half the cost of the same at home, I could get a shiny red pot. I hand-carried my precious cargo from San Jose to San Francisco via Hong Kong to Singapore. And then the break-making started in earnest!

The bubbling of the dough mixture was most satisfying. This meant to me that the magic was working.

Leaving the dough for a 12-hour proof plus another 2-hour makes for a sourdough bread, without the need for a sourdough starter. Another shortcut! I just love this recipe. The Boy also loves this bread and would clamour for this on a weekly basis. I was also eager to cut down the cost per loaf from about $30 to a more normal $10.

I even ventured into the land of bread that required kneading after seeing a picture of the same posted by a friend. So I made these 2 loaves but as they were white bread, they weren't the hit the sourdough bread was, and so I went back to baking what the public demanded.

On a subsequent trip to the US, I even bought a second, slightly smaller Le Creuset pot in orange and I've since used that one more to bake my bread because it gives the dough a better rise because of the proportion.

I've experimented with adding dried cranberries, candied walnuts, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds and dried figs to the dough. Making bread especially the No-Knead bread is easy and enjoyable and helps achieve the satisfaction quotient of making something with one's hands.

Cammeray

This mid-Century block is very modest, but it has a charm about it that sticks in my mind. It has been 3 years since we lived there and I had only lived in it for 8 or 9 months but somehow, I can't get it out of my mind. The clean, modernist lines, the beautiful green surroundings, the water nearby, the very genteel feel of the village...

I always loved Surry Hills for the vibe, the hipness, the cafes, the feel of the whole neighbourhood, but in the end, I think my heart keeps coming back to Cammeray. And maybe it's time my head admits it too. I think it's the first time I've said it out loud.

Weigh In

I have always had a mild obsession with retro weighing scales and have bought a couple from overseas flea markets and contemplated lugging back one of those heavy ones with metal weights you can add or subtract on the weighing pan. But good sense always prevailed at the end. However, I am always on the lookout for vintage weighing scales whenever I travel.

Anyway, the battle of the bulge also continues and a less retro bathroom scale is involved in this battle. I have been jolted back to action and have been faithfully logging in on My Fitness Pal (G calls it My Fatness Pal which seems to be a more apt name really). I have been quite successful in keeping to my goals this whole week since I started and have only failed today, but I plead Chinese New Year Reunion dinner - 'nuff said. I don't want to be lugging around the equivalent of 7 litres of milk every day with/on me but I am looking at it as 3+2+2, I think it makes it easier when the loss is calibrated in smaller, more do-able chunks.

The next few days will be a challenge, with pineapple tarts and other CNY goodies everywhere I turn. I think a couple of pineapple tarts once a year wouldn't hurt. After all, we have to keep traditions going!

Random Musings

This blog has been totally neglected for the last 3 months. I blame.... eBay I think. But I am now a reformed, ex-eBay addict and have time for other stuff like updating my blog (just one personal blog now, have decided to let the other one die a natural death, but also need to get round to pulling my weight on the vintage blog), reading a bunch of books that I've been faithfully borrowing from the library and getting my impacted wisdom tooth operated on and removed.

So what have these photos got to do with anything? I am not quite sure except that they are colourful, have interesting street scenes and I enjoyed walking around Chennai by myself where I took them.

I don't think I'll be going to India this year due to work budget constraints. If that is so, then it will be the first in 3 years that I don't make at least 1 trip to India. It will be a record of sorts for me as I sat back one day a few months ago and thought to myself, "Now which country have I travelled to the most in my 20 year career?" (yes - 20 years!) and the answer was "India". Not exactly what I was hoping for, but that's the truth. And in the wake of the Delhi bus gang rape, I wasn't that happy with the realisation.

But this year, there won't be that much work-related travel. We are hopeful that we are getting our acts together earlier in the year, and plan our personal travel better and get to where we say we want to. Without the hassle of work travel, travelling might become more fun and I may in fact, want to travel while I am on leave, rather than opting to sit on my couch at home which was what was my preference the last 2 years when I was getting on a plane every other week.

 All right, random musing over. Blog re-activated.

20th Class Reunion

My Law School class of 1992 is having our 20th anniversary class reunion next Friday. 20 years! Seems unbelievable that 20 years have flown by in a twinkling of an eye. We were just young adults in our early twenties when we finished up our 4 years in Law School, sold ice-cream in the foyer to raise money for our graduating class bash, practised hard for the traditional graduating class concert - as you can see, we did Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" and to this day, I don't know how the show went because I was one of the background dancers and didn't have the luxury of watching the performance. And I don't remember watching the taped (yes taped on video) recording afterwards. What I do remember is lots of sweat and tears in the rehearsals, where many life-long friendships were made and a couple were broken.

Those 4 years were the best ones of my life I reckon. There were lots that I learnt inside the lecture halls but even more outside the lectures. At the jam and hops bopping to the live amateur bands, canoeing for ages in the open sea to Sentosa island and camping overnight (and then realising that I had to canoe back! What? No one told me I had to take the canoe back and it wasn't a canoe there, take the bus back kinda outing), in the foyer scooping out big scoops of ice-cream, playing Pictionary, having lunch in the Arts canteen while hungry eyes stared down at you, willing you to hurry up and vacate your seats, those long tea breaks at the School of Management canteen, mugging late into the night at the Faculty, then walking back with a friend to the hostel...

Those were the good old days. And in a week's time, we will all be meeting up, with more kilos piled on, less hair, more lines on our faces but I am sure we will all still see the young ones in our early twenties beneath all that. I can't wait.

Sydney, I Miss You

Last trip to Sydney was 5 days before Christmas last year and was an in and out trip, hardly enough time to meet my friends, drink all the flat white to satisfy my caffeine cravings, visit the new cafes that have popped up in Surry Hills, buy all the vintage ceramics and glassware at the opp shops, nose around the Mitchell Road Auction House, gorge on lovely bread from Bourke Street Bakery and Central Baking Depot, walk the parks and beaches... And almost a whole year has gone by without a work trip to Sydney this year, the biggest drawback of the new role. I miss everything and everyone.

So even nursing this (new) cold which followed 2 bouts of walking pneumonia, I am determined to enjoy myself when I get there in 2 days' time. So let me get back to lying on the couch and resting my mind, body and soul. Then I will be ready for you Sydney!!