"De Profundis clamo ad te, Domine”
From the Depths, you cry out;
Ears only to be met
by roaring waves - Thunderous tumult.
Death, may come.
It comes to all of us.
To some, it comes earlier. But it comes.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Intersesting stuff that's new to me...
Coke Zero was something I tried recently. Being a person who does not take soft-drinks (gassy, carbonated ones especially), and relies mostly on tea (sugared lightly, non-milky - which is rather difficult to get in HK with their trademark 奶茶 milk tea), coffee (although seldom now...I don't like reliving the experience of being addicted and downing 7 cups a night, only to still fall asleep an hour later) or plain ol' water - I found Coke Zero surprisingly good on the tastebuds. Apparently there is no added sugar - making it like Coke Light -without the flat taste of Coke Light. And more importantly, there isn't any phosphoric acid (which the original Cokes do) - that leaches calcium from your bones!
Also went to a Hainanese restaurant that Ka Yong Biao-Ge and Da Bak Leong (Eldest Uncle's Wife) brought me to. The chicken rice which Biaoge insisted was a must-try, was really fantastic - in fact, comparable to the Chatterbox at the Mandarin! And for a much lower price - think it was HKD60? The Hainanese, famed for their culinary skills - had a wide array of dishes - both western and Chinese. Dai Bak Leong decided to let us have some escargots...which was quite an experience for me - having never tried them before!
Having been seasoned with herbs and butter, and served on a base of lightly whipped mashed potatoes, they actually tasted quite nice! Something that one could not quite place exactly...not 'chicken'...or any other meat. Perhaps, it was simply "Escargot" flavoured escargot.
1) Food is vital for human survivial (yes, water too).
Hence, in a place where you are demanded to survive in a rapidly moving environment (and I don't just mean the people and pace of life. Even the weather here changes suddenly...it was nice and cool last week, and within a day, it became 27 degrees this morning! WHAT THE!!), you've got to find cheap, nice places to nourish you (otherwise you're gonna be quite miserable).
Wanting to try 'western food' here (yes yes...the whole 'western' and 'occidental' I've studied and understood...just leave it be for now. Western here means anything eaten with fork and knife, not chopsticks), I whipped up a ham and cheese omelette with grilled tomatoes and a pasta side dish. (As seen RIGHT)
Looked quite decent, and believe you me...it tasted great (BETTER THAN RUBBER-MEALS you get from a certain establishment which only look good in pictures, and taste half-decent).
2) Basket of "Shao Bao ("寿包") - an interestingly Hong Kong phenomenon (I wouldn't dare say "Chinese" for fear of offending socio-analysts) to be had during a birthday celebration, instead of the 'usual' birthday cake in Singapore. This is not to say that birthday cakes are not in fashion here. It simply means that traditionally, Hong Kong people do pay attention more to the traditions than we would traditionally do.
Left: Another example of "Shao Baos", this time for my Eldest uncle's 60th Bday.
Below: Noticeably, there were green luscious 'leaves' on them, which upon closer examination, seemed to give the impression of thick green alien leeches crawling over the pure plump 'paos'.
Thus seeing how lifelike they were, I adopted the green things as pets momentarily and even tried feeding it a sprig of parsley that the roast chicken had not wanted (nor did any of the people around the table).
3) Things with strange sounding names and ingredients are not necessarily bad. Below: A "pei dan Sou" (Century Egg Puff), before I devoured half of it.
4) Fruits grow mouldy if you leave them in plastic bags (Even for just one day).Below: An illustration to prove the point (when I tried crunching up the bag, a puff of spores came flying up. I did not hesitate to chuck it out).
MacDonald's: A kid's fantasy. I liked the taste and smell when I was a child. Couldn't quite explain why. Perhaps, it was the deep-fried zest of Golden Arches 'golden fries', which you couldn't quite get at home (which only served boiled and steamed vegetables. But as I grew up...I began to know more things. I began to hear about the horrors of fast-food. Terms, like "high-blood pressure", "cholesterol-free" that had never been known to me began to assault my consciousness incessantly. (I had only come across the term "trans-fat" when I entered University after talking to some friends who absolutely abstained from fast-food). I don't know if I could still relive my childhood of craving for a nice hot fast-food meal with as much zest as before. Pangs of guilt are blended with those of craving, like the ice-cream machine which swirls the 'low-fat' yoghurt into the cup, tops with nuts and candy. The pictures you see of a Macdonald's meal below, were taken a few weeks ago, when the pangs of craving subdued those of guilt. That's been my only meal from Macs since I've been here. And the second fast-food meal in HK (the first being the KFC meal that utterly stank). The Macs fries, as always, look and smell great. The Coke, well...looks like it always does from Macs...in a paper cup...slowly being diluted and watered down by the enormous serving of ice. And the burger (which was a Sausage McMuffin with Egg, cos I was interested in the menu that served something that I would normally get as breakfast in Singapore, as an ALL-DAY item in HK). The burger...look totally different from the billboards and signs that advertised it in the shop window (of course, I know, I'm a grown up, and I should know better than to go comparing the stuff on ads with my product in hand). But hey...I felt totally cheated. The thing that I had bought, looked NO WAY like the freshly steaming muffin with glistening burger meat and bright yellow and white egg. It looked, frankly, like a rubber toy a dog would play with. As a result, my appetite (which had been ravenous prior to opening up the burger wrapping), had now been reduced to the size of a pistachio). And so I barely was able to squeeze the burger down. No, I didn't finish the fries (Guilt had returned, after Hunger had been satisfied).
Next morning...the fries that would have been my dinner, were turned into my early lunch, along with ham and a nice cheese omelette (that, although had lots of oil, was surely more fulfilling and healthy than my rubber toy meal).
ONTO OTHER NEWS:
I love the 小吃 here in HK! There are just so many things to be had. Chillied fish-balls (辣椒鱼蛋), 烧卖, '炸量' (literally translated as 'fried stuff'...a collection of Ngoh Hiang-ish fried delicacies available on satay sticks), and even...the forboding 臭豆腐 ('smelly bean curd'). The snacks you see below, are from an era of yester-year, and seem to be in most abundance on a small island off the West coast of HK called Cheung Chau (长洲).
Red-bean cakes...made with real egg and flour batter and freshly ground bean paste. The stall holder has been selling her delicacies for more than 30 years!
Right & and Below: "Put Zhai Gou", otherwise known as "Bowl Jelly" is made of brown sugar, red beans, along with some other secret ingredients. Stall-holders leave the jellies steaming in large bamboo baskets, and upon sale - scoop out a jelly and stick sticks in it before handing it to you (as below). Really marvellous! (and something that sadly, I will never get to have in Singapore).
Below: Steamed milk tarts. Unlike their egg-yellow counterparts, these milk tarts are literally milk poured into a tart-base and left to steam. When tried, they have a consistency that is in between yoghurt and custard - "betwixt and between" - in the liminal stage, if you know what I mean. Bliss!
The Determination to Serve (from "My Utmost for His Highest", 23rd February)
The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve . . . —Matthew 20:28
Jesus also said, "Yet I am among you as the One who serves" (Luke 22:27). Paul’s idea of service was the same as our Lord’s— ". . . ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake" ( 2 Corinthians 4:5 ). We somehow have the idea that a person called to the ministry is called to be different and above other people. But according to Jesus Christ, he is called to be a "doormat" for others— called to be their spiritual leader, but never their superior. Paul said, "I know how to be abased . . ." (Philippians 4:12 ). Paul’s idea of service was to pour his life out to the last drop for others. And whether he received praise or blame made no difference. As long as there was one human being who did not know Jesus, Paul felt a debt of service to that person until he did come to know Him. But the chief motivation behind Paul’s service was not love for others but love for his Lord. If our devotion is to the cause of humanity, we will be quickly defeated and broken-hearted, since we will often be confronted with a great deal of ingratitude from other people. But if we are motivated by our love for God, no amount of ingratitude will be able to hinder us from serving one another.
Paul’s understanding of how Christ had dealt with him is the secret behind his determination to serve others. "I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man . . ." ( 1 Timothy 1:13 ). In other words, no matter how badly others may have treated Paul, they could never have treated him with the same degree of spite and hatred with which he had treated Jesus Christ. Once we realize that Jesus has served us even to the depths of our meagerness, our selfishness, and our sin, nothing we encounter from others will be able to exhaust our determination to serve others for His sake.
And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech." - Genesis 11: 7
"The world today is in a shocking mess!"
So claims the media constantly (without providing any credible solutions, just constant doomsday news).
So proclaim the leaders of the great nations which drive and inspire the global economy (whose solutions are to "increase State expenditure on defence budgetting in order to fight/aid in the fight against the "War on Terror" - whatever that is).
"War" (with a capital W) as we all know, has been fought over ages immemorium.
Its been fought over trivialities of who's-son-looked-at-who's-daughter. Its been fought for possession of land and resources.Its been fought for greed.I watched three films these two days: "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore (who says in his film satirically "I was once the next President of the United States"), "Loose Change", and "Babel".
They all seemed to be addressing different issues - the first one about the US administration's lack of will to address global warming issues that are so starkly apparent, the second implying the possible fright tactics and smear campaign on the "Axis of Evil" carried out by the US Government during and post 9-11; and the third, a startlingly down-to-earth rendition of four different life stories around the world and how they seamlessly fit together amidst the cacophony of voices intoning various dialects and languages.
Yet, as I sat and watched the credits roll for "Babel", my mind was shocked into thinking about how our world has turned out from its beginning. Self-interested individual actors are we all, and this has been so since the beginning of time.
From the conception of Adam, who bit into the fruit of wisdom in order to satisfy his own insatiable curiosity and lust.
From the story of the Boddhisatva, who had actually been a Prince of a powerful realm and had killed many innocents in order to expand his empire, and later realised his massive short-comings - commiting his final years in an act of repentance at the foot of a Boddhi tree in meditation.
"Does crime pay?"
The politically correct answer often rings back in our ears "Of course it doesn't! You go to jail! You get beat up!"
Sure. You see dozens of people on the news each week, being arrested by the police - the official State apparatus for the management of "The Two Ds" (as I'd like to call them) - deviancy and delinquency. There are various reasons for people to get arrested. Some steal to support their family, because the work they are doing just doesn't pay enough. Some rob banks to fuel their passions for a life-time cruise round the world in a nuclear-powered yacht (if that exists!). Some commit shop-theft because they have too much to spend, and would rather experience the feeling of walking out of a shop with the merchandise AND the money intact.
For all of these behaviours, we label them socially as 'deviant', and our social norms have their own unique ways of dealing with them.
We throw thieves into jail. We whip rapists and murderers. We hang drug-traffickers (at least in Singapore).
There is a fixed penalty for a fixed crime. No running away from the system. Its the rational law we are talking about here.
Now, I'm not saying that there is anything wrong about punishment for crime. In fact, I support appropriately meted out punishment. But what about those instances which we hear about, where a 'rich kid' gets away with a certain petty theft - because "he was just learning and finding his roots...let him stretch his wings...you'll see his potential. give him a chance". But put in the same situation, a poor kid is probably going to be damned by his observers: "See? He had it coming. These under-class people...don't know what's good for them. They should just "stay out of (our) upper-middle class uncaring face". (Incidentally, an academic had actually written about this phenomenon of discrepancies in applying the law across the board in the article "The Saints and the Rednecks"...read it for SC1101E...and its in my "Perspectives of Crime and Deviance" pack here in HKU. Liked that story. Got some interesting morals behind it...)
Which leads me to the next point.
Who defines "Crime"?
Certainly not 'normal' citizens like you and I. We, like all other free-citizens of republics are the potential perpetrators of 'crime' (whatever that is).
So instead, according to Social Contract theory (Hobbes-in-motion here), we give a little of ourselves to the State, for the common good of all. But we give as little as it is comfortably possible to maintain our own individuality.
SO YES. The State manages our well-being, in the form of government subsidised education, public housing that is relatively cheap (compared to those oh-so-nice condominiums which seem like castles in the sky to you). And occasionally, like in the case of developmental East-Asian economies - there is the occurence of the "Developmental State" - which takes a totalitarian stance on nation management, along the premise that it is THE only way to ensuring successful development "From Third World to First".
Qn: What about the environment? What about the lives of the common people, whom some may still argue are a simply highly evolved version of Proletariats, living a Capitalist-driven illusion of fast cars, big houses, 'good jobs' (whatever those all are...)??
Ans: The choices 'we' (our collective consiousness embodied in the State apparatus) makes has to be rationally driven. Hence, we will care for the environment, so far as it coincides with our personal interests and agendas.
Just ask yourself...
When was the last time you switched off the lights before leaving your hall room?(I do. But I know ALOT of hostelites who don't...they take it for granted that they've already paid a "flat rate" and are "Entitled" to use all the electricity they want (and can) for a whole semester.
When was the last time you turned on the air-conditioning at home, even though you know full-well that the weather - being oh-so-cool - doesn't warrant it at all?
Perhaps you'd say you're used to "sleeping with air-con on at night", that its just "too stuffy and humid" to do so otherwise.
Well, let's put it this way: If I, a person who has been suffering from eczema and will start scratching myself to bits when I get too sweaty and sticky, can sleep without the air-conditioning on (and have been doing so for the past 23 years of my life), I don't see why anyone who is otherwise medically sound should not.
Think about it....
Lastly for the night, I'll leave you with some food for thought:
Was reading the Da Vinci Code today (yes, I know...I'm living an opulent life-style as an exchange student, catching up on reading of best-selling novels and viewing great films...when its already the third week into term), and I was struck by this quote from Napoleon:
"What is history, but a fable agreed upon?"
Certainly it wasn't cited in the context which I'm using it now (Dan Brown's use of it was more on how the Catholic Church twisted and carved the gospels to fit its own agenda of wanting absolute control over the Catholic population).
However, the idea about totalitarian control over knowledge does seem to ring a bell....especially after viewing those three controversial films. 1) Who gets to dictate environmental policies in the world?
2) Who gets to decide what is the next big enemy of the world?
3) Who decides what we see on the news each and everyday of our lives?
Democratisation of the press, the media, and the world at large is a great and ideal thing to have, but we've got to always remember that someone, somewhere is going to be reading and editting the things we see/hear - and even THINK about (if you're thinking Nineteen Eighty-Four...you're not too far).
P.S. Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" may even become reality. Just look at how its possible now to have test-tube babies who will grow entirely independant of a womb. NO more instances of parents having to find a surrogate mother for the baby. Baby grows too big? Just chuck him in a bigger sized vial...he'll survive with all the right nutrients. Eugenics...ah man.
Went Peak climbing with most of the other Singaporeans and a few China exchange students last Saturday. Don't want to say too much, but just enjoy the pics!
Left: The pavilion that overlooks the city is amazing...better than going up to the Peak Tower. Here, you get fresh air, and great scenery (esp if its not foggy)
The Ubiquitous Peak Tower which is shaped like a "giant anvil" say some, houses lots of interesting (and expensive) boutiques, restaurants - and even a huge EA Games outlet - which has the latest games like "The Godfather". Enjoyed beating up rival thugs for Corleone's gang, while it lasted. Heh.
Today, I tried making dinner again.... Had already marinated half a bag of chicken fillets in the fridge, and decided to do a deep fried chicken rendition.
As you can see on the left, the chicken pieces were soaked in a marinate sauce of Chicken marinate, sesame oil, dark soya sauce, and 'hot sauce' (whatever that is....I found it on the kitchen counter top).
Then dipped the fillets in potato starch (corn starch or tapioca starch does fine as well...I just made use of what was available. As always).
A major problem I encountered while frying the stuff was that...I HAD HEATED THE PAN TOO HOT.
Initially wanting to dry out the pan, so that oil wouldn't splatter around when poured into a freshly washed pan, I had turned the hotplate on to full heat (setting '3'). However, when I dipped the chicken fillets into the pan - they started smoking almost immediately! As you could guess, what happened next was that I was left with blackened chicken pieces...that actually tasted alright (if you peeled all the black bits off).
If you notice carefully, the one which is not like the others (the fillet that looks more 'normal' and golden brown), was the result of listening to the advice of Judy. What advice? REMEMBER KIDS: When you're cooking batter fried stuff...no matter what...fish/chicken/even goreng pisang...heat the oil up first...and fry your stuff in small to medium flame. NEVER high flame. Or else, you'll get blackened chicken strips like Yours-Truly. BTW: Judy is the Filipino helper of the young couple down the hallway who have a 10 month old son called "SuenSuen" (I think...that's probably his nickname). Ain't he adorable?? ;)
Because of the rather miserable looking chicken that appeared on my platter (that I had initially intended to be my entree)...I cooked noodles with dumplings. Threw in a few leaves of lettuce, which actually taste quite good together with the noodles.
Yes...I will be cooking on a regular basis here in HK. The food is generally quite good. But good food does come at a price (esp if you're in campus/ard the HKU Pokfulam Area). This place is considered "rich man's territory". While walking to the nearby "Park-N-Shop" to do grocery shopping, I have spotted several Ferraris and Lotuses (Ricky would be so pleased!). In the school canteens (which are mostly like foodcourts) - prices for a normal meal begin from HKD$10 for the cheapest fare - and are usually priced in the region of about HKD$25 to HKD$40. "Cheapest fare" is not necessarily "Lousy fare", as I can attest to. So far, I've tried "Potato and Pork Rib Rice" and "Stewed Beef Rice" which were both $10 HK. And both were not only filling (with quite a generous serving of meat on top of rice), but tasty too. That's one thing that Singapore stallholders can take a tip from (stop scrimping on the food you're giving us man!). Ahh....but I still like 茶餐厅 "cha can ting" food....cheap, good, and lots. That's where u can really taste the local cuisine - much like a Singaporean would always insist on bringing his foreign guests (if they agree), to the grimiest and dingiest hawker stalls in Singapore to try the "D"-for-Delicious Bak Chor Mee or Char Kuay Teow. Which reminds me...I'm craving for these foods now. HOW?? HOW?!?!
Some would say I'm a health-freak and a pseudo sports enthusiast wannabe. Others who think they know me say my poetry doesn't seem 'me'. I'll let you decide.
Coke Zero was something I tried recently. Being a person who does not take soft-drinks (gassy, carbonated ones especially), and relies mostly on tea (sugared lightly, non-milky - which is rather difficult to get in HK with their trademark 奶茶 milk tea), coffee (although seldom now...I don't like reliving the experience of being addicted and downing 7 cups a night, only to still fall asleep an hour later) or plain ol' water - I found Coke Zero surprisingly good on the tastebuds. Apparently there is no added sugar - making it like Coke Light -without the flat taste of Coke Light. And more importantly, there isn't any phosphoric acid (which the original Cokes do) - that leaches calcium from your bones!
Dai Bak Leong decided to let us have some escargots...which was quite an experience for me - having never tried them before!
and served on a base of lightly whipped mashed potatoes, they actually tasted quite nice! Something that one could not quite place exactly...not 'chicken'...or any other meat. Perhaps, it was simply "Escargot" flavoured escargot.
Red-bean cakes...made with real egg and flour batter and freshly ground bean paste. The stall holder has been selling her delicacies for more than 30 years! 
Today, I tried making dinner again....
