Work, Coffee Chocolate Chip Cookies & Other Failed Baking Exploits

I woke up really early this morning, slightly before 9am - which can be such a bother when your sleep cycle becomes accustomed to your Tuesday to Thursdays work routine. I'm still working at Bakerzin, albeit shorter hours and less days. I take the opening shift about 2 or 3 days per week and report to work at 10.30am and clock out at 3pm after lunch break.

Typically, the opening shift includes me and the barista - T, J, or one of the supervisors. The baristas gets the drink station ready while I help to spruce the cafe up. This involves setting the tables and chairs outside, putting the bread basket out at the bread station, making sure that the bread sticks haven't gone hard or bad beforehand, sweeping and mopping the floor and ensuring that each table has cutlery and is wiped down with alcohol.

Serving at Bakerzin has completely opened my eyes to the evils of consumerism and how much food we waste. Everytime I clear plates, mounds of rice and meat are always left behind, with bits and pieces of untouched bread or cake. Women are the worst. Its as if every single XY chromosomed individual that enters Bakerzin is on a diet. The typical questions I receive from the female patrons are "Can I replace the rice with vegatables?" , "Less pasta and more broth", or "Less rice please!" And whenever I come back to clean their plates, its as if they've neglected their rice completely and chowed down the vegetables and half or almost all the meat.

Well I'm all for healthy eating, but I bet that I'd find a positive correlation between diet and food wastage if I ever conduct a study on this proper. Then I'd present my findings to the owner and founder of Bakerzin, who comes in regularly, and explain that we can help save the environment, save money and prolong the existence of Earth by reducing the portions we serve. Then we'd charge less, and more people will patronize the cafe, and we'd charge, say 50cents extra, if they ask for bigger portions and instil a monetary penalty for any food wastage.

Plus, some patrons are complete pigs, especially the ones with babies and children. Spilling food everywhere and ripping out sugar packets - such as Splenda which is such a fat waste because I'd totally use it for my baking - and dusting them onto the floor. The kids would wave their food laden spoons around and send bits of pasta flying everywhere and throw clean napkins on the floor. And I have to slough my ass my sweeping up their mess. Now I know why the food and beverage industry is a complete crapload. We humans are such slugs.

The positive things about work are that I've got to get rather friendly with the kitchen and bakery crew. All of them are literally brought up in Chinese-speaking homes and are more comfortable conversing in Mandarin. Initially many of them wouldn't speak to me because they assumed I couldn't speak Mandarin and would politely quiz me on which country I was from and I'd tell them, yes I'm from Sinapore, no I'm not from America/England/Phillipines/Indonesia/Burma (does that even exist?!), then vindictively surprise them off their asses by scolding them in Mandarin when they get on my nerves.

The two main bakers from from Taiwan, and they're uber friendly. Two of the part time staff at the bakery are real nice girls. XY, whom I always call Jasmine, much to her annoyance, and DM, an intern from TP in Hospitality & Tourism Management.

In the cafe, where I'm assigned to, the barista whom I usually work with is T, who immigrated to Singapore a few years ago from China. She taught most of the routines and rules in the cafe and is extremely patient with me. The first few days I worked there, I made so manylittle mistakes and I was always freaking out and she'd laugh it off and explain everything to me, such as wrong orders or forgetting to set the cutlery or stupid shit like that. If I were me, I'd blow my top off.

I like T as compared to the other barista. A stupid nuthead name YY, who might just be a textbook narcissist. He kept on nudging my shoulder and poking me at the sides and once I offered him ride home in my parents' car becuase it was about 11pm. So we sat the the benches and our supervisors walked past and he called out "We're dating!" I almost barfed out my liver. Then I went on to calmly pointed out that guys like him weren't my type, meaning snotty Chinese boys who smoke and are younger than me, even if its only just by 1 measly year.

Sometimes, I'll be lucky and get assigned to the bakery. The problem is that the side tables where the breads are temporarily stacked directly faces the barista's table. So when I've to pack the breads to shelve them, I'll be facing him as he makes drinks. Sometimes he makea puckering faces at me which really is a disgusting sight, because 1, he's not good looking at all, and 2, he looks like a stoat whenever he does that. Then he'd be like "Hi, Pretty Girl." and I'd turn away in frustration and embarrassment.

Once, we were closing the cafe and I had just finished stamping my card and he commented on the number of hours I worked and showed me his work card that was almost full due to the long number of hours he worked, like I was supoosed to be impressed by such commitment. Then I politely went to ask why did he want to work such long hours and for reasons which I cannot fathom, he went "My thing is very long also." At first I didn't get it, I mean who says stupid shit like that? Then I noticed that sly glint in his eyes and he repeated the word with more emphasis "thing" and held his index fingers at an equidistance in order to clarify what he meant.

He is such a dutty-head. What sort of a guy tells girls he has a long "thing"? Only a guy with small teeny todger that's what. I could only stare at him and trying not to laugh becasue I was so highly amused by his desperate attempt to please a girl and boost his ego, but he was smugly waiting for a reply so with a straight face and nonchalent voice:

"I've seen bigger"

Then I shoved my card back in the main drawer and walked away.

What a loser he is.

Anyway, he's started school so thank god I don't see him anymore. Clearly he has issues.

Apart from work, I've been doing some sporadic baking. I use the word sporadic, because I can't find recipes that I like, or that I can't bake the goodies that I like because they're positively sinfully high in calorie in fat. Jeez, what is it with Americans and their need for high-fat, high-calorie comfort food? And whenever I reduce the butter and sugar, the taste is all dodgy. I just can't understand it.

Anyway I found a rather simple recipe of Coffee Chocolate Chip Cookies online today and decided to give them a go. As per usual, I left out a few tablespoons of butter and sugar, and added an extra bit of coffee powder and vanilla to make up for the reduced fat and sugar. The cookies came out tasting a little too plain. I could still taste the coffee, but it wasn't strong enough so I suppose the next time I'm baking it, I'll add more coffee powder and a bit more chocolate chips to boot. Its so weird, because the batter was coffee dark and I was really glad about it:



But when I pulled the tray out the oven, they came out - much to my dismay - light brown instead of that dark cofee chocolate brown I had hoped to see:

Plus, they didn't even taste remotely like cookies at all. They were chewy and according to my mother, who has willingly and gleefully accepted her role as my guinea pig, reported that they tasted a little plain and not like a cookie at all. She said maybe its the lack of butter and sugar that produced such a cookie. Her final verdict - based on the cookies and other baked goods that she's tested - is that my cookies aren't sellable. The only exception is my greentea cupcake and my vanilla cupcakes - which I followed accordingly without any alterations. I am hopeless at baking.

The other exception is this very simple and plain vanilla custard pie. All I did was make the pie crust from scratch and add vanilla Jello as the filling. Mum said this - out of all my baking tries - was nice, but I thought the custard tasted blah.

Other disastrous, send-me-to-the-poisoning-department attempts are:

Cinammon Pancakes: Batch 1

I didn't flip it fast enough and the cake burnt on the underside.

Cinammon Pancake Batch 2:

I couldn't flip the pancake right and it was though I was making scrambled pancakes. It tasted awful. Very milky and not like the scrummy McDonalds' pancakes that I loved. I felt nauseous after eating it.

Moving on.

Pop Up Pancakes:

This may look nice, but it tasted exactly the same as the Cinammon Pancakes. Something's missing. As usual. Nauseous, again as usual. So much for delicious low sugar healthy (ier) baked goods. I can't cook a decent cookie without inducing vomitting in my family.

I am a pathetic baker. I ought to shoot myself.

Call me paranoid, or delusional, or insane, ot stupid, or whatever, but honestly I think I've gained weight. I feel as though I've ballooned and everything seems to be pudgy in a unglamarous way.

Pfft. Am currently in a mild state of depression.

I spent the last hour or so surfing Youtube for vidoes bearing relevance to the America and Iraq war and spent a better part of a half hour watching short documentaries about the Iraqi children caught in the crossfire between the resistance the US marines and it just aches my heart to see these young children bearing the brunt of war at such a formalative period of their lives. Boys with burnt limbs, girls with bleeding faces and dead babies on the sides of the roads. And Bush said casualty was kept at a low rate, despite the official reports from the media stating the actual death rate of more than a million Iraqi innocent citizens?

And all these children are so stunningly beautiful, with their light hair and striking bright eyes, yet they'll never grow up without reliving the ravages of the war they had to go through.

It makes me ashamed of myself, being so self-conceited about my image and all that when such a travesty is occuring in Iraq. Reading about it in a book is one thing, but to see pictures and videos of this occuring strikes me in a different manner - to see the horror unfurling before my own eyes.

This is one of the things that make me wonder if there truly is a God and all. Would He really sacrifice hundreds of thousands of innocent children so we can learn from past mistakes? I highly doubt it.

Stayed up til 1am just so I could finish reading through the last long chapter of The Fall of Baghdad, by Jon Lee Anderson. Its ironic how I've taken so long to finish reading this book, because in the past I always buy time to read a new book I just bought. The Fall of Baghdad was bought in Adelaide almost 6 months ago and the first half of the book took me a few months to trudge through and the second half in practically a few days.


My rationale is that the first half of the book describes pre-war Iraq with a descriptive introduction to the Iran-Iraq war, which I thought was a little draggy, as well as the culture of Islam and how Muslim Iraqis live their Islamic life under Saddam's rule. I almost forgot how much I like reading about this whole America-Iraq debacle, ever since I read The Green Zone about Bush's failed and politically correct efforts to rehabilitate Iraq and build a stable democratic society for Iraq, while ironically fighting Iraqi resistance from both the Sunni and Shiite sects of the population.

Honestly, Bush, Chenny and Powell should have taken a leaf from the books of the British. Look at what happened when the British tried taking over Iraq and ruling them. They were practically slaughtered, and now Bush had imbecile plans to further divide the Sunni and Shiite when clearly the Iraqis perceive themselves as united and as a whole regardless of which sect they belong to. This is clearly an example of individualistic greed, fuelled by lack of knowledge and understanding of a collectivistic and non-liberal community.

Plus, the administration's claim that the War of Terror was motivated by the fact that Saddam concealed weapons of mass destructions that he would eventually use against the Americans and the rest of the world in order to establish an Islamic world? I highly doubt that. Even if Saddam's Fedayeen and his merceneries of politicians agree to such a ruling, I'm pretty sure that Iran and Jordan would put up a strong resistance against such madness. Plus, the Russians haave their own nuclear weapons. I highly suspect that Bush wants control of the Middle East's oil, because if Bush controls the oil, he controls the world; since other power countries such as Japan and Russia are dependent on the Middle East for oil ever since Saudi Arabia discovered their wealthy supply for the energy source. So basically speaking, if America controls the flow of oil, American becomes the God of Earth. How's that for narcissistic grandstanding.

Above all that, what truly is heart-shattering is that the Iraqi population were highly optimistic that the Americans would provide assistance in establishing a democratic society for them with the banishment of Saddam, yet they find themselves being controlled by the American forces instead, with their right to security and freedom to govern their own land stripped from them. Moreover, the loss of civilian lives, including that of innocent children and the corrupt abuse of women by the soldiers is just beyond reason.

So you see, I may want to live in the States in the future, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm blinded by their power and prestige, not with all the corrupt flaws and wrongdoings that could very well be seen as "crimes of humanity".

Living History, by Hilary Rodham Clinton up next. I'm absolutely dying to read about what Hilary has to say about Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky when he ostensibly regarded himself as a one-woman man, only to have his wholesome image get blown up in his face when said mistress announced it to the free world.

Men are pigs. But not Derek Morgan because he is a perfect specimen.

Lately I feel as though I've been cast into a shadow of loneliness, exacerbated by the fact that I'm so bloody bored at home. The little tinges of feeling left out, if you know what I mean, like all of a sudden I'm too boring for some people now and they've moved on to interact and socialize with other interesting people.

Well fine.

Ask me no questions and I will tell you no lies.

I think that the migration to Livejournal was rather spontaneous and very unlike me. I'm an analyst and I prefer analyzing things and scrutinizing them to the point of insanity rather than acting on them on the moment. But whatever. I think it'd be nice to move here and there.

I've decided that I don't want to find out whether where other friends have decided to go to, in terms of which university they've selected. It might influence any decision that I've made at the point of time, and besides, I'm sure they won't want to tell anyone and won't respond even if I ask them, which I completely understand. From now on, I shall not mention the university subject unless the other party brings it up.

The cuts on my elbow somewhat sting, which is weird because previously it never does. Maybe I'm suffering my spetecimia, which is impossible because I'm not shivering or breaking out in cold sweats and delirious or suffering from boiling fevers. My theory is that soap doesn't sit well with raw flesh. But whatever.

I met AT at NEX while on the way to get yoghurt before heading home after lunch with V at school today. And can I just say it was incrediBLY awkward to see him up close and personal, because the last time I saw him was probably 8 years ago and my 12 year old self vowed to never lay eyes on him because of what happened between us then. Somehow I had a feeling that almost the whole of my primary 6 class knew the gist of what happened. I don't understand my brain. I mean, why do I fall for complete shits? Let's look at this, shall we:

1. AT - pretended to be someone else on some dumb-ass chatroom in order to find out whether I had a crush on him or not, and obviously it worked, because some girlfriends told me the real truth and that the found out from his buddies he was pretending to be a friend whom I thought I was talking to.

2. BN - gave me hell during Secondary 1 and kept kicking my school bag becuase I was the only girl sitting at the corner of the class which was populated by a lot of boys then and I was seen as the sacrificial lamb. It didn't help that he called me names, none of which I care to repeat.

3. SY - worst one to ever cross paths with. I asked him out and he told his large group of chauvanist pig friends exactly what happened and now they're on his side and he called me a western bitch. Kiss my fat ass, SY. Kiss my fat ass.

4. IL - this was. okay, but the memory still stings and lingers in a not so friendly manner, but he wasn't as mean as the first 3 assholes.

Hence, the only viable and feasible conclusion I can draw is that the boys that I fall for are shitheads, especially SY, who was, and still is a nasty SOB who thinks he's God's gift to women. I don't know why, or how I lost my head then to have thought he was a nice guy. I must have been unconsciously high on something.

Why don't nice boys like me? Or better yet, why don't boys like me, period? Most of my friends have at least one boyfriend and/or had guys who have had crushes on them. But me? Yeah I'm freaking Frankenstein to them. L says its because of my "unique Eurasian-esque" looks that make boys think they're not good enough for me. Excuse me while I barf because that is HIGHLY debatable. I'm not pretty, yeah I admit that but I've a personality. Not like those hooker-esque Chinese girls who wear short dresses that almost ride up their butts and wear heels with stick thin legs and smoke weed or pot with rebonded hair that's badly bleached and or dyed and speaks with an embarrassingly horrible sounding accent that sounds like a strangled chicken, yet they're hooking up with the good looking Caucasian boys?

Where is God in all this insanity? Is this what He means by evolution? Keeping the population going by intermixing hotness with the genes of asphyxiated poultry? Excuse me, but eww. Why don't boys like me? Yeah I'm short, and fat and not pretty, but I'm sure I can hold a fun and intelligent conversation anytime I want to. Plus, I care about serious issues, like animal abuse in China and I've taken a real interest in America's rehabilitation efforts for post-war Iraq and the whole debate about whether Bush invaded Iraq because of 9/11 or because he wanted to seize control of oil in the Middle East. I personally vote the latter.

The point IS. NO BOY likes me. I'm so pathetic. I mean I'm not actively wanting one. I'm just saying why I don't have one. This isn't something I can study for or work towards. Its a matter of attraction. I am hopeless.

Sod it. Work tomorrow. I'm going to quit. I know I keep saying this, but if I quit, what I am going to do for the next few months? I can't bum around at home like a bum and do nothing. I need to be intellectually stimulated. Oh god this is depressing.

I'm going to read and sleep when my hair dries. Am currently reading The Fall of Baghdad, by Jon Lee Anderson. Bought it in Australia but didn't finish it because the first few chapters were mildy boring, very extensive about pre-war Iraq, and its only when I get to when Iraq starts getting bombed and the records of its aftermath that starts to rejuvenate me.

I had initially planned to make a batch of pancakes from scratch for breakfast this morning, but decided not to in the end. First off, I woke up pretty late and figured by the time I had finished cooking them, it'd be close to 11am. And I didn't really want to eat irregular meals. Moreover, I looked through the ingredients and instructions and found out that I didn't have a griddle or skillet to make pancakes. A frying pan would do the trick, but my frying pan is rather large in diameter and I'd have a humongous-sized pancake if I were to spread the batter all over the frying pan. I'd have 1 large pancake instead of 12 regular sized pancakes. So bugger that. Hence, I decided to bake Ginger Snaps after breakfast. I followed, yet altered the recipe from one my mum's old recipe books: I distinctly recall flipping through the pages as a young girl, marking with a bold tick in red ink, as to the cookies that I would bake. Plus, it gives the calorie counts whatnot so I'd know how much I'd have to alter in order not to bake cookies that are equivalent to the serving of a cheeseburger. Reflecting on how the cupcakes I made for SY and KSH were too buttery for my liking, I had a glorious wonderful idea to replace butter with milk to make the snaps. After all, I had done that same thing with my chocolate cupcakes so surely the principle is the same? So I happily whipped out my milk and poured it into the mixing bowl, congratulating myself on my cleverness. Creamy yet low cholesterol. What a brilliant idea! After mixing the wt ingredients with the flour and ginger powder, it resembled the "light, creamy texture" that the book described which lifted my spirits considerably. Who says we need butter to bake cookies? Sod those people! Healthy cookies are here! Of course I had the ultimate last laugh when I dipped my finger to test the batter and to my abject bewilderment, amusement and horror, the batter turned out to be liquid instead of the soft solidish cookie batter. What the hell happened? I almost scremaed out in exaperation. I reasoned that I used too little flour and instead of adding more flour, I figured an egg white would do the trick because egg whites serve as a "hardening agent". So I scurried to the fridge and cracked the egg and turned on the electric mixer. The finger dip test concluded that my cookie batter was not cookie batter. In fact, it was too liquidy. So much for my new found brilliance! In the end, I decided to spoon the liquid batter into my mini cupcake moulds and created a sample batch of Ginger Cups:

Of course when I tried them, they came out too tough. Like overcooked meat. It was difficult to chew and so it dawned on me that this was the result of that egg white I had merrily chucked into the mixing bowl. Plus, the ginger taste was a little sour, which I completely did not fancy at all. So I decided to add some lemon glaze that I made from scratch that was in the fridge as cupcake filling, and they turned out much much better.

But ultimately, the Ginger Cups weren't good so I decided to throw the remaining batter into the trash. It was a waste of flour and eggs, but at least the lesson learnt is that butter is essential to bake the cupcakes (or other butter substitutes) and to never add an extra egg white unless directed by the recipe.

Bobby is contentedly snoring at my feet, though he has an annoying habit of sleeping directly at the legs of the chairs and we always scream that one day he'd get run over. In fact he did get run over by my chair. I was studying and decided I need a break and pushed my chair back and suddenly heard a strangled yelp and looked down in horror and saw that Bobby was lying there, sleeping and I did not notice him! Bobby leapt to his feet and started sniffing at the wheel of the chair. I found it so incredibly strange that I bent down for a closer look and to my abject horror, saw that a tuft of white hairs were protruding from the underside of the wheels. I had shaved Bobby with my chair. I was filled with a sense of shock, mingled with bemusement, yet Bobby just stared solemnly at me with his puppy dog eyes, then circled around at my feet and laid back on the floor with a sigh:

Vanilla Custard Pie later!

So I came back from O School this afternoon after 2 consecutive classes and was utterly knackered. After a late lunch/snack of strawberry frozen yoghurt with granola, almond and Kit-Kat for toppings, I just crashed onto my bed and slept. And had this awful nightmare.

See I was at this place, with my brother when suddenly I got a text from K saying my testing session would be soon. Then I suddenly realized that I had an exam in about 3 minutes. Well O freaked and started grappling at my stuff and attempting to find my things, and the lift refused to budge because it broke down. And people around me were complaining. So I called the teacher and tearfully told him I'd be late and he got a little cross with me. And I felt so wretched and I woke up with a start and immediately thought that I had an exam right there and then and was late for it.

I decided to go online and search for what this nightmare meant. I'm not exactly big into astrology or whatsoever, but I do believe in dream intepretation. I came across a few websites and the common ground meaning for being late for an exam in your dream goes like this:

there is some test in your waking life, something testing you and challenging your capability to perform well. This being directly related to an innate feeling we have to achieve and compete

These dreams usually have to do with your self-esteem and confidence or the lack of. You tend to believe in the worst about yourself and are often overly worried that you are not making the grade and measuring up to other people's expectations of you. You may also experience the fear of not being accepted, not being prepared, or not being good enough.Test dreams also suggest that you are feeling unprepared for a challenge. Rarely, these dreams are about the actual content of the test, but rather it is more about the process and how you feel during the exam taking process. These feelings often parallel how you are actually feeling in a particular challenge or situation in your waking like.

represents your fear of change and your anxiety about seizing an opportunity. You may feel unready or unworthy in your current circumstances. You may also be conflicted over decisions about your future.

I think its really easy for people to say that we should live life fearlessly, that we should be fearless to the point of poverty, to not have a care in the world about what others think of our actions, to live in the moment and stop taking calculated risks and weighing the pros and cons and just live in the fudging moment for once, because isn't that what life is about?

I always thought life is about the choices we make, and how we come to accept and live with those choices. But recently, I've been thinking that life may also be about assumptions. We make an assumption about life and if it doesn't work, we initiate our second assumption. I mean of course our assumptions can't be ridiculous ones, like "I assume gambling cures depression" or "I assume alcohol cures boils " or some other stupid shit like that.

I had a long and somewhat gratifiying talk with K that left me in a state of hot muffled tears. I didn't think he'd know I was crying, considering how he was doing much of the talking when I desperately texted him for advice. Then he suddenly went "And by the way, why are you crying?" And I just burst out laughing at his candidness and that trace of amusement in his heartening and caring voice, despite the fact that he always unconsciously (or so he claims) insults me.

It was a refreshing change to talk to K about my frustrations and deep worries. So far, those I've been talking to have listed off a series of facts and figures, the "on-the-surface" information that I needed to know about each of my choices and telling me they'd be sure I'd do good. Except for one who was all "fearless to the point of poverty". And I'm like "thanks a heap y'all".

I listed all my fears and worries and issues to K and he took it all in seriously and finally came to a conclusion that the reason why I'm choosing NU over NT is because I fear being judged. NU is perceived as a powerful institute of education in Singapore, and prestige is always associated with this acronym, yet with NT, it's like, the "rebound" one, though it obviously isn't.

The truth is, I'm someone who wants it all. I want to be seen by others as successful and powerful, and being in NU would probably give me that. But K offered that I should make a decision based on not what others perceive, but on what works best for you. I don't want to go to NT, because I fear that people will see me as taking the chicken-shit way out, but if I make it past all those hurdles, people will herald me as being incredibly driven. Both these motivations are driven by what others think. But K and Ksh reminded me that this should not be the case. I strongly believe that in order to reach the top of my pinnacle, pride and ego must sometimes be shed. Yes, the cost may be unbearable, but it is those that go through this humiliation and pain that emerge as winners. I sacrified dance just to get my current GPA. I'm not about to throw that away because I want to please others.

NU has always, always be my first choice. But now I see the risks that I've to go through and I'm starting to worry and doubt. Yes, we should live life fearlessly, but I cannot live life fearlessly with these big risks. The stakes, are high. I'mnot going to say that they're extremely high. I'm just going to say its high, because as opposed to NT. They are high.

The answer is "yes, I will work psychotically hard in NU, but if I do so and get pass the hurdles and the school ends up shifting the Honors criteria higher and higher, it will be a waste. A truly dreadful waste." Yes, life is about living fearlessly, but what the fuck good will it do, if I don't get an Honors?

I don't know. This week has been an emotional rollercoaster. I cried in front of my mother for the first time. I can't make this decision alone. I honestly, honest to God, and Allah, and Vishnu, and whoever, that I cannot make this decision alone.

I've still got 1 month to think through this. Its so emotionally wrecking.

Of course besides breaking down over this worrying issue, I've had baking to take my mind off things. So far, I've made Chocolate Chip Cookies, Peanut Butter Cookies, Mini Vanilla Cupcakes, Mini Vanilla Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting, Vanilla Cupcakes with Lemon Glaze, Mini Chocolate Cupcakes, Cream Cheese and Jelly Cookies and Matcha Green Tea Cupcakes.

My favourite part of baking is watching the ingredients beating furiously in my stand mixer and being churned into thick wet liquid and subsequently licking my batter-laden fingers and swooning over the sweet (not that sweet, because I'm neurotic about getting diabetes) tangy taste of cookie batter.

Went to Arab Street and Haji Lane for the 1st time yesterday with Zee and SY for Middle Eastern cuisine. I've always wanted to try hummus because I'm always reading about it in my Jean Sasson books, who writes about the oppression of women in the Middle East - and how Adam Sandler basically eats everything with hummus on it in Don't Mess with the Zohar. Hummus is actually pretty delicious. It has a slight slight slight sour tangy taste to it which doesn't linger like Tom Yum does. Plus, it tastes awesome with arabic bread.

Maybe I could try making hummus in my own kitchen. I just got to buy chickpeas right? And maybe a blender or something, I mean isn't that what hummus is? Mashed chickpeas? I'd be damned if I don't send myself to the poison department in the hopsital after making hummus.

DANCE LATER. Gin is replacing Allegra and the hell I am going. I intend to dance as much as I can before 3 to 4 years of psychoticism (is that even a word) shrouds over me and suffocates me til I shrivel like a dried up piece of fruit. And I won't get a chance to go to New York and meet a successful handsome Caucasian man and have blue eyed babies and I'll die an old spinster with 86 cats and CSI will come and investigate and Gil Grissom would dust my body for prints and D Robbins would cut me open and conclude that I choked on cat food and then I'll be strapped with a toe tag labeled "old codger" and be stuffed in cold body locker, awaiting the final episode of life where I can decompose and the remnants of my remains will sit there on the tray like items dropped from someone's pockets. Alone and miserable, the legacy of one who had given up her life for her passion.