Cold Mornings and White Russian Cupcakes

It's a cold Saturday morning as I am writing this long overdue post (that I've been promising myself to write way back in February of this year).  The sun is streaming through the balcony doors and Nards is swaddled in a blanket on the sofabed, not only because of the cold, but because of a sore throat that has been bugging him since Wednesday this week.

I've been trying to get back to blogging for most of this year, and it takes me almost eight months to get over my block.

Not much to update except that I've been spending more time in the kitchen, baking, than taking photos these days.   In fact, the only way I take photos lately is through my phone, and the only social media I've been updating is instagram and twitter.  I have missed holding a camera, and experimenting with Nards on different light set ups.  Next year, hopefully, I can achieve more balance between baking and taking photos.

Speaking of baking, my latest project is making boozy cupcakes.  My sister recently celebrated her birthday and I baked white russian cupcakes.  (She originally wanted to have margarita cupcakes, but I was averse to investing a lot of money on a good bottle of tequila just for the 1/4 cup I need for the batter.  And I am more averse to buying cheap booze because they mostly taste like battery acid.  Since we had vodka and Kahlua on hand, this was a convenient substitute to what she wanted.)

This cupcake was not overly sweet and the alcohol content was just right, not overpowering nor underwhelming.  It was such a hit with the girls at the party that we've decided to add it to our menu.

Next baking project: caramel cake.  Will post it as soon as it's done.

Revive This Blog. STAT.

I am hoping that I've come to the end of this blog's hiatus.  I have lost my inspiration to write for quite a while.  But after devouring a lot of reading material lately, I may have gotten a bit of my drive to fill this blank space with, at the very least, a few coherent words.

My block had gotten so bad, I can't even be inspired enough to fill a 140 character space on twitter.

I'm giving myself a deadline.  I should at least have a decent entry before the month's end.   And I do hope that will propel me to adding more entries.

Hope to see you all back here on the 28th. :)

Put Your Records On

Nards and I were watching reruns of The West Wing last Sunday. We were on this special episode that Aaron Sorkin wrote entitled Isaac and Ishmael.  At the end of the episode, the song playing on the end credits was not the usual one but a song of Buffalo Springfield.  We started bobbing our heads and tapping our feet without even realizing it.  It was uncommon that the two of us respond to a song in this manner on the first couple of bars.  But respond we did, and we searched for the song on YouTube just to listen to the entire song.

There a couple of nights when I put together a playlist on iTunes, Nards would pour out wine and we'll just sit and listen.  We both enjoy these quiet nights, not talking, just listening to good music and unwinding with a good bottle of red.  It reminds me of a lot of summer days, and weekends, where I would browse through my parents' vast vinyl collection, pop two at a time on the turn table, and put on my Dad's massive headphones and plop down on the nearest chair.   Sometimes, my siblings and friends would come visit, and we'd gather around the stereo and have a listening party.

I miss those days.

Today, with almost everybody owning a pair of ear buds and their own mp3 player, nobody really experiences the magic of listening to music together.  I appreciate the benefit of not being subjected to someone's disagreeable music preference, sure.  But (and I know this sounds awfully corny)  I like those brilliant instances when people suddenly stop whatever they are doing because a perfect song plays somewhere.

What rare bliss.

Pleasant Surprise

Two night ago, while Nards and I were waiting for the opening ceremony for London 2012 Olympics, I was monitoring my twitter feed for updates from BBC sports.  A tweet popped up with a youtube link.  I opened the tweet, and loaded the video, and the minute I heard the first line spoken, I knew it was Benedict Cumberbatch.

It was such a pleasant surprise. :)



I thoroughly enjoyed the opening ceremony.

I'm a huge, huge fan of Danny Boyle.

Vincent and The Doctor

One of my absolute favorite episodes of Doctor Who is Vincent and The Doctor. Apart from the fangirl moment The Doctor and Amy had at the café when Van Gogh appeared and the giggle moment when Van Gogh wanted to give them a painting, I loved the scene when the three of them were on the grass, holding hands and looking up at the night sky.

Vincent Van Gogh: [Explaining how he sees the world] Look at the sky. It's not dark and black and without character. The black is, in fact deep blue. And over there: lighter blue and blowing through the blues and blackness the winds swirling through the air and then shining, burning, bursting through: the stars! [the sky gradually transforms into van Gogh's painting Starry Night] Vincent Van Gogh: And you see how they roar their light. Everywhere we look, the complex magic of nature blazes before our eyes. 

If I could time travel, visiting Van Gogh would probably be on my top ten list.  I would love to see his studio and to see him work, to watch him create magic on canvas.   And I would do exactly what the Doctor and Amy did (giggle and fangirl), drag him in the Tardis and bring him to a museum to let him see how much his art is appreciated.  How much beauty he contributed to the world.   I would tell him how much I love his work, how much it means to me.

I'm saddened that he killed himself, and he died thinking that no one liked his paintings.

This episode was the only one in the fifth season that had a suicide hotline announced at the end.  It reminded me to strengthen my resolve to be kind to everyone, because everyone is really fighting some kind of battle.  Some are just better at hiding it.

My Weekend in Instagram

We had a productive weekend in and out of the kitchen.  Let me tell you about it.  In pictures.  I'm a bit knackered.   Struggling to actually string a lot of words together to form a coherent paragraph.  Even twitter is challenging me today.

 To get the amount I need, the entire bowl of calamansi must be squeezed.  Took me about an hour or so.

Ingredients for calamansi curd.  Not in the picture:  calamnsi rinds.  Those suckers are hard to get.

Fluffy pink macaron batter.  Well, pre-macaronage and pre-croûtage, that is.   (Fancy french terms that may be googled.)

Pink macaron shells + dark chocolate ganache = this.  I love the light on this photo.

My first attempt to make chai tea syrup.  From L-R: water, honey, cloves, bay leaf, ginger, cardamom, cinnamon bark, vanilla and english breakfast tea.  I need to recalibrate the amount of those spices.

A nice wall in an underground parking somewhere along the stretch of Ortigas Avenue.

What I had to settle for because Charlie's ran out of milkshakes.  Was really jonesing for Salted Caramel Shake, but alas!  The milkshake gods were not smiling at me.

Something that I nibbled on while we had watermelon bellinis.  Very hot afternoon on top of a disappointing trip to Muji.

Moonlighting

As I write this entry, I have my classical playlist on my player.  I was on an adult alternative streak last week, and this week, I've mellowed down to orchestra music, with wonderful solo pieces on the piano or the violin.



My playlist, courtesy of Genius, was generated from Moonlight Sonata.  I remember learning to play this song back in third grade.  I started with a simplified version for children.  When I reached sixth grade, I taught myself to play the actual piece.  I am very fond this song.  It's so doleful and pensive.  I used to play this for my parents after dinner.  I also remember my late Tita Paz, asking me to play it for her when she came for a visit.  And being a very good piano player, she'd teach me good techniques on how to play it, exactly when to build up to a forte, and  when to bring it down to a pianissimo.  This song remains one of my favorite pieces to play as well as Sonata Pathétique by the same composer.



Funny thing about Genius is it's uncanny way of putting together songs that I truly love in one convenient playlist.  After Moonlight Sonata, it added Debussy's Clair de Lune.  I love this piece.  Just love it.  I learned to play it in high school, though not in it's entirety because somewhere in the middle of learning that piece, I got sidetracked by broadway pieces.   I revisited that piece during grad school, but there's still a lot of distractions for me to finish learning the whole song. 



Chopin is also on the list. A considerable chunk of it, actually, comprised of his nocturnes, sonatas and waltzes, since I only have one Beethoven album, and about three Chopin albums.  What can I say?   He really floats my boat.

I mentioned to Nards last week, that one of the things I loved doing before our life together, was  playing the piano.  I couldn't bring my piano with me because it occupies a huge space.   The only musical instruments I brought with me are my flute and my grandfather's violin.   The flute is in good condition and when I'm alone with nothing to do, I'd play a few simple pieces.  The violin needs to be restrung and the bow, maybe reconditioned.  I'm always careful with it because it's an antique dating back to the 1930s, I think.  It also saved my grandfather's life during the Japanese occupation.  Oh how I wish I heard my grandfather play it!  He was truly brilliant, from what I hear.

I have sorely neglected my piano.  This month, I will have to spend about one to two days at my parents' while a repairman and tuner gets it back to its former glory.  Nards suggested that I look for an affordable second hand clavinova or small cabinet piano that can fit in our condo so I can resume my piano playing.  I used to play two to three hours everyday with about  twenty minutes devoted to finger exercises.   My fingers have pitifully lost some of their flexibility on the keyboard.

Once I get a decent piano here, I will definitely learn Clair de Lune.  It's too beautiful to simply listen to it.   I want to be able to play it.  I'm sure my Mom would love that.

Old Friends

Mitzie and I used to spend a lot of time at Pages.  It was this little bookstore on Katipunan at a third floor of one of the buildings that are now dwarfed by Xanland.  I remember I used to park in front of that building, walk to the back, climb six mini-flights of stairs and onto a small non-descript door.  We loved going to that place, where they served cappuccinos in ginormous cups (think ramen bowl), and vanilla almond cookies.  All they ask is that we buy coffee and sugary treats to keep them in business.  It was such a novelty for us to peruse their shelves, sink in their overstuffed armchairs and couch, and read their selections.   A wonderful novelty at that time when the only decent bookstore was National Bookstore and they seal up their books in plastic and chase you down with the cash register if they discover you reading any of their books. 

I loved that place.  Mitzie and I would be there on days when we didn't have work.  And we used to treat ourselves to books every payday.  That and two double cappuccinos.   To say that we were heartbroken when it closed is putting it mildly.  We missed it to pieces, and no matter how many bookstores we discovered after that, it was never the same.

When I went to my parents' two nights ago to bake a last minute order for brownies, I found myself staring at stacks of my books that I have yet to pack and bring home with me.  Most of them were from Pages.

Someone recommended this to me. I can't remember who though.  The story takes place in Old Manila.  And I enjoyed how the author describes the place.

Definitely one of my favorite poets.  She has a thing for death and grief and lost love.  I am still looking for a book of hers with artwork from her brother.   Those Rosettis.  So talented.

I have a lot of other books, mostly poetry, from Pages.  I'll have to take them out of their boxes one of these days and read them once more.

Tuwing Umuulan

A couple of years ago, after a nasty break up, a gaggle of friends headed by Gang brought me to a videoke place near Eastwood.  She called it my "freedom concert."  The theme for the night was songs for a broken heart.  The schmaltzier, the cheesier, the better.  Alcohol was served, the mic passed from one set of hands to the other, and the screen flashed lyrics of the most ridiculous, nauseatingly emotional songs of heart ache and unrequited love with video clips of couples, buildings and beaches.  I still remember Joey singing a Sharon Cuneta song with his signature choreography. 

Gang wanted this "freedom concert" to be cathartic for me.  And through the alcohol haze and heady wanton singing, an issue was challenge: for someone to pick a song that really hits me squarely on the nerves and succeeds in making me cry.

And brilliant Mr. Climaco picked the right song, singing with gusto.  Holy cow, and he was monkeying around again by enacting the song.  My eyes started to smart, and I didn't even notice my tears streaming down because I was laughing so hard at the same time.  It hurt sure, but it also lifted a great weight on my shoulder somehow.



It was cathartic.   That part was true.  And I appreciate my friends who cheered me on during a difficult time.   I am grateful for what they have done for me.  One of which is that now, every time I hear this song, it's no longer about a relationship in the past that didn't work out; but of a drunken night with loony friends belting out the lyrics to sentimental songs in their combined effort to cheer me up.  

Today, on this rainy day, Genius included it in the playlist.  What great timing!  Definitely added a bit of sunshine to my gray day.

Tatters

It's embarrassing, but I am one of those people who still have clothes from high school and college.  And who still wears them.  To say that I'm attached to them is an understatement. 

Maybe it's hereditary, but my Mom kept a lot of the clothes she sewed back in the late 60s/early 70s.  They were impeccably made and she used beautiful, beautiful fabrics.  There were a number of colorful floor length batik dresses with capped sleeves and some with puffed sleeves, and matching tops and skirts.   I'm thankful she saved them, because when I started working, it was all I wore.  Saved me a considerable bundle of cash.  It made a statement in my place of work, which I didn't mind.  I was proud to be wearing clothes my Mom made and she herself wore to work.   She took courses in pattern making and sewing while she was in college, and her clothes could rival the quality of well-known labels.  (Which is probably why, whenever she takes us clothes shopping, she's difficult to please because she's always tsk-tsk-ing at the shoddy workmanship she sees hanging on the racks.)

But as usual, I'm digressing.

This is about the clothes I currently have in my closet, some of which date back to the late 80s.  I still have the class shirt from second year high school (II-Biyaya).  I also have the red striped shirt from my college days that my Mom got me from a trip to LA.  Also a handful of classic Giordano shirts in pretty pastel colors that my Dad bought for me from HK.  I still wear all of them.  In spite of the pitiful (and this is a mild description) condition of some of them, I refuse to throw them away.

And so the warfare between my myself (and my shirts), and my family began.  They are ganging up on me.  My Dad always tuts his disapproval when he sees me in my beloved tatters.   My Mom does the passive aggressive route, and showers me with new shirts.  My sister surreptitiously aggravates the holes in my shirts (particularly my red striped shirt!) so I'll be forced to throw them out. And my husband begs me to let go and move on.

But I'm sticking to my guns (and shirts).  Especially my red striped shirt that accompanied me to my first day in college.  

Nards did the laundry last week.  While he was folding them away, he came upon my beloved red striped shirt.  He had a weird look.  And I panicked. 

I threw a hissy fit.

"No! No!  Don't throw it away!!  That shirt was with me in Kas 1, Hum 1, Soc Sci 1, Nat Sci 1 and Math 11!  It attended the freshman orientation with me!  And Mom gave it to me!"

"I was only trying to figure out how to fold it."  A beat.

"Oh, okay.   Here give it to me."   Even I couldn't figure out to fold it with all the holes in the back and the rips on the hem.  It doesn't matter.  I'm not giving it up.

Maroon 5 Woot!

After being subjected to two hellish malls, about 17kms worth of gas, an hour of inching through Monday morning traffic, and 45 minutes of waiting in line behind a guy who couldn't make up his mind about the seats he wanted to purchase, I was able to buy them.

We're all excited to see them perform. :)

Especially since we've had this song on LSS for the past couple of weeks:

Cabin Pressure

I believe a day spent laughing is a day well spent.

I recently discovered Cabin Pressure, a funny radio program from BBC 4.

Cabin Pressure is a sitcom about the wing and a prayer world of a tiny, one plane, charter airline; staffed by two pilots: one on his way down, and one who was never up to start with. Whether they’re flying squaddies to Hamburg, metal sheets to Mozambique, or an oil exec’s cat to Abu Dhabi, no job is too small, but many, many jobs are too difficult.  

It’s written by John Finnemore, writer for The News Quiz, The Now Show, and Mitchell & Webb; and stars Benedict Cumberbatch (Atonement, Starter for Ten), Roger Allam (The Thick of It, A Cock and Bull Story) and Stephanie Cole (Doc Martin, Housewife 49). Written by John Finnemore Produced & directed by David Tyler A Pozzitive production for the BBC (text and photo from the BBC website)

It's so funny, that Nards and I are always convulsed with laughter every time we listen to an episode.  I am literally rolling and laughing so hard that tears are streaming down my face.  It has three seasons so far, and I just read from the creator's blog that they got a green light to produce season four this year.  Whee!!

Here's a youtube link to the first episode.

They got me at the bing-bong. :)

Wild Grapes

It's not a piece of literary genius but it's rife with Brit humor.  I love love love this book. It's a permanent fixture on my headboard.  I read it at least twice a year and it never fails to make me laugh. Mitzie gave this to as a present way back in 1998.  She picked it up from Powerbooks in Megamall and decided to give it to me because it says "hilarious" on the blurb at the back.

She knows me well.

Thanks Mitzie!! It's my go-to reading material when I need a break.  And I would be bawling my eyes out if I ever lose it.

Macaron Wedding Favors

We were commissioned by a bride to make 200 macaron wedding favors for her.   It was nerve-wracking, but we were able to finish everything in 4 days.

Two mixers, because I was so afraid of overworking the machines and winding up with no mixer at all.  The red one is mine and the white one is my Mom's.

Stiff peaks.  Nards thought it was butter, but it's a mixture of egg whites and sugar.

Beng, piped all the batter.  For two straight days, she piped more than 1,300 shells.  Thank you Beng!  I was in charge of mixing and the macaronage.

I love watching them develop their frilly feet.  They rise gradually after about five minutes in the oven.

It was an orchid themed wedding.  We decided to make yellow macarons and in keeping with the theme, I made white chocolate ganache flavored with vanilla bourbon.   It tasted good (to me, anyway, I hope her guests also find it good).

This is how the favor looked like.  Nards printed and cut the little tags.  I punctured it with my star puncher so that Beng can thread it through a nice purple ribbon.  I piped the filling and made all the sandwiches, and three of us pitched in, packing them in the little boxes and tying the ribbon.

We're still a little bit shell-shocked by the volume we produced the past four days, but we're quite pleased that we were able to do it at all.  We're thankful for the work, and it made us assess our capacity for mass producing the macarons.  It's a good learning experience.

Our next wedding is still a couple of months away, and we're looking forward to it.

Sherlock

Currently, my absolute favorite show.  I cannot wait for Season 3.

Unplugged

Hello, internet!  I'm back.

It's been twenty days since I went online.   Though I missed some of the things I do online, I found it utterly refreshing not to be online.  The only thing I allowed myself during this "vacation," was to check and write emails on my iPod and check in on GetGlue. 

Surprisingly, I find myself not keen on keeping up my old online habits.  At present, it's a tedious task for me to even type in facebook on my browser.  I'd rather keep my online presence on blogger, twitter, tumblr, YM and pinterest.  I'm this close to deleting my FB account, but we have business pages there so I'm held hostage by that.  That and the scores of possible clients who are hooked on FB.  (Much as I want to let go, our business relies heavily on our online presence and activity.)

Social networks have claimed a huge chunk of my day, and I'm pleased that I have reduced that hold to about an hour or so in a day.  I've been able to read more, finish books I've been putting off.  I now have more focus because I'm no longer distracted by notifications and pings on my computer.  (Except the alerts from WhatsApp on my phone, but those are live friends!)

One thing I missed, that I used to have a lot of time for before the advent of  FB et al, was listening to audiobooks.  I used to have audiobooks of Walt Whitman's, Yeats and Emily Dickinson's poetry in the car (proven and fantastic method of curtailing road rage, trust me).   I have amassed a lot of unheard audiobooks, and the first few ones I loaded on my iPod was Casanova and Sherlock Holmes Rail Way Mysteries, both read by Benedict Cumberbatch.   (He and Martin Freeman are my current celebrity obsessions and deserve a blog entry all by themselves.)  I couldn't really concentrate when I played them on my computer because I'd inevitably get distracted by social networks.

Now, I can blissfully listen to them while keeping my hands occupied with something else.

I strongly recommend unplugging for a spell.

Rainy Season's Sidekick

With rainy season (in the midst of May) comes flu season. 

Over the weekend, Nards and I accompanied our assistant to an event somewhere in the mountainous regions of Antipolo.  That venue was perched on a steep hill within a village with guarded gates and quirky street names.  

The wind was blowing so hard, it rocked the car in the parking lot after the boys disembarked and unloaded the equipment.  I was half-afraid that the car was going to get flung to the other side of the courtyard with me in it.  I didn't want to take that chance so I followed the guys to the hall beneath a theatre (where I saw little caucasian girls, in cute tutus, dancing).   The hall was nicely decorated and swathed with black and white.  There were strings of crystals suspended everywhere.  I love the velvet damask table cloths.

We had a glitch in set up.  One of the primary cables was not working, and we had to high tail it to a computer shop (all the way from the top of the mountain) to get a replacement.  I went ahead to the parking lot to get the car warmed up.  I was halfway to the car, when it rained.  And it wasn't a gentle drizzle, it was a full-blown downpour with cold winds whipping me into a glacial mess.  When I got to the car, I was shivering.  I turned on the engine and cranked the car heater just to get off the chill.  

The following morning, I had a colossal headache, a bad case of sniffles and an itchy throat. 

That night, as we were about to sleep I laid my hand on his arm. 

Nards: whoa.
Me: what?
Nards: you're hands.
Me: what about it?
Nards: they're like pan de sal.
Me: pan de sal?
Nards: yeah, warm like pan de sal.
Me: (touched his feet with my feet) even my feet?
Nards: you're feet are like pan de sal too.
Me: *groan
Nards: where's the paracetamol....

I developed fever, of course I did.  Nards, on nurse mode, gave me meds, fed me warm meals and supplied me with fruits.  Now, I am mostly on our recliner, resting, watching TV and dozing on and off.  Going online when I'm up to it, to check our business correspondences, because Nards is busy with our current events.

What's the take away here?  My sister sternly told me to always pack an umbrella or a windbreaker in my bag.  No argument from me.  But this weather is starting to wear me down.

RPGs and Me

Before I got involved with Square Enix, EA, Ubisoft and Capcom, I had a long standing love affair with LucasArts.

I remember that summer before my sophomore year in high school, when my parents got us a computer.  It was a 286 processor with 56kbs of RAM, with a CMYK monitor.  It had a floppy disk drive, (5 1/4 floppy disks were 360-800kbs only) and built-in speakers.  Powerful thing during those days, but quite pitiful by today's standards.  I learned to use Wordstar and Lotus on that thing.  I learned to touch type.  I also learned basic programming and how to make batch files.

Clockwise (L-R) from upper left hand corner: Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, Pirates of the Barbary Coast, Sam & Max, Prince of Persia (photos from Moby Games)

But the best part of that computer was the new array of games we could play.   LucasArts, at that time, had the best games.  And my siblings and I spent most of our summer (when there were no 8-hour power failures), playing.  We also had Win, Lose or Draw, Family Feud and Wheel of Fortune.  I can still remember the midi sound track to all those games.

 Maniac Mansion Intro

There was no internet back then.  No walkthroughs to download.  They could be procured from the computer shops that charged a minimal fee for printing costs.  I remember my classmate in HS gave me the walkthrough for Maniac Mansion.  It was a big relief for us to finish that game because we got stuck at some point.

There are revamped versions of this game.  I have finished Prince of Persia Sands of Time and Warrior Within.  I have Sam & Max on my iPod.  I'm going to try the new Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island.  I hope I will enjoy them as much as I enjoyed their original versions.

May Showers

I find it ironic that the day I saw a friend twitted a news link that says La Niña is over, we get a downpour.   Not that I'm complaining.  I'm grateful for the relief from the intense summer heat, the sound of thunder, the smell of rain and the sound of it as it hits our neighbor's roof.  

I used to dread rain during the month of May because it meant that the new school year is just around the corner.  It was haggling season with my Mom on our sleep schedule.  (She liked to put us to bed earlier and wake us up earlier a few weeks before the first day of school to get vacation mode out of our system.)   It also marked the time when I had to start covering my new schoolbooks with plastic.   I love getting my new school books.  I'd always cover my literature books first and read them afterward.

I feel that was ages ago.  But at the same time it also feels like it only happened yesterday.   Does that make sense?  At present, all I know is that this rain is a welcome break.  And the whole city just took a much needed bath.

My biker roommate is a bit sad though, because rains = no biking today.

Mother's Day Macaron Promo

Click on photo to order. :)