Detours of a south east asian prairie girl

Quite a few years ago, I tried to read Philip Pullman’s reknowned trilogy: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. For whatever reason, I couldn’t quite get into it. I wasn’t captured, I wasn’t swayed, I felt completely passionless. In fact, I gave up after The Subtle Knife and didn’t even get to the last book. I have a vague recollection that it was nebulously against women.

Of course, I was wrong. So Wrong.

A week ago, I picked up The Golden Compass again, on a recommendation by a fabulous woman from KidsBooks on Broadway. I tucked myself in on a quiet day and just started reading. This time, I couldn’t put the book down. In less than a week, I had read all three books and the experience was infinitely different.

Against women, god no! The opposite, in fact! Heroines at every corner, instead! Intuitively drawn villians who may not be villians, understandable human motivations, smart characters who grow and evolve and gay angels. Gay angels? What the f*ck, it’s brilliant! It’s not a straighforward good versus evil story. It’s unimaginable how richly layered the story actually is. How wonderfully detailed the settings are. How aching the struggle between wisdom and blanket oppression. Hmm, kinda timely, don’t you think? Brilliant.

We pastry cooks are a different lot from the fast-line, hot-grill, swearing-saute, screaming, yelling, cursing, culinary cooks. Most of us, anyways. By pastry cooks, I don’t mean the bakers, they are a different species altogether.

Both of us can be meticulous, which is just a nice way of saying anal. No fingerprints on the plate, the tuile arranged just so. At least in the finer-dining arena where a Gordon Ramsay type might well kick your arse if you’re not anal enough or if you don’t work clean enough.

But in pastry, there are no flying pans and hardly any outbursts of anger or frustration. The best pastry kitchens led by the quintessential pastry chef radiate a kind of cool collective calm. The hours tend to be different (more days, less late nights) which incur different lifestyles after work. I have not yet met nor know of a pastry chef who’s hard-drinking and hard-living. We wear our hearts on another type of sleeve, it seems. Our art is one of precision and science, with touch and feeling thrown in and a good bit of sleuthing when things go wrong. Thankfully, we don’t have the pressure of the culinary line, which gets hit day in and day out in certain bursts of time. When we do get slammed, we smile and pull what we need from things that we’ve prepped. So we have the chance to think differently, act differently.

For those of us who choose to work in either field, we do what we do for love. Certainly not for the money. For culinary cooks, it might be the adrenaline. For both of us, the instant gratification each day and night pulls in. This is what I want when I’m done work each day, that I can say, that was good. Our customers were happy. We put out the good stuff, made with good stuff. And that I did it with love and care. Couldn’t be sweeter.

My calendar since Thursday is filled with food! Thursday night, bubble tea and snacks at late night Richmond hangout. Friday night, gloriously hedonistic meal at lovely Phnom Penh. Saturday night, desserts and cocktails at newly opened Canvas Lounge. Sunday night, dinner and drinks at Stella’s Tapas Bar.

Must be spring, everyone including me, is coming out of the woodwork to greet, jostle, and yak.

By the way, dinner at Phnom Penh? Unassuming, unpretentious, to die for. Go for their specialties and seasonal surprises like lotus stems, I swear you god you’ve never had anything in Vancouver that will remind you of South East Asia more. In fact, just ask the waiters to recommend specials, you’d be hard pressed to find the same dishes anywhere else in Vancouver. Eat well and prosper!

Learning to find the joy in life while going through burn-out isn’t easy. Someone light me a sparkler, please. I want to get off this intense rollercoaster and go on a joyride instead. The Big Sur is looking mighty promising. I could find some salvation there.

On another note, my most highly anticipated film of the year is getting ho-hum reviews. Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights opened Cannes recently and so far, the reviews, while respectful, have been lukewarm at best. I’ll admit, I watch the two released teasers and thought that while the dialogue and voice-overs would’ve worked magically in poetic Chinese (as lonely struggles often do in his films), they come across flat and generic in English. Well, more judgement later when I see the whole film … meanwhile, I think I will rent 2046 and watch that again. Swoon.

Mom, thanks for telling the kindergarten teacher not to change my left-handeness like the other kids. Thanks for saying that it was natural for me, despite what others think at the time. It kept me different and I loved it. Happy Mother’s Day! May you have lots of keropok chips, laksa noodles, and ice-kachang in tasty ol’ Malaysia!

A missing piece of the puzzle found and fitted. A sign of relief. Lined. Game. Set. Where there was desperate panic, almost, before, there is now a belief that the score is on the up and up. In my life, proactivity has won and I am thankful.

When I was little, my mom travelled a lot. My brother and I would stay back with Grandma and the host of loving uncles and aunt while mom and dad traipsed around the world. Wouldn’t you know it, when my brother grew up, the first thing he did was to go see the world. For years and years. He worked in Australia, hoofed it everywhere in the South Pacific (including Fiji just after the military coup – so cheap, he said, no one there, beach all to myself!). He came home for less than a year, then charged ahead to work in England, which lead to jaunts all over Europe and a 50 day camping trip in Africa where he was the camp cook. He worked his way through Asia including Laos and Cambodia when the countries first opened up and the road from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap was not yet paved. I believe his dream was to dive in the Red Sea and that he did. Now, with a family and a job that holds him down, he still manages to swing it somehow. Shorter trips to Cuba, Dominican Republic. Marathons in Canada and even Vegas. He’s a good man, my bro.

As a family, we have pretty good travel skills. I’ve never worried about my brother or my mom and dad. Yet tonight, when I met my mom at the Vancouver airport, enroute to South East Asia, I felt different. Protective. Like watching my own child step off to the big blue world. There she was, with her good friend, and the two of them are starting their 1 month long trop to Malaysia, Brunei, China. I am so much taller than her now. She really seemed like a child going off.

I felt like saying, do this, don’t do that, this is how. Yet, she’s got it all covered. So does her friend, an experienced traveller herself. I wave goodbye at the gate till they left. My mom, she kept waving me off, go home already!

Strange, isn’t it? All the skills that she’s taught me, here I am feeling this. Perhaps my own maternal instincts are kicking in afterall. Well, mom, have a wonderful trip, I know you will enjoy yourself. I wish I am there with you, but only because I want to be in Asia too!

A chance meeting, sunlight on both your faces. Warmth. I was touched.

I saw an old friend last night. In the seven or eight years where we haven’t seen each other, she’s done wonders. She’s released her first CD, is on her first tour, and draws for a living. Big changes. Lovely. Lovely to see life pay off, in ways we first didn’t think possible. When the first glimpse of possible happens, it is a beautiful thing, isn’t it?