Detours of a south east asian prairie girl

Gluttony knows no excess. It’s true. The morning after a splendid staff “Christmas in January” meal where I had to undo my belt to fill in that last piece of heaven, you’d think I’d lay off the savoury food for a while. At least till lunch.

Nope, not my style. At breakfast, I was back at it. Wandered down to Brioche, a cosy little bakery/cafe/eatery on Cordova Street in Gastown. Low-key and unpretentious, they serve tasty bits like venison soup with truffle oil and roast rabbit over greens. Roast rabbit? Wow, here I thought they were just a bakery serving paninis and the like.

I was impressed. But no roast rabbit for my breakfast, thank you very much. I settled in and ordered an omelette that came with ham and portabello mushrooms, with creamy brie and just the right amount of roast garlic. It came with really nice baguette slices as well as fruit salad. Free range eggs too, mind you. Really tasty and filling.

Given that I’ve been out of my home today for more than 12 hours, and on my poor feet for at least 11 of those hours, that big breakie was definitely worth every drop of kilojoule. Yummmmmm.

… walking along beneath the lights of that miracle mile, me and mary making our way into the night. you can hear the cries from the carnival rides, the pin ball bells, the skee ball slides, watching the summer sun fall out of sight. there’s a warm wind blowing in, far from the ocean, making its way past the hotel walls to fill the street. mary is holding both her shoes in her hands, said she likes to feel the sand beneath her feet …
— scooter carusoe “anything but mine”

Go Ana!

9:15 PM Melbourne time = 2:15 AM Vancouver time

And Roger Federer finally wins his 3rd round 6-7, 7-6, 5-7, 6-1, 10-8 against an amazing Janko Tipsarevic in the Aussie Open. Have to say that I barely breathed in the last four hours of this epic match and my jaw still hurts from clenching. Aiyah, I’m way past my senior citizen bedtime.

Way to dig deep, both players. I love you Roger!

This assertiveness of mine has been supressed far too long. Work within the system, yes. Do the polite Asian immigrant thing, yes. Try to understand the other’s viewpoint, yes. All that and more.

Well, when that big ol’ system fails and you end up constantly having to fix everyone else’s mistakes or lack, forget about it.

This b*tch is back!

About 4.5 billion years ago, a chance collision between an errant planet and a newly formed Earth created the Moon. That the Moon was formed out of the chunks of Earth that spun out into space is incredible. That the errant planet’s liquid iron melded with Earth’s iron core to produce the huge magnetic field which till today, protects us from the solar wind, is also incredible. This collision knocked Earth onto a tilted axis, thereby giving us seasons and a motley crew of habitats. The Moon’s gravitational pull gave us tides and shields us from the larger gravity of the Sun and Jupiter. It’s almost as if Earth, knowing the barrage of cosmic armies that are to come, married off her daughter and took a prince, forging a peace alliance that was to last for billions of years.

We are this lucky. We are the exact distance from the Sun to have mild temperatures. We’re not burning up like Venus or freezing like Mars. Our mass is not simply made of gas like poor Saturn.

In return, we stand on a thin crust on top of high pressure molten liquid. We see 25000 miles pass before our eyes every single day without noticing it.

The Weddell seal who lives in the Antarctic, for whatever evolutionary reason, does not head north when winter arrives. It lives under ice where the water is warmer and periodically gnaws at the ice to buy itself air holes.

The ferocious looking Viperfish, a twilight dweller deep under the ocean, has needlelike teeth that are so long that they extend up to their eyes. With such jaws and teeth, it takes on prey that are bigger than itself. Evolution bought this fish a different kind of life line.

Throughout our planet, animals migrate extraordinary distances in search of water, food and shelter. Humans in strife do the same. At any point in time, various species of life eke out a survival that at the end of the day, can be one of demise or flourish.

Or simply, continuance.

I like to see what this sweet little planet will have 4.5 billion years from now. I wonder if there will be another collision that could set us off on an entirely different course. I wonder if that collision will come from ourselves.

I should hope not.

Taking advantage of a Saturday off in town, I wandered over to the Vancouver Winter’s Market today. Put on by Eat Local, vendors provide plenty of locally grown organic produce, wild caught fish, baked goodies, gorgeous herbs, beautiful honeys and relishes, et al. It is a fun place to be even on a rainy morning.

Dinner tonight was wild caught Spring Salmon with celeriac puree (so buttery and creamy!). Musky shitake and oyster mushrooms were sauteed with italian parsley, sweet shallots, Russian garlic and white wine. Topped the whole thing off with a flavourful mixture of salad greens and a simple balsamic dressing.

This is the first time I’ve made celeriac puree and it is darn good. Glasses of Chilean Viognier made the entire night quite friendly too, heh.

E, however, was not to be deterred. When I patted my tummy and announced that dessert would be whatever she wanted, she didn’t miss a beat. Taking a dark chocolate Santa from Christmas, she proceeded to melt part of it on a white plate, then showered the whole thing with fresh pomengranate seeds. She then grated the remainder of the Santa over top. How’s that for improvising?

I’ll admit it, I’m a huge Sex and The City fan, tho I wouldn’t neccesarily differentiate a Manolo from a Jimmy Choo when presented with one (like I’m that lucky). But New York City is a character all on its own and any movie with New York featured prominently is a movie I wanna see.

I’ll admit again, I’m a huge ABBA fan. And the Meditteranean looks good on film too.

So, lucky me, beautiful teasers of both have just been released:

Sex and the City
Mamma Mia

Thumbing through page after gorgeous page of Wide Angle: National Geographic’s Greatest Places.

Reminds me when even as a little kid growing up in teeny weeny Brunei, how I would pore over atlases and maps and pictures of places in the world. The words in this book are brilliant and vast. Take for example, this lovely opening paragraph in the Central and South Asia section:

From the taiga of Siberia, down through the peaks and valleys of the Hindu Kush, across the undulating hills of India’s Deccan Plateau, south to the jungles of Sri Lanka, the physical environment depicted here, even where fertile and temperate, appears to tolerate rather than welcome human presence. In the heart of Asia, where the elements and elevation range from monsoons and tsunamis pounding the Indian coast to the thin, frigid air atop Mount Everest, the landscape is often inhospitable and indomitable, so enormous and rugged that mankind can occupy but never subdue it.

Africa may be the cradle of civilization. Central Asia is where empires die.

Oi, believe you me, that epic Trans-Siberian railway is calling. I’m coming, I’m coming!

In the land of trucks and country music right now. So there are 6 preprogrammed stations in the SUV, right? And three of them are country. Good thing I like country too and they do play the good songs out here. Not so fond of the trucks and SUVs tho.

Saw The Golden Compass yesterday, finally. Unfortunate script decision, methinks, to cater to young kids. It’s such a complex story with lots of violence. Look at what Peter Jackson and his team did with LOTR, they decided to make it three and half hours. This one, on the other hand, shortened it and look what happens, people that read the book felt cheated and people who didn’t read the book couldn’t understand it. It’s too bad, because the visuals were great and the acting was earnest. Nicole Kidman is perfect as a truly torn villian. Given the box office returns, it’s hard to say whether they will make the next movie, but I hope they do. I think they have a good chance of pulling it back together.

In other news, I have been eating. Eating and eating and eating. First night here, we got invited to dinner with my mom’s friends. You know what that means: down home true to blood Bruneian cooking! Braised short ribs, the requisite yellow curry with homemade curry paste (wow!), chicken wings etc. Oh, my mom did throw in Arctic salmon with Indian tikka sauce for a spin, which was delicious.

More eating continued the next few days with dim-sum, a full-on Chinese wedding banquet, mom’s stuffed eggplant which E learned how to make, this and that. And it’s not done! Tonight, we’re going to this little place when apparently, they stuff seafood into some sort of a melon and then steam the whole thing and then somehow make soup out of it. I don’t know, will tell you after I have it.

Seeing the 20 or so grown-up cousins is always trippy. Hey, weren’t you just a cherubic seven year old last time I saw you? Wow, we can *actually* keep a conversation going now! Yah, hey, you saw the Golden Compass too, eh?

One thing about being here that I do love, the cross-country skiing is free and the trails are amazing and quiet. The place my mom takes us to includes a giant Esso refinery right next to the trail, but hey, when you’re in Alberta, you might as well accept the fact that you’re in oil country. Okay, uh-huh, yah. Go Oilers go. Woo woo.