huh...

time is counting down. :)

new semester is coming. Semoga semester ini nilai semua lebih baik lagi...

Finally after 2 weeks freakin holidei, balik ke malay lagi. Ada yang terasa 'lain'. Actually masih pengen banget stay di Indonesia. Tapi, udah keburu masuk.

Timetable udah ada. Dan yang paling nyenengin, di time table, Thursday gak ada class. haha seneng bangeeeuuttz :D

 Ada 5 subjek di semester periode august-december ini ;

❤ Foundation of Business (BMB 1202) By Ms. Tana

❤ Life and Literature in a Changing World (BMB 1402) By Ms. Bernice

❤ Business Computing (BMB1206) By Mr. Derek Ong

❤ Study Skills (UCS 1000) By Ms. Catherine Tan

❤ English for Business and Management Studies (UCS 1001) By Ms. Mazlin

Gonna be soo damn difficult to pass this semester. Huh.

But still keep trying lah. :)

Belum lagi Englishku yang makin hari makin jelek aja. Huhu. Gimana caranya nih. Cape deuung.. :(

Wish me success. :D

Cake Lady, Part 2

I wrote in the last post that I don't bake and ship my "amazing chocolate cakes" to our troops with ANY expectation (EVER) of receiving any kind of thanks. I mean this very sincerely.

Of course, guess what happened next? The day after that post, I received a handwritten card and a letter from Lt. W. who was the recipient of my five boxes last month. Talk about timing!

Our men and women over there have so much responsibility. They are fighting for us and our country while doing their best to stay alive and uninjured. They are apart from their families and loved ones. As a commanding officer, Lt. W. is also responsible for those who serve under his command. I can't even imagine what it must be like to carry that kind of responsibility. And with all of that, he still found both the time and the inclination to sit down and write a letter of thanks to me. I don't have the appropriate words to describe how humbled I am by that.

So there is no recipe in this post. Instead, I choose to share a few of Lt. W.'s words:

"Every one of us sends their appreciation to people like you who have not forgotten about us over here. We appreciate everything you do. Remember, no act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. I hope that maybe one day we can all live peacefully and in great harmony."

Amen.

What’s the (Aaron) Deal?

August 14

A couple of points of clarification about my my recent blog entry about Aaron Deal, who is quitting his job as executive chef at Tristan, in Charleston, S.C., at the end of the month and moving to Chicago.
First, at some point between the 2nd and 13th of September, he’ll be doing a stage at Gramercy Tavern. A stage is basically an internship, so it won’t likely have much of an effect on the overall operations at Gramercy Tavern, but New York diners do like to be in the know, so there you have it, New York diners.
Chicagoans, Aaron says his job at Custom House will be executive chef, but I’m still not sure whether that means Shawn McClain’s leaving or if he’s just going to take the title of chef-owner or some such thing. I'm sure the good people at Grub Street are on the case..
Update: I just learned that Aaron will be replacing Richard Camarota.

Required Reading: In Defence of Food

The holiday to Umbria wasn’t entirely about stopping and smelling the rosemary. I did some work too. Sort of.

In between dips in the pool, singeing my hair in a pizza oven and trips to hilltop towns, I read In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan.



It’s a book about food. Really, really about food. Proper food. More an extended essay than a fully-fledged tome, it is the most intelligent, impassioned treatise on the subject I’ve ever read.

With so much extraneous information bombarding us everyday, seeing the topic of food stripped down to its bare essentials is both refreshing and important. Crucial even.

Pollan writes about food with a sense of unhurried urgency and seemingly effortless intelligence. He is a man who, if you’ll excuse the pun, knows his onions. And shallots. And garlic and all other members of the allium genus. He knows what is wrong with the food industry and, more importantly, he knows how to fix it.

One of the criticisms levelled at many polemicists is that they are happy to point out problems and often less able to talk of solutions. Michael Moore, take note. Pollan does both with equal skill.

In Defence of Food is the sort of book that comes along so rarely it makes you want to buy copies for everyone you know, thrust it into their grease-flecked fingers and sit watching to make sure they consume it. And consume it they will.

It is, without a shadow of a doubt and no degree of hyperbole, the best book about food I have ever read. Ever. Now, go and get a copy, sit ye down and read it.

And follow me on Twitter. But only if you really want to.