Verbier March 2006

Went for a charity ski trip to Verbier in aid of Calvert Trust (www.calvert-trust.org.uk), which specialises in outdoor activities for disabled people, on 23rd-26th of March.

It was fantabulous! The second time I'd ever skiied in my life, and this was miles better than the first.

I and two other friends who are complete beginners got a private instructor (from La Fantastique. I spent the first day on the nursery slopes picking up/practicing my year-old rudimentarty ski skills. And on day two, the instructor Aude Troillet brought me up to the real slopes in the morning, and we did four runs in two hours—blue, (not very steep) red, blue, red. It was great... challenging, yet confidence-building. I was actually skiing... sliding across the snow. Traversing, turning, downhill. Inhaling chilly mountain-fresh air deep into my lungs, slopes of brilliant white snow before me, blue skies above, surrounded by majestic snowy mountains, the warm winter sun tingling on my skin, wind on my face, the swishing sound of snow from my skis. I was in love. Flying through air.

Which is not to say I did not fall. I did. And especially on my last red slope of the morning (I think it was at Les Ruinettes) when I was tired and scared of the steepness of the hill. I was making mistakes, doing it all wrong—leaning backwards, putting my weight on my bum, putting my weight on my uphill ski... and I fell a good four, five times on that one slope alone. And yes, my ski flew off too. But I picked myself right up, so good had I become at getting up from my falls on my trip to Torgon last year. Although once, I fell right in the middle of the slope just before the end of the slope. I could see the cable car station at the bottom of the hill, and skiiers were zig zagging downhill past me on the left and right. Aude said: get up, it's dangerous. But I was exhauste, and my knees were literally burning. I couldn't get up for a few minutes. And I couldn't imagine going down that short steep slope, oh so near though the end was. But in the end, I clambered up and went down the slope. Very slightly shaken. But happy and proud that I'd done a full morning's worth of skiing.

That afternoon, my two friends joined us, and we skiied down La Chaux, a blue slope, three times. On the first run, as Aude was teaching one of my friends, I had to play the role of instructor and helper to my other friend Nish, which was actually scary for me. And the last day, on Sunday, Nish and I went up alone, sans instructor to ski La Chaux again. And that was great. Knowing that I could do it on my own. Gaining confidence to do the parallel turns on some of the slopes, although I was still snow ploughing most of the way. I need that, I need the time and space to practice practice practice and gain confidence.

I was told that to ski well, one has to ski often. Definitely more than once a year. Some of the expert skiiers ski seven eight times a season, or more. And I so want to do that. I want to be good at this. I want to go off piste. To ski across the glaciers, and valleys, through the forests. I want to explore the winter terrain on skis.

It wasn't all about the skiing of course. This time, I finally experienced the legendary apres-ski, which I had missed on my first trip to Torgon. Drinks in the late afternoon after skiing. Dinner. Then dancing to cheesy music at night in one of Verbier's three clubs. In the three nights we were there, we were mainly at The Farm Club (which is apparently known to have very over-priced drinks) but we spent one night at the Gas Bar. The Farm Club was surprisingly packed on weekends, comparable to London clubs, in that there was virtually no dancing space. And there were some pretty fit girls with pretty good moves. So it was a whole day of skiing workout, some rest, and a night of dancing and living it up until 2 or 3 am for me, and then up at 8 am in the morning again. The best kind of life.

Culinary experiment

Time: 18:20

Since the idea of mango with fish first occured to me, it has quietly but insistently made itself heard. Slowly, the idea began to take root, expand.. what, how, do I dare... I decided on cod in the first instance (though I find salmon and mango interesting too), baked in tin foil. Yet my fear kept me back—my house oven isn't exactly working. And the idea persisted and became louder. Finally, I decided to bite the bullet, and have (rashly) volunteered to cook tonight's dinner for my housemates.

Cous cous, which I had previously obsessed over, still features. Mango cod with cous cous (and sundried tomatoes—another favorite. And this time I bought it from the Italian festival La Dolce Vita that was held at Olympia over the past week) is planned.

I bought the cod, the mango, exra cous cous... and had spent the past half and hour preparing it. And just as I was about turn the knob to heat the oven (I recall that is something that has to be done), I realise just exactly how lost I am. I don't have the faintest idea how to work our oven. The symbols next to our two oven knobs have worn away, I don't know which is the timer, which is the heater-knob. I have no clue if I need to switch the oven on, or if there is even a switch. I seem to recall us having a oven tray but I cannot locate it. We do not seem to have oven gloves and I am terrified of heat (one of the reasons I do not usually cook). I am completely lost. I am actually beyond out of my depth.

I have just gone down. And the oven is not yet heated up. There is something that is simply not working. I'll try to figure something out and see how it goes. Fingers crossed..

Time: After dinner

It was disastrous. My housemate had suggested putting the tin-foil wrapped fish into our giant pot and heating the pot up. I did that and left it alone while I cooked the other stuff. When I opened the pot to check on it, I noticed some juice/liquid had fallen onto the pot and was sizzling. In a bid to avoid burning the pot, I poured water into the pot, hence effectively steaming the fish rather than baking it. And by the time dinner was ready to be served and the fire turned off, the entire bottom of the pot had turned black—all the water had evaporated and the pot was covered with a thick layer of carbon. The cod itself was tasteless (despite me putting what I thought was too much salt) while the mango was over-ripely-sweet, so one could taste the sweet and the bland separately.

Meanwhile, I had bought extra cod fish to cook a separate dish in case the would-have-been oveb-baked cod got burnt. But I didn't quite have an idea of how to cook my plan B fish. I could have grilled it (we have a grill), but I didn't quite know how to use it, and frankly, didn't have the stomach to go through another round of worrying and figuring out. The same housemate suggested frying the fish. But I didn't season the fish long enough and didn't quite know how to fry the fish. Don't really know how to steam fish either (didn't have the ingredient anyway. Plus, it wouldn't go with the Mediterranean-themed cous cous). So I stewed the cod fillet in a curious mix of sundried tomatoes with dried chilli and garlic and had to keep asking my housemate: Can you tell me if it's cooked yet?

My favorite part of dinner was the cous cous really. And I rather liked the mango itself too. And the apricot tart that my housemates bought for dessert. Well, and also the microwaved broccoli. Everything but the fish basically.

Okay.. so clearly, the statement that I cannot cook whatsoever still stands. Or at least I can't cook Western food. In my defense, it would have definitely helped if the oven was working. But the key takeaway is that I am missing a key step between the fish and the mango. I need to find a way to season the flesh of the fish itself, or to let the mango sweetness infuse the fish. I wonder if it is a problem of marinating the fish long enough (I only prepared it half an hour before cooking), or that I have to season the fish separately, and what kind of seasoning is usually used for fish (excluding the standard Asian seasonings of soy sauce, ginger, garlic, chilli, assam, parsley, fermented black beans)

Or, in future, I could just not cook. My friend had volunteered to cook for me at his place, he said I worked hard enough all week to be cooking on weekends. But I declined saying I had promised to cook for my housemates. In future, I should just take his advice and chill out and be taken care of, or cooked for. THAT is the moral of the story.

Pupae: the trials of transformation

As a kid (okay.. as a younger self, if you will), I was fairly disastrous.. in quite a few ways, one of which was fashion-wise. Like when I used quite brazenly wear this pair of broken specs out on my neighbourhood Safeway grocery runs. Yes, and this was just last year when I was 22.

Since then, I've decided that, well, I have to grow up, and to finally make a real effort to look pulled together, like a proper adult.

But how can you look elegant, when at the end of a working day at mignight, you're holding a presentation markup in your left hand, coat and scarf hung over your left arm, your rucksack is slung over your right shoulder because you went to the gym today, your regular working bag is clutched in your right hand, and you're wearing red sneakers (yes, with a work suit) because frankly, your feet just hurt too much from the heels otherwise, and you walk to work most days.

So tell me how I can achieve the look of unruffled elegance and sophistication when I'm a second year analyst who's just trying to keep her head above water, and I will bow down to your unrivalled genius.

The small things in life

It snowed today. London has been cruelly cold recently. My skin is parchment dry. Walking to work has become quite a feat of discipline and endurance. And it takes a few minutes for me to stop shivering and let my hands and feet thaw when I come in from the cold. I'd heard it was supposed to snow at the end of this week, end of February notwithstanding. And in the mid afternoon, I saw gentle white flurries outside my wide office windows. It last for just a couple of minutes. Maybe even half a minute.

My CDs arrived today! "Walk the Line" soundtrack and Vienna Teng's "Warm Strangers". I love Amazon! In the space between a thought and the about-face of a fickle heart, my parcel is delivered! My favourite is probably "It ain't me, babe" cos I love the harmonisation and especially Reese Witherspoon's voice, the bouncyness of the song, and also the surprising message of this anti-love song. I also love of course, Walk the Line, Cocaine Blues (very very much), Folsom Prison Blues, Juke Box Blues, Jackson. Check www.walkthelinemusic.com to hear snippets of the songs!

Today I also finally got around to submitting my application for a provisional UK driving license, my first ever driving license. I'm pretty excited about it. I remember how thrilled I was when I got my US social security number when I went over for a working-holiday back in the summer of 2002, the first summer of my life. I was now a registered member of the bureaucratic system of that ubiquitous TV/movie nation! That one tiny step closer to realising my LA/NY glamourous life dream. Then it was my UK NHS number. And paying taxes—painful, but still shiny in the novelty of it. My residence and work permit. Now a driving license! The British near-equivalent of a Malaysian identity card (I completely do not understand the furore over identity cards)

I've just recently realised how quickly time literally zooms by. Faster than the speed of light! When I come back from work and switch on my PC, type in a web address. I have barely perused a short page/blog entry, and five minutes have already passed. I find it difficult to write because Time seems to steadily and determinedly march by at a frightful pace before I have the nanosecond to gather my thoughts, much less put them down in a coherent manner. This, for example, my "Speed Entry" in its randomness and lack of internal relevance/structure (it's about random thoughts/happenings that are in no way related/relevant except for making me happy today), has taken already 40 minutes. Imagine!

One downer to end the entry (because I don't have the time to end it elegantly), is that I have a sore throat, which is ominous indeed. I fear I am falling ill.

Goodnight, world.