"Practice makes Permanent"

Food for thought:

There is the ongoing joke. A tourist asked a famous violinist How do you get to Carnegie Hall? to which he replied Practice.

I've never been into poetry, but since seeing this one youtube clip of Phil Kaye and Sarah Kay reciting spoken word poetry, I have been hooked. One particular clip which Sarah Kay did on long distance relationship titled "Postcards", she metaphorically speaks of the ongoing practice of a drummer living downstairs. How practice does not make perfect- it makes permanent. We may be repeating the same mistake over and over and it truly does not get us any closer to perfection- in fact, it draws us further away as we learn our mistakes. Phil Kaye further talks about repetition in this clip. If we repeat something enough times, it loses its meaning, be it words or actions.

It is always so much harder to unlearn a mistake and relearn it the right way, than to start from a blank slate and learn from no prior knowledge. Be it music, sports, relationships... /emo rant.

From baKEE

So after a long time of not baking anything, we decided to go back to basics and make a mud cake. With cream cheese frosting.

A party for Two

They say bad things come in threes. Actually, that is more a luck thing- bad luck comes in threes, apparently. I'm not a superstitious person at all- though as a kid, I always thought there was a ghost living in my parents' room. Or specifically, their bathroom, and I hated going into their room, especially during the evening when the sun is setting and the world is shadowed in this unnatural semi-darkness. Perhaps it's because out of all the rooms in the house, their room is the one place I visited the least.

Where was I? Oh, three. If we were to be superstitious, three is a good number because it's meant to sound like "live" in Chinese as opposed to 4. Saying goes that it's always third time lucky as well. Then again, there is that weird superstition that you should never take photos with a group of three because the middle person will bite the dust. Yep, this world works in strange ways and one cannot define a number as being simply either good or bad. HOWEVER, I've had my three unfortunate events and would like to believe that things can only get better from here. It's all about being positive and optimistic.

From cookkk

No better way to do that than to have a party! And since it's a weekday, few people could make it. Rather, it was a party for myself and PS (aka Princess) only.

Ventidue: Kanzi Fashion Cafe

This marks my 400th post on this blog. Fact #1: this blog is actually a lot older than 6 years, even though the first entry in its archives are from 2008. I think I started blogging around the start of high school (when blogging was the trendy thing to do, with everyone owning a xanga page... kids these days probably never heard of xanga before) and that would have been more than a decade ago. Blog went through various revamps, entries got lost... till the only thing left from the past is actually... the tagboard (fact #2). Which hardly gets used these days, but it has withstood the test of time thus far.

From fooood

Today, we head down to the city. Ever since tt and I stopped seeing each other, I hardly go to the city anymore. Scratch that- I don't go to the city anymore, but this was one of the last cafes we discovered and went to together, and it has become a favourite.

Ventuno: Salvage Specialty Coffee

No excuse not to blog today apparently, because I have the day off and just wanted a completely lazy day. It has indeed been such an uneventful day I feel almost guilty for having it, so let's make up for the lack of productivity by blogging.

It's been so long since I did a cafe series entry that I've forgotten why I didn't number the past two entries, but since the last numbered one was 20, guess this is entry number 21. Recommended by friend and colleague KT, claiming it has the "best coffee" (hear that a lot, but really, there is no such thing as "best coffee", I just find that Single Origin or Campos are usually the safer options when it comes to coffee), we headed down to Artamon on a beautiful Saturday morning.

From fooood

The place itself is quite small and cosy, not too overdone in terms of interior deco, but enough to make it inviting. Never actually knew Artarmon was like a Japanese hub, with Japanese convenient stores (konbini!), restaurants and bookstores scattered around the suburb.

Pasta Project

Just when you thought things were going to be regular, she stops posting for a couple of weeks. Things have been crazy irl, and not in a good way.

From cookkk

My first real car accident involving another car, and it's strange how the first thing that crossed my mind as I was sitting there was "naw =( you can't be serious, I am 500m away from my destination!!" when really it should have been "what on earth just happened...". The next thought was, "great, I have glass all over me, but wait, they don't cut! O_o This is amazing!" before the logical side of me kicked in and it was all "ahh.. what do I do now...". I'm just glad to have friends who knows exactly what I need to get out of a rut, so B and H- thank you so so much for being there for me, for taking my mind off things with dinner (fried chicken and beer, can't get any better than that for comfort food) and for the reassurance.