Oh well, the moment's here at last. Time to go back, and restart where I left off 4 weeks ago. Brownie's used to me coming back home every night already, but I did manage to squeeze in another meal for him this evening so that he won't go hungry. I suppose, after those 2 horrible weeks at Jokun, going back tonight doesn't seem as gross as it previously did. Or maybe the last 2 weeks of civilian life has reset much of the angst.
Anything today? We went for Huiling & Khai Honn's ROM at OCC, and I ended up cooking the salmon trout (AMAZING STUFF!!), veal ravioli and some duck gizzard confit.
Quite a few tests this week, plus a long, long night on Tuesday at East Coast Park.
I haven't seen my gran for ages, and this being my last week out, we decided to make a day trip in. This time we brought Yx's mom and brother along too, in addition to mom's usual rambutan-picking kaki, Leng-leng. It happens to be the rambutan season, so there was plenty to do!
Before we reached gran's place, we made a detour to one of our suppliers' garden. In addition to a chicken-rearing fascility, he has a private stash of dragon fruit plants. I have 3 plants at home actually, but they are just being gross and refuse to flower or fruit.
The flowers are actually very pleasant. Huge, though.
Mom & Leng-leng are somehow fast friends with the chaps there, so even when the boss isn't around, they are entitled to free pickings of the fruit. I really didn't expect that they'd harvest a barrow-full of the stuff though.
My uncle's pulasan plantation is teeming with the fruits, as well as duku langsat (Lansium domesticum).
Tonnes of pulasan! We ate as we worked, and ended up over-indulging in fruits.
Hmm .. were we harvesting them or eating them?
Mom looking quite un-glam.
Harvesting the duku was quite a challenge though - the fruits are borne on the top branches of the tree, necessitating a climb up.
2 monkeys on the duku tree - Leng leng on left, mom on right. And Yx later got inducted as a third monkey!
Dad cheating & collecting the rare duku that are borne on the lower branches.
The harvested fruits are later sorted (Yx doing the sorting here!), and the green ones and split fruits are discarded first, followed by sorting by size.
This pic makes them look a little like baby potatoes.
There was this other tree with fruits that is very similar to the duku, but I was told it's a separate entity altogether. True enough, the tree looks different, and - if you'll believe it - the fruits are even higher up on the tree! Unlike the duku where the fruits come off easily from their stems, this other fruit is held together in bunches that are horribly tight and difficult to extract.
I actually managed to retrieve a few fruits using a long pole, and they tasted a hell lot nicer than the duku! We were upset that the rest of the fruits were way beyond reach though (see the picture below. The tree in question is that tallest one just to the left of the centre of the pic, and you can just make out a brown mass on one of the branches - that's how high they are!) Leng leng was not to be defeated however; she took an ultra-long pole, and marched off to conquer.
There were tall grasses all around, so Yx's brother and I held up a piece of tarp to catch the falling fruits. "Incoming!!!"
At last!!! =D Muahahaha ...
A few miscellaneous things ...
Huge bee's nest in one of the toilets.
A dark red oleander which I gave gran as a present a year ago. She's treating it like some sort of treasure, and I'm very touched.
Wild cosmos in the garden. The young leaves taste like unripe mangoes!
Had a really pleasant week (apart from a nasty incident of being late on Thursday), thanks to the friendly guys over at MCC. I felt a lot more at home there than at my precious week, and I think that's what really matters, even though workload may be a tad high at times.
Thinking of fixing up menus for a couple of dishes, we'll see. I still have that slab of salmon trout in the freezer, and a whole 2kg of veal ravioli that's getting on my mom's nerves.
We went over to Prof Michael's house yesterday for someone's farewell party, and I had an enlightening talk with him. Learnt about this guy called Dean Ornish, and it's quite astounding what an ultra-low fat diet can do for you. I'm not talking about trying to maintain the usual RDA of 20% fat - Ornish advocates way less, something like 5% I think. It's a freaking difficult thing to follow, but it does make one think. Apparently, Ornish published in the Lancet in 1990 (Lancet. 1990 Jul 21;336(8708):129-33) his results on the Lifestyle Heart Trial, that such a low fat diet can actually lead to reversibility of CAD, not just prevention. Losing weight is one thing, but decreasing the cardiac risk index sounds really great. The only problem? My patients will cut my head off and put it on a pike if I were to ever suggest this. Imagine sticking to just 15g of fat per day. That's 2 packs of Mac's fries, and you're done for the day. Lke, you really need to eat just veggies for the rest of the day. No milk, no milo, no stir-fried stuff even. The stuff he made during the party actually tasted good, to my surprise. There was potato salad (fat-free mayo, of course!), macaroni with veggies, and braised tofu. Maybe I should *try* this out too, and see how difficult it is.
LOL, I came home to find a welcome-back email so titled, from one of the rest who didn't have to go. It was a quick and lean escape last night, and no one minded the rain the least bit. We were invited to stay a little at our building to wait out the rain if we wanted to - ARE YOU FREAKIN' CRAZY?? It's amazing, the kind of petty politics that still goes on even at the higher levels. Maybe that's how some people climb the ranks. My only solace was that I made a couple of new friends there, and truly, that's just it.
Going to a new place today (I'm still waking at 5:30am out of habit), at least I'll be able to come home every day!
