My Brother And I

My Brother

 

My brother is a funny character. He lived in my shadows as a kid trying to be like his sister, but I used to toss him aside like a rag doll because to me, he was a pain in my butt. I thought my parents doted on him more than they did me. He was like the quintessential hallmark of an Asian home - the much needed boy in the family to carry on the family name.

 

We Are So Different

 

So we grew up pretty much apart not just because we were 11 years apart in age but because I felt he was loved more than I was, I grew up as an over-achiever, attempting to prove my worth through my grades at school and at piano exams, and through each successful milestone in my career.   My brother's grades at school was less than stellar.  His earlier career stints were lack-lustre. I brought home trophies and certificates of achievements. He would be lucky if he remembered to bring home his pencil case.  I was notorious for being the school bully. He brought home complaints about being bullied in school.  When I signed up to be in the pioneer batch of the  non-uniform military officers program at the army more than 25 years ago, I went head-on into a life of discipline, camaraderie with my mates in the army and plenty of physical activity.  Apart from failing topography, I did enjoy that short stint in the army.  When my brother got enlisted into national service, the first thing he asked was, "Will there be an umbrella provided in the full pack?"

 

My Brother’s Love For Life

 

I realised through time that my parents never loved me any more or less. As parents, they just strove to provide my brother and I with whatever was needed so that we could live life with a purpose.  As time passed and eased that age gap a little more, I also noticed that my brother was just happy being himself, living life not with the intent of proving anything. He just wanted to enjoy every moment that life had to offer. 

 

Appreciating Our Differences

 

We weren't brought up any differently. We were just different.  Our perspectives on life were different.  My brother never took life too seriously, but to me, every minute wasted in useless banter, was a minute wasted in what I could do, earn or gain. 

  

My brother was happy just being himself. He walked through life enjoying every minute of it through food and travel. In fact, he actually ate the world.  Every city he travelled to outside of Singapore, and every neighbourhood he visited in Singapore were all driven by his love for food.  Food and travel were a nuisance to me. I agonised about the hassles of travel.  I worried incessantly about the amount of calories, fat content, and nutritional value of everything I ate. I used to think traveling was a waste of time and I wouldn't do so unless there was a purpose, be it work, writing assignments, workshops that I had to conduct, or for boxing or Muay Thai training.  When friends asked if I had gone on a vacation. I did not understand what that word meant.  While I lived to work, my brother on the other hand worked to live. 

 

 

I haven't quite lived and I haven't quite embraced the love for life till very recently when I grew up enough to let go of that ego that had shaped me since I was young. Through new glasses of maturity, I had come to accept that it was okay for my brother and I to view the world with different perspectives and celebrate life in our different ways.

 

Our New Blog

 

So I started a new blog, with the help of my brother. It is a blog that represents the different ways we both enjoy a common obsession - Food. Although we are siblings who grew up 11 years apart, shaped by differing experiences to see the world from different perspectives, we celebrate our passion for life with our common love for food.  However, our attitudes to food are quite different and the way we celebrate our love for food are also quite different.
 

Jerome lives to eat and hoovers everything edible that crosses his path.  As he shovels food into his mouth with that fork in his right hand, he takes photographs of what he eats, and posts pictures and notes up on Facebook with his left.  Often, his beautifully written prose about what he had eaten would be 7 paragraphs in length and would not have any punctuations in between because he had been too busy multi-tasking. 

I, on the other hand, eat to live. It is not just about my attempts to eat healthily. As I am a “cam-whore” and “social media hussy”, I spend about half an hour styling my food, taking photographs, writing notes and posting them across my social media platforms before eating them, right after the hubby has paid for the bill and is about to head out of the restaurant.  I enjoy reading all my posts about what I had eaten because I know that I had lived fully in spite of watching what I eat. 

 

It took me 35 years, to finally learn how to live life with genuine passion from my brother who does it better than I do.

 

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  Due to her love for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing MMA-related articles to several sports media.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She is passionate about Boxing and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.  

Giving My Awesome Cafe A Second Chance

Another Visit To My Awesome Cafe

Last week, I wrote a blog post lamenting the need for business owners to follow through on their fabulous ideas with  great action plans right through to the flawless delivery of their services or products.   

In that post, I mentioned My Awesome Café, one of Singapore’s newest and hippest cafés that had been making waves amongst professionals working in the Central Business District who were gagging for a moment of peace and relaxation as they sipped their coffees and tucked into their awesome salads, quiche, sandwiches or desserts.  I was quite unhappy with the slow service and wrong orders that some of us had experienced.  And I swore then never to visit My Awesome Café again.

However, when it came to desserts, or broadly, when it came to any kind of food, I always broke my promises.  My personal trainer and my heart surgeon would be familiar with this.

Today, I had decided to don my rather rare but widely welcomed calm composure, and gamely paid My Awesome Café another visit.  I attributed this irrational behavior to my uncontrollable weakness for desserts, and my soft spot for the café’s intrepid owner, Franck. 

The Second Chance

The service was still slow on the second visit, even though we were there at the tail-end of the busy lunch hour and wanted to just relax into a cup of coffee and a cake.  I sauntered to the dessert shelf and Franck gave me a rundown on all his awesome desserts.  I always enjoyed talking to Franck.  When I told him I might have the "Awegasm In A Cup", he would retort smugly, " Good choice!  That would be me then." 

I mustered a lot of self-control to order only 2 types of dessert – the pineapple upside down cake which I had lovingly labelled "Sex On A Plate" and the bread and butter pudding.  Both did not disappoint.  The pineapple upside down cake in particular, was served moist and warm and had generous chunks of pineapple in it.   In fact, I regretted not ordering 2 pineapple upside down cakes.  Maybe, next time, I might even pre-order the entire tray in fact. 

I soon forgot how long it took for the coffee to arrive.   Franck was quickly forgiven.  I was too busy enjoying the desserts that I forgot to even order my own cup of coffee while the rest of the girls in my party were served theirs.  

So you see, a customer could be so easily pleased if only one thing...just one thing..could be gotten right.  In My Awesome Cafe's case, there were two. One was the awesome desserts, the other was the awesome attitude of its owner Franck who managed to explain the menu items,  engaged the customers, took their orders and cleared the tables even when faced with the mounting pressure of his kitchen staff not turning around the food service fast enough and irate customers who just did not have the time to wait for a salad.

I am sure the café will soon creep back into my list of favorite chill-out places to go again.   I promptly chided myself for expecting perfection when I was there for awesomeness.  Perhaps, I needed to learn to separate the two.

When I am braver and calmer still, I will head back there for lunch to give its signature Awesome Salad another chance too.

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a 44 year old mother of one, who spreads her time between her day job as a marketing professional at a financial institution, her hobby as a certified professional tarot reader, numerologist and astrologer, and her family which includes a 20 year old son and 3 dogs with personality disorders.  She's married to a Scot who has been affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" and prays that he does not find out that the term when translated, has labeled him as a "Ginger Head".   Together, we create a home made up with more nuts than a fruitcake but filled with plenty of love.  Her other blog can be found at http://sungoddesstarot.blogspot.com

My Awesome Cafe's logo and vision

Sex On A Plate: Photo taken by Chia Seow Wee

The Ash Family's Culinary Adventures

Domestic Bliss

David and I had been enjoying a little semblance of domestic bliss in the past couple of weeks.  No, we were not attempting to make babies, to the relief of Joel.  We had been busy in the kitchen, exploring our inner Gordon Ramsay and Nigella Lawson. We got reacquainted with our kitchen appliances and utensils again.  Previously, we bonded only with the refrigerator when David peered into it 173 times a day to look for food.  Even the blender was no longer a tool solely used to fuel our evenings with exotic cocktails.  We have been baking breads, scones, cupcakes, cookies, whipping up jams, chutney, spreads and experimenting with different types of bruschetta toppings and canapés.

That’s not all!  I have also been channeling both my favourite food writer, Nigel Slater of BBC's famed Simple Cooking program as well as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of the River Cottage series by growing my own herbs and vegetables.  I have been using them in my cooking by getting  recipe tips from Nigel on Tweeter too.  So far, I have got an array of herbs and vegetables growing by my window sill like rosemary, thyme, basil, mint, chilies, celery, bak choy and water convolvulus.  The list may be expanded soon to include oregano and chives.  Nigel made a suggestion about sprinkling lavender flowers on roasted tomatoes and cheese on toast.  I would probably need to grow a pot of lavender soon.

Anyway, I did promise some of my friends, a couple of recipes from the Ash Family’s culinary adventures, so here they are:


Spiced Pineapple Compote

Ingredients:

·                     2 pineapples - peeled and grated (do not use a blender)

·                     1 cup water  - scented with juice of 2 oranges and a tablespoon of orange zest)

·                     cup brown sugar

·                     sticks cinnamon , 2 star anise and 4 cloves

Directions:
1. After grating the pineapple, put the pineapple, water, juice, zest and spices in a pot and cook over low to medium heat until the pineapple mixture is soft.  This takes about half an hour with intermittent stirring.
2. Stir the sugar into the pineapple mixture and continue cooking till the mixture thickens over slightly higher heat for another half an hour. Once the mixture has thickened, leave to cool in pot. 
3. When sufficiently cooled, spoon the compote into sterilized jars with tight fitting lid and store in the refrigerator.

Raisin Scones

Ingredients:

·                     2 cups Self-raising flour

·                     2 tablespoons brown sugar

·                     1 teaspoon baking soda

·                     1/2 cup butter

·                     1 cup raisins

·                     1/2 cup buttermilk

·                     1 egg white beaten

Directions:
1. Combine, flour, baking soda, and sugar in a bowl
2. Rub in butter till mixture resembles coarse crumbs, then fold in buttermilk and raisins.
3. Knead mixture on floured surface, then shape them into circles and flatten slightly.
4. Brush the top of each scone with the egg white and then bake it in pre-heated oven at 200 degrees for 20 minutes.

David and I really enjoyed tottering about in our kitchen and our little herb garden like a couple of geriatrics in a wee cottage. I guessed this was another outcome of that pre-empty nester syndrome we had been experiencing with Joel spending a lot more time out with his friends.  Our housekeeper Evelyn has not quite bought into our recent spate of culinary adventures yet as she had to deal with the massive cleaning up afterwards.  I had to force her to sit and watch Heston Blumenthal on TV in the hope that she could feel thankful that we had not attempted to stuff and roast a pig on a spit right in the middle of her pristine kitchen or attempt to recreate a menu from Medieval Europe using Bailey as yet.


About the writer:

The writer of this blog post is a 43 year old mother of one, who spreads her time between her day job as a marketeer at a financial institution, her hobby as a certified professional tarot reader and numerologist, and her family which includes a 19 year old son.  She's married to a Scot who has been affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" and prays that he does not find out that the term when translated, has labeled him as a "Ginger Head".