My love/hate relationship. With cleaning.

There I was, perched on the next to top rung of the step ladder, holding on for dear life while I attempted to clean the ceiling fan in my house. In the best of circumstances, my balance isn’t very good. I can fall over while striking a yoga pose in the gym. In fact, my friend, SY, had just told me about her housemaid who was on the ladder cleaning her fan when she lost her balance and snapped off a blade. So, gritting my teeth and sweating buckets, I cleaned the fan and vowed to get a part-time maid in to help me with my chores.

Vadai you want?

Very often, after lunch with friends, I would cruise through a certain street in my old neighborhood. A food truck would be parked there, dispensing freshly fried Indian snack food that, to me, was ridiculously cheap and oh, so delicious, especially with a cup of coffee. I would see fancy cars stopping by, often with chauffeurs popping down to pick up some snacks for themselves (or their bosses). A few different snacks were on offer, but my favourite was the vadai (or vade), a spicy, savory dhall fritter.

Er, what does my pomelo salad have to do with Simone Biles?

I was peeling the pomelo I bought this morning, a football-sized, grapefruit-like fruit that’s encased in thick pith and skin. I was looking forward to having its juicy sweetness add some punch to the Thai salad I was making. As I cut deeper and deeper into the pith, I realized that most of the weight of the fruit was in the pith and what I was left with was a very light, orange-sized fruit that was sour and worse, dried up. “Damn,” I thought to myself. “What was I going to serve up now?” Then I remembered the interview Golden Girl Simone Biles just gave.

Etiquette shaming - a sign of the times?

My friend, K, recounted how she once absent-mindedly entered an elevator without looking, only to be told off by the man exiting. Not only did he admonish her for not letting people out of the elevator first before entering, but he did so in an expletive-laden rant. She was so stunned that she didn’t even have time to apologize or explain. I’m on the side of K on this one. She really didn’t mean to be rude but wasn’t even given the opportunity to apologize. And to people out there who say that the man had every right to tell her off, what happened to “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything”?

Mieng Kham - An explosion of flavors in one mouthful!

I love Thai food in all its variations - the spicy tom yums and curries, flavorful grilled meats and seafood, and noodles of course. What I like the most are Thai salads, a unique combination of different salad leaves and fruits, piquant herbs and often shredded meat as well.  The flavours all meld together in mouth-watering combinations that whet the appetite, leaving you craving for more. The appeal of Thai food can be summed up in a neat little package called Mieng Kham. You can just pop in your mouth for an explosion of favours - sweet, sour, spicy and bitter all at once!