Bowling and The Small Miracle - The Beginning

If I have to stand up to give out testimony about miracle, this is what I want to talk about, small miracle in my simple life. Things that will bring out a smile and  lovely memories that I will remember for years to come. Small as they are, miracle is still a miracle and I am glad to be able to recount this story.

Long long time ago...

I was born to be a motoric moron. I had no talent whatsoever in sports and exercise. And this defect of mine has scarred me for life, as I became the object of bullying by my Physical Education teacher  in my school days.

You name every kind of sports that exist, and I sure could not do it. Basketball, volleyball, kasti, even 'bola bekel' just to name a few. In my junior high school, I was made to do the (basketball) lay-up shot many times, I just could not do it right. The memory still lingers until now, it's left (foot), right, left while shooting. But, I just could not do control my feet when I was running. Come on, you were running and you had to remember which one was your left foot and which one was your right foot, and control it just to shoot a ball? How stupid was that? And the stupid PE Teacher (sorry, but really, no appreciation for this kind of brainless teacher), made me and some other moronic girls do it over and over again, as if our life would depend on our ability to do lay-up shot.

I mean, sports and exercise, are done to make a person happier and healthier, right? It is supposed to create the sportsman out of a person, so that a person can learn to lose graciously. But what if that person just loses every time? Every single time? I mean, out of 10 lay up shot that I did was deemed wrong, even though the balls went straight to the basket. Wasn't that the point, to score the point by shooting the balls to the basket? I don't think the TV viewers will bother whether those NBA players moved their feet correctly while shooting the balls? But, no, my brainless teacher still gave me 0/10, because I did not do my left, right, left foot correctly!

And it happened over and over again, in every PE lesson. I was made such a total loser! And I just hated that feeling. So, I grew up  hating every kind of exercise and every kind of sports. (Yes, I am also lazy, but that is beside the point). I hate every sports on TV (sports are to be done, not watched),  I never supports anyone to become athlete (athletes have no brain, no brain).  I dared not join any basketball games, or volleyball games, as I refused to be the person who brought out the downfall of the team. I hate the feeling of being the loser.

And life passed on....

I got a job, I got married, I had my children, life has been good to me.
But, something happened. The department that I was in, decided to do bowling for the team building activity. And, by now, you should understand, with my predicament with all the things motoric, I was not particularly excited about the bowling thing.

With the ratio of 1:6 for woman: man in my company, all the ladies were tasked to form a team and find their own teammates. I went around my department, recruiting the guys! The conversation would be something like this:
Me: Hi, do you want to join my team? But I have to tell you, I am a very bad bowler, really really bad!
Guy 1: Oh, that's all right, I am also not a good bowler. We will do all right (he's in)
or
Guy 2: Well, I did bowling like more than 10 years ago, if you want to accept an old man who has not bowled for the last 10 years, I'll join your team (he's in)
or
Guy 3: Yes..I do play, but not too well I should say (he's in).

So, with a team of not so good players with different nationalities (two Australians, one Korean and one Chinese Canadian, and a lovely Indonesian lady as a team leader), I thought I would do all right. We would have fun losing out the game together! Never would I thought that these guys were bunch of liars. And these guys would never thought that I was being honest to them when I told them that I was such a bad bowler.

The guys that I recruited turned out to be such excellent bowlers. The old man who did not bowled for the last 10 years, was the bowling champion 10 years ago. The others were good bowlers too. My other members were not too pleased with my performance. But they could not voice it out in the name of team-work. Whenever I bowled, the ball would either go to the gutter or if it did not, then it will be moving very very slow, just like the slow motion that you see in drama, and would hit at most 2 pins. Most of the time, though, it would just go to the gutter.

The result of this game was as expected. We did not win the game, but the old man got the highest score for individual. In fact, our team still managed to get the second or third highest score and would do better if not for the low score contributed by me.
As for me, I resigned to the fact that I got "the bowler of the year" award. No guessing on what the award meant. My team members should be happy because 2 of its team members won a prize.

However, things were not that bad for me, as the award came with a prize: $50 shopping voucher. That was not quite good, considering the winner got $100 voucher. At least  I beat those that are average, and my tight competitor (second lowest scorer) looked at me, green with envy!

Morale of the story:
Either you are the first or you are the last, but never ever be an average, because mediocrity is not rewarded


(to be continued)

Picture can be found in google, and is not used for any financial gain whatsoever.

A thought about the big D

"Again?" that's what my maid said when I told her that I might come home late that day, as I needed to to for a funeral wake for a colleague's father-in-law. That's the second one in two weeks time. Yes, again! DEATH is part of life that is inevitable.

It's always so depressing to go for a funeral wake. We may not know the person, but we do feel for the family and relative left behind. And, like a routine, there will be talk on how it happens, and for the people who die because of certain illness, there will be talk about how the illness change the family life. Of course, there's always exceptional case, like my friend's grandmother who passed away peacefully in the age of 100, died in her sleep. But the last funeral that I attended, a 73-year-old who passed away because of lung cancer, was one of sad story. The cancer spread to the brain, the family did what they could, they sent him for radiotherapy, and that's after 1 year history of chemo. Part of his head was all black and burnt, but the saddest part of all, he suffered from memory loss. Not being able to remember the family, his reasons to staying alive. All of us kept quiet while we listened to my colleague telling us about the deceased last days, eerily quiet.

It got me thinking. How difficult it is to die with dignity. When we are sick, we automatically turn into a different person. We show the meanest, darkest side of us to the people around us, ironically, the people we love most. It is a trying time to the person and the family. We pity the patient. On the other hand, look at the family. Look at the spouse, the parents, the children, the siblings. The sickness changes their life terribly. Gone are the days when they can laugh freely without feeling guilty. What is left is just the feeling of helplessness as they watch their loved ones fade away. And sometimes, the big D seems like the great escape. How sad! How very sad.

Then again, I heard another sad story, of a colleague (that I never know of), passed away after he did his jogging. He was only 38 and is a father of 4. It happened so suddenly, so unexpected. He still had his half packet of peanuts on his office table. Who would have thought?

As someone commented to me later, "Life is just too short, too precious! So, don't go on diet, and enjoy the last piece of the cheesecake!"

Ok, maybe just enjoy half of it so that you can live longer

Annual Masterpiece

I realize that I first came up with this blog to document down all the baking trials ups and downs. Along the way, though, too many things that I have came up with went down unrecorded.

But really, the first quarter of 2010 did not come easy for me. Busy was an understatement. I was totally flat out. I just did not find time to do a lot of things. And it did not help that both my husband and I were traveling quite extensively too.

Therefore, it's so difficult to resist the temptation just to get a quick fix by buying a cake for my little girl for her birthday this month. I had to really persevere to come up with something for her. Although, I have to admit, during the process of coming up with the cake, I was wondering, why could not I just ordered something from a bakery.

But, it's the feeling that I could only do this for another few years, to celebrate her childhood years when she still appreciate "a cake made by my mommy!". So, if baking a cake will preserve our memories of each other, then I'll make an effort to do it.

So, that's it! A cake for our little princess' 5th birthday!

Just like anything else in my life, this cake was full of challenge. Despite marrying a civil engineer, I knew that building a castle cake was not as easy as it might look on youtube video. Especially if stacking was involved. A solid foundation must be built for the base cake to be able to support the second tier cake. My dear civil engineer husband rendered no help with building the cake. I cringed when I had to push the dowel (ehmm..it's a disposable chopstick, budget constraint) into the cake. I risked having carpal tunnel syndrome when I came up with hundreds of flowers and leaves for the decoration. I prayed so hard when I had to cover my 23 x 33 cm base cake with fondant. And, did I mention that it's my first time dealing with large scale fondant?

But, the final result was oh-so-worth-it! It may not be the best cake in the world, but I am so contented with myself when my daughter kissed me on the cheek, saying that she loved the cake. Or when my sweet-talker boy said, "It's not pretty, Ma! It's very very pretty!"

I may have seen the best of cakes! But to think that this is made by a non-pro, with budget constraint, limited fondant exposure, I think I was doing rather all right.

Another problem arose when we found out that storing was an issue! The humid weather killed the fondant. So, we actually turned on the air-con in the dining room, where we kept the cake, just to ensure that the fondant did not get wet and pliant due to the humidity.

So, there was the story of my annual masterpiece for my little girl. I was tempted to take all the pictures in the decorating process. But when I saw my fingers, all covered with fondant, I said to myself, "forget it!"