The Actual New Year

I the spirit of the annual shift, I'd like to share about the second most wonderful time of the year -- the new year. A few years ago, I realized that there are actually more than one new years in 365.25 days. One is the first day of the calendar year, and the other is each person's own new year, the birthday. The planet Earth's new year and mine actually happen in only a 24-day difference. Such a short period.

And so, in a lame effort to "discreetly" make known my wishlist, I blog thee:

The Ideas for an ldeal Birthday Gift for Conan

WAIT!! Before you close the window due to your non-interest in gifting me any of these, at least read through it just so you could know me better. More than a list of I wants, it's actually my way of putting out myself in the universe and saying, "Hey, I'm interested in these things. How about you?" So please do read on... and even feel free to comment at the bottom. : )

This (planet Earth) year has started quite fruitful for me. Plans have gone a-churning and my life has gone a-moving. It hasn't been like the past year's beginning. So I think I'll end this rhyming, 'coz I'm totally blowing it. Haha. Recent events have inspired this list, and so here it goes:

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1.A... Driving lessons: I've been praying for God for a car to go about with my business. It's been impossible to make bulk deliveries when riding a commute. But although I don't own one yet and I'm believing I'd own one on or before the 2nd quarter of the planet Earth year, I reckon I'd have to take the first step to owning a car: LEARN HOW TO DRIVE properly... and then get a license. I accept personal lessons from anyone or a gift certificate consumable as driving lessons from any reputable driving school in Metro Manila.

1.B... A good car care and repair book. When I get my car this year, I'm sure it's gonna suffer a lot from the nube that's been sweating balls and trying his best not to hit every lamp post along the street. So aside from the fact that I'd like to see my car live at least another 10 or 15 years, I think it's cool for a guy to know how to maintain and/or fix his car when it breaks down in the middle of a road trip, don't you think?

2... Strengths Finder 2.0. I just wanna take the test. They say it's gonna help others a lot. I know your eyebrows just looked at each other now or at least one of them stood higher than the other after the two sentences that didn't seem to connect. You see, at the beginning of this year, I've prayed for God to help me be a better person towards others. Somehow,  I've gotten feedback that people "fear me" or that I'm a snob. I'd say I disagree but hey, it wasn't just one person who said it, and I commend them to have the intestines to tell that to me even if they "fear me" (it must be the sarcasm). I didn't feel comfortable hearing that but I knew I had to do something about it. Strengths Finder 2.0 (allegedly) has a way of finding out your strengths not just so you could crown yourself with a pat on the back but also to help others via your strengths. Now that, I think, would make me a better person towards others.

3... Any food book that is above (or almost) PHP 1,000. Don't get me wrong. I'm not after the price. The price is simply a gauge for the quality of the book. If you noticed, I didn't say cookbook lest you misunderstand that I seek for recipes. When I  mentioned food books, I meant books that answer the why's of the kitchen rather than the what's. A good example is the Modernist Cuisine by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet. They explain why your burger has to be cooked this way, what adding this does to that, and all that. It's USD 600 by the way. So no, don't buy me that. But if you find it in your heart to do so, I pray that God will bless you more. Hehehe. With that, I'd just recommend Ideas in Food by Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot; Working the Plate by Christopher Styler and David Lazarus; Alinea by Grant Acahtz; and On the Line by Eric Ripert... read up!! And for all these books, an e-book reader would be nice too.

4... Kitchen tools and equipment. For any time of the year, occasion or no occasion, these would make an excellent gift for me. If I may, I'd also like to formally announce that we are officially in the planning stages of a concept food shop. As early as now, we are trying to build our shop, one measuring spoon at a time. So we'd really appreciate any peeler, wire whisk, ladle, silicone spatula, Pyrex measuring cup, knife, chopping board, mortar and pestle, cookie sheet, stew pot, baking pan, frying pan, sauce pan, cast iron pan, pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, hand-held blender, stand blender, electric mixer, food processor,  bread toaster, oven toaster, microwave oven, gas/electric oven, gas burners, chiller, freezer, sous vide machine, an entire kitchen if you would like to, or as simple as an apron, dish towel, and good quality mittens. Those... would... be... great.

5... Meatballs. I'm such a sucker for them. If I were a mighty African tiger, meatballs would shrink me into a kitten and a ball of... well... meat. Haha!

I hope you learned a little more about me today. This is one side of the dodecahedron that I am. This new year is has become very personal to me. Not in a selfish angle but in a way where I think I'm thinking less about myself and thinking more of the people surrounding me. I'm starting to choose a direction for my life (yes, I've been fooling around all these years). While around friends and family, I'd like to think that it's time for me to build something for my future. And although I'm not in a relationship right now, I'd like to be ready when my heart finally tells me that it's time. Meatballs and gooeyness. Told ya I was a dodecahedron.

The Guilty Pleasure

Image from here

After culinary school, I totally realized how much of a big deal it is when food is handled well or not. Well handled food deserves "respect" for the service and badly handled food deserves otherwise. Respect for the skill of someone handling your food can be awarded in different forms. One form could probably be a personal commendation to the chef, another can also be a recommendation to other diners, and of course, the most basic would be the willingness to pay (no matter how costly) for the superb service and for taking time to perfect and master excellent food handling. But before this paragraph turns into a snooty snooze fest, let's cut to the chase.

Image from here

Let's just put it this way: lately I've been exposing myself to food that's properly cooked (by someone else) and am willing to pay for it, even at a price. However, even as a budding culinarian (yes, aside from being a newbie trying-hard writer), there are just some things I'm used to, and they do come cheap. By things, I mean food; by used to, I mean try my best to have them regularly; but by cheap, I don't mean handled really bad. After all the snoot fest I've been training my palate to get used to, I regularly return to my culinary guilty pleasure -- Chinese Takeout.




There is something about the Chinese cuisine that I feel is superior over a lot of others (especially Western). While others impress themselves as posh and pinkie-up snootiness, Chinese cuisine (and a bunch of Asian cuisines, for that matter have) has a regal sophistication and oriental respect to ingredients, at some point, even a science to it. And when you get all these properly made for a few bucks, packed in boxes and have them while you work or go to school or just for dinner with your fellow geeks, boy oh boy, have you hit the jackpot.

And so, while some may look down on Chinese takeout, I'm sorry but my amateurly sophisticated taste bids well to the properly made stir-fry in a paper bucket as gourmet that is worth every cent, no matter how few the cents I shell out. Haha! Now excuse me while I finish my left-over dumpling from last night's take out. :p

The Market Basket

I know, I know. I'm sooo sorry for having a follow-up blog this late. It's just that I seem to have ran out of brain cells to elaborate about ideas I believe in which I can actually summarize in three sentences. Three sentences ain't a blog, and it's too long to be a tweet or a status message. So I've finally given in to my comfort zone and one of my major fields of interest, which is incidentally yours too -- food.

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I've been professionally cooking for only two years now, but I've been an amateur garage-band type of cook since I was a young lad. You see, in the culinary world, there is a term called the market basket. It began somewhere in time when people went to the market every single morning to decide on the menu of the day. What ever is offered in the market today shall be what is on the menu later. It's a pretty challenging task for a chef to come up with different dishes everyday and also takes a set of highly skilled cooks to execute to the chef's standards a different dish each day. Not many restaurants or eateries are blessed with such a crew. The market basket is so challenging that it has evolved and established itself as a format for competitions in the culinary world, even used in reality shows like Top Chef.

The previous paragraph just shows how cluttered my thoughts are as a writer; starting with being a young lad and cutting to the market basket concept. So where does my ladhood go in the picture of this thing called the market basket? Here: I have been doing it since I was 6. As a child, my parents both worked the 8-hour jobs. When I got home from school for lunch, nobody would be there. My sister comes home in the late afternoon, and my mom & dad came home late at night. So for lunch, it was just me, the fridge (my market), the stove, and the TV; and for dinner, it was just me, the fridge, the stove, the TV, and my sister. You can guess what I did with these things. And you obviously know how I was (and still am) when I was a kid -- I was fat. In the Philippines, there is a term people use to joke about fat kids, "napabayaan sa kusina" roughly translated as "left alone in the kitchen". In my case, the joke was not half meant; it was entirely true! Thank God I never burnt our house down. My mom swears by this story (although I think I do remember parts of it), that once she and my dad were away for a seminar out of town for a few days. One morning, she calls home and I answer the phone, "Hello, mama?" Like I knew it was her who was calling. "How are you, my baby?" she says. "I'm awake." "Where's your sister?" "In bed. Asleep." "What about you? What are you doing?" "Cooking breakfast..."

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In the Philippines, traditional folk don't usually have toast nor pancakes nor bacon nor cereals and milk as proper breakfast. We have garlic fried rice, an assortment of scrambled eggs, omelet, and/or perfectly sunny over easy eggs, fried dried fish and/or smoked fish and/or beef/pork/chicken tapa/tocino and/or sweet sausages (called longganisa) that spit and spatter when you fry... plus an assortment of dips (called sawsawan, i.e., ketchup, fish sauce, spicy vinegar, bagoong) and tomato & leafy top salads with salted duck eggs. Sounds like a feast eh. Now, imagine a 6-year-old preparing such a table as this... for two -- me and my sleepy sister.

I don't mean to brag or toot my own horn. All I wanted to do was finally share one of the things I'm most fascinated about. Besides, any 6-year-old kid can do (probably even more than) what I did when I was a kid. Hello? Junior Master Chefs? If there's one thing I'm proud of though, it's that God gave me a set of parents who raised me well into being smart and independent as young as I was, even in the aspect of food preparation.

The Three-day Hump

Has anyone heard of it? The three day hump? I first heard about it back in college. I had to fast for seven days and to not eat for just a day was torture. Someone then told me that I just had to get over the first three days without giving in and I'd make it through the rest of it. I don't actually remember if it worked as that person said, but I sure hope it works this time.

http://www.markevanstech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/blogging.jpg

No, I'm not on a fast nor on a diet (I think I have to do one ASAP though). I need to get over the three-post hump. That is, keep up with blogging. As I've previously said, it even took me some time to begin a blog. I just realized, it would take much more to maintain one. Don't get me wrong. I'm not forcing my self to do this. I do want to do this. It's just that I seem to find excuses to postpone. There I go again, making an excuse by starting a sentence with "It's just that..." :p Maybe that's exactly the hump which I need to get over: the excuses hump. No more excuses for three succeeding posts (and beyond), although I really don't have exact days of when I will post a blog... How about I make sure to post at least three a week? I think that sounds like a plan. This being my second post for the week, I just have to post another to meet my quota... or maybe another after the next. We shall see. How about number of words? Do word counts... well... count? Such a newbie.

The Beginning

I live in a world of epic proportions of dynamism. I wake up to the sound of a city -- a tune, rain, wind, machine, voices, a song. I open my eyes to the past's vision, now in the flesh -- color, light, form, movement, technology, life. I get up to a life and decide to live for whom I owe it to -- the God, family, friends, acquaintances, and the rest who have life. It is a sin not to write about this.

How did I do? That first paragraph might have taken longer to think about and write than the rest of this entry. As this blog's subtitle says, this is an attempt to get into the blogging sphere as a newbie and a late bloomer.

I am Conan. I'm a 25-year-old communication graduate from the University of the Philippines. For someone who's been pretty much around people who read and write a lot (and again with a communication degree), I would think of myself as one who has more likely kept a blog or done something to keep the writing skill sharp and cutting through words and ideas. Unfortunately, after that very long sentence of cluttered ideas, it shows how rusty I am... and at this age. Ugh.

On this (really really late) night, the 11th of September 2011, let this be a manifesto for me to start a blog as a creative outlet of thoughts that hopefully make sense and do not offend; thoughts that do not corrupt; thoughts that uplift and do not destroy; thoughts that may rant at times but rant for betterment's sake; thoughts that hopefully go beyond my lifetime and probably even this world's. These thoughts, I put into words in the name of writing, so help me, God.

image c/o fanpop.com