What to do

Today, I didn’t bring my work home. Or rather, I forgot the external drive where I usually put all my content work in. Putting stuff that I’m currently doing on the drive allows me to work anywhere where I can obviously plug it in.

But today, I forgot to bring it home and I saunter into the house as if I was seeing and smelling it for the 1st time. I do take a sniff - it’s a small house with a kitchen upstairs and I never cook anything on a regular rotation that would allow the smell to stick around. So I don’t cook fish (too expensive anyway), and we always do Indian and Chinese to-go (what you make at home doesn’t taste the same). I’ve ridden in enough Uber Camrys smelling permanently of Chicken Tikka Masala, and been inside cozy $1.2m Auckland apartments reeking of cabbage and onions to realise, that unpleasant food smells are more offensive than clutter or tacky decor.

Today, there isn’t any discernible smell, not even from the butter-laden shortbread that I made last night on an impulse. But I did see the clutter in the spare bedroom that we -or rather I - converted into a ‘laundry room’ where freshly-laundered clothes are dumped into the bed for sorting, or for ironing later. I’ve started to sort out my sock and underwear drawer; all the ‘small’ sized Calvins are going, and no, I didn’t get fat. I had started doing steep, inclined treadmill runs the last couple of months, and suddenly, I could feel the pinching tightness of the fabric against my groin and my testicles. So now they’re on a pile on the bedroom floor and I’m thinking, what happens to old underwear? Should I take a photo of my buff hamstrings?

I find Lily on the bed and she automatically goes into begging mode. I realise that it’s actually past 5pm which is her feeding time. I feed her half a packet of her prescription food (she has a delicate tummy) and a packet of broth, which is $1.50 for about two tablespoons of a gelatinous liquid and a smidgen of meat or fish. She eats for about five minutes, walks away, and goes up to her tower in a manner that is meant to attract my attention and means, where’s my after-dinner treat? This is what she does every day. This is her routine.

I give her two of the Temptations and then I make myself a double espresso. I get a piece of the shortbread and settle myself down on my desk and wake up the Mac. I open Outlook to check on my emails. This is my routine.

Well, not doing this today. I put the Mac to sleep and now I’m completely and utterly at loss at what to do…

Work trip

The whole trip took a little over 7 hours. A flight to Christchurch, then a connecting flight to Hokitika and an hour and a half of driving through the interior of the West Coast.

And all the quiet landscapes; empty, brutally beautiful, remote.

I always picture myself driving through these (in a motorcycle of course which is the dream), or having a moment (wading, swimming in the shallows?) at some picturesque stream or river. But in that fantasy, I never stay, I always keep moving.

I’m never one to shy away from solitude, but there has to be something more alluring than quietude for me to consider staying just a little bit longer. But what would though, other than that feeling of wanting to be disconnected from a world, that is increasingly hurtling towards something dark? Can we truly disconnect? Can I really disconnect, me??

I think it’s an illusion to believe we can get away from it all, but after having spent the weekend in this little town, I think that you probably can - here in New Zealand anyway.

What I ate (over the long weekend)

  1. All Indian restaurants in Auckland seem to use the same recipe for their dishes which doesn’t really matter because 99% of the time, it’s good. It’s the kind of goodness that’s impossible to replicate. And don’t bother with pre-made mixes or sauces; they never come close to the real thing. And because the dishes seem identical wherever you buy them, I don’t quite remember where we get our favourite curries - mine is ALWAYS a lamb madras - except that it’s local. This is the one time I go all out on carbs - basmati rice and three garlic naan - because the sauce is so rich, that one serving (at less than $20 for the whole combo), lasts me THREE meals. People always joke about Filipinos eating a whole pot or rice with one cup of gravy and well it’s true. Very satisfying.

  2. There’s a Malaysian restaurant that serves crispy chicken skin, but theirs is battered which in my mind, probably doubles up the fat content. Occasionally, I save the skin from my chicken and cook them in one go, but in the oven at a low temp until they’re completely rendered. I just season it with sea salt and pepper; dipping sauce is Pinakurat vinegar.

  3. Moustache cookies.

  4. For Sam’s birthday dinner, we went to the most basic French restaurant there is Le Garde-Manger. But basic probably works because it has outlasted every other fancy French resto since opening in 2010. It probably defies trends, but the menu has changed very little; the same old classics are there with occasional specials written on the board. While not French, I ordered the fish special which was a perfectly cooked piece of snapper fillet. The accompanying side of ratatouille was so good, that I replicated it the next day. Just don’t make the mistake of having them make a cake (which turned out to be a tiny, dry forgettable chocolate cake) and order their desert crepes instead.

  5. For Sam’s birthday cake, we decided to make Ina Garten’s (in)famous Mocha Icebox cake.

Sunday

We finally took down the Christmas trees, took the mattress that Dylan slept on when he was here back to the garage, re-arranged the plants and cleaned up my desk. The holidays are officially over.

It’s too hot to work from home (we don’t have AC) even if the second floor has plenty of windows and two sliding doors that open to the deck- but what is 26 degrees compared to a summer’s day in Pangasinan or maybe Dubai??

And yet here I am, topless, sipping water every hour and feeling that heat lethargy where half of your brain feels like mush.

And yet I have fallen in love with summer, with sunshine. I read somewhere that a man needs vitamin D to boost testosterone; so maybe I had been feeling the ‘boost’. But I’m still wary of it. A decade ago, people I knew were laughing at my SPF 80 sunscreen but look who’s laughing now. The last three years, the sunscreening has expanded to include my neck and my hands.

They say there’s a hole in the ozone right over New Zealand, so even if a 31 degree day in the scheme of things isn’t really hot, we got it worse.

It’s a bitch to deep fry in the heat, but the easiest meat in the deep freeze to cook are boneless chicken thighs so fried-chicken it is. I have the recipe for ‘popcorn chicken’ down pat which is really all in the batter. I never used to have a measurement for it, hence, the inconsistency but now I do. The ratio of flour to tapioca starch (or cornstarch) should always be one to one with a teaspoon of baking powder. From there, I just make variations on the flavouring. I’ve always been partial to Chinese five-spice or plain salted- this is because I always eat it with rice and a buffalo-ranch style of coating doesn’t really suit.

We bought the viral KMart mini rice cooker and it’s perfect; I don’t eat any more than a cup of rice and it makes enough for dinner and for lunch the next day.

Today

Finally and literally got to the root of the problem as to why our 6-year old calathea plant was feeling the blues; her soil was water-logged (what looked like clumpy clay was mixed in her soil mix) and her roots had started to rot.

So we spent the better part of the afternoon splitting her in two, repotting two other indoor plants that I got as gifts as well as an olive tree that I got for myself as a New Year gift.

Tuesday

I had a consult today with my GP.

The horror stories you normally hear about the health-care system in New Zealand isn’t about insurance (the NZ government pays for health-care services) or lawsuits, but about a lack of doctors and long waiting lists. So you try (and pray) your damn hardest not to get sick, and that if you did, knock on wood that it’s just the common cold.

I went for a different matter - I’m fine by the way - and I was surprised that there was an immediate opening. My current doctor is old, like senior citizen old, just like my previous GP who I think, got sick on the job and was now probably and definitely retired (I hope) and enjoying sunny Brighton (in England) where he’s originally from. But old doctors are the best. They have a relaxed and cheerful demeanour even when they’re desperately trying to find you a good systolic reading using a manual blood pressure monitor.

Jaqueline - my current GP - is a tall and statuesque lady who occasionally lapses into citing current studies that she’s read about, or diagramming on paper, the relationship between enzymes and bodily organs. She also patiently listens to my attempt at self-diagnoses and neither contradicts nor reproaches me (I wasn’t wrong anyway, just saying).

She saw me at 9:50 when our appointment was at 9:30 and we wrapped up at 10:45, but I didn’t complain; the whole session was worth the $50 it cost (in New Zealand, this is relatively very high).

For dinner, I thought, why not a salad? And no - it had nothing to do with my doctor’s appointment - I was still having flashbacks of that salad I had at Brewd Hawt, and the realisation that we have been doing our dressings wrong.

I didn't have iceberg lettuce - and it’s really the ideal type of lettuce for this - but use whatever you have because the point is, you need to eat those goddamned salad leaves before they go off. I had curly lettuce which I washed, dried and roughly chopped up. For the dressing, it was mayo, hot sauce, mustard and miso with some EVOO.

Drizzled that over the lettuce, did a generous sprinkling of that bagel seasoning and just because I was feeling extra, grated some parmigiana reggiano on top. YUM.

PS: my cholesterol levels were amazing the doctor said and the figure did make me gasp (a 2.2). To think that for the last 6 months, I’ve been eating butter as if it were cheese. See? There are some small miracles there…