Dinner Parties

Now that work has finally come to an end, I've still been busy, albeit in a different way. Like always, my days in a week fill up with plans before Monday even begins, with errands to run for Sweden, ministry-related responsibilities, family dinners & coffee runs with friends (hence the picture of the terrible latte art above from Pies & Coffee). If it's not something, it's another. One thing I've found time to do though, is to host a bunch of dinner parties...!

The amount of work that goes into hosting dinner parties is tremendous, no doubt, but I enjoy every part of it. I love recipe-brainstorming the night before & grocery shopping in the morning, walking through empty aisles & fussing over the right cooking wine or freaking out over the fact that white plums aren't in season any more. I love the hours of preparation in the afternoon, & the kitchen becoming more & more of a frenzy as 7 o'clock draws near, when people start to stream in with drinks & dessert offerings & their beautiful cacophony of voices. I love it all. But why?

A big part of it definitely has to do with the fact that I simply love food & enjoy cooking, & it's undeniable that the feeling one gets from seeing other people enjoy the food you've cooked is great. & there's always that talk about the base human instinct to constantly feed people etc. At the end of the day though, it always boils down to the company. Great food & all its trimmings are well & good, but it always comes down to the people that embody the heart & soul of all dinner parties. It doesn't matter who comes: a close friend, an aunt, a whole horde of youths, or even a ragtag assortment of the above, & it really also doesn't matter if the food is fancy or not. I like the fact that lives can be shared over simple or elaborate fare, over a bowl of homemade pesto or over tender filet mignon with red wine dressing. It's the spirited debate at the antipasti course & the deep conversation over coffee & cake that all of us really enjoy. It's why I truly love dinner parties ;)



Now if only the dishes could magically wash themselves.






P.S. For helpful tips & recipes on how to host lovely dinner parties for any occasion, any of these books are brilliant:

1. How to Feed Your Friends with Relish by Joanna Weinberg - Incredibly practical & no nonsense.
2. Cucina of Le Marche by Fabio Trabocchi - Reinventing Italian cooking while keeping it simple.
3. The Vintage Tea Party Book by Angel Adoree - I love this book. Besides recipes, of course, it contains instructions on how to host the perfect tea/dinner party, from DIY decorations to sporting the right hairstyles. The recipes are slightly fancy & sometimes take a ridiculous amount of work, but if you've got all day, why not?

& just for good measure,

4. Where Shall We Go For Dinner? by Tamasin Day-Lewis - Currently reading & enjoying tremendously.

Glorious Ruins.

It's been a while & I reckon it's time for a regular, good old-fashioned update on what's been happening... I've always been a big list-maker, so here's how life has been in the past couple of weeks in five parts:



1. Old friends, food, drink & live music.  


Five more weeks till Sweden & I'm treasuring every moment I have with the people here before I leave. Lunches at Marche & dinners at Saveur, watching the Goodfellas at Timbre with Tiara & Kieran whilst getting drowsy from the multiple LIITs & of course, the inevitable late-night suppers. Have also been spending a lot of time at the movies (Great Expectations, Now You See Me, World War Z & hell, even that monsters university animation), which is great except that I keep falling asleep halfway. It's been lovely, nonetheless.

2. Church Camp 2013: Serpong, Indonesia.


Wow. I can honestly say that this has been the best church camp I have ever gone for in the sixteen (yes, sixteen!) years of being an NLCCian. This year we had a combined camp with one of our sister churches in Serpong, a small township outside Jakarta. Church camp is always refreshing & something I look forward to every two years but there was just something special about this years' camp, a combination of certain events & the relationships built with people that made it different & perhaps even ground-breaking.

The highlights:

Churros from a shop called Churreria. We went after these deep-fried treats & their range of chocolate dips like rabid dogs, rushing to the mega mall (right next to our hotel) every night after service to get some. In all honesty, they weren't that fantastic, but somehow sharing these warm, sugary snacks with a bunch of people whose company you genuinely enjoy made them taste so much better.

We also patronized a very hipster cafe called d'journal (or 'DJ ournal' by most of us, coined by Schist) that served pretty good cafe lattes & an assortment of teas every single day. Great hangout spot & plus, they didn't kick us out till 2am.

Had the privilege to be a part of the craziest team in church camp, proudly named 'LIGHTLY SALTED', an eclectic mix of odds & ends: teenagers, little kids & a bunch of parents. It's amazing how we managed to do the wacky night item & the cheer, thanks to our leaders (Alex & Bea) & frankly, because of how creative the parents were. Always ended up in stitches at the end of each rehearsal & enjoyed every moment together. What an awesome bunch of people!

This was the other youth team lead by Pat & Megan (my cool roomie since 2012 lol) that was so amazing, both in their cheer & name & wacky night item. Pity we didn't get to spend much time together though.

Another amazing part of church camp was the worship. I remember just feeling so overwhelmed & partially frustrated before camp at the thought of doing/leading worship for four services, worrying about practice times & music sheets & the biggest headache of all, setlists. Oh, dreaded setlists. It didn't help that my throat felt as raw as sandpaper &that I could barely string a sentence together without a hacking cough. Really could not see how church camp could be enjoyable with so much to do, but God really came through in a time of desperation & weariness & did something so powerful through us in the praise & worship sessions. It seems surreal to talk about it now, about how everything just came together & about how people abandoned themselves fully to worship despite the crackling sound system & power failures. & this was regardless of whether it was a full band or just a guitar & two voices leading. It just showed me how much God could move when we fully relied on Him! I'm beginning to understand what people mean when they say that excellence in worship comes not solely from our skills but from the trust that each musician had in each other, & the trust that a worship leader has on his or her team & vice versa. I just have to say that I'm part of an amazing, amazing team.

It's a crazy rant, I know! It was just cool to see the church, particularly our youth group, be so deep in worship night after night. Not caring about what another person was doing, not caring about how he or she looked like to another. It was as if a dam had broken, as if a wall had come down. What a privilege it was, to be a part of it all.

Besides worship & all the team stuff, we didn't do much else except hang out at DJ-ournal or each others' rooms, talking late into the night. The last night, after megs & I invited a bunch of meandering youth to our room, word unexpectedly got around that everyone was gathering at 1106 & by 1am, there were about twenty people squished in our tiny hotel room. It was a little insane, how we managed to order room service & play bridge & the classic 'animal' game despite how exhausted everyone was... Great great fun though.

Though it was mad tiring with all the music rehearsals & team rehearsals & planning for a birthday surprise (Happy birthday Anthea & Beatrice! Love you both.) while also attempting to squeeze in time with my family, I had a real blast. Church camp has just barely passed but I'm already eager for youth camp 2014 & what new things it'll bring!



3. Work.

After deliberating on work opportunities for a while, I ended up helping out at Oops Asia again this summer. It's always a privilege & joy to go back because everyone feels like family & we always have a good time together, whether if it's at a ministry event or jamming spontaneously in the studio or just laughing over something during lunch.

Particularly excited for our new media videos that we're currently experimenting with & shooting. I love little artsy ventures like these where it allows our team to get creative & create something uniquely 'ours'.

(P.S. what I wore to work sometime last week. Love the chill office vibe, something I often take for granted!)




4. Rest.

There isn't much time for this at all, but when there's an hour or so to spare, I love delving deep into old comforts: poetry, song-writing or best of all, afternoon naps. Can't wait for the couple of weeks just before I leave where I can have tons more of this!

Also, having tea in my lovely, new, firetruck-red tea set! Back story: Last tuesday after a gruelling day of work & before young adults lifenet, I met Andry alone for a quick talk at the coffeeshop because he said he had something 'urgent' to discuss with me. After the talk (which had made me slightly anxious the preceding days but turned out to be about nothing much at all), we walked over to church in time for lifenet to start. But when andry opened the door to the main sanctuary, I got a whole lot of poppers & noise & a rousing 'SURPRISE' thrown at me by a combination of youth & young adults...! What a crazy surprise. Turns out that lifenet was but a farce & that Jenn & Jordan etc had been planning a surprise 21st birthday party for me for a while. The rationale was that I would be in Sweden during my actual birthday & they couldn't celebrate it with me, but it was still totally absurd because my birthday wasn't for another six months. Still, it was really, really sweet (until Circle of Death happened... HAHA). I received a tea set & a double set of TWG teas from everyone, which shows how well they know me ;) I can't believe how fortunate I am to have such thoughtful & amazing friends, & I'm grateful for them everyday.

So thank you all, it was incredible.



5. Sunsets & stuff

Photos taken during our nature trip to chek jawa last Friday, which I had to wake up at 550am for. I surprised myself & a lot of other people simply by getting up at all & staggering out of the house. Interesting trip & good fellowship & took some nice photos, but it's going to take much more than this the next time I wake up before dawn.

That's about it for now. It's currently 6am & I've spent the past two & a half hours just putting this together... somehow, it just felt important to do so. I could go on, but it would be mad to continue & so ends the longest post ever.

Will write again soon, but for now, good night!

Within & WIthout

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” 

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

__________________________________________________________________

I recently caught up with a dear friend C, who is currently studying journalism & English literature in the dreamy city of Paris. We talked like how old friends often do: naturally & unabashedly & sometimes absent-mindedly & so it was shocking when she suddenly stopped in her tracks & scolded me for the way I blogged. C, one of the few loyal readers left of this forgotten online space, told me to blog about something concrete, & not to be so vague & nebulous (a word we are fond of throwing around lately) as I 'always' am. It was puzzling to me at first, but it's true. Many writers do feel an obligation to always write about a compelling issue, to publish a review on an art film or an electronic product, or to update his/her readers on a life-changing moment, but the thing is that life isn't always about great, big stories like that. Life isn't just made up of momentous events; it's made up of a million minuscule occurrences too.

So here are a few 'concrete' things that have been happening in mine lately. For starters, the entire office spent an entire Saturday celebrating Alarice's & Calvin's wedding union two weekends ago. What can I say? The chapel was resplendent, the ceremony was lovely & the dinner after was intimate & special. It was a wonderful way to spend an evening, getting drowsy with beer & sleep with friends under fairy lights & flags. I couldn't be happier for Rice, who's been like an older sister to me the past couple of years, at my workplace & elsewhere. The journey is only beginning & I'm so stoked to see how God uses this amazing couple in his kingdom :)

Have been meeting up with the girls (& a couple of dudes) from church often too, for meals or movies or just pure conversation. It started out with a strict sense of urgency, where the ending of sophomore year made me realise how quickly I would be leaving this country for exchange in Sweden & well, I really did want to meet everyone at least once before that. This quickly changed though, with teas turning into dinners & shopping trips turning into 4 hour-long talks at the nearest coffeehouse. I love spending time with these friends & mentors & younger youth. These are the people I've taken for granted for more than 15 years but I am certainly grateful for every one of them.

There are so many more things to write about. Books I've been reading & music I've been listening to. Art exhibitions & time spent with S. The Great Gatsby film. Secret tea sessions & bizarre socials. Work & my hilarious colleagues. I love writing at this time of the night, where the air is still & the world stops, if only for this twilight hour. It's as if God reserved this time, or created midnight at all to let people think & write. But for now the hour is late & that will all have to wait till next time.

P.S. I hope this is concrete enough for you, C. Love. 

A Spritely Sky

This post will be written in hash-tag form, because:

a) It's easier,
b) There's no better way to emulate the bursts of emotion one gets from seeing a brightly-lit sky, even if it is only for a few seconds.



#night #fireworks #fourthofjuly #spontaneous #colours #lights #people #families #cities #barbecue #awe #love #hands #America #red #white #gold #snapshots #noisebutthenalsoquiet #independenceday #humanity #joy #hope #tears #goodnights 

Love Me Do

'Love is giving of your best self even on a bad day. Love means sticking together. Love is not taking things personally even if someone else is in a bad mood. Love is going to get ice-cream. Love is staying even when they drive you crazy. Love isn't a result of circumstances, love is a choice. Love is speaking kindly under pressure. Love is family. Love is kissing. Love isn't finding a soulmate, it's being a soulmate.'

It may be a little late, but this is love, from the Girl With The Glasses Show.

Call it what you want!

CNY is coming to an end! There are a lot of essays to write. Some times I lie in bed at night and have mini panic attacks, just counting off the list of things I have to do. Then, the moment passes and I go back to reading the latest Marquez novella or scrolling through pages of 9gag. You know, just saving the panicking for future me.

Also, you know the dream where all your teeth fall out? I had that for the first time yesterday and it was tres frightening. It was terrible because in addition to the teeth falling out, my jaw broke into two and my dad refused to take me to the dentist. I don't know why he was a douchepacker in my dream. That is all!