The first week back at uni is always the busiest week on campus — there are always so many more people on campus than you’d gotten used to over the years. I imagine it’s everyone turning a new leaf, resolving to turn up to every class. Of course, that resolve breaks by Week 4, and the campus is at comfortable capacity again.

But, some things don’t die down. For the 4.5 years I’ve considered studying and studied art theory¹, 90% of people asking me what I want to study always follow with, “What’s art theory?”.

This is my opportunity to enlighten you.

But 1st — why do people ask me this question?

1. Art theory is an obscure degree. There are ~60 art theory students for every year level.
2. Art theory is taught on a separate campus for art students at COFA, away from main.
3. If #1 and #2 weren’t obscure enough, I don’t even think 1% of the undergraduate law school chooses to do the second degree of their combined degree in art theory.

2nd, what’s art theory? According to COFA, art theory is the study of the history and theory of art and design. Don’t you love how it gives prospective students a circular definition? More pointedly though, I study aesthetics, i.e. the nature of beauty, art, and taste. We study questions like What is ‘art’?, What should we judge when we judge art?, What should art be like?, and What is the value of art? Simple enough, yes?

But! There’s a 3rd. After I’ve explained, 80% of people will still assume –

1. I’m majoring in art theory in a B Arts. I’m not. It’s a B Art Theory.
2. I create or make art for the degree and ask to see examples. I don’t.

I don’t really mind people asking, though. I do what I do!

What’s the one thing in your life that you have to keep explaining to people?

1. Yes, I considered a B Art Theory/B Architecture, too! But they axed the combination.

After a month of unusually frequent updates, I’ve been comparatively MIA this past fortnight. Thing is, my summer is over and classes start Monday. What does that have to do with my being MIA? You see, I’ve been trying to catch up on all the books I wanted to read, movies I wanted to watch, drawings I wanted to fill my Moleskine with, and recipes I wanted to try. In short, I’ve been procrastinating all summer, and now that summer’s ending, I’ve been trying to get these things done. Yes, I procrastinate all year round, okay?

Cocoa brownies were on the list recipes to try. Usually, I’m skeptical about recipes that use cocoa as their sole source of chocolate — they always seem like the easy way out. We’ve always had cocoa sitting in our pantry for as long as I remember — cocoa has a long shelf life and it’s cheap compared to the bars of chocolate that decadent chocolate goodies demand. Cocoa never seemed to make great cakes — they were always dry and didn’t taste like real chocolate cake. It never satisfied the rich and fudge-like vision I have for brownies.

But when I came across the best cocoa brownies, even the skeptic in me had to try. The recipe only used cocoa powder, yet, they are delightfully chewy, rich, and fudge-like. They do their name complete justice! In fact, they smelled and looked so good coming out of the oven that BBF and I didn’t even wait for it to cool, before cutting off a corner to nibble. If tasting good wasn’t enough, they’re ridiculously easy to make, and don’t require an entire kitchen bench worth of kitchenware¹ — we used one bowl!

With these slabs of heaven, I don’t care that cafes ask for $6 to $8 for a not-so-generous slab!

How do you like your brownies?

1. Unlike the tiramisu cake I made a few months ago.

I had every intention of trying okonomiyaki last week. In fact, SBG and I had looked up places on the Internet that served okonomiyaki the evening before. We also walked around to a few restaurants, but it seemed that okonomiyaki is something served for dinner, not lunch. So, after giving up our pursuit, we ate at a restaurant we’d been to a few times before, Yumei.¹

Generally, most Japanese restaurants serve average sushi. There’s never anything wrong with it — after all, it’s just short grain rice, with rice vinegar, sugar, and salt coupled with a typically unseasoned filling — but it’s a challenge to find sushi that stands out. In amazing sushi, the rice and toppings are distinct and flavorful. It makes you stop to think, ‘Wow!’ .

I think it’s common knowledge that the better the sushi, the more expensive. Any restaurant serving reasonably priced sushi that tastes better than average is promoted to my mental List of Favorite Restaurants. Yumei is an average restaurant serving average sushi.

But! I’m only particularly fussy about one thing about sushi: it has to be Japanese. Why?

• Western sushi — California rolls and dynamite rolls² for example — does not appeal to me. I understand that westerners are squeamish about raw fish, but the crabstick and canned tuna replacements just taste weird in sushi.
• Korean sushi — gimbap³ — also does not appeal to me. Fish cake, crabstick, spinach, carrots, and pickled radish? They make something simple taste far too complicated. I love the roasted seaweed they wrap around gimbap, though!

If I had to eat one culture’s cuisine for the rest of my life, it’d probably be Japanese

Do you like sushi? If so, how do you like your sushi?

1. In Capitol, Chinatown
2. California roll consists of avocado, imitation crabstick, and cucumber. Dynamite roll includes yellowtail, and fillings such as bean sprouts, carrots, chilli and spicy mayonnaise.
3. A derivation of Japanese sushi

Earlier this year, I made it one of my goals in my billionth attempt at the 101 in 1000 project to try out one new food every month. I’m a creature of habit and eat the same item for months — it used to be sushi, now it’s udon. So, the goal is to diversify my eating habits by finding 33 new foods in 1000 days. Now, in order to help me, I’ve come up with 10 –

01: Okonomiyaki - Japanese savory pancake.
I first came across this at the Sydney Food Festival Night Markets last year but didn’t get to try any. But it looks so tasty! And the Japanese tend to know how to make their food.

02: Korean BBQ - method of grilling meats at diner’s table.
I see one everywhere I go — I used to go past one every day of high school, and now at the bus stop at the train station, there’s one right across the road!

03: Hard-shell Tacos
I’m curious: how do you eat these things? I mean, my mouth isn’t that big, and even if it were, wouldn’t the innards just spill out of the shell?

04: Deep-fried Mars Bar - an ordinary Mars Bar fried in batter.
Did you know they originated in Scotland? I’m not convinced they’d taste great or even better, but I do like Mars Bars by themselves so they can’t be that bad, right?

05: Monaka — Japanese sweet made of red bean filling sandwiched between thin crisp wafers
They remind me of ice cream sandwiches, but not. What really interests me is that the wafers are made of mochi — I’d always thought of mochi having a soft, bouncy consistency.

06: Wasabi Gelato
A gelato outlet in the City¹ used to offer wasabi² flavored gelato. My friends and I dared each other to try it but never got around to it!

07: Coca-cola Chicken Wings
Apparently, marinating chicken wings in Coca-cola is a common dish in Hong Kong, and yet I’ve never encountered it on the many times I’ve visited or in Chinese restaurants in Australia.

08: Pate — spreadable paste made from fattened goose liver.
Know this: I detest eating liver — its firm looking but mushy texture gives me the chills. But I’ve heard very good things about pate, so I’m willing to try it.

09: Dürüm — a Turkish wrap filled with kebab ingredients.
This one’s in honor of BBF who’s tried making me eat one for two years. I refused the first time, and have refused him since, simply because it’s become habit for him to bring it up, only for me to turn it down. It might shock him when I don’t!

10: Escargot — cooked land snails.
What list is complete without escargot? I’m convinced that if I could forget the fact that they’re snails, and all their associated sliminess, I can probably quite enjoy them.

On a random but related note, who agrees that Vietnamese fish sauce smells like feet?³

What foods do you consider must-eats? What foods do you want to try?

1. Passionflower
2. A hot mustard-like spice made from Japanese horseradish
3. Not that it tastes like how I imagine feet to taste like, but the smell!

1. Stuff that’s too unimportant — I ate raisin toast with butter for breakfast
2. Stuff that’s too important –

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out.
– Stephen King, Different Seasons (1982)

That is the reason why serious attempts at love poems and letters come off as unromantic and make me want to hurl.¹ That is also partly why I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. And before you jump to the conclusion that she must be one single and bitter girl,² I’ll spare you the embarrassment: I am not single; I am most happily in a relationship. Got that?

For me, whether platonic or no,³ love is limitless; it sees no limit to its depth and scope. It is conditional, but it is limitless. Yes, even a parent’s love for their biological child is conditional. It is only that the love of parent for their child allows more room for inconsistency and incompatibility than the romantic love between two individuals that relies on each person not necessarily remaining who they are, but changing in a still compatible manner.

So, because I view love as limitless, mere words cannot quantify or qualify love. They will never do love justice. You can try, but unless you’re a phenomenally amazing writer, it’s going to simplify, and even trivialize, something so precious and beautiful to a tiny fraction of what it is. The words always end up more hollow and empty than you intended.

Just tell me I love you often, but without quantification or qualification — the depth and scope of that love, I can gather by being with you, by how you treat me. If you want to give me gifts, skip the ‘roses and chocolates’.⁴ Give me something that harks back to a happy moment we shared. An inside joke, perhaps.⁵ Love should be spontaneous, so surprise me! But not on Valentine’s Day, that’s traditional, i.e. predictable.

I’m not traditional; I don’t follow traditions just because. I need a reason.

But to turn this entry on its head, this is about as true as anything said about love can get:

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

What is love to you?

1. If you want to write me one, it must be satirical.
2. As that is what happened last time I shunned some tradition related to love!
3. I feel I always have to clarify this because so many people assume love = romantic.
4. I love chocolate, but not when society tells you to give it to me!
5. On that note, never play Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing to me. It’s been ruined.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, try this: take any ordinary object at hand — a pen, a mug, a pencil, a button, a strand of hair. Make your choice an object with a presence you’re familiar with, and have always called by the same word. Now, as you stare at the object, repeat its name: ‘mug’, ‘mug’, ‘mug’, ‘mug’, ‘mug’, ‘mug’, ‘mug’. Repeat the word until the familiar word detaches itself from what it represents, i.e. a large cup. A few seconds later, you find yourself repeating absurd sounds that have no meaning.

You can replicate the same sensation by staring at the word, or by writing it out repeatedly. It’s a strange sensation to have always known a large cup to be a mug, and yet to have to ask yourself “Is that really a mug? Is that even how you spell mug? What’s even a mug?”¹  The word ‘mug’ ceases to denote or indicate anything and becomes formless.  Meaning dissipates.

The extreme fragility that links words and objects amazes me.  As soon as we stare at the word longer than we should, express it more than we should, or even think about it more than we should, the link becomes twisted and breaks.  The word becomes empty, but the object!  The object becomes more present somehow — denser — once it’s escaped those recognizable syllables.  We become more acutely aware of the existence of this ordinary and familiar object.

Have you ever paid a word so much attention that it doesn’t seem real anymore?

1. It’s relatable to René Magritte’s Interpretation of Dreams for the artsy people who read.

If I asked you when was the last time you had rain that poured down for more than 10 minutes, I probably wouldn’t get very interesting answers. Am I right?

For the longest time, when it rained in Sydney, it only lasted five minutes before it moved on. If you were cooped up inside, you’d hardly believe it’d rained — everything’s dry by the time you step outside. Surely, it doesn’t rain so rarely?

But no, the last time rain came down in sheets for longer than five minutes was also the last time I was caught in it. A bunch of my friends and I were at the local shopping mall getting dinner, and by the time we needed to walk back to school, the rain was so crazy we all got soaked to the skin. It was fun. But that was during high school — some 4+ years ago!

So, when it started to rain last week, I was thinking, “It’s going to stop, it always does.” Yet, it didn’t — not for at least 30 minutes before we had another downpour after a 10 minute break. When something like this happens, I’m left in that limbo where I’m almost afraid to jinx the rain gods by thinking, “Wow, it’s actually pouring like I hoped it would!” . But by some defying act, we’ve had bucket-loads of rain coming down for more than a week. It’s worth mentioning!

And what better way to spend my free time stuck inside than with a good book and a mug of hot Turkish apple tea? There’s something soothing and homely about curling up in bed and reading a book deep into the night (or morning) while the rain patters on the window. It rather mitigates the magnified awareness we have of being alone that we often feel at night when everyone has gone to sleep, and we can’t see anything beyond the space we’re occupying.

Now, I’ve jinxed the rain gods by writing this post.¹ But there’s such a thing as too much rain!

How do you like to spend your rainy days best?

1. ETA: It’s sunny and the sky’s blue again. What’d I say?

I’ve been blogging at somewhere or another for around 8 years, and I’ve never ventured too far from that crafted persona. But! Here are five honest reasons you’d hate me, not quirky or adorable, but genuine reasons you’d hate me if you knew about them –

001: I ignore every-one/thing that I find stupid and/or ignorant. I cannot even pretend that what you say or do matters to me if you are shown the obvious truth, e.g. the world is round, and still choose to pursue that which is proven to be false, e.g. the world is flat. Also, if you give me a suggestion, and I ignore it, it’s not because I didn’t consider it — it’s because I did consider it and thought it did not work (though not always stupid).

002: I’m incredibly selfish with my time. I like to be alone. I like to spend a lot of my time doing my own stuff by myself. And even if I like you a lot, I may not reply to your text message, email or phone call immediately. I also may not want to see you all the time. People who don’t know me may think it’s because I don’t like them or that I’m angry or annoyed at them. But I’m not. I will make time for you within a reasonable time.

003: I think unfree labor isn’t completely bad. I think prisoners should be made prison laborers (the duration and task dependent upon the magnitude of their offense). It’s an efficient use of state resources, and a practical method for reforming their criminal ways. We pay millions in taxes for the upkeep of prisons. And for what? So prisoners can idle away their time. What better way to recompense the state¹ than its making productive use of your time? Being imprisoned does not teach criminals to not commit crimes if prison is not a harrowing experience. For the homeless, prison is heaven enough to re-offend!²

004: I hold grudges when you don’t apologize. If you throw a baseball and it hits me on the side of my head, and you don’t apologize 7 years ago, I will hold a grudge. If you break my craft project by prying the backing off to satisfy your curiosity for what’s underneath and pretend you didn’t incur the damage 8 years ago, I will hold it against you. However, anything you didn’t premeditate or that can’t be reasonably foreseen, I brush off.

005: I find it difficult to befriend ugly people. That isn’t to say I only befriend pretty people, or that my friends and I are particularly good looking, no, but rather that I find myself more readily wanting to befriend everyone but the ugly. Their personality may make a beautiful and engaging book, but if their cover is grotesque and vulgar, that brings down my interest (platonic or no) considerably. Yes, I am shallow, and I am a sucker for aesthetics.

Let’s be honest: what’s something about you that could make someone hate you?

1. As it is a crime against the state
2. Yes, I know this system is easily corruptible, and relies heavily on the citizens themselves, rather than the state, determining the laws by which they will be governed.

Do you find it a little strange that the color blue surrounds us, and yet it’s a color distinctly absent from our food?¹

You look outside on most days and find yourself immersed in blue — the sky, the ocean and the sea are all blue. If you look at satellite images, the color blue overwhelms our existence. Yet, unlike the similarly abundant color of green, we eat cannot eat it.

It’s rather mysterious. We need only open our fridge to be reminded that food exists in all colors — there’s the yellow butter, the red tomato, the orange carrot, the green lettuce, the purple eggplant, the white milk, the brown chocolate, and even the black licorice or black bean paste. All those colors are natural and immediately appetizing. Blue is inedible, it seems.

The only blue food exists in the form of candy or alcohol. You make berry blue jelly², and it’s the first thing that catches your eye when you open the fridge. I see blue curacao, but I’m almost certain the only reason I’m paying attention to it is its almost surreal blue color — and it’s artificial! Even blue icing on a cake screams of artificiality — there is nothing comfortable or easy about a blue cake.³

If you didn’t go out of your way, you could live your entire life without eating or drinking anything blue. And you wouldn’t be missing anything either!

Even if having blue blood symbolized royalty or the upper class, and that once in a blue moon referred to something that happens rarely, the same can be said about them — the royalty and blue moon exist, just as blue food exists, but they are artificial. The royalty are just humans like the rest of us, and the moon only appears blue when it’s shielded by dust.

How do you feel about blue food?

1. Also.  About the title: illusive or elusive?  They both make sense in the context of this post.
2. Jello, for Americans
3. I had a cake with blue icing once — it was in the shape of a UFO.

Two random thoughts that don’t deserve their own entry –

001: Whenever someone cuts me off while I’m talking, I cut them off mentally.  This is one of my horrible habits.  For example, if I’m having general day-to-day conversation, but the other person continues yakking on without acknowledging any response I’ve made to what they said or asked, I can no longer take the conversation seriously or provide input. I understand if you’re ranting, but they aren’t even remotely ranting — they just want a mirror.

My solution is to let them continue their narcissistic “ME ME ME, it’s all about ME” fest by appearing to listen, but not processing what they’re saying, and retreating into my own world.

How do you deal with conversations that are really just huge “ME ME ME” fests?

002: Has anyone noticed that since Facebook revamped its privacy settings, that every move you make is published on the Live Feed?  Even if prior to their revamp, you had tweaked the settings so only certain things showed up, e.g. it publishes the groups you’ve joined, but not your change in relationship status? Now, everyone knows who you’ve just added as a friend (A and B are now friends), whose status you just commented on (A just commented on B’s status), and just what you wrote on whose wall.¹ All by default, with no user-defined preset.

I wasn’t even an avid Facebook user before (people ask me if I still use Facebook all the time), but now I’m even less into it!  Their new ‘privacy’ settings that were meant to give its users more control only take stalking to a whole new level.

What do you think of Facebook’s new privacy settings?

1. I know you can delete each item by removing each manually from your profile page, but that’s tedious.