please and thank you

Please, and thank you.
That’s how Momma taught me to.
For what happened and wishes that haven’t,
please, and thank you.

From the day we were born, we were designed to ask, to demand, to take, to require. To get something to satisfy our comfort, to patch up the sense of lacking in our days. Giving wasn’t actually natural; we had to be taught on how to share our toys or cookies with our bench mates when we were kids, to surrender something out of what we have, to be willingly be separated from something out of our lives. And since it was more natural to take, we will more likely to demand something back after we give.

I’ve been learning about this law of give and take. I’ve pondered on the verse, “it is more blessed to give than to receive” from Acts 20:35b. When things around demanded something out of me, I often asked silently, “what have you got for me?”. And that’s when disappointment arises.

We demand more, making excuses that we can’t really give anything out if we don’t have anything to give in the first place. We expect things from everyone; from our parents, our families, our spouses, our friends, our community, our churches, our governments. Not necessarily material things, more than often we expect mental supports and loyalty, and love. Since nobody is perfect, more than often we all miss the mark. Expectations thwarted, and we simply chuck our ‘giving mode’ out of the window.

Disappointment suffocates. It hinders us to see the goods and highlights the faults in everything. It holds us from joy, it closes our ears from edifications. When things don’t go as expected, it’s hard not to be deflated. So what to do now?

Expect less, give more.

Simple, yet tough. There’s a huge challenge in Jesus’ message on giving, because He knew we need to learn everyday. We might be expecting, demanding lots of other things in life, but maybe, all that we need we have received. Right here, right now.

Please, and thank you. This “please” might not be about asking at all; it could be, for some of us, about letting things to happen, and we can still say, ‘thank you’.

I have hope that there comes the day when we will experience first-handedly on the joy of giving without having a return. Our God knows we need saving everyday, and He can only do that when we soften our hearts, leave our pride at the door, and receive from Him. We need to remember that God doesn’t demand perfection from us, yet He gives perfectly. How could we expect perfection from others when we are not perfect ourselves?

When we learn to give, and maybe, eventually, we find that even our imperfection in giving brings joy to others,  then we can understand the joy of giving. Until then, let’s learn to say, “please, and thank you”.

***********************************************************************************************
Dear Daddy, please, teach me, and thank You for everything. I’m humbled by Your love.

image courtesy of Three-Sixty Press from Keep Calm Gallery.

 

ohollandaise~

I woke up this morning with a list of things to do in my head. And I was determined to get them done by the end of today.

• Laundry. The full package; washing-hanging-ironing-folding.
• Bedsheets due to be changed.
• Search for custom-made bed frames and bedside tables for our bed.
• Some work on the wardrobe; the seem-to-never-end routine.
• Search for some stuff on the internet for Mom.
• Cooking.
• Continue with my reading on this Sacred Marriage book by Gary Thomas.

I know I sound like a housewife already, which I think I am now. Hmm. Hubby was in such high spirit this morning, since he’s got his new gear yesterday, he offered to do the first and second part of laundry before continuing his experiments with his camera. Too sweet 🙂

I attacked the dirty dishes first, wiped the kitchen counter, threw out the garbage and put a new lining for the bin while asking Andrew to take out the heavy ironing set from the laundry room. I was about to move ahead with ironing the huge pile of bedsheets when my eyes fell on the recipe books I bought from Woolworths a couple of days ago.

Women's Weekly - excellent for beginners

And I thought,

“hmm.. should I?”

Self-confessed bad multi-tasker, sometimes I take more on my plate than I can chew. Those cooking books are not even my idea, it was a suggestion. Last week, a friend recommended me to try cooking when I said I don’t cook. “One recipe every week”, she nodded at me. I resented the idea at first, because whenever I go to the kitchen, it’s always to produce something that is ready-made; I need to only add water, milk, or peel. Or reheat. I didn’t spend a year studying commercial cookery for nothing; I know what I am NOT capable of. But lately I am such a sucker for periodical challenges, so I decided another weekly challenge won’t hurt. And it’s just food, nothing can really happen, right?

I have flipped through the cooking books since I bought them, and I’ve got some pages dog-eared. Leaving my bed sheets and ironing board set up already by Andrew, I picked one recipe to start my cooking challenge; Cajun Chicken with Lime Hollandaise.

Cajun Chicken with Lime Hollandaise

I’ve got some chicken breasts in the fridge from last night’s cooking, and Cajun seasoning in the pantry,  so I only had to grill the chicken. Now, the sauce. They taught me how to make these sauces in school, but that was like, 8 years ago. And I’d never made them again since. But hey, you only have to follow the recipe, right? So I’ve collected all the ingredients out of the fridge, and started making them. Andrew came into the kitchen once in a while, teasing me, “aww you’re cooking!”, but he pretty much let me wrecked the kitchen.

Hollandaise sauce is basically a mixture of egg yolks, white wine vinegar, lemon/lime juice, peppercorn and melted butter. All you have to do is to whisk together the egg yolks, vinegar and juice, and continue beating over a double boiler until it’s thickened, then adding a steady stream of melted butter into the mixture to make it creamier.

And that was what I was trying to do, I swear. But OH why am I so surprised. First, the whisk that I used to beat the egg yolk mix kept slipping out of my hand/the bowl, and sent some egg yolk rain across the counter, hitting the stove and A’s beloved Nespresso machine (he didn’t know this, and I didn’t let him know, either, or he’d haul me out of the kitchen right away). Wiping the crime scene quickly, I continued with melting the butter, and beating the egg yolk on the double boiler. I kept beating and beating and beating, waiting for it to reach the saucy consistency. But nah, it just didn’t happen. “Maybe when the butter is in, it’ll get thicker”, so I poured in the melted butter, a steady stream as the recipe instructed. And yep, something started to change.

the ingredients. or the mess.

my attempted hollandaise sauce

I just knew something was wrong when I took the bowl off the boiler. O yes it was creamy and thickened. But the smell was far from any versions of hollandaise, or any sauce for that matters. It smelt of kue bolu, or sponge cake. Buttery, and egg-y. COOKED egg, to be exact. The boiler was too hot, apparently, and it was too late to save my attempted hollandaise sauce. 😦

Uhm. I typed in ‘hollandaise sauce’ on Google just now, and Masterchef website claimed that you DON’T have to put the mixture on the double boiler whatsoever for you to make hollandaise.  :(:(

Maybe I should’ve stick with what I am good at.

the therapeutic feeling in ironing

I hollered at hubby for him to fix some lunch from last night’s dinner, and we had lunch in peace. Well, I cooked the rice, he fixed the Kung Pao chicken. At least it tasted good. It was his cooking, by the way.

Oh, and he had me posing for his new gear all day. You gotta do what you gotta do, but it surely was a fun day 😀

I just need to gather more courage to actually attempt more cooking. God help me.

 

take me away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

take me away
away
from the cast of
your shadow
a longing grasp
engulf me
blindly in your
shadow I am
drown
and losing myself
in the bitterness
of your
sweet caress.

 

haiku: the bowl

Maybe I can be
the cereal,
she said,
Or no, maybe
the milk
or perhaps
the spoon?
I just want
you to start
your day
with me.
I
without hesitation
thought,
Then I am
the bowl
and I will
hold you
every single
morning.

-Tyler Knott Gregson-

 

look.

I’m looking
into the horizon
where dreams and hopes,
woven
and the warmth of
your hand
entwine in mine,
as we peruse together,
our wishes, our desires,
unlocking the secrets
of life. Our lives.

 

 

God loves me.

I’ve spent some time thinking about my personal happiness commandments, and the first question I asked myself was,

“What makes me happy?”.

I could think of some answers.

Having a good laugh with good friends.
‘Me time’; good book to read, painting my nails, writing.
Singing; it makes me happy most of the time.
Goofing around with my husband at home.
Snuggles with my mom, recalling old stories.
Snuggles with my husband after a long day.
Ice cream!

When I asked myself to think deeper, I feel happy and content when I can comfortably be myself, and nobody minds. When I feel secure that no one’s going to judge me or think differently about me when I am being myself. When my imperfections and everything else in me don’t give any reason for others to think twice but to love me nonetheless.

What makes me happy? Or happiest? It’s when I feel secure. Secure and content of what I have at this moment.

I did mention in the previous post that I’d have “Be Yuko” as my first commandment. But when I thought about it, it wasn’t completely true. Sometimes I wished I was somewhere else, or someone else, or I wished I have done more or differently than what I have done right now. Being myself sometimes disappoints me. And whenever this condemning thoughts of “you’re not doing enough, you should’ve done differently, you’re not good enough” started to take over my head, the only thing that will calm me down is the conviction that my God loves me no matter what.

How so? Because if He doesn’t love me, He wouldn’t even bother creating me in the first place. I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalms 139:14), and this is more than enough to calm my heart on any rainy days. I am secured in His love for me.

I’m not going to be naive and say that everything is okay. As a matter of fact, I know full well that life has its ups and downs. But whatever life may bring forth, I know in Whom I shall confide. When I don’t feel that my day deserves a smile, I want to remember that there’s one Being that loves me no matter what. And His love will never end for me.

This is my fundamental understanding about my life; rain or shine, God loves me. Good day, bad day, God loves me. And no one can take that away from me.

So, Happiness Commandment #1 is : God loves me. Simple, straight-forward, and very true!

😀

ps. here’s a blog I found when browsing about ‘what makes you happy?’. The tip is quite handy, too! and it’s got a short video of Joel Osteen talking about happiness.

 

quote : better to write..

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self

Cyril Connoly

 

Happiness Commandments : the prolog.

After laying down two big posts about happiness and a dare to change, I am enticed to have a go myself. There’s this urge to take the challenges, and to actually write some more, toning up my writing muscle (and my eyes’ muscles, since I tend to write till dawn).

so, Happiness Commandments.

The background story is the one of the blogs that I regularly visit nowadays; Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project. Every day Gretchen will have an article or a video that touches on the subject of happiness, to then be explored from different perspectives. From my mini manifesto about happiness, I am intrigued to come up with my own list of happiness commandments.

What I have in mind is, by having the list of things or suggestions on how to be happy, I will have to at least learn to know about myself. What makes me happy, what makes me sad, or annoyed, etc. Sometimes we have to be asked the right questions that in order to answer them, we’ve got to really think and open up who we really are. To be brave and be not ashamed of what matters to us and what doesn’t. And by committing to this list, hopefully, I will have an exciting journey of rediscovering myself and, fingers crossed, be a better person.

Gretchen, in her page on how to start your own happiness project, wrote that the first step is to write your own version of happiness commandments. These commandments can easily end up like a to-do-list, because we might identify where our problem is (e.g. I shall wash my plates right after I’m done with my food), and drop the pin like the ones on your GPS, and work excessively just on that one bit. We will end up with pages of lists if that’s how we’re doing it. We need to broaden up our target, and that one resolution may fall under a larger self-command, like “clean while you cook“, or “unclutter is cool”, for example. The process of constructing the commandments will take time, I’m sure, because I will have to identify what areas that I am more sensitive with compared to the others.

Anyway.

I don’t know why I’d need 400 words to start writing up my commandments. I guess I’m buying time, again, because I’m so NERVOUS!! *cold, sweaty palms*

Okay, my number one is pretty easy and straight-forward and it’s because first of all, I took it from Gretchen’s list. Hee.

Be Yuko.

As in, be myself. Easy, straight-forward, a tad too cliche perhaps, but at times proved to be a heck of a challenge.

You know what, I think I’m going to do what Gretchen’s done in her website. I’ll set up a widget somewhere on my blog site, list down my commandments, and link each of them to separate posts where I will explain myself why I choose to do or have that point in my list. Oh, and I also need to work out on naming the list. It’s gotta be catchy, you see. It’ll be easier to remember whenever I need some ‘help’ out there. So, my next post will be a “Be Yuko” post and why.

Alright! Enough for now. Have to get ready to go to church soon! We’ve got Om Djohan in the house tonight, for our Joint FA 😀

 

…

hhuuuuuuuuuuuuuyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

lesson : do not clean your keyboard when you’re about to write a new blog just because you need to buy some time to work up an opening paragraph.

xD

 

just being cheeky..

..but after squeezing my brain and milking all the buzzing ideas inside my head onto several posts for the past days, an old post from my early wordpress day came into mind.

Now that the red bowl has got a fairly good amount of turnover, I may or may not be confident enough to say that I can have some variations of rice dishes, just to see which one works and which doesn’t. Hainanese style? Mushroom risotto? Lamb briyani? Seafood paella?

Now I’m hungry.

This one red bowl is getting there. Steadily.