Making Bread

I already bake my own baguette and hard crusted dinner roll. I was interested to learn about other varieties of bread. There are many courses available in cooking/baking schools, but most of them are heavy on time and fee. The friends tell me that baking courses do come up in the community clubs, and they are right.

I signed up for the first available one that was held at a cc near me. It was the first of a two-stage course, each consisting of 4 one-afternoon a-week classes.

I love everything about the course!
I love the instructor. She is of the same mold of teachers I encountered in my school years. Dedicated, sincere, knows her stuff, never loses control of the class.

I love the course mates. Some are experienced bakers who wanted to know more about this particular category of food. Others are novices for whom everything about cooking/baking is thick mystery and unfathomable magic.

I love listening to everyone's stories of goof-ups and victories in their attempts to bake their favourite bread.

For me, I picked up on the one critical step that has been missing from my bread making all this while - the technique of folding/kneading the dough for surface tension so that the bread will hold it's shape!

Sadly I will not be able to do Stage 2 of the bread course because of schedule conflict, but I will make myself free to sign up for their cake course in November. Heh!

His birthday with the friends

His birthday is quite some time away yet. But because someone is going to be away on the day, the friends went ahead and turned their dinner party into a birthday occasion for the man.

We did not expect this. We were getting together because it was the first weekend that all of us were going to be in one place. We negotiated who was to bring what, and ended up agreeing that the friends will take care of dessert. Which turned out to be a lovely homemade fresh orange cake with candy birthday decoration.

We have shared happy times in the past few years, we have plans for more to come. Their thoughtfulness on an occasion like this makes me grateful we have cultivated the friendship, and we have every wish to see it grow.

ps to the friend - PR baju cantek on both of them :)

A hafla

There are dance parties.

And then there are haflas where belly dancers come together to celebrate music and dance middle-eastern style, complete with lots of food, drinks and merriment.

It mattered not that this was a community of dancers I was meeting for the first time. The music was infectious, the dancers were riveting and soon I was one with them.

Really, there are dance parties, and then there are haflas.

The Sunday Market

It is quite the thing to do in the earlier part of Sunday. Maybe it is the only thing to do late on a Sunday morning after breakfast and before lunch. The Riverside Craft Market is, after all, just an easy 10 minute stroll from our hotel.

The market is small; my fascination at craft made by mass manufacturers from around the world fizzled after an hour.

But it was wonderful to see our friend at his weekend stall.

Brisbane - before I forget

Brisbane: the capital city of Queensland, population 2 million, third most populous city in Australia. 1 in 5 Brisbanite is foreign born.

The weather was perfect the 5 days I was there: clear blue cloudless skies the entire time. A sunshiny 20C during the day and a bracing 12C in the night.

There is nothing to dislike about the place - it is pleasant and more than adequately efficient for everybody.

But I didn't get any feel for the place. It is like vanilla. There is nothing to object to, but nothing memorable either. It is simply agreeable most of the time.
Before all memory of the place fades into oblivion, I will mention three restaurants which are almost worth remembering :

- Little Singapore on Charlotte, where the food almost made the cut as Singaporean.

- Mado where the bellydancer zipped in for the obligatory 20 minutes of weekend live entertainment and immediately left after her desultory version of a tabla solo.

- The Korean BBQ restaurant (the name has already been erased from my memory bank) where the smoke extractors are for show rather than function.

Brisbane. Vanilla. Except sometimes, one even manages to find fault with vanilla.