trois questions

1. what's the difference between a sign and a symbol?

2. who pushed humpty dumpty over the wall?

3. why didn't carnivores learn to eat vegetables?

而你是我的答案 最确定的答案
有了自己的天使 做什么都显得勇敢
顺着梦的沿岸 只有收获没有遗憾
被握着手心看的未来 永远蔚蓝

but somehow

at the start of this year i made the transitional challahs with tiffany, which contained some whole-wheat flour. today i used the recipe from my american book, which uses all-white flour. you see, challah is defined by the eggs, not the type of flour. (brioche however must be white bread, so whole-wheat brioches are an oxymoron.)
all the eggs and olive oil makes the dough a bright yellow, like a brioche dough sans the butter. is it the eggs that give the dough this gentle, waxy look?
this time i divided the dough into five portions to make a 5-braid challah. the strands were not tapered properly, so the ends of the loaf came out too fat.
before and after proofing. the egg wash gives it this glossy sheen that is so nice to look at. i like that, up-close, you can see lines in each strand of the braid. it's like the strands of gluten in the dough.
it feels as if the loaf is tightening up as it baked, as if the braids were being tensioned.
it turned out really huge, almost filling up the whole oven space, and it's so much bigger than my hand. i love it's dark golden brown shine. i think it truly is a bread for celebration.

challah!

63523

i suppose this XBW is making me fat, because i have no time nor energy to exercise at all, after all the long days outfield. but a warm chocolate cake and a new york cheesecake from bakerzin catalyses everything.

i think the live firing is - at the heart of it - a display of power. it represents a fundamental need to show off, to satisfy the male ego. but all in all, very exciting, very impressive. (the spectators just don't know what or how much work the whole show was built on.)

this week contained some very gentle rains, which cooped us up in the vehicle for quite some time. i slept, i dreamt, dreamt of running out of a wedding into gentle rains. the gentle rains also made the ground muddy, and to throw track on muddy ground is so very undesirable. not being able to help during the break track and assembly process is also very distressing.

this week has also been about missed opportunities. a rehearsal dragged late into the evening stopped me from getting to meet guohao. people have also been playing their music everywhere, including over the CVC: listening to 周杰伦 reminded me of weijie singing all those songs; and there was that 他不会是个好男人，也不会是个好情人 song that annjiat always kept singing.

somehow i'm beginning to lead this midnight office life, where i get down to real admin work only at night, and sometimes dragging into unearthly hours. just yesterday when we came back and were washing vehicles/cleaning arms, i had to go and do up an orbat chart at 330am.

and a surprising find: when i was shaking the oil off the dipsticks onto a wet road (from the gentle rains), i watched the droplets form rainbow spots all over. it was quite pretty, the way they blossomed.

i realised that maybe a very pretty, crescent, smiling moon may not be that rare after all, given that i've seen it a few times now. maybe i just didn't notice them in the past, which i very ironic in some way. it's like tom na h-iu all over again, if anyone remembers what tom na h-iu is. i guess now i get more time to look at a night sky.

i think i'm finally getting this blog back to the way it should be: more reflections, less food. now, will you explain 不能说的秘密 to me?

today, i proved de moivre's theorem by induction. on another note, look at this,

and tell me: what do you think the 'grey stuff' is? i think it's 芋泥.

get me the delivery

ah, the almost-one-month-old brioche dough that was sitting in the freezer was unveiled last night.
five balls growing. i wanted to make the smaller balls sandwich in between the big ones, and pop out over the top, so that there would still be some semblance of têtes. but in the end i couldn't hold it up together, so i let them lie zig-zag.
this brioche dough seems to give me bubbly surfaces, compared to the nigella brioches. so the crust is not smooth and shiny.
i think the loaf looks like a pound cake after being cut open. maybe a smaller tin, a taller loaf next time?

hydration/hydro-ration day

a day out with jinquan makes you think from the person, to the country, to the world, and to the brain in the vat. but really, my eyes are OPENED. and a random question about the number of tessellable and non-tessellable shapes yields an answer relating to cardinality.

so yes, the set containing positive integers is equally big as the set containing integers.

this early morning the moon was a crescent, a smile displaced from a star and a satellite. and after the evening rain, the sky became so clear that many stars managed to permeate through.

我始终带着你爱的微笑
一路上顺找我遗失的美好
不小心当泪滑过嘴角
就用你握过的手抹掉

在多的风景也从不停靠
只一心顺找我遗失的美好
有的人说不清哪里好
但就是谁都替代不了

the leopard fires!

bedford

it finally rained, albeit shortly, after so many days of sun and sun. while i was eating KFC for lunch just now, i looked at the people around me. the more i looked, the more i wanted to stop eating. to redeem myself, i didn't eat all the skin.

depardieu

this is an unsually long, pictureless, post. but that's because i feel like gushing right now.

yes, XBW is so super tiring and taxing, especially at a time where recruits are everywhere now, shouting left right left right, and commanders are constantly asking for nominal rolls and PARTICULARS and i'm asking for blood groups and handphone numbers and the office printer not working...

i suppose amongst all the hot sun, sand table exercises, rehearsals, BOSes, servicing and maintenance, i've learnt/seen a lot. now i know how they pump nitrogen, and i finally got my hands down to pumping the track tension. (still don't like grease.) today i helped in the pulling through of the cannon, though most of the time i was sitting on the barrel (which is a form of helping). i love the convoying most of all; i can drive at whatever speed i want, turn at my own decision, go up and down the hills, and drive on the side of the road that i choose.

this to-and-fro between camp and gedong is linking me to more people from my (near) past. there's joosiong, chienwei, yanho, jj, boonhui, benedict, lenny, ziyi... imagine all the muah chee, all the melon milk! and today sam took me on the motorbike ride: so scary, but so fun!

here is the song i keep listening to:

搜神記
容祖兒

當初膚淺 得你恩寵似升仙 天有眼
當真糊塗 未曾發覺我該俯瞰南極快沒有冰山
當初專心 等你燭光晚餐 從沒有認識蠟燭怎樣消散
當你的光環 暗過世間火柴 何用困在五指山

而神蹟失靈才知天大地大轉得快
夢幻的生涯無非拖手逛街 怪得誰
要敬拜你便沒視力漸觀世態

忘掉誰是你 記住我亦有自己見地
無論你幾高 身價亦低過青花瓷器
評核我自己 只顧投資於愛情
困在你小宇宙損失對大世界的好奇

回味誰是你 往日有甚麼品味
只要敢遠飛 亦能自創我的搜神記
磨練我自己 做人目光高過聚散分離
就憑你 相愛大不了提升演技當做戲

從前只懂情人的感動力量 最珍貴
未洞悉小巷大街偏地華麗 昂起頭
看見世界我也會有我的氣勢

忘掉誰是你 記住我亦有自己見地
無論你幾高 身價亦低過青花瓷器
評核我自己 只顧投資於愛情
困在你小宇宙損失對大世界的好奇

回味誰是你 往日有甚麼品味
只要敢遠飛 亦能自創我的搜神記
磨練我自己 做人目光高過聚散分離
就憑你 相愛大不了提升演技當做戲

拋開你先識去審美 往後我便有自
己見地無論愛幾高 身價亦低過青花瓷器
評核我自己 只顧投資於愛情
困在你小宇宙損失看大世界的福氣

回味誰是你 往日有甚麼品味
只要敢遠飛 亦能自創我的煙花記
仇視我自己 若然目光高過聚散分離
奉承你 因往日雙眼無珠不停放大你

想快樂不靠神蹟 才懂創世紀

omg the 夏日嬷嬷茶 trip is going to happen; i may actually finally be able to take a break from a time where recruits are everywhere now, shouting left right left right, and commanders are constantly asking for nominal rolls and PARTICULARS and i'm asking for blood groups and handphone numbers and the office printer not working...

sometimes things are just so coincidental, and yet so untimely. and whatever happened to dreams of the future, promises of korean strawberries and a strawberry-mascarpone tart?

the 1600th

omg i couldn't survive a weekend confinement. maybe it's just the working till late 1am every night. anyhow, i've started peeling after the saturday burn. we've been eating organic rambutans grown right in camp too.

and every morning you hear 'left right left right' everywhere.

opening a box

you know how you always want to keep those stuff that hold memories for you? how they always fill up box after box of 'happy things' and 'sad things', and end up taking up a lot of space in your room (if you even have one)?

here's a thought. every once a year, open up those boxes and look at everything. if you pick up an item and it doesn't remind you of anything, doesn't draw from deep within you some precious memory, doesn't induce an inward smile, then it means that that memory has been lost. it also means that you should throw away that object of remembrance.

the object is meaningless to you already.

six of everything

i am completely sunburnt after a long day at sentosa with platoon 6. i got cut when i was swimming far out. then i didn't get into the water anymore. anyway, no one brought sunblock, so everyone was sunburnt.

and sometimes we make the same mistakes over and over again, like wearing the good spectacles to the beach.

tonight there's a very round moon. and omg, look at evil symptoms.

nubs

a remake of brioches à tête!
this time i kneaded the dough just long enough to get the butter in and for the dough to become elastic, so there wasn't any excess butter leaching out like last time, and you can see how very elastic the dough is.
i froze half the dough so actually i have a stash in my freezer now, ready for anytime i want a rich butttery bread again.i followed the reinhart method for shaping the têtes, so they were centred throughout proofing. still, the amount of dough was too much for the molds, and they got a bit unshapely.the brioches are in fact very nice with ice cream. but that's a super rich dessert.

and then another attempt to use up some sourdough starter, the vermont sourdough again.
this is the liquid levain build, which i left overnight to get very bubbly.
the dough is slowly built up over the entire next day. and i slashed it 'VS' for vermont sourdough. bleah.
same old, same old. i think i'm not that crazy about lean breads as much now. i LOVE brioche, and reinhart's enriched whole grain breads.

these are the stuff i made for the potluck at jia en's hosue last week. (and to think the rest didn't cook their own.)
mashed potatoes! i think the halved potatoes look cute, like nubs of something. and then look at the whole block of butter and all that milk that went into the cooked potatoes. you can tell that it's going to be very comforting.
when there's mashed potatoes, there'll be salmon fishcakes! i made these smaller than last time, so that they'll be like little coins of salmon. i almost burnt the first few though, but the subsequent ones came out very golden.

on other news, i went back to gedong camp and met so many people! and i learnt how to solve a rubik's cube of orders 2 and 3. 不爱, 也是一种爱.