Pâte à choux

I baked cream puffs!

Found a recipe online and it seemed pretty easy to do so I gave it a try. It tured out better than I thought and it was quite surprising because I usually don't like cream puffs much back home. I'm hoping to make a second batch soon.

Sigh.. the only thing that's missing are durians... if only I could make durian puffs like those at Goodwood Hotel... hmmmmm

Anyone care to send some over?

:P

Lobster meal

We bought lobsters the other day and steamed them in a pot. Yum!

Obviously, W did the cooking. Haha.. I didn't have the courage to place the live lobsters into the simmering water though the lobsters seemed pretty sedated already. It took longer to cook than I had planned so as you can tell, we were kinda hungry and cracked open the lobster before we remembered to take a pic of it. So here's our ready to be eaten lobster taken by a couple of famished people :)

Pottery

This is my first finished work of pottery!

I've been attending pottery classes for a few weeks and wheelthrowing's been tougher than I thought. I accidentally got into an intermediate class (there was no indication of it being an intermediate class when I signed up online) and ended up throwing pieces of pottery next to pp who were making really beautiful and awesome shapes. I guess it's encourages one to improve at a faster rate :)

I'm pretty hooked now, the process of creating a piece of pottery is quite therapeutic. I find it relaxing and it appeals to my creative side. Of course, I've been learning about patience as well. There are immediate repercussions to actions caused by my type A personality. I really hope that I'll be able to throw more than bowls and plates soon. I finally made a cylindrical vessel that day, but I tried too hard to shape it and it ended up in the scrap barrel instead...

Swine Flu

Everybody should have heard abt the swine flu or H1N1 situation by now, esp the pp from back home, where dramatic measures seem to have been taken. Many pp have been asking us how the situation is here. As of today, there are are 34 confirmed cases of swine flu in Massachusetts but none of these people seem to be staying in our area. Other than the news we get from the TV, and N95 masks being sold out, everyone here seems to be going about normally in their daily lifes. At W's hospital, no extraordinary measures seem to be taken ie. temperature monitoring, masks for all with patient contact.

So far, I've had 2 reactions to the situation. The first is that I'm strangely unconcerned about our safety. Ok, maybe it's not so strange that I'm quite at peace. When I first heard of the swine flu outbreak in Mexico and how some pp in the US have been infected, my first reaction was 'SARS again?' but that was quickly followed by a reminder of how God protected W and I through the SARS situation despite us having been in close contact with patients. I know that God who protected us then will keep us safe again and that He knows better than I do about the whole situation and how things are going to turn out. Anyway, we've got way too much food in the freezer and if we've got to stay home for some time, it should feed us for a looong time :)

The second is that I started to think about the end times that the Bible talked about and what that means. In Matthew 24: 5-8, it says
For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.
I'm just wondering what this whole thing is all about. There's been lots of natural disasters in the recent years, calamities that have not occured for 10s or 100s of years: the tsunami, floods, earthquakes, now a flu pandemic? What's happnening? Is this really just a consequence of the human race destroying earth with global warming or is there something else?

I find that in times like this, I'm reminded that my life on earth is finite, that many of the things which I consider important are actually immaterial in the time of death. Work, money and many other problems start to fade away and I start seeing a little of the big picture. I only get to live once and I would really like to learn to walk with God during my life here, I would also like to love and enjoy my family more and I would like to make my life count by helping others with their life. I've been very thankful for the break that I'm enjoying, I've had time to think through all the stuff that I've been doing and to decide what's actually important. We're just thankful to be able to live life a little differently now.

Rockport

We visited Rockport over the last weekend. It was a beautiful trip, the sun was out and everybody was in T shirts and shorts. They told us that it was summer-type weather. I was just happy to see the awesome ocean views.

Rockport's a small town, known for its crafts shops. There were a few stores selling paintings, pottery and other crafts and it's a good place to browse and admire artist's works. It's quite a popular place and has many small diners, ice cream shops and bakeries. We bought ourselves some lobster, fish cakes and stuffed clams and carried them to the rocks, where we had a mini picnic by the atlantic ocean. We were too full after that to get an ice cream plus i think I've had an overload of ice cream for the moment.