As dead as a ....

Finally done with one entire day of lab with a poor pig lying on the surgical table and being subjected to all our manipulations. From injections of pharmacological agents like acetylcholine and norepinephrine to tons of catheterization to carotid occlusion, cutting of vagus nerves to open chest surgery to induction of cardiac tampoande and relieving it. Phew! Not just for us but for the pig scarificing itself for the good of medical students and better doctors in the future. Let's hope that some patient down the road will truly be benefited by this experience that the future doctors went through. As for us, we are just glad that it's over and pause a bit to think about the numerous animals we will inevitably be sacrificing for our research in the days to come.

New gastronomical attempts

It has been some time since we experimented with new dishes. For a long time, we have been routinely cooking and eating things like fried rice, minced pork noodles, tom yum soup with frozen dumplings, ngoh hiang made and frozen since last Thanksgiving, Ikea frozen meatballs (and the list goes on).

Blessed with abundance (and relatively cheap) seafood in Boston, it makes no sense if we carry on without a foothold into seafood dishes. Lo and behold, with the help of google and online recipe, we have tried and perfected (on our first attempt) 姜葱鱼片. It was so good that we made it again the following week. Several factors made it a huge success. 1) The type of fish is really important. This dish demands the type of fish which is chunky in nature, preferably with layerings of fish oils in between different layers of meat (visualize salmon, but unfortunately, salmon with its characteristic taste would not be so suitable for this dish) 2) The dry climate in Boston: A step in preparing this dish is to coat the fish with corn starch before flash-frying them. The dry weather helps to turn the batter into a thick coating around each piece of fish and later, preserve the crisp in the batter after frying.

To celebrate a long weekend ahead, here came gastronomical attempt # 2. Once again, with the help of Grandma Lily, we made the famous Singapore dish, oyster omelette! Having wanted to make this dish for a long time, we bought a bag of tapioca flour, only to use like 2 tablespoon of it in this dish. Anyway, CY did a great job in adding lemon juice to Yeo's hainanese chicken rice chilli sauce to concoct a sour chilli sauce closely resembling hawkers serve with oyster omelette. The texture of the omelette is pretty good but the taste can probably be further improve with fish sauce and maybe, fresh oysters next time (Yes, we use boiled canned oysters).

Anyway, it's a nice, sunny, laid-back Saturday morning right now over the Patriots' Day weekend, and I'm chilling around, oogling at the dishes we made ourselves and able to sit down to blog about them. Great day!

We’re going home!! May 31 – June 14

Look at our elated faces:

(Taken on our 4th dating anniversary April 9)

P/S: Do we really look like siblings?

Crossing over

Last week was Palm Sunday and Pastor Enoch preached on the topic "Crossing over". That's an intriguing title by itself. There are so many things in our lives that we are crossing over everyday. Some are life-changing milestones and others just a trivial step such as myself thinking of switching from the world of PC and windows into another of Mac and OS named after cats. Anyway, it was really the kind of message which made you feel that someone had just turned on the light to illuminate the world. Speaking on the episode when the Jews were going to cross over the River of Jordan, Paster Enoch described with insight how different it was from the famous splitting of the Red Sea and their crossing over then. During then, the Red Sea just split in front of them, even without any one stepping into the water. But not so at the River of Jordan. God commanded Joshua to instruct the Priests to carry the ark and step into the raging waters during a time when rainfall was heaving and the river was bursting. I just loved the small little skit Pastor Enoch acted out himself.

Joshua (to the Priests): "Carry the ark and go into the waters"
Priest 1: "Eh Joshua, not sure if you realize but the water has not split yet. Last time at the Red Sea, the water just parted before we stepped in."
Priest 2: "Yea, that's right. (Looking at the menacing waters) There are only so many of us (refering to the priests). You can't just try and see...."

It was rather amusing, especially to myself. So many times we go over the passage about the Jews in the old testament and think how faithless and inconfident they were, especially after they had gone through the once-in-a-lifetime-of-the-entire-universe experience of Red Sea splitting in front of them. But yet as pointed out, the task of stepping into Jordan was not as simple as it seemed. Sometimes we are also just standing in front of the Red Sea, waiting for God to split it first.

So the story goes, the Priest went into the waters with the Ark and the River parted. The Ark was God's reminder about His mercy, justice and providence. Sometimes it is amazing and almost unbelievable but it just happens. We happen to be in Boston, attending this church at this specific time that we can be part of the church's expansion. And just as we try in our limited ways to contribute financially to the building funds and work out our expenditure, God provides for air tickets back to Singapore at nearly half price (a discount turns the price from $1600 to $888) and on top of that, our traveling dates allows us to sublet our apartment to someone in our building who wants to lease it from his parents during his graduation. That further cuts our traveling expenses substantially. What can we say?