Festive Foods

I finally downloaded the 300+ photos from my camera taken at random times over and past three months.. and discovered that a huge number of them are food photos! So I thought since today marks one month after cny, why not have a little food blog about what we have been feeding ourselves the past month..

So two weeks before CNY, we took out our food processor to ground up three kilograms of pork (that is a lot of pork!) to make ngoh hiang with. And we thought, since we have the food processor out and some bad tasting mango plus old kiwi fruits in the fridge, why not make a healthy wholesome fruit smoothie?

We threw in some oranges and yoghurt for good measure. The smoothie turned out a tat sour (no thanks to five kiwis and one very sour mango) but it was quickly resolved by adding some honey.

Amazingly, that night dc and I stayed awake in bed and talked for three hours in the darkness, wondering how come we are both so high. We fell asleep only at 3pm, and not surprisingly, overslept for church the next morning. Apparently kiwi fruits contain lots of various vitamin B’s that increase metabolism.. So, think twice before ingest five kiwis at night.

And to complement the CNY atmosphere, we made bak kwa bread using our bread machine.

Technically I used chinese sausage that was microwaved a little to render its fats, but its effect is probably the same. Yummy. Really happy that we bought the bread machine, though it did take quite a few tweaking to optimize the breads that come out. Now we know what exactly goes into our breakfast (no preservatives for sure) and nothing beats freshly baked bread in the morning! More on the bread machine later..

Meanwhile, the seafood-loving bear is taking notes of all the 山珍海味 he’s going to tackle this new year.

And staking his claim on the can of abalone my parents sent over..

 

So anyway, back to our 3kg worth of ground pork..

With shrimps, shallots, garlic, carrots, mushrooms, water chestnuts, and lots of five spice powder, it became

 

 

:) Served a third of the stock over two CNY gatherings, and still have plenty in the freezer for days we are lazy to cook..

With the shrimp heads left over from all that ngoh hiang making, dc rolled up his sleeves to make his famous prawn noodle stock.

Frying the shrimp head to get the brain juice is the only gory part..

Singapore prawn noodles – soup and dry version. The gore is worth its wait!

With all the cultural cooking going on, I just had to do some baking too!

Pirated kueh bahlu (since I didn’t have the proper mold) and undocumented traditional peanut cookies! I still have more almond meal in the fridge.. was a little ambitious buying the ingredients and wanted to make almond cookies too. Got distracted by the almond cookies that my parents sent over.. and one month later, cookies are still unmade haha. They will be gone soon, not to worry.

Two weeks after CNY, we finally found an occasion to prepare 鱼生. My mum feared that I would not get to taste her famous yu sheng while I’m overseas, so she took the time to fry the crackers, prepare the sesame seeds and sent over a yu sheng kit together with a can of abalone. It was funny and heartwarming at the same time to see familiar things coming from Singapore. So for this gathering, I cut lettuce, carrots and chillis, together with some of the preserved stuff in the kit. We also bought turnip for this dish, but our neglect led to food spoilage.. oops. Nonetheless, the yu sheng turned out perfectly with the sour plum sauce from Singapore (and years of tutelage from my mother, of course).

My mum will be proud. :)

With the reminding abalone, we used part of it to augment our bak chor mee :)

Just reminds me of the Sarawak Kolo mee in Singapore. My sister’s one-time favorite.   

And since this entry is on festive food, we can not forget about today’s special festival.

Happy Pi Day!

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Uniquely Productivity

Recently, the word "productivity" must have appeared often in the Singapore newspapers. I was rather intrigued by the entire notion of it. Leaders of Singapore are calling everyone to be productive. What exactly does it mean and why are we talking about it now?

To discuss the latter first, talking about productivity now is important but unfortunately sad and awkward. Why important? Because it is definitely true that given a limited set of resource, one can only increase output by increasing productivity. Being asian as we are, and furthermore, being Singaporeans as we are, we will definitely want to squeeze every single drop out of what we contribute, akin to using a roller press to squeeze every bit of toothpaste we have in the tube. Why sad and awkward? Because it is rather surprising to talk about productivity in a developed nation (if we acknowledge ourselves to be one). Developed nations usually talk about investing in the future, innovating and staying ahead of the curve. Developed nations look into themselves, ask themselves why they are considered developed nations and aim to continue to be leading the world. Developing nations, on the other hand, would focus on productivity. Nothing wrong with this dichotomy, just the natural course of things. Developing nations gather more manufacturing and low to medium tech jobs and more importantly, they have a lot of labor to fill these jobs. It is these jobs which are more easily and significantly targeted by moves to increase productivity. Innovating is messy and inefficient. It goes through lots of failure and may generate little output for the tremendous amount of resources it consumes. A streamlined work process is, however, methodological and any process engineer can look at it and tweak it to incrementally increase the output.

It further begs the question: why are we even at a sub-optimal productivity such that we should be increasing our productivity? Some people may say it's human nature to be lazy and there we are, being our lazy selves. That is partially true but we also have to account the powerful force of rewards that come with our output. Who wouldn't want to increase productivity to maximize our rewards or compensation? This, I believe, is clear to everyone, whether in a developing or developed nation.

I offer what all these phenomenological events mean based on my personal worldview.

1) Singapore reverting back to its old efficient mindset

In short, targeting productivity is easy (relative to innovation but still difficult is its own right) and is where the buck is worth its greatest value. If one looks at a work process and decides certain changes have to be made, he, being the manager or boss, changes it immediately, tests the new process and receives the result immediately. Through many more iterations, the process can be quickly optimized. Innovation, on the other hand, is never a defined process. No one knows what is going on and it takes years to verify if something implemented to promote innovation works. For policy makers holding on to tax payers' money and striving to push on to achieve results, it must be very unsettling to choose to target innovation over productivity. The "we must be efficient, make some changes, and be able to reap some benefits from them" mentality is strong and hard to fight. Again, nothing wrong with this mindset. In fact, it's this mindset that pulls us up from a third-world to a developed nation. The million dollar question is: can we move on with this mindset from now on?

2) Great mismatch in productivity and compensation

For those who took economics before, economics 101 always talks about the fact that in a free market, people's behavior will be driven by market forces. If there is a demand for a type of good or service, there will definitely be suppliers appearing to answer to the demand, because they want to earn the profits associated. So the fundamental reason why there would be Singaporeans who choose to fluctuate at a sub-optimal productivity level is that there isn't compensation or reward to motivate them to increase their productivity. This notion of insufficient compensation is further broken down into two causes: 1) There is literally low than expected compensation 2) Singaporeans have higher expectations of compensation than what they are receiving, thus forming the perception of insufficient compensation. It takes a long discussion to distill where we are between these two (and I believe we are somewhere in between). But let's just put it bluntly as insufficient compensation for whatever reason. Many times, I read our leaders giving examples of how waiters and waitresses overseas multi-task and manage tons of work alone. At the same time, I read in many forums how the immediate response from people is that the overseas waiting staff gets to earn tips if they perform well while the local staff only sees a fixed pay. This is blunt, but it is true. The motivation offered by compensation is very great and somehow, we do not have that to propel ourselves forward.

3) Being caged in a certain mindset

Here's a feeble attempt to tie the first two points together. We have been caged by our "developing nation" mindset and it's difficult to shake it off. A wide survey of society supports this. 1) We tend not to look beyond the economics. The point above proves useful here. Some may argue that we should have overcome this childish, worldly attitude that we must be rewarded in materials for every bit of effort we put it. E.g. as our leaders put it, being a productive waiter saves work for his colleague. Now, this is a mindset of the developed world. Having moved away from the state of always having to deal with survival, we devote more time to thinking about the greater social good and when the time arises, we step up to contribute to benefit not necessarily ourselves but the larger part of society. How many of us have such a worldview? Sadly, very very few. Being in a developed nation, we are still operating as though we are fighting for survival (which many would argue we really are, but I dare say we really are not, given the true poverty is becoming rare in Singapore). (It seems unrelated but this mindset can play a part in our "generous" contribution of $50,000 to Haiti and Chile to aid their earthquake victims. Our contributions may be, unfortunately, tied to how relevant these parties are rather than how devastating the earthquake is) 2) We are still trying to walk the world being a developing nation. One minister, when interviewed by the papers, claimed that Singapore is pressurized by cheap labor from India and China. We, therefore, have to do the same job at a price competitive when compared to India and China. Wait a minute everyone, why do we want to be looking at the same job as India and China? We have to be creating jobs suiting the skill and knowledge of a developed nation and creating a niche for ourselves. This being said, we have to bite the bullet and take the path of innovation. During this innovation time, our GDP may fall and people up there may lose jobs for not producing "results". But we just have to do it.

The third point is the most tricky problem. It is hard to change people's mindset. It takes generations to do that. In a way, we "created" this problem ourselves. We advance rapidly economically and for some reason, neglected to advance our mindset as rapidly. If a term can be borrowed, I would say we have experienced "inorganic growth". To be more exaggerating, we are almost like Robin Williams in the movie "Jack", experiencing Werner Syndrome and growing up so fast that our minds cannot catch up. The inherent problem is not that we are always trying to play the catch up. It is that our mind will eventually catch up, and by then, have we already grown too old in Jack's terms or should I say if we still stay relevant in the world stage?

What's wrong with the minds of Bostonians?

I can't help it but to write about driving experience in Boston. It sounds like Sumiko Tan writing about aging and "bachelorette-hood" in Sunday Times. It just goes on and on. But perhaps I finally understand why she keeps writing about those stuff, just like how I have to write about Boston drivers.

I was going to turn onto Memorial Drive today, when I saw a car waiting at the intersection. I pulled up behind it and waited for my turn. After a long while, I noticed that there was already no traffic and the car in front just remained stationary. I honked but there was no response. In the end, I had to circle around the car, only to see the driver talking on a phone. No hazard lights, no gesturing to ask others to go ahead...

Sometimes, I really feel that it is not a coincidence that such people are commonplace in Boston which is a city full of intellectuals. People who come to Boston all have proven themselves somewhere, probably are full of talents and not to say, incredibly smart. They think they are better than others, know more than others and therefore exist above a system used to "govern" the lowly mass. They fight to be faster and quicker, be it only by a split second. The quantity of time saved doesn't matter. Their brain is begging for the dopamine released they see others eating their dust. In fact, it wouldn't be surprising if their neurons undergo massive apoptosis if they lose out in some way. Boston...