Don't we all wish the world was You and I?

Everyone has their own opinions, I've heard. Some stupid, some reasonable, some exceptionally revolutionary! Ok i hear all the haters going who are you to say it's stupid? So this age old argument about people having the liberty to act as stupid as they want. say stupid things if they felt like it, do stupid things if they felt it was right, is a whole load of rubbish isn't it?

I mean, unfortunately, unless anarchy is to be achieved, and we all thought that if left rule-less and unregulated, human beings will be just A OKAY, we have rules for a civilised society. But the matter only arises because these rules differ according to the religion, and the culture we've all been through.

I sit here tonight soon to be the Eve of Deepavali, listening to Anthony and the Johnsons My Lady's Story and it has inspired me to write. I am saddened when i listen to such poetry in music, to such beauty in music that we live in a world with so much shame and many more repugnant voices.

It seems rather stupid that people with as stupid opinions as gay-haters, women discriminators, wrong do-ers in the name of religion...wait the first two has to do with religion too walk amongst such beautiful people and in beautiful places and amongst such amazing creatures of the land and the blue waters of the oceans. How something as simple as an idea, like religion which began centuries ago, has spread so widely that some of the worst crimes of hate and just pure evil has been committed in the name of religion. I want to coil into a hole where religion would not have made my life a struggling battle with the rules that keeps my mother in the kitchen and out of the senate, the rules that pushes the faces of my gay friends into dirt, the rules on how to lead my life in preparation for something none of us controls; death, and the rules that has lead the powerful to oppress so many weak and vulnerable that i think of as i read about their stories.

I would only have the inspiration till the end of the 10th loop of this song to write about something i wish if i don't get to experience, my children or their children will be able to. I desperately want to believe that we are capable of change, that poetry and music will thrive and reach to as many people as it has reached, touched and spoken to me so many times and given me inspiration and faith. If only people were to seek faith in something more physical, more lucid, more real so we wouldn't all hide behind this illusion called God as we relinquish all our responsibilities to this beautiful space we occupy in this universe.

Seems ridiculous that we dismiss drugs that causes even the slightest of side effects, or a hair product that damages our skin in the process to long straight hair, or vote out senators and politicians that make decisions that affect our unforgiving economy but with facts in our faces and history repeated a billion over times proving how religion has evoked animal sacrifices, human blood shed, genocides, more murder, discrimination and yet we turn a blind eye, a deaf ear and muted mouth and pray for change!

Why wont we be the change that we so want? The peace we hope for as we walk out our doors? 20th loop over --- I think of a few great people that are only ashes now and think of what an amazing world it would be with them around but concurrently it seems the frustrations of this world is better left unburdened for the dead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35-RJ7NxFFY

Are we truly monogamous?

Monogamy, is tricky. I know no one, except for Samantha from Sex and The City (besides polygamy in religion) that is okay with polygamy, with multiple partners, with no REAL strong feelings towards one particular partner and doesn't mind that the other person is that way too. Well, you would have to be i guess.

So what is monogamy? cavemen and women werent monogamous. Can we truly  be monogamous then? We try because it's been programmed into our minds, by society that we should only be with one person at a time.  But then again, can we really ever be okay with boyfriends and girlfriends having another person to go home to, to sleep with, to share with? Not in my opinion. I like to believe I'm a monogamous person, and I'm pretty sure i am and would be. Do i think i can be with the same person for 30 years? I dont know, but i would not complain if i was, if i still enjoyed his company or still think he's awesome. Yes because its romantic, and its cute. But also because, of all the effort I've put into it, the compromises I've made, the characteristics I've found in that person that I have not found in the many other fishes.

The one argument i do not understand about polygamy, is that we hold ourselves back at loving another person. I dont think this is true. If loving someone else means, looking at how beautiful that person is, or thinking they have awesome abs, awesome legs, or wanting to get to know another person , then i would have loved a million people by now. I know love is the most subjective weirdest complicated thing around, but surely that cannot be all that it is. I dont think we can love two people at once. Definitely not in the same intensity, definitely not in the same way. Because being human, I think certain flaws that are present become more apparent and we then would have favourites.

For me, it's only when we LACK something in a relationship, do we really start seeking it from someone else, someplace else. Love to me is mostly the sharing, that connection. I get everything else from my family and friends. but intimacy is too complex to have with two people at once. When i share with my lover, deepest thoughts, ideas, secrets, passions, fantasies, i cant do that with another person.

I'm a true sceptic most of the time, but this funny little thing called L-O-V-E is a lot more complex than we give it credit. I believe we have evolved from chimps, from cavemen to the US that we are now. That somehow being with one person, is all our emotional capacity can handle. I LOVE a lot of people, and a lot of things and a lot of food, but i will only LOVE love one person, umm at one time that is!

Chocolate Cheesecake

My sister's birthday came around last April 9th, and everyone thought it would be a good idea if i baked a cake for her. I've never actually baked a whole cake so i thought it would be a nice experiment too.

I absolutely love baking FYI. Its hard i think but its definitely been growing more and more to a legit hobby and interestingly it has lead me to try out cooking as well. So I've made some dishes as well for lunch and dinner.

Ok so getting back to the baking, so anyway i recently used up my RM20 book voucher at BookXcess, which has the most amazing priced books! I decided to buy a Julia Child baking book that cost  only RM 60 full price, and RM 40 after my voucher! Ever since Julie and Julia, I (and im sure many others) have been obsessed with her! I needed to get my hands on some of her recipes, and follow her lead. She's an awesome woman, just because in the time that she was baking, there were almost NO women in the culinary business, and she pushed through and was very "manly" for someone living back then and had revolutionary ideas to make it in the business. So how can anyone not love her!

But apparently all of her own books were sold out, and the closest i could come to getting one of her books was this book.

So the recipe I first tried from this amazing baking book was the Chocolate Marscapone Cheesecake. And this was an awesome recipe! I'm beginning to think that all the recipes in this book are as easy. The instructions and ingredients are made very easy for beginner bakers. Right, so here's the recipe:

This is the recipe.

This is the instructions. I think you should be able to save this
image a lot bigger than it is when you click on it.

Continuation of the above.

I modified the ingredients just a little because I'm not a HUGE fan of cheese, but my sister is. So the cheese was for her and the chocolate for me! I converted all of the pounds to grams, and only put in about 550grams of cream cheese when i think the recommended gram was about 650grams. If I were to do it again, i'd probably cut down a lil more on the cheese. The cake turned out awesome! It was more of a fudge like moist cake then a flaky cake. You have to refrigerate it, before serving because it melts a little if not. Ideally it says it keeps up to 4days, i kept it almost up to 3weeks, and was fine after eating it. Lesly was fine too, and he has the pansy stomach! But keep in the freezer if you want to keep it a while.

Baking it, I had to put the batter in a pan then put that into another bigger pan with water and then bake the whole ensemble. My mom helped me check on it, and take it out of the oven because I was late for tuition, and had to leave. When you take it out, just coat the bottom of the cake with some cookie crumbs. I had some left over chipsmore, so i crushed them and coated the bottom of the cake. Feel free to use whatever else kind off cookie crumbs you like. We didn't get a whole photo of the cake, but here's a photo of a slice. Please remember that I'm not a fan of the pretty ones, my cakes and cookies often turn out quite ugly, but taste just as awesome! =D Hah! In your face, OUTER BEAUTY!

The reason why it's not so smoothly cut is because it was advised in the book that when you cut the cake your knife had to be hot, after dipping it in hot water. But yes, I was too lazy to do that, so instead, i kept cutting the cake with remnants of the previous slice on butter knife, then scooping it up from the knife with my fingers and licking it after I'm done, it was a lot more fun and yummy that way!

Bagan (Burma)

As magical as Bagan was, it was also filled with the most amount of street kids compared to Yangoon and Inle Lake. So that was a little conflicting, because it got hard to sometimes enjoy the place and let loose, when we'd talk to these boys and girls and hear about their stories of how they want to continue schooling or get into the university. It was absolutely saddening knowing that we didn't bring anything to give to them (they really wanted to trade something for our sweaters) in return for some art they painted which looked really amazing by the way. We had no more money left to spend (we were on a budget too!) so that was the only alternative. But these kids were all over Bagan, and not only kids, but almost every other sales person by the street tries to haggle and pester you into getting something. It wasn't TOTALLY unfamiliar though, so eventually we got used to it.

 How to get there: So we took the "Bagan Express" bus from Inle Lake to Bagan. Only this bus goes to Bagan from there. And it's nothing you would imagine an express bus being. It broke down once, and we stopped to pick up people quite a number of times but i think what made up for all of that was that we were travelling in the day (also for 12 hours) so we could look out the window and see interesting sceneries. The trip from Inle Lake costed us 12000 kyats per person. You wont get it cheaper than the other shops. Maybe more expensive. But that should be the price, because we were there apparently at a peak time. 

Gah! The toilets were horrendous! It was much much
much cleaner peeing outside, which is what i did most
of the time!

The Sky as we left Inle Lake on that cold cold morning! This was Kalaw where we saw ICE on the ground! And we survived with our not made for winter clothing!

Rest Stop! In the middle of nowhere! Time to pea.

The Bagan Express! It broke down and the driver know exactly whats wrong .

We sat on top of the bus for about 5 to 10 minutes with the
Russian gang of tourists! They were fun and always had
vodka ready to pour! Then the guards at the entrance to Bagan
said we had to come down! =C

Getting around Bagan: It works for everything: bicycles! We rented two bicycles for 4500 kyats. That was for three days because we were cycling around as soon as we reached Bagan. We went into Old Bagan (where the amazing temples are) only on Day 2 and Day 3. We rented in from the hotel we were staying at. You can cycle EVERYWHERE with a bicycle! the old temples are just by the sides of the road, so its easy to stop by every single one of them while ur cycling! The map we had helped a lot in locating a few big ones, that was a must see! And we also had a lot of help from two girls that just randomly followed us around on their bicycle without us asking, and showed us around. On the last day, they tried to sell us some postcards. But they were awesome company! And it helps to ask anyone you can, about temples around you, because its easy to get them all mixed up. They have beautiful names though. And each temple, pagoda has a family that looks after it. So they will take you around the pagoda and temple and tell you about its history and significance. That was truly awesome! All of them sell loads of stuff in front of the pagoda, like lacquer wares and paintings and clothes. So feel free to buy something if you want, for the service they've just offered you. Everyone we met at every pagoda was really nice though. It was an absolute joy talking to them about the pagoda, what they've done for it and about their lives!

There was a procession on the streets of Bagan,
with cows decorated and kids on each cow and
 lots more walking, dressed up very fancily.

Look 360 degrees around Old Bagan, and this is the view!

We loved climbing up the outside walls of the temples,some
get you quite high up to get awesome views! 

A view of a temple from another temple quite
close by, this kinda views helped us planning
our journey from one temple to another

These HUGE golden buddhas were in every ,
almost every temple!The bigger the temple, the bigger
the buddha! And a few parts of the buddha  was made
 with gold flakes on them. And not one statue has been
disfigured, or chipped off. 

More wall paintings, these were just so
amazing! So well preserved
and ALL OVER the WALLS! 

Original wall paintings in some of the temples
still so well preserved.

These were original statues of buddhas made from stone, very well preserved. But gated so no one could touch and destroy it.

Preservation process in progress. They were employed
and paid for by the UN. The government had no
 part in almost any of the preservation efforts.

Where to stay: We got a reasonable price for the inn we were at. Our bus was filled with tourists, and the bus just stopped at that inn, so rooms were being taken up as we were deliberating on the price! We took our room for 12USD a night, we stayed there for two nights. It was quite nice, the inn. And the compound was nicer! They had a swing in the front, a cute dogs, that all looked alike in Bagan! They were like bigger versions of shih tzus, and there were all strays! The dog in the hotel, was really smart and would jump on you when you gestured like you had a treat. All the dogs looked like they needed a bath though. But yay! doggies anyway.

Food: Food is good in Bagan! There's a lot of places to choose from, mostly around Nyaung-U, where all the hotels are mostly situated. And a few on the way from there to Old Bagan. And there's a lot of vegetarian places! So that was awesome. I was mostly vegetarian for the whole 10 days that I was in Myanmar just because it was absolutely delicious and very varied the dishes and the uses of veges in their food! Oh and its cheaper! The food places in New Bagan (Nyaung-U) is very close by the hotel, so we jsut walked around and looked at the menu and prices and then decided. We only wanted to eat at places that offered "Myanmar food". On average for two persons, we spent on average 9000 kyats for lunch and dinner. Hmm i guess it was a little pricey here. But that's also because all the restaurants, came with fancy lamps and decorated table and chairs and an ambiance! Its quite hard to find road side food in Bagan. Breakfast is provided by the hotel. Breakfast was toasted bread (w always asked for more but the most they gave us was about 3 slices extra!) and eggs (a choice of scrambled, omelette and bulls eye) they were all very good, but then again i think you can NEVER go wrong with eggs.

This was a mid range place in Old Bagan, recommended in the Lonely Planet
Guide. That's tanaka on my face!

I have to NOT recommend a place in Bagan though, although it was recommended in the Lonely Planet's Guide to Myanmar. It was called Golden Myanmar -- a buffet with about 20 different dishes for each of you for 3000 kyats per person. I have never ate so little at a buffet in my life! There were curries and vegetables , but almost ALL if not ALL were soooo sour! Like absolutely sour and bitter! So i only ate the rice, and one or two vege that was not sour or bitter. I soon discovered from eating at another rest stop (we crossed the road to eat in a family's small hut restaurant) on the way back from Bagan to Yangoon.  They were very grateful because the bus stopped at the bigger popular rest stop restaurant just opposite their shop and i think they dont get as many customers as they would like. Anyway we ordered one plate of rice, with some curries and vegetable and it was also sour, the curry at least! So i think the curries in Myanmar when they have meat in it, are usually sour! Just the way its cooked there maybe. But this family was really nice, we met his wife who was pregnant and resting and his daughter. He was very hospitable and we had a nice conversation about Bagan and his little shop! 

And i think that's the most important thing for any place, to make it a nice holiday or vacation. The people. And I've truly not met a more friendly hospitable down to earth crowd that i did in Myanmar! It was absolutely amazing and nice talking and getting to know all of them. And I even got two email addresses of two english teachers that were "lurking" around one pagoda to talk to tourists to improve their english. That reminds me, I'm going to email them right after this!<

The two girls that followed us
around to each temple.They were really
like our guides! And postcards she was
selling.We kept bumping
into them, having stalkers never felt so good!

These girls were selling some stuff in one of the temples
and were so amused that we had tanaka on our faces that
they commented on it as soon as we parked our bicycles.

                                        

The old lady that smoked and kept asking us to pay her when
we took her photo. She encouraged us to take her photo!

We were never hustled as much as we
 were at this place! We didn't want to
get anything else,but had to just
because they were so good at
making you feel like a monster
if you didn't.

These boys and their sister were playing
in one the temples. They grew up in
the temple and wanted
us to take a photo of them!

This cute couple was in Inle Lake!
Isn't that cutest baby and the cutest
old man EVER?

Monks that come down to the temples in their robes,and a pot for
left over food or anything else that is willing to give. They just stand
still in the corners of the temples, and people put in food or money.
These kid monks were hiphop influenced apparently! But had to pose
in secrecy, before an older monk saw them and had a talk with them.

The kind lady in one of the temple applying some tanaka on
our faces. Burmese people wear them all the time, like powder
to protect their fair skin from the harshness of  the sun.

Baby with face full of tanaka! Yumyum!

All in all, Myanmar was an amazing experience! To see these three places, 10 days is the optimal length of stay i would say. We had enough time to recuperate from the bus rides to enjoy the places! I hope a revolution is not far away, looking at the middle east and all the amazing revolutions that are happening there! The people there deserve as many opportunities they can get and to be free !  

Burmese kyats. The notes there looked like they've
absolutely been to hell and back. Just shows how much the same
money has been used again and again. Pretty sure the printing
of money has stopped. You only see nice notes if you have
1000 kyats onwards.

All Beautiful Photos are the product of Lesly Leon Lee's magic touch: Click for other amazing photos and videos

Inle Lake (Burma)

Inle Lake in Burma was the first AWE that we experienced. That was mostly because I did all other research EXCEPT the temperature.

Transport: To get there, there is an afternoon bus (only one bus) from Yangoon and it costs about 12000 kyats per person, inclusive of the taxi ride to the bus station. It take about 12 hours to 15hours to the junction of Inle Lake. And then to get to the Lake , we had to take a taxi that costs 7000 kyats, for a 20 minutes ride. We would have walked, but it was so cold, almost 0 degrees! So we had no choice.

This wasnt the bus we took to Yangoon but you would
definitely see mostly these kind of old used cars
 and trucks and vans on the streets.

Getting Around: Getting around inle lake is easy! We rented a bicycle and cycled around the small village. Its a relatively small village so exploring it was quite a breeze. We cycled through some villages with huge pigs in the compounds of their houses and then went to a small temple that looked really nice.

Photos of some of the adventuring we did, and what we stumbled upon

Small kids working hard collecting soil!

The cycling paths

Weather: The drastic change of weather in Inle Lake is something we would NEVER forget! Silly me for thinking no way, Burma had a cold season. So when we approached the junction, it just kept getting colder and we didn't come prepared. So we started wearing more and more layers of clothes. I had on two long pants and three layers of tops. Topped by a sweater with a hood. And a hat! When we arrived around 4am or so at the junction, the temperature was about 4degrees. We were shivering all the way up to the inn where we finally decided to stay. When we got to the inn, we quickly got under the covers and tried to sleep the cold away. AMAZINGLY, we woke up to a bright and sunny and cool morning. I could go out cycling with my sleeveless and my three quarters. So thats the drastic weather changes, for Burma at the end of the year. Its usually hot all around starting from February.

Food: AWESOME! Because its so cold in Inle Lake, so all food are hot and steaming and taste absolutely appropriate! We ate by the road side, and in town there was a row of stalls that open at night, about 7pm or 8pm (just when it starts to get chilly again) and they have really good food. A lot of fried bean cutlets and of course noodles. Prices are slightly more touristy than Yangoon. So neals for a whole day for two persons might cost to about 3000 kyats.

They have water EVERYWHERE! for free to drink
! but they do use the same cup though.

Accommodation: Remember Inn. This inn was actually very nice! and the people there were also equally helpful. We got a room for 12 dollars a night inclusive of breakfast. They also have hot water. Good stay!

What to do?: The only main thing to do here is to hire a boat, to take you around the Lake. This costed us about 12000 kyats per person. But walking further down , we could have gotten a boat ride for about 10000 kyats per person. The ride though was amazing! They took us to a few places, and villages , to see silver making, cigarette making, umbrella and paper making, clothes making and a lot others. The ride lasted from morning to evening about 6pm. So it was worth it. And is a must to do! On the way to these places, we saw the one-legged fishermen. They use only one of their legs to row the boat while catching fishes. We also saw miles and miles of tomatoes growing on the lake! The lake itself was huge, felt like a sea!

 Of course more temples, this was when we stopped by the
 floating market. The location of the
 market changes every week

 Things to see on the Lake! Nice structures of
 houses with BOATS in the 'porch'

Lots of people selling vegetables and all, 
good food!! and very cheap!

The one legged boatman.

Silver making. All hand made goods. Earrings and necklaces 
and many others. very intricately made

.

The making of lotus thread. Its about 10times more hardy than silk 
and cotton. They use this thread to make the monks clothes.

The temple by the lake.

 

The jumping cat monastery. The lady there had a hoop and 
when she called to the cats, they all took turns
 jumping into it! The whole place was filled with fatties! 

All Beautiful Photos are the product of Lesly Leon Lee's magic touch: Click for other amazing photos and videos