home-made mayo...

Well Stef... enjoy! Sorry Nat...another night post! Anyway, this one was taken from an episode of Kylie Kwong. Simple, and pretty easy to make. Yet to get the correct consistency though.

You will need:
One Egg Yolk
Lemon Juice
Salt
Olive Oil
And a lot of arm power

Seperate the yolk of one egg from the white. And juice one lemon. What I did was I ran the lemon juice through a sieve to remove the flesh and seeds and all; so that I'm left with just pure juice. Actually, half a lemon would work better.



Beat it up a bit and add some salt.



You will need to make an emulsion, for that, you will need a whisk. Slowly pour in the olive oil while whisking the whole mixture. You will really need to beat in a lot of air into the mixture to make it look like the picture below. And electric whisk would certainly help. Apparently, it can be beaten till it's as stiff as merangue, but I lack that kind of arm power.



You basically have a mayonaise. But, if you eat it on it's own, it will taste horrible; and I mean, REALLY HORRIBLE and SOUR!

What I do is to bake some chicken fillets, then use two forks to shred them as shown below. Then just pour the mayonaise in. Trust me... it will taste exactly like chicken mayo from Delifrance or something like that.

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verses read: Psalm 76

Received a nice SMS from a good friend yesterday, it really helped me a lot. And prayers do come true as I was able to sleep well last night.

Today, tried out this really power yogurt based curry recipe, it was fantastic! Will try the same recipe with fish someday.

Just came back from the NTUCF FoC, tomorrow will be another day. Last night of the camp, talent night, I doubt it will be as crazy as the VCF one, but it should be fun. Tomorrow, orientation games, not looking forward to that, bad back and all.

when two or three are gathered...

... add a fourth... and you get...



was taken at a VCF Science Faculty Gathering...ooops... hehehe... my tiles are pretty decent huh? Too bad I lost this hand... no money involved though...

But check out this lamp... interesting gift got any of your mahjong crazy friends... but watch out.. it costs something like $280!

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verses read: Psalm 75

Today is a rare day for me, it’s a free day. What makes things even better is that tomorrow is also a free day! Can spend some time at all the FGs and FoCs that are happening over the course of the day. Thank God, they are all in the same place.

Today, I will have to go down to NIE just to submit my results. That’s a real waste of petrol, but I don’t really have much of a choice. Didn’t find time to go down to Orchard yesterday, hopefully time will be a little more cooperative today.

Yesterday’s rehearsal was pretty good, but I’m obviously really rusty on the bass. My fingers hurt as well after three days of bass playing. My riffs are getting really slack as well, hopefully things will improve once the rhythm sets in.

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verses read: Psalm 70-74

Today is the start of my course in NIE. My timetable is heavy, it’s literally working hours, 8.30am to 4.30pm almost everyday. Exactly like work, and since I am actually being paid to study, I have to take leave in order to miss classes. Will need to do so in September.

It’s a long and (thankfully) lonely drive to school later; well, have a lot of new CDs to listen to. My iPod died, hopefully I will find time to go to the Apple Centre later to get it fixed, and find time to go to the gym before heading off for band practice at night. It’s a pity, it was a good chance to reunite 5 of 6 members of the BCE band, but only 2 of us will be there. It will be one of the more interesting gigs for sure.

Yesterday’s Psalm was a really appropriate Psalm to read, especially in light of all the “revelations” recently. And talking it all out with good friends yesterday really gave me the other perspective; one which I will hold on to. Letting go isn’t easy, but that has to come first as hard as that might be. Psalm 73 is such an often quoted Psalm, but reading the whole thing in its entirety made it all different.

“Whom have I in heaven but You?
And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.
My flesh and me heart may fail,
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” - Psalm 73:25-26

rediscovering the call

Been a long time since I last updated this blog properly, was on a four week "Enhanced School Experience" at Temasek, so for the sake of the privacy of my students, I decided to journal all my thoughts offline. But well, it's all over now, so I can share a bit of what has happened.

I guess my call to go into teaching happened over quite a long time. Way back in Secondary School, I had teachers who really made me want to be like them. Especially my D&T teacher, he was really the best. Super cruel teacher, but will never forget what he taught. But all along I wanted to study engineering. Unfortuantely, or fortunately did badly for Physics at A levels, plus I scored double As for math at JC, so I dropped plans to do engineering and decided to teach. To cut a long story short, ended up going to NUS to read math, I really enjoyed that!

But even though teaching was always at the back of my mind, it never really till GAP camp that I realised that it was something more than just "what I wanted to do". God was calling me into service. On the last day of camp, I still remember Ps Jon praying for all the campers when he suddenly said, "Some of you, God is calling into full-time service, but for others, God needs you elsewhere, He needs you in the schools." That struck a raw nerve and I began to tear when I heard that.

Yet still, I didn't apply till the beginning of this year, that by itself is another long story. And so here I am, about to begin my course at NIE on Monday. But if anything the last four weeks has been to me, it has confirmed the call that was placed upon my life.

Going back to school was certainly a very anxious time for me. But as the days passed, things really got very much better, and I began to rediscover the call that God gave me two years ago.

Initially, I was a little disappointed that I was asked to teach a secondary one class. I had the mindset that as a honours graduate, I would be teaching at least upper secondary and most likely JC. But then as I began to talk to teachers, I began that teaching the upper levels was not what I would enjoy doing.

As one very experienced teacher told me, "it's a different burden". Teaching at JC levels is all about results, and the better upper secondary classes, was also about results. The burden was for the better the teachers with better classes was to produce the As for the school. That was an eye opener for me.

On the other hand taking the secondary one class that I had, a noisy but good (grades-wise) class, was certainly enjoyable. That was what I really wanted to do. Observing the rowdier classes also brought smiles to my face. Those classes were certainly more enjoyable to teach, and yes even the classes with disciplinary problems.

Honestly, it felt like Youth Ministry 7 days a week, and my prayer is that this is my mindset for the next four years, what happens after is up to the Lord to dictate again.

The door to return to my almar matar has opened wide. And I've been praying hard if I should write to the VP (who was a D&T teacher, but not the one who taught me... he graded me and gave me an A1, so no complains). And the Lord reminded me, a fulfilled vow will open many doors as promised. Two big doors opened in the last week, this was one. Not the kind of doors that I was expecting to be opened, but an opened door nontheless. It's up to me to step through.

We often think that God's Will is a one track thing. And indeed the Bible alludes to it being a "narrow path". But we forget God's grace. And I believe that in His abundant Grace, God's Will need not be a single narrow road, but He is so gracious that He can give us the choice of two or more narrow roads, both of which will glorify Him equally. If we hold on to His teachings and His Word. So perhaps, a fork in the road has appeared, and God tells me there is a choice, it's up to me to choose.

The Lord gave. The Lord took away... but He gave again.

Ingenium, Deligentia, Dexteritas

Just saw a posting on the NIE portal...

"Vacancy available at Tanjong Katong Secondary School"

My heart skipped a beat. Reading the details however stated clearly that they need someone who is graduating in November/Decmeber this year. I've a year to go.

This door has been opened, the chance may not come again. Should I step through it?

the solution...

Decided to humour Clayton a little. But on a more serious note, you don't need calculus to solve it. Besides, it's an E-math question!!!

But on an even more serious note, this topic is known as Arithmetic and Geometric Progression (APGP), it used to be in the A-math syllabus, but was removed and placed in the C-math (now H2 math) syllabus. To me, not a good choice, as this topic is extremely important in Calculus, especially since the idea of Riemann Integration is still taught at H2 level. If I had my way, relative velocity would go, and this would be in A-math. But then, I don't have my way.

Anyway, here is my solution, which I did find on Saturday night itself. Pretty straight forward, you will need to know a few formulas (involving sigma notation) to simplify the solution to it's final form.

030706

verses read: Psalm 56

Realised that I’ve not updated my journal for many days, well, the Bible reading is still moving forward anyway. Not skipping a day, almost one year already. And I must say it has been refreshing to do this.

Second half of the year has arrived, things will kick into a different gear, exam gear. And for once, I’m not on the receiving end of it. Now on the marking end. School has been excellent, the past week has really been good. But well, the honeymoon is going to end soon and the real work is going to start. The chocolate bar at Plaza Singapura was really huge; but it sure didn’t look edible! It was lacquered to prevent it from rotting or melting.

Did something today that I’ve never done by myself before; went shopping for clothes. I never realised it was so tiring! But anyway, Great Singapore Sale, so the shirts were quite cheap. Anyway, today was a matter of necessity, ran out of proper shirts to wear to school after just one week! Looks like I will have to do something similar again next year, hopefully I will be able to fit into more shirts by then!