Despite all preconceived gender stereotypes, and despite the fact that I love weddings and the colour pink, I have to admit that I’m not the most romantic person. Take this year for Valentines Day, I wrote all of you Dear Readers a post on Valentine’s Day and how we never really did anything special for it. It was only when Mr NQN later read the story that he remarked to me.

“We do nothing huh?” smirking “Don’t you remember that I proposed to you on Valentines Day?”

My hand flew over my mouth and my eyes widened. Good god he did! And it was an utterly memorable Valentines Day indeed! Luckily he has a sense of humour about it and I think he saved that one up mentally for whenever he is caught short without a gift for Valentine’s day or an anniversary.

Then cue my next fumble. I was going to be away on our anniversary this year and not only that, I didn’t tell him the proper way. I just mentioned it in passing while we were watching television. Another strike for The Good Wife (which by the way is such a fabulous show, how great was the end of Season 2?).

But Your Honour,  in defence of my Good Wife status, I did however make him bacon pâté for part of his anniversary gift. You see the poor dear is quite helpless when I go away and simply doesn’t eat the entire time (I don’t understand it either). It may not be the most fanciful anniversary present but I decided that I am a practical gal and the man needs to be fed or he will starve. And he grew up being given rocks from the garden for his birthday (one year his brother received a rusty clamp from under the house that was actually already his) and assorted strange things so I felt like he had had a lifetime to prepare for odd gifts.

Click here to read the full story

Did anyone read the recent article in the Wall Street Journal about Why Chinese mothers are better mothers? It was one of those topics that was sent to me by a friend and had me alternately cringing and laughing at the same time. In it the writer Amy Chua purports that raising children “the Chinese mother way” i.e. strictly and expecting better from them does them good in the long term.

The article was of course written to incite comment rather than reflect the tone of the actual book cherry picking the most controversial parts whereas the book discusses the mistakes and regerets that she had and that one of her children rebelled. One thing I remember having a chuckle about was when she tells us some things that her daughters were never allowed to do.

• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin

Let me go through that list for me and my parents:

• attend a sleepover (I held and attended lots of sleepovers)
• have a playdate (I definitely had these)
• be in a school play (we didn’t hold school plays, is that an American thing?)
• complain about not being in a school play (I wanted to be in one so I may have complained about the school not holding one)
• watch TV or play computer games (I was allowed to do both although bear in mind a computer game was Pac Man and Space Invaders when I was a kid)
• choose their own extracurricular activities (well apparently food blogging for children hadn’t developed what with the internet not being around so with nothing else at my disposal I was allowed to choose homework)
• get any grade less than an A (well I did really let them down consistently here)
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama (lol again I must have been a huge disappointment although I upheld the Chinese child tradition of failing in gym)
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin (I did a couple of years on the piano but they gave up soon after_i was not going to break out with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, I was more a Für Elise gal-the abridged aka simple version)
• not play the piano or violin (my lack of talent decided my fate here)

This list was interesting to me because I felt that my parents were incredibly strict with me growing up. Yet from having a look at this list my parents were utter slackers! I then spoke to a friend Buxom Wench who told us that her child Clone No. 1 said “Don’t worry, mum, you’re a failed Asian mother, I’m going to get you a t-shirt that says so. On the back it can say, ‘I forgot to ruin my kid’s life”. And she mused aloud and said “Maybe I can wear it to Chinese New Year…hahaha”.

I do recall wishing that my friend’s parents were mine though. Another aspect that my parents were strict was more from my father’s side. He only ate Chinese food so we never got to try anything different for the first decade of our lives unless it was bought from my pocket money or eaten at a friend’s house. I hated it back then, all I wanted was something different but now, if I don’t have Chinese food for a couple of weeks I start to crave it.

These Xiao Long Baos were actually something that we didn’t grow up eating. Instead for us dumplings were the Cantonese yum cha variety. But when my mother asked me what I would like to have to Chinese New Year I suggested these. Both of our interests were peaked at watching them being made at New Shanghai but the restaurant weren’t willing to share their secret recipe so I looked for a  recipe and found one at Steamy Kitchen which looked the part. It had the telltale gelatine broth that once steamed, turned into a lovely hot soup to be sipped from the dumpling.

Click here to read the full story

I consider myself an optimist. I approach everything with the belief that it will work out well and that fun and hilarity will ensue.

Except for New Year’s Eve.

That’s where I turn into a Christmas Grinch, or more accurately, a New Year’s Grinch. This is a day on which my relentless optimism turns into a hibernating bear and growls and grizzles. Bah humbug I say to New Year’s Eve. You see I feel the pressure to have a good New Year’s Eve and sadly whilst I’ve had some good ones, I’ve never really had a truly mindblowingly spectacular one.

Part of the problem is the great expectations.

I could huddle together with like minded friends as we have in the past-we used to have a spectacular view of four sets of fireworks from our apartment but the magic seemed to elude us every single New Year’s Eve confounded by high expectations or the crazy times that we should be having-why weren’t we wearing crazy glasses and drinking glasses of champagne in the streets when all we wanted to do was eat and sleep? It seemed that while we could always be guaranteed of a wonderful Christmas, NYE joy seemed a little out of our reach.

Perhaps the dullest New Years Eve was the one that had the most pressure associated with it – the year 2000. I had left it to Mr NQN to organise something. This was early on in our relationship and I didn’t realise that if left to organise something, he simply will not organise a thing. We ended up watching a single firework display at Manly Beach and Mr NQN was forever relieved of his organising duties (which he was immensely pleased about).

Click here to read the full story