March 21, 2022March 20, 2022 by Sharlene

It’s Monday (March 21, 2022)

Some things last week:

Made flaky pastry for the first time – it’s not as rich and buttery as puff pastry and slightly easier to make I think? This topped a chicken pot pie for Pi Day last week.

Went with the kids and friends to a BTS cup sleeve event at a local boba store. Order a drink and you get these cute freebies for two of the members’ (JHope and Suga, or as they’re sometimes called Sope) birthdays. And the whole place is decorated with lots of photos with the members. Then a short walk to a Japanese store/restaurant for lunch, where I had chirashi bowl.

Currently…

Reading:

Watching:

With the kids, I watched Is It Cake? on Netflix, where yes, bakers make cakes that don’t look like cakes. First episode – fast food!

Listening:

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

Eating and Drinking:

With some leftover flaky pastry I made for Pi Day, I made garlicky cheese palmiers. A delicious snack.

Cooking:

Maybe some Hong Kong-style baked rice.

I have some sweet potatoes to use up and was considering making a sweet potato pie, something I’ve never had – or eaten – before. But I presume it’s kinda like pumpkin pie? Well, I’ll have to find out what’s a good recipe.

Last week:

I read:

Grass and The Waiting by Keum Suk Gentry-Kim. I hope to post about it later this week as they’re incredible (also incredibly sad) graphic novels about South Korea.

I posted:

Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung

Library Loot (March 16 to 22)

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week. This meme started with J Kaye’s Blog and then was taken up by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at the Book Date.

March 19, 2022 by Sharlene

Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung

Good things come in small packages. Like dim sum. Siu Mai and Har Gow are perfect one or two bite dumplings, any bigger and they just seem a bit too much.

And in Ghost Forest, the scenes and vignettes, are sometimes just one or two pages. Sometimes not even reaching one page. But they convey so much.

This is the story of a family that moves from Hong Kong to Canada before the 1997 Handover. The dad remains in Hong Kong to work. He’s known as an “astronaut father”, visiting his family for Lunar New Year.

The story opens with 21 days after the father’s death, and the daughter watches a bird perched on her balcony. She says, “Hi Dad”. That made me think of that huge moth that stayed in our house for a few days after my grandfather’s funeral. Some Chinese people believe that moths are the spirits of your dead loved ones visiting you. And maybe that’s just superstition or us clinging to any little symbol that brings us meaning, but somehow that brought some comfort.

At 272 pages, this is a short and simply written book, but it’s best if you take your time with it. I tend to be a fast reader, so when reading a book like this, I’m forced to slow down, to take a pause between these segments and reflect on them.

Ghost Forest is a quiet and soft read but it managed to wring out all these emotions from me via its spare prose and blank space.

March 16, 2022March 15, 2022 by Sharlene

Library Loot (March 16 to 22)

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.

Happy Library Loot day!

What I got from the library this week:

A Lab of One’s Own: One Woman’s Personal Journey Through Sexism in Science – Rita Colwell (audiobook)

I happened to find this while browsing the audiobook library catalogue. Colwell is the first female director of the National Science Foundation and an environmental microbiologist.

The Orphanage – Serhiy Zhadan, translated from the Ukrainian by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler

This book was first published in 2017, but it sounds very much like what’s happening today. A teacher sets out for an orphanage to find his nephew. The orphanage is in occupied territory and it’s a dangerous journey through combat zones.

The Old Woman with the Knife – Gu Byeong-mo

A story about a 65yo female assassin! I think we need more books with female main characters who are 50+.

Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch – Rivka Galchen

I haven’t exactly had the best track record reading Galchen’s books. But this one sounds interesting? I think? It’s set in 1618, and the plague is beginning to spread. A woman is accused of making someone ill with a drink. It’s based on real historical documents too.

March 14, 2022March 13, 2022 by Sharlene

It’s Monday (March 14, 2022)

Hello Monday!

Some things last week:

BTS had their first concert in South Korea in about 2.5 years. The first and third days were broadcast live online and the second was screened in cinemas around the world. So on Thursday, I woke up at 145am to catch the 2am concert and on Sunday, the 1am concert. They’re incredible entertainers and the quality of the video and audio is amazing, perhaps even better than their last online concerts! I got the two-day multi-view pass. Most of the time I watched in single view but there are some songs that they do where they’re roaming around the stage more so I watched that in multi-view.

Of course we had to have Korean food over the weekend. Above is kimchi fried rice with spam. We also had bibimbap and kimbap as well as chicken wings.

Currently…