Nostalgia and warm fuzzy feeling.

Bouquet of Bird of Paradise for Linda. I hope she likes it. I am too mean to get interflora to send her real flowers.





http://barrylindashootout.blogspot.com/

This is my first anniversary of blogging. November 2008, I posted my first entry. I didn't start off blogging on my own volition. I was into writing and an aspiring and wannabe writer getting no where with editors or publishers.

I didn't want to get rich or famous from my writing, I just wanted a hard copy book. My friends suggested me to start a blog. Even before I read a blog, I was on my high horse, shamelessly saying," it's only people who shamelessly scream out, " Read Me!" My oldest daughter said, "Try it, Mum" and started this blog for me.

The rest is history, I love it. I love looking at the beautiful photos, and reading the writings and most of all I made many friends, some I consider as the Chinese say, "YU YUAN",(fate) yes, Barry and Linda, we are oceans away, but we have this YUAN which I can't explain. I even found Sarawakiana who was my role model and I secretly admired when I was a 13 year old. You couldn't imagine the joy it was, reading her posts and wondering if she was who I thought she is and then to have her telling me she remembered me.

Blogging also improved my knowledge, I do research when I need it. Finally I have a sharpen mind, when we are out, I have my camera with me, always having a keen eye on what I could blog on.

What has this carton of coconut cream got to do with my nostalgia and fuzzy feeling. Many of you will remember I studied in Windsor, Canada. There is not much of Windsor I remember as it was so long ago. (1975-77).

This carton of coconut brought me back then to my discussion with Linda that I used to visit Toronto with my friends.

The first year I was at Windsor U, I was the Assistant Liaison officer of the Malaysia Indonesia Singaporean Students association. Later, I was the secretary. Once a year, on International Night, each international group had to present it's own ethnic food. As curry was the common food among these three countries, we chose to cook curry chicken and also satay kebabs. Both these food needed coconut cream. My friends who were Indonesians and purists, insisted we had to use a particular brand of Indonesian coconut cream, that cream was available only in Toronto.

So sometimes, when some one went to Toronto to buy the cream, I tagged along. So Linda, may be at one of those trips, I may have bumped into you. Only then, we didn't know we were to become great cyber friends.

Since then, I have cooked a "container" load of curry chicken during our FOODSALE, my charity for the Deaf children in Kenya. I used to cook five chickens. I have left Singapore three years, and it is a fuzzy feeling when friends tell me that they my chicken curry. Being involved in FOODSALE gained me friends from all over the world.

When I left Canada, I didn't use the Indonesian coconut cream, but reverted back to the watery coconut milk or santan that we in Malaysia and Singapore use.

This week, I bought a carton what I thought was the watery santan or coconut milk I always use. When I opened it, it wasn't. It was the solidified Santan Kelapa Murni. Opening it was like opening the Pandora's box of memories of my friends I made in Canada almost 35 years ago..