spring blossoms

it was Bruce Hall's inaugural Malaysia High Table dinner today and i achieved my first milestone in my guitar career. my dean, diedre.pierce asked me to put up a short performance for the night, knowing that i played the guitar for Malam Kenduri. was initially going to play "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" by DeathCabForCutie, employing a 2-guitar setup with elizabeth on vocals. then, eli fell ill, and i thought of playing the acoustic version "Tears" by X-Japan. spent the whole day worrying about my performance.... till..

3.30pm.. i caught a spark of genius, and asked eugene to get on the guitar and together we jammed on my favourite chillout 4-chord progression. we worked on it once, and bingo!, we just found a piece to play for the night.

i thought of the chord since mid last year at least, if not earlier, and i only found someone to just jam and play spontaneously that song when i came to ANU. i sat down for a while, laid down some directions for the song.. and voila! i just composed my first guitar song. thanks eugene.

it didnt have a name up till the time when we performed it during dinner. our performance was pretty impressive given that we only came up with that song TODAY! everyone seemed to have enjoyed the song, so i'm quite happy.

it's only tonight...a touch of magic once again... we found a name:
s
Spring Blossoms
very simple, very chillout

we might consider doing a song for every season. but hey, spring is still a great season and i'm looking forward to it!

bacon and cheese pie

hmm.. this is probably the first non-recipe and non-cooking related post. well, i've been working part time in the ANU campus bakery for over a month now and pies are among the things that i help to make.

today, just as any other day, i was helping to transfer the pies from the baking tray(pie moulds) onto the aluminium foil cup-like pie holders. [my boss calls this task 'stripping the pies', among other terms like 'give the floor a scare' which means 'sweep the floor' ]

anyway, pies like bacon&cheese pie has some cheese toppings on the top surface. sometimes, the cheese will melt in such a way that it flows till the side of the pie, and then when it hardens, it 'locks' the pie onto the mould, making it harder to remove the pie. there are 2 possibilities why it is hard to remove a pie:
1. the mould is not greased properly
2. the scenario mentioned above
it is quite irritating sometimes when you are trying to rush your work, and some of these abnormalities happen, slowing down your momentum when you just want to get the job done quick and go home.

so, one thought came across my mind.

"what is holding you back?"
(such that you cannot take off and fly, that you are still stuck in your current idle situation, that you cannot progress and move forward)
for a pie in that 'stuck' situation, it's the cheese holding it back from being removed easily
( as it should be) from the mould.

relate that scenario to our everyday lives..
what is holding us back from a positive change (of character, attitude)?
what is holding us back from taking that initiative to help others?
what is holding us back from executing that brilliant new idea that came across our mind?
what is holding us back from expressing our innermost emotions to another person?

what is holding us back?
not cheese, that i'm sure.