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Posts Tagged ‘food’

Singapore Sojourn Part 5

Posted in A writer's life, am wrinting, China, Creative passion, Cry Havoc series, research, Singapore, Steampunk, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I have been here three weeks and one day. Wow, time has flown. And on Saturday we fly out to Beijing for 12 days in China. What I thought might be a short side trip has become the big China trip and I feel the excitement building.

I made a few goals for my time in Singapore. Pool walking every morning. I have done this, sometimes with more enthusiasm and a few days with less. I am sleeping a bit longer than those initial days where I woke up at 5am. However, I can’t seem to sleep in past 7.30am. But I am reaching sleep goals according to my Apple watch. I’ve also road tested these two last days taking my Apple watch into the pool. It is a much better way of keeping track than lap counting. When I count laps I lose count because I starting thinking about Aunt Prudence.

My other goal was writing 30,000 words of the novella The Prudential Light, which is Aunt Prudence’s memoir in the Cry Havoc series. Well I am at 44,000 words so I should at least make 45,000 words today but you know there’s a lot going on in this story and it may be a novel after all. I blame the condo’s swimming pool for that because many of my ideas came to me while pool walking and losing track of how many laps I did. The reason I think this is that I have written so many scenes and I think the plot might come together at 50,000 words but all the restructuring, back filling skipped scenes etc is going to bring it up in word count. Anyway, I’m very happy about that.

Next steps is to commission a cover and also a cover for the next installment, Edward Huntington Esquire, Gentleman Magician. This will cover the period of Edward finding out he was a magician and his meeting with Dr Heaton and Fulton. I probably have another story in the series, which would be a novella (god I hope so!) about Wilbur Hardcastle and Jemima’s mother. It will be a love story but not a romance because we all know that Jemima’s mother died young.

Then I might start on my spin off series.

Meanwhile in Singapore I have caught up with my mate Dev and we have hung out. Yesterday, we had a marathon Orchard Road experience yesterday from 12pm to about 7pm, including most importantly a trip to Kinokuniya. We started at Pizza Express which is fine dining in Singapore. Then we had tea and something naughty in Paul’s, which is outside Kinokuniya and then later I had a kind of Hawker Centre experience in the Food Republic, which is sort of the same thing except in a mall and airconditioned. I had some fried prawn noodles and oyster omelette. I’m not keen on oysters, I can eat them, but I really liked the egg part, which was crispy and tasty. Dev tells me it is eggs with water and tapioca starch.

Me and Dev and Kinokuniya

Lychee Fanta and Cream Soda flavoured Fanta. They were a $1 each and interesting.

To get back on the research track on Monday we went to the National Museum of Singapore to see their Once Upon a Tide special exhibition, about the history of Singapore. Well worth the visit. We also did a quick walk through of the permanent exhibition on level one. Lucky I did because I found out Rickshaws were invented in Japan later than I thought and where popular from 1880s until 1930s.

Below is an early map of Singapore in the period that I’m interested in.

I also got some good photos of things that will help in my story of Aunt Prudence and that’s the main focus of my visit to the museum.

I have really enjoyed hanging out with my son and daughter-in-law. On Tuesday we went to the island of Sentosa to check it out. We mostly did things like the free shuttle bus to check out the beaches and we did a skylift up and back to look around and at at the Shake Shack. We don’t have Shake Shack in Australia. The chips are good but this time they weren’t as hot as they should have been. The Shake Shack in Gardens By the Bay were so good! The cheese burger I had was real and yummy.

On the skyride

Today is going to be an at home day. I need to do some writer admin, hang out my washing so I can pack for the trip and write. I really need to do something with my hair but that remains to be seen if I have the energy. I thought a pink rinse would go down well in China, except I didn’t bring any with me so my hair is very blonde and curly. However, apparently Beijing will be hot but not as humid so my hair could remain straight.

My Kinokuniya purchases. Thea Guanzon is from the Philippines and Sue Lynn Tan is Chinese from Hong Kong.

Above is the emotionally needy Siumoguai who had snuck into my room and perched next to my swimmers.

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Finally I can sit at my desk

Posted in A writer's life, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on December 26, 2024| Leave a Comment »

With family visitors, the office needed to be gutted and my desk moved. I have only just now uncovered it. We had two drawers to assemble for our new bed and we had to deal with them before I could sit down and type. How wonderful it is!

We celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve with way too much food and loads of presents. I was so full I feared I would burst. I received Tansy Rayner Roberts’ latest kickstarter because it was so shiny and I asked the Dweeb to get it for me. But he also was my kringle choice so he also got stuff on my wish list. A photo printer, papers, and a voucher to frame a print. Other goodies some lovely tawny port, some really beautiful embroidery items from Ms Li brought from China. A lovely fan and a lovely scarf, some redwood earrings from California, chocolate and more.

A picture of Kickstarter from Tansy Rayner Roberts.

Yesterday, is my day off. People eat leftovers generally and we did and I watched rom coms the whole day. T’was the Text before Christmas, and the commentary was: “would someone really chat to a stranger? ” and you had to suspend belief for this one, but I liked it, I wanted to watch While You Were Sleeping (an oldie). Prime wanted $19.00 for it and I figured I’d just go buy it but then I found it on Disney for free. The Holiday was another one I hadn’t seen before but really liked. I also watched Love Actually before bed.

Christmas presents and not all there yet.

This morning I was out of the house at 6.30am to walk around Lake Burley Griffrin with my younger daughter. A good five kilometres! I needed it and a bit more. Today like I said uncovering the desk and finding my computer after some furniture assembly.

Food

My writing plans before Christmas went out the window. I had to go to NZ in a hurry for my brother-in-law and sadly he passed away after suffering a lot. I had to leave my sister behind but she’s surrounded by her son, her daughter-in-law and grandkids and I’ll go see her soon when she returns to Aussie.

I ended up maxing my credit card and spending all my money. Something I have not done for a while. Luckily I get paid again next week and things are better now and the need for spending has ended. I did save for Christmas but a few unexpected things came up. We also go the dishwasher repaired twice so that was not a nice Christmas expense. We found the problem was these soap sheets we were using made too much suds. We weren’t using them right in any case but the technician said don’t use them and use a level teaspoon of powder. My iphone battery died too and needed replacing. NZ trip and hire car.

We are also dog sitting because my elder daughter and my youngest grandchild have relocated to Sydney and we are watching the dog for a bit until she gets him after New Year. The cat is not impressed as he’s confined to one part of the house and he usually owns the whole place. I had to encouraging to leave our bed last night because I couldn’t get my pretzel shape comfortable and it was too hot to have car fur against my leg.

That’s about it. I haven’t thought of a plan for the year yet. I do need to get more of Amber Rose drafted ASAP. I appear to be more worried about the Dweeb’s deadlines than my own. He got a nice lecture from me this morning. Lol.

The immediate family and visitors are all well and happy and that’s a lovely thing.

I hope you had a Merry Christmas if you celebrate and my best wishes for the New year.

A lovely tranquil view from me walk this morning around the lake.

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Calm down a little

Posted in A writer's life, tagged , , , on November 6, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I’ve just checked and my last post was October 17. Where did the time go? I’ve been to Adelaide, tick. Then, we had family visiting from the UK so lots of stuff to do, food to eat (oh dear my gut bulge) and things to do.

Highlights for me were Matthew’s sister took us to the Taronga Park Wildlife Retreat. It is an amazing hotel, purpose built, tastefully fitted out and you wake up to koalas outside your window and you can do an evening tour after the zoo closes. And the view across the harbour was amazing. Our UK guest was very impressed. I thoroughly recommend if you are visiting Sydney and want a nice hotel, probably pricey but great as a special treat. Then some of us took the ferry over to Circular Quay and walked around the Sydney Opera House, had lunch on a street side cafe and then walked to the Rocks until we headed back to our new hotel, the Sofitel Wentworth, newly reopened after a grand refurbishment. I was too tired to go out but the gang went to Chinatown and had dinner. Then it was a visit to Coaster’s Retreat before heading back to Canberra with our guests. There were visits to the zoo and aquarium, National Museum and other things. Too soon our guests were off again to return to Sydney then home.

Life feels a bit like a roller coaster. Writing tasks long neglected, tiredness and so on. At the moment, I’m doing the final read through of Destiny’s Blood (much delayed due to the above) and then life might decouple a bit from writing. I’ll be drafting Amber Rose again, but also assembling deck furniture and doing house related things in the lead up to Christmas. I honestly don’t know how I fit it all in, but I always feel like I’m not doing enough.

I am really looking forward to going nowhere in particular, except Matthew is taking me to Sydney for a concert on Sunday but we will be back Monday so not quite the big expedition.

Two manuscripts on submission reach their useby day on the weekend so I’ll be looking to review them and send them out again. Sigh.

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Travelling with too much to post

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on January 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Since Lincoln we have moved around a lot. We went to Newcastle upon Tyne, staying mostly out at South Shields. We loved this place. My Hanson grandfather was born in South Shields and it was lovely to get a feel for the place, where his father and his grandfather live. I went searching for the houses where they lived. Alas, the Long Row had been demolished and the Long Row now is only part of the original with new buildings, but they lived in these tenements along the river. They were seaman, steveadores etc so lived close by. I went looking for two other addresses. Catherine Street I found was now a library and the other place still existed but the house they lived it appeared on Apple Maps in someone’s backyard so no longer existing. We went looking for St Hilda’s cemetery and it is now a car park. I sort of gave up after that. I was going to go and look where my nana was born in Washington but her street didn’t exist and it was a suburb’s name now. Besides it snowed that day. We did one day in Newcastle and did my Vera thing, including Whitley Bay and the Holy Island on our way to Scotland.

In Edinburgh I caught up with a second cousin on my mum’s side. He and his wife were very interesting people. One of the things they do is medieval music. Fascinating.

We stayed in a lovely hotel, Holyrood with views to Arthur’s seat and very handy to the High street etc. They were so lovely. We left something behind and they posted it to us, charging us only for postage. Food was good, room was large and warm. We did a day trip to Perth to visit Farah and Edward and had a lovely lunch, talked about books etc before heading out to walk through the town/city. It’s quite big Perth. It was also quite cold with barely getting to the high of 1 degree C.

It was time to turn south and we stopped in Lancaster for the evening, meeting up with Patrick and Julie for dinner. Lancaster is a place we’d like to come back to as it seemed interesting but we couldn’t really look around as we were headed south.

In Knebsworth we stayed with my cousin and had a fab time. She took us to Windsor for the day and spoiled us rotten. Now we are in Maidstone in Kent also being spoiled, but today is chill day so I can blog.

It’s kind of sad as I have lots of photos but here are a few.

Windsor castle

Windsor Moat

Matthew in front of St George’s chapel, Windsor Castle.

A snap taken in the Undercroft Cafe with my cousin, whose treat it was for us.

The castle ruins in Rochester, Kent. We went for a day to check it out.

Medway River at Maidstone, we did a long historical walk around the town.

A Tudor style house in Maidstone. Then we went to lunch at La Villetta, enjoyed some great food and company.

We went to Aylesford to visit to Friars again and it was misty and moody and very serene. We enjoyed it so much.

The peace walk lookiing back to the gatehouse at the Friars. Note, to Ruby Heart/Emerald Fire fans, this is the priory I used in the book. It was a great setting for a secret society of magicians.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more photos. We head to London for two weeks on Thursday. The sand in our hour glass is running down. Although we are going to Malta and Singapore before we see our cats and family again.

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Kitchen Goddess

Posted in baking, Dragon, Dragon fantasy, Pandemic, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 3, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Right now I’m in the process of making sourdough bread. It’s part of my usual routine so not a pandemic hobby. Not that there is anything wrong with baking while you are stuck at home. I find it reduces stress. It’s just that too much baking makes one fat.

To combat this I am trying to increase my exercise. Twice this week I have walked to the local shopping centre-a least 25 minutes away on foot and back again with my little granny trolley. I don’t feel too scared by this as there are all these markers in the little shopping centre showing where to stand to keep your social distancing up and it’s not very crowded.

Today I went to pick up a parcel from the post office and then thought I’d get a few things from the supermarket. There was a queue to getting into the supermarket. It wasn’t long and I was inside in good time. We had to wash our hands with sanitiser and keep our distance. I headed straight to the toilet paper aisle and was victorious. I also scored two small bags of flour and a dozen eggs. I feel like beating my chest and crying out like a victorious Tarzan.

I was surprised by how much food was available and I had this queer feeling. One part of me just wanted to buy stuff because it was there and this is a pandemic and the other part was like all this food doesn’t make it seem like a pandemic. I had to tell myself that the food would be there next time. A lizard brain reaction maybe. Of course, some shelves were low or empty but now that people can’t panic buy there’s plenty. I should also say all the staff were very nice and polite and helpful. Ideally though I leave the shopping to Matthew.

My greatest challenge over the next few months besides not contracting Covid-19 and dying is not to get fat while housebound. So trying not to bake! However, my family are asking for homemade English muffins and hot cross buns and Anzac biscuits (oatmeal cookies) as well as sour dough bread.

We get Youfoodz meals delivered for most of the week and they are calorie controlled and then we cook or do something else-usually a freezer dive as we have frozen left overs meals. That helps a bit because if I totally got into cooking mode I’d cook heaps of things that I love to eat and my self-restraint ? Well there is no such thing!

However, I contrast this with many, many people in the world right now who don’t have food, or shelter or decent medical care. I might be stressed. I might be finding it hard to concentrate but I’m not in a bad way at all.

That might or might not be helpful thinking. My usual life and expectations have changed.

I’m still trying to work on the PhD (difficult) and keep my mental health in a good space. I try not to think of my publishing career and what will happen to the industry. My creativity has been squashed into a plastic bag and tossed into the back of the cupboard.

However, for those of you without books. There is a promotion of free dragon books on Bookfunnel Link

So go help yourself.

I just had a Darynda Jones book delivered this morning. I’m very tempted to start reading it right now. I was lucky enough to meet Darynda in early March as part of the ARRA signings. I like how she puts real life into her urban fantasy and her sassy lead, Charlie.

The other impediment to productivity is Gin the cat. He just plonked himself down on my lap after walking across the keyboard and wouldn’t shift. He just looked at me with those enormous eyes and stared. He also had his claws out so hugging him was like hugging a rose bush. I think it is revenge because the other day I accidentally locked him on the deck for the whole night and it rained.

IMG_1096Next this turned up in the mail. I’ll talk about this next time…

IMG_1095

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Christmas Time

Posted in Christmas, tagged , , , , , on December 25, 2015| 3 Comments »

image imageIt’s the end of the year and there are festivals and religious events throughout the land. In our family we celebrate Christmas. Not so much as a religious holiday although we recognise the origins. For us, me and my kids, it is a time for being together, of overeating and present giving. It’s also a time to pause and reflect on family or our achievements over the  years, the growth in our waistlines (me) and the growth in the grandchildren.

christmas

Christmas time in Dweebenhiem

 

I think about why Christmas became such a thing for us. When I was growing up, Christmas was a thing and then when my parents split it was part of the divorce settlement or something as it no longer existed in my parent’s hearts. My mum was lackadaisical and my dad well he tried in a drunken adult sort of way. I grew up too early. Christmas became a source of pain from the age of ten. Getting up to no presents under the Christmas tree, knowing that there was no actual magic and delight and just feeling the pain of being and feeling alone, unloved and unnoticed.

silver tree

 

So when it came to having a family of my own I made sure that Christmas was a special time. When I was married, my husband and I decided to have a few traditions that would be ours. Even though we split a bloody long time ago, a couple of those traditions still linger. It is our tradition since Taamati was born to have trifle. It’s a simple dish of canned fruit, sponge cake, custard and cream. Sometimes it had coconut and even jelly, but the essential components remained. These last couple of Christmases my son has taken over a lot of the dessert making and has made the trifle into a new food group. It is really strange to me that we don’t have trifle at any other time of year even though it’s quite simple to make. It’s just the thing we have on Christmas. We also have pavlova! Because we are gluttons! Then I started to make plum puddings and Christmas cake too. Oh god! Just thinking of all this is making my belly ache.

tree

Tree decorated by the grandkids

 

We have tried to cut back on the food but it always remains the same with desserts I think. Taamati has taken to making those too. This year he lives in China and is only back on Christmas Eve so he’ll be excused from some dessert duties but not all.

nutcracker

The other tradition we adopted is that we have our celebrations on Christmas Eve. This goes back to me and my relationship with Tony. He was Italian and that is the traditional European celebration time. After I split from Tony, my kids asked me to keep it at Christmas Eve.  After nearly ten years they were used to that timing. It left them free to go to their partners’ family dinners on Christmas Day and I kept up the tradition of not cooking on Christmas Day. We just lie around watching movies and reheating food. These days I go with Matthew to visit his parents on the farm and share some turkey and salad and open presents. It’s a long haul – all the cooking—but these days it’s not too onerous. It used to take me three days to prepare. This year it was only two evenings.

 

My daughter also organised organic meats for the roasting and that’s very special indeed! We usually have antipasto-grilled vegetables, ham and other cold means,  prawns, tortillia de patatas, pasta, salads, cheese, olives etc etc. Then comes the main course, roasts meat of various kinds, turkey, lamb, pork, ham, chicken, with roast vegetables (potatoes, pumpkin, sweet potato), spinach and cheese sauce, peas, gravy etc etc…and then there are desserts …somewhat later in the evening.

 

One of my daughters said to me that I always made Christmas special when she was young and we’ve kept that up. It was magical and fun and that’s what has carried over into adulthood. I recall when I started to study and I had little money and made presents. I was still sewing clothes for the dolls on Christmas Eve. (Back then we did the Christmas Day celebrations). She still remembers coming out to all the dolls in new clothes and the basket bassinettes. I did that every year. My kids were still having stockings until their twenties. Now with the grandkids we keep up the tradition. The young ones get to open their presents  Christmas Eve and wake up to their stocking on Christmas morning. Usually there are lots of presents…heaps of presents because they are all combined.

santa

So I treasure that the effort I put in meant something to my kids growing up and that they treasure it that much that they continue the tradition of making Christmas a special time. I love my family (and friends) and I love knowing that something I put a lot of effort into means so much to them and that if they keep it up their children will continue it on down through time.

Sigh. Merry Christmas everyone!

Oh and if you have  an new ereader and like dark fantasy then  my book Dragon Wine book 1 -Shatterwing is free!

Below is the blurb

Dragon wine could save them. Or bring about their destruction.

Since the moon shattered, the once peaceful and plentiful world has become a desolate wasteland. Factions fight for ownership of the remaining resources as pieces of the broken moon rain down, bringing chaos, destruction and death.

The most precious of these resources is dragon wine – a life-giving drink made from the essence of dragons. But the making of the wine is perilous and so is undertaken by prisoners. Perhaps even more dangerous than the wine production is the Inspector, the sadistic ruler of the prison vineyard who plans to use the precious drink to rule the world.

There are only two people that stand in his way. Brill, a young royal rebel who seeks to bring about revolution, and Salinda, the prison’s best vintner and possessor of a powerful and ancient gift that she is only beginning to understand. To stop the Inspector, Salinda must learn to harness her power so that she and Brill can escape, and stop the dragon wine from falling into the wrong hands.

Dragon Wine Book 2 :Skywatcher, the follow on book is also available in ebook and print.

Try the publisher’s website to the links to your retailer. Here.

Dragonwine

Dragon Wine Series

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