No More Mr. Rice Guy.

I've just proven to myself that I'm utterly pethetic in the kitchen. I've been defeated time and time again by the stove and the food I try to cook that I've lost all hope and desire to try and try again. I'll just be wasting more food and angering myself in the process.

In the same way some people are scared of using computers (technophobia), I'm now scared to turn on the stove (Mageirocophobia).

I just tried to cook rice for the first time, hoping that I could have some delicious European curry for breakfast instead of my usual cereal, but trying my best in looking at the cooking illustrations on the back of the bag with chinese characters, I managed to turn what should have been white rice into black rice. And the taste? It was like eating charcoal. I had to throw the whole shit out. Scraping the burnt rice off the bottom of the pot just added insult to injury.

In the process of cooking rice for the first time, I also managed to fill my apartment with smoke, realising later that I should have turned on the fan. Talk about closing the barn doors after the horses have escaped.

Why can't cooking be as easy as pouring soy milk over a bowl of cereal?

WHY?!?!?

I wave my white flag.

I have no choice but to continue eating out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday. Perhaps I'll start writing restaurant reviews and keep track of those restaurants with NO pictures or English on its menus. Tisk, tisk, tisk.

This evening was the better highlight of the day, for I made my pilgrimage to IKÉA with some friends and bought a lot of much needed lamp shades, floor light, desk light, and other accessories for my sparse apartment. With exposed CFL bulbs hanging from the ceiling, bare walls, and a bed in the middle of the room, it was like living inside a prison cell, minus the bars. Well actually, there are cast iron bars on the gate that serves as an added layer of security to my entrance door, apparently due to this less-than-safe building complex of Dong Wang Zhuang, but I've only seen one funeral procession (which I mistook as a small celebratory festival at first sight) so far so it couldn't be THAT bad... Oh yeah, and there was that Japanese student I heard about who was pushed off the balcony and plunged to her death, but that was before I had arrived so it doesn't really count.

Se Hwan Kim and his wife was a delight to be with. I was telling them about my rice cooking disaster of this morning and she told me that cooking rice is actually pretty challenging, even for experienced cooks, and certainly more difficult without the aid of a rice cooker with a built-in timer and auto-everything. I don't know if she was telling the truth or just making me feel better, but it was nice to hear that.

Before hitting the showroom on the 3rd floor, the market hall on the 2nd floor, and the self-serve furniture pickup on the 1st floor, we went straight to the IKÉA Restaurant & Cafe to satisfy our cravings for IKÉA's infamous Swedish meatballs. I had fifteen of 'dem delicious balls covered in gravy and cranberry sauce and I popped them into my mouth one after another.

Among the things I bought from IKÉA, I walked out with was a beautifully sculpted ORGEL VRETEN floor lamp and a couple ORGEL lamp shades to complement. It has a very distinctive Japanese design to it, which is the basis of my minimalist interior design I had chosen to run with. Stay tuned for the "Before and After" blog entry!