Skip to main content

Another year ends...

I was planning to end this writing project after a year, therefore November 2015. Why? Because I like a project, I like a beginning and middle, and an end. I like to evaluate and consider. I like to round up, round off and pontificate my learning. I recently had an interview, and my interviewer said that I was clearly very goal focused - and I agree, I am happy to muck in to do whatever needs to doing to achieve what was set out to be achieved - and this was a project for me to listen, watch, learn and write about it.

But as I was pondering what to round off with about this year in food, wine and London, I realised that I was still thinking, I was still oscillating between different ideas and had come to no conclusions. Therefore I have decided to go against my nature to sum things up, and instead - continue writing. I'll continue writing on a monthly basis, about how food, wine and the location of London intersects in my life.



I'm going to keep going, just keep going, with no real goal, no end date, just a theme... and this freaks me out - which is why I think it is a good idea.

I have not written for November because I was over analysing what to write, and how to conclude. I have things to write about, for example about my October trip to Copenhagen, and the amazing food there - and the fact that I also ate the worst dish ever; I also have to write about my November decision to re-think what I want to with my career, and the choice London has to offer, and then my trip Belfast at the beginning of December.

But one thing I have been thinking a lot of recently is social media. I love it, I love technology, I love the friends and work I've got from it.. but instgram is the modern day 'keeping up with the Jones' but on a global scale, and with 'Jones' you don't even know. The podcast The Kitchen is on Fire had an episode where they said/asked 'is instagram just bragging' - and of course it is, which is ok, it's ok to be privileged and spoilt. But, I feel overwhelmed by it all and it makes me anxious and even though I know it's a farce, and I don't have to play into it, I do. And with food there are so many more elements - having to know the latest restaurants, the best wines, being able to take the best photo... being 'in the know' is exhausting.

And so, I'm going to try and take a break. Or at least slow down.

Twitter and intagram are wonderful and powerful things, but I need to take some perspective. It's just fucking food, after all.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Understanding Malaysia: part one of ?

‘The (Malay)Asian Friend’ I think this will be a series of essays, a disgruntled thread that may take a lifetime to untangle. The continued misunderstanding of a complex nation, where borders and boundaries come from flux, where the jungle makes lines in the earth an impossibility and yet politics, nationalism, colonial lens and the exotic touristic eye compete to limit and define a nation built on migration and the movement of people. (and I realise that this could refer to not just Malaysia!) My original gripe comes from the limitation of how Malaysia food, and therefore Malaysians, gets represented in London. I write in my book (out in a year’s time) that we are boiled down to a few dishes - “roti canai, beef rendang, nasi lemak, nasi goreng, maybe sambal, and now laksa.” The request for these dishes is like a checklist of if a restaurant is ‘authentically’ Malaysia, or someone is authentically Malaysian if they know/like/eat them.  You don’t crave nasi lemak, are you really Mal...

JANUARY 2015: nostalgia and the here and now of London (and riesling)

I got a little annoyed with January and everyone wanting to have a ‘dry January’. I had worked all through December and I wanted to have fun for the beginning of the year. Luckily I had a few trusted friends who were equally unimpressed with the dry Jan concept. But of course, everyone was broke (including myself) so I decided that it was going to be a month of drinking good wine at home.   That’s the thing with London, there is always something good to do, there is always somewhere great to be; it’s a tricky city to be in, when broke. And January is such a sad month, that you want to brighten it up with fun, but you don’t have the money to do so. When I went back to uni to do my PhD I used up all my savings and really didn’t have time to pick up extra work, so even though I graduated six months ago, I’m still playing catch up and living pay check to pay check. Therefore despite the December work slog, I was back to being broke by January. And I know that I’m not alone in this...

Bodies broken into boxes

The launch of Sourced's new season on Trees had me thinking a lot about landscape, and the systems of landscape, and how us humans are part of that systems.   I have a lot of feels, after so much reading I do, that doesn’t always allow for concise ‘academic’ or ‘journalistic’ writing - there is no argument to be made. When I think of landscapes, I often think of trees, of the jungle. And this thinking is always a visceral one, the feeling of a landscape on my skin, in my bones, and translation down generations.   I’m interested in how colonialists saw these ‘new world’ landscapes; there were ‘Enlightened’ thinkers who deeply thought about the environment, but saw the environment as an influence on the people as opposed to a conversation - the landscape was a un-thing; oppressive even. The environment was a way to justify a hierarchy of race, and from there racial definitions became ways to legitimise slavery, exploitation… our beloved environment was a reason to subjugate. So ...