I was supposed to write a short description of Unimates Night (the society that I’m part of) and it turned into a very short story. After I emailed that to the Secretary, she texted me back: “seriously all that?”
Er… I suppose so.
Anyway, I decided to post this short story The Second Last Week. I dashed out the story within an hour, so you know, be nice.
Nah, just kidding. I welcome your literary criticism.
And heads up, readers. I’ll be blogging about this documentary film called Living with the Tiger and my email interview with the director, Mike Thomas. It’ll be out sometime in Wednesday or Thursday.
Updates: One of my friend, Justine, asked if “… the market for restaurants in heaven a monopoly, perfect competition, oligopoly etc.? That may have a huge impact on whether they can make that little profit or not, hehehe!” To be honest, I haven’t really thought about that. Well, I would say the market for restaurant is a monopoly since God is the head honcho up there. Bartleby and Loki are just skimming off the profits. Also, she pointed out a minor grammar mistake 😀
_______________________________________
The Second Last Week
It’s the second last week of the semester. You’re tired, hungry and thirsty. You’re running on empty and you still have to face Exam’s coming onslaught.
You stand alone in the desert. In the distance, you see Exam and his minions charging at you. You collapse, the guitar and samurai sword slipping from your hands. The heated ground burns your skin as you lie in your final resting place. Beside you, the guitar strings snap under the heat of the sun, mournfully twanging your funeral song.
Exam and his minions approach. You close your eyes.
All is silent. You only hear the desert wind and thundering hooves of your approaching death.
Then you hear laughter.
But, wait… you open your eyes and see that you’re in a cozy Italian restaurant. Around you are your long-lost friends, mates you have not seen for a long time. In front of you is a endless row of free-flowing pasta, pizzas, salads and Italian delicacy.
It was like the old times.
Am I in heaven?
But hunger pushes away any thoughts. You devour the mouthwatering food and drink the refreshing spring water. You chat, laughed and make merry with friends that you haven’t seen for ages since their death at the hands of Lord Assignments.
It was like the old times.
But good times have to end. Sated and drowsy from the delicious meal, you decide to retire for the night. As you make your way to the exit, a guy with slicked back hair stops you in your tracks. He looks vaguely familiar, but you can’t remember where you met him.
“Yeah?” You ask him.
“You have to pay for your dinner,” he says.
“What? PAY?”
“Yes, you have to pay.”
“This is outrageous!”
Slicked-back-hair guy shakes his head.
“You’re not the first person to say that. But the food and drinks in Heaven are not free. Ever since the Global Financial Crisis, we’re running low on cash. So we decided to make a little profit.”
“But… but… who are you?”
“Sorry, it was bad manners of me. My name is Bartleby”
“Bartleby?”
“Yeah, I was a former angel. A Watcher to be exact,” Bartleby says.
“But… I don’t get it. How can Heaven be affected by the GFC?”
“Errm, yeah, that, it’s a pretty long story. But let’s just say Loki and I lost a bet to Lucifer. Look, it’s not something I really want to talk about now.”
“Who’s Loki?” You ask.
“Loki’s the former Angel of Death.”
“Former?”
“Yeah, God’s actually pretty pissed with us right now,” says Bartleby, “He stripped us of our titles.”
“So… where’s God?”
Bartleby sighs, “He’s still around, just not talking to us. We are destined to serve the newly deceased for eternity.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, anyway, Loki and I came up with a fantastic plan. We’re planning to stage an Occupy Heaven protest. We just need some donations from you.”
“Wait, wait, wait. So it’s not for the meal I had?”
“No,” says Bartleby, “half goes to the food and drinks. The other half goes to the Occupy Heaven protest.”
“Okay, fine, how much is it?”
“$29 for Non-Access and $25 for Access.” Bartleby flashed a smile.
You stare at him.
“I don’t believe this shit.”
“Well, better believe it. Heaven’s in deeper shit than you thought. You don’t have Access? It will be $29, please.”
It’s not because I’ve ran out of ideas and stuff to blog on, it’s just that I’ve been bloody busy with university life this semester. Running a society is much, much, much harder than I thought. Especially if you have events every week and your members are all International or Exchange students who have high expectations of you to create the best Australian/ USYD experience for them.
On top of that, I’ve to make sure the society is running smoothly so that the Clubs and Societies Office don’t come down on our asses with the ferocity of Cerberus.
Luckily, I have a great Treasurer and Secretary who help me to keep track of things.
I have to admit though, as a lazy perfectionist, the majority of the pressure came from myself. I was determined to create the most fun environment conducive to the international student body n USYD. With almost 10,000 international and exchange students in USYD, it’s a tall, tall order. Certainly not something I can accomplish within my university academic career. But at least I can set the foundation. I hope.
And let’s not mention my academic career. Not too stellar as I wished it would be. I still try to keep up with my work, but it’s quite difficult to be honest. Doing three English Literature subjects as a third-year Uni student is terribly draining. The amount of novels and plays I have to read almost every week is more than my current personal monthly reading quota (1 book a month, to be exact). This does not include the articles and journals that the lecturers assigns every week for each seminar.
There’s this English Lit course that I took. It’s called Fantastical Women and it’s about how women characters are portrayed in Literature and how women writers attempt to break away from the traditional, patriarchal forms of literature.
Interesting, I know.
But some of the novels and most of the articles are complicated at best and confounding at worst.
Most of the time, I turn up for the Fantastical Women seminar without doing any of the readings. Under the eyes of all English Literature majors and professors, this is the worst insult you can ever hurl. As an English Lit major myself, I feel very insulted too.
Anyway, there’s this girl in my seminar who sits near the back of the lecture room with me. Because of our seating arrangement, we always end up in the same discussion group. After being in the same group with me for a number of times, the first question she’ll ask me is this:
“Have you done the readings/ read the novel?”
And my answer to her, age-old and ever unchanging as a rock:
“Nope.”
Sometimes, she’ll subtly change her method, in hopes that my answer will come out different.
The girl will pick up my copy of whatever novel we’re covering in the seminar and her first comment will be:
“It’s so new!”
Of course it’s new. I just bought the novel a few days ago and I haven’t even read it. To be honest, I don’t even know why I bother buying the novel. Probably keeping up with the appearance.
Then she’ll ask me, “So… you haven’t read the novel, have you?”
“Nope.”
I must have broke that poor damsel’s heart a million times.
Yesterday, it was our last seminar. We were waiting for the lecturer. So a bunch of people sitting near me was talking about the current novel. It was Jeanette Winterson’s The PowerBook. The girl, half turned in her seat (she’s always sitting in front of me), reached out and took my copy of the novel.
Holding the book, she hesitated, not sure if she could withstand another heartbreak.
Willing what must be the last vestige of her hope, she flipped through my copy.
She paused.
She glanced at my sleep deprived face.
“Hey, you’ve read the book.” The dog-eared pages betrayed my rough handling.
I just smiled.
She smiled, a glimmer of hope shone through. Maybe I wasn’t so hopeless after all.
Half an hour later, she found out the reason why I read the novel.
My partner and I had to give a seminar presentation on the novel. I think her hopes might have deflated a little.
But I have to say that she had such unwavering faith for a traitorous English Lit major like me. I would have asked her out if only I wasn’t so preoccupied with another girl.
Oh well. Life goes on.
Anyway, I’ve rambled on for almost 742 words without even reaching to the main part of my topic.
BANANA BREAD.
I love bananas.
I fucking love banana bread.
I seriously could orgasm when I eat banana bread with Nutella.
Since I love banana bread so much, I decided to bake it. I mean, why not? I have all the baking equipment and ingredients in my kitchen and banana bread is pretty simple to make.
So last week, I went out and bought bananas, some butter, eggs and a loaf pan.
After waiting for a week for the bananas to become nicely ripe, I decided I couldn’t wait anymore and burst out my baking hat and apron this afternoon (I don’t have a baking hat and apron).
It’s on.
BANANA BREAD!
Okay, ingredients.
You need:
2 1/3 cups (525g) of mashed, overripe bananas
2 cups (250g) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (115g) butter
3/4 cup (110g) brown sugar
1 teaspoon (5g) BAKING SODA
1/3 teaspoon (2g) salt
2 eggs, beaten.
Pretty simple, really.
Now, what you do is this:
Take out bananas. The apple is there to speed up the ripening process:
Lay them out in a row on a baking tray. Adieu my good soldiers:
Then roast the shit out of them in the oven at 230 degree Celsius for 5-7 minutes. (You did preheat your oven, did you?):
They won’t explode. Trust me.
Take the roasted bananas and squeeze the gooey banana nectar into a cup and mashed them up. Mash them good:
I had to prevent myself from drinking that sweet, sweet nectar.
Now prepare the batter. You still remember the other ingredients, don’t you? Let’s have a recap:
Ignore the weighing scale. You won’t be needing it.
There’s a few things I would like to point out. First, use BAKING SODA. Not baking powder. BAKING SODA is also known as bicarbonate soda or bicarbonate of soda. Baking soda IS NOT the same as baking powder. Don’t screw this up.
Second, don’t buy raw sugar just because it’s brown. Raw sugar IS NOT brown sugar. This is how brown sugar is supposed to look:
Brown sugar has the consistency and feel of dark, wet earth.
Don’t fuck this up.
Oops, almost forgot the eggs:
Now, in a bowl, mix the flour, baking soda and salt together:
Melt butter in a saucepan:
Here’s a tip, don’t just leave the butter burning in the saucepan. You’ll only get burned butter. That’s not what you want. You just want to melt the butter. So remove the saucepan from the heat and constantly swirl the butter around. Get it? Good.
Once butter have melted, in a SEPARATE BOWL, mix butter and brown sugar together:
Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended:
Oh boy…..
Stir banana mixture into flour mixture:
Hmmm….. come to papa.
Now, when you stir the mixture, DO NOT OVER MIX. You’re not entering some ‘best-human-blender-arm’ competition. Just stir to moisten to the mixture and make sure there’s no more white flour specks left.
DO NOT OVER MIX. JUST STIR TO MOISTEN THE MIXTURE AND MAKE SURE THERE’S NO MORE WHITE FLOUR SPECKS LEFT.
Get it? Good.
Lightly grease the loaf pan with butter. Use a brush to spread the butter around:
Now pour that sweet, sweet-looking mixture into the loaf pan:
I… cannot… wait… any… longer….
Now pop that into the oven (YOU DID PREHEAT YOUR OVEN, DID YOU?). Bake the banana bread for 60 to 65 minutes at 175 degrees Celsius.
Do not touch the oven. Do not open the oven to ‘speed up’ the baking process. Unless you have those ancient oven that doesn’t have a glass window on the oven door, just leave that fucker alone.
Go do the dishes. They’re not going to clean themselves.
After 60 to 65 minutes, open the oven and insert toothpick into banana bread. If the toothpick comes out clean, it’s baked. If not, bake for 5 more minutes and test it again.
The result is this:
Sob. So… beautiful.
Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire rack. I don’t have a wire rack, so I turned it out onto a cutting board:
Our banana bread in heaven, nourished be thy name.
Your bananas come, your bananas be done,
In our stomaches as it is everywhere else on earth.
GIve us this day, our daily banana bread,
And forgive us our hunger,
As we also have forgiven our hungerers,
And lead us not into over-bingeing,
But deliver us from our guilty snacking.
For thine is the banana, and the bread, and the banana bread, for ever and ever. Amen.
Thou shall now feast on the fruits of your labour.
As it was my first time making banana bread, it came out okay. Both my housemates said it was not bad for my first time. But there are improvements to be made:
Let bananas ripen more. I was too impatient
Get MORE bananas. 8 medium sized bananas were only enough to yield 2 cups. I probably need to use 10 or 11 bananas.
Use slightly more brown sugar.
Use slightly more flour, salt and baking soda.
Bake it for 5 minutes longer. You can see the base is still slightly wet.
The banana wasn’t that sweet enough (due to the lack of overripe bananas), so NUTELLA came and saved the day!
Hmm…. chocolate and banana, the best of both worlds.
Now go bake your banana bread. May Banana bread bless you, my child.
They posted a large memorial picture of Steve Jobs on the homepage.
Steve Jobs had indeed died.
I don’t know Steve Jobs personally but I’ve heard many stories about him such as how he stopped Apple from contributing to any charities, how he was a control freak, a perfectionist, a bully and other such stories that leak out through the media.
All giants are bound to struggle with that.
Steve Jobs was a giant.
He may not be the best human. But he worked hard at what he does best. In that course, he revolutionized many technological gadgets.
The iPhone, the iPods and the iPads that are so ubiquitous among my generation, the Macbook that I’m using to type out this blog post, all these inventions, they are all due to Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs was a visionary giant. Rest in peace, Steve.
Zareth Writes At 