Yelly Writes

For the love of Spam!

30 Dec 201330 Dec 2013 Yelly

I injured myself yesterday and Spam was to blame. No, not that spam, not the one of the emailed variety.

Yesterday was all about turkey (yes, I’m still trying to rid myself of the leftover turkey that was languishing in the fridge and not preserved cryogenically in the freezer) fried rice and Spam. All my joy and anticipation (turkey fried rice was a favourite) melted away when my forearm was splattered with hot oil from the frying Spam. It hurt. A lot. And if I’m honest, I was more worried that my arm will look more speckled than usual because of the Spam battle scars! My mom warned me yesterday to take care of the blisters as they might be infected. So I will be careful…or at least, I will TRY to be careful!

But there it is. Me injured (again) in the name of food and cooking!

Yelly Writes

Christmas post-mortem

25 Dec 201327 Dec 2013 Yelly

After early morning phone calls to catch a family lunch in Manila, a hurried breakfast after present opening, the mad dash to cook the turkey with all the trimmings, recovering from a food coma, watching the requisite Christmas TV shows (and the Queen’s Christmas message, of course!), and watching the regeneration of the new Doctor, I am now relaxing and taking advice from her Majesty. She said that “we all need to get the balance right between action and reflection. With so many distractions, it is easy to forget to pause and take stock.” And that’s exactly what I’m doing , pausing, reflecting and taking stock — while watching the Downton Abbey Christmas Special.

Christmas has always been wonderful because it has always been magical. It is a season filled with joy and wonder and most of all, love. Because it is love that is the real reason for the season. God loved us so much that He sent his Son to be with us. And because of Jesus’ birth, we have Christmas and we have a wonderful excuse to celebrate (in a big way) faith, love, family, friends, lovely fattening food, and most of all life (with all its joys and sorrows). I hope everyone had a smashingly spectacular Christmas filled with wonderful moments! Merry Christmas everyone!

Yelly Writes

Breaking the silence…again!

27 Nov 201327 Dec 2013 Yelly

This is becoming a blog-a-month kind of thing. I’m not happy about that though. I seem to have lost my writing mojo. I love writing but life seems to have overtaken my writing aspirations. What to do? What does one do? How does one conquer writing block?!? How does one climb over the writing wall?!?

Sometimes I look at the social wasteland that is my social life and I wonder what in the world has happened?!? I used to go out for coffee with friends, go window shopping, blog loads and be interesting! Now I only have thoughts that never get written down, that never get expressed. I have become a jumble of insecurities and unrealised dreams. I am completely homesick and I feel like I haven’t achieved anything at all!

I’ve tried everything: post-a-day, post-a-week, post-a-photo, post about food, post about cooking, post-a-whinge, post-a-peeve, deadlines for posts (this particular attempt at encouraging more blogs reminds me of a quote from one of my favourite movies of all time, Julie and Julia,Julie Powell’s husband Eric said about deadlines — “I love deadlines, I love the sound they make as they go whooshing past!”). These tools don’t seem to encourage the blogging juices!

Frustrated am I!

Whinge over.

Yelly Writes

Mourning my curtains

21 Oct 20134 Nov 2013 Yelly

I am still smarting from the sabotage of my curtains. I have left a message on the Danes’ Launderers and Dry Cleaners answerphone but, of course, as I expected, I have not had heard back from them. I am waiting for my anger to subside before I write an email so that my email is concise and sensible and not anger driven.

I need to look up what my rights are.

I know I signed an Owner’s risk waiver but I don’t think that completely obliterates my consumer rights.

I will find out what I am entitled to. I am good at research so I’m going to find out what options are available to me.

Yelly Writes

Danes ruined my curtains

20 Oct 20134 Nov 2013 Yelly

DO NOT USE DANES LAUNDERERS AND DRY CLEANERS!

I think a picture paints a thousand words and I think this picture says it all. The blackout lining in BOTH my curtains were melted. I am absolutely livid but I understand that they think they’re off scot free because I signed an Owner’s Risk waiver. But I am not going to let this go.

On their curtain cleaning page they say that “All curtains are carefully processed then hand pressed and wrapped so they are returned to you in immaculate, crease-free condition.” As you can see, my curtains were not “carefully processed” because BOTH the curtain panels were ruined. Oh and my curtains weren’t inspected. They accepted my curtains and told me how much I had to pay and that was it and to sign the Owner’s Risk waiver without explaining it to me. There was no inspection for care instruction labels.

To add insult to injury, I didn’t find out my curtains were ruined until I got home and excited unfolded my curtains only to find that the blackout lining was completely ruined. All I had was a letter saying they applied the cleaner and everything started disintegrating. That’s not really what I’d call “immaculate and crease-free”.

This was not “an excellent personalised service alongside high quality laundry and dry cleaning.”

Yelly Writes

My keys are…where?!?

15 Oct 20134 Nov 2013 Yelly

I locked myself out. I forgot my keys on the dining room table where they were of absolutely no use to me! And this instance of my dreadful forgetfulness was an expensive one!

So I called a locksmith and after watching the poor man work on what was, apparently, an amazingly secure lock for nearly an hour and a half, I am £75 poorer but am happily inside my lovely and warm flat! I can now say that the stairs in the stairwell outside my flat door weren’t made with comfortable lounging in mind!

Lesson learned: Make sure your keys are where they’re always supposed to be, in your purse!

Yelly Writes

The irony of it all!

29 Sep 201330 Sep 2013 Yelly

After my post on the 12th of August (Breaking the silence), I did anything but! I haven’t written anything for over a month!

I’ve been quite good at journalling (actually writing in the journal that I lug around everyday) and writing my random thoughts down via an iPhone app called Day One. But I’ve been neglecting my blog, and that is the understatement of the century.

I’m going to go away for a while and I’m going to have a rethink about the blog. I might rework and tweak a few things. I keep looking at the blog and I keep thinking something needs to be done to it!

Watch this space folks!

Yelly Writes

Breaking the silence!

12 Aug 201330 Sep 2013 Yelly

My excuse: I’ve been busy.

Life has a way of interrupting writing. Which I find really annoying! I must find time to write because when I don’t vent, I become grouchy and grumpy and ornery!

I tell myself it’s all the writing muses’ faults. They have abandoned me again. But that’s not entirely true. If I really want to write about things (ANYTHING!), I should make time to write down my thoughts. Even my exercise in journal writing has ground to a halt because I don’t make time.

I have been busy in the kitchen though. I’ve been making bread completely by hand! I’ve discovered that kneading the dough helps my carpal tunnel syndrome. I’ve made pan de sal several times now and now I know that the perfect cooking time is 11.5 minutes! At least in my oven, it’s 11.5 minutes. I’ve also found the perfect blondies recipe. I’ve made it about 4 times now and each time it’s been a success…and have managed to add a few tweaks to the recipe enough that I can now call the recipe my own.

I’ve set myself a challenge for the next few weekends. I am going to

make profiteroles
make puff pastry
make a roulade

I also need to start using my Goldilocks Cakebook. Goldilocks is an iconic chain of bakeries in the Philippines and I want to try the recipes so I can bring a little bit of the Philippines to my little corner of England.

I’ve got most of everything under a semblance of control. Now all I have to do is discipline myself to write regularly! Big ask, you say? Not really. I just need to push myself to write. Because the excuse that I can’t find the words isn’t quite true. I talk enough for 2 people, so all I just have to do is to close my mouth and let my fingers do the talking for a little bit!

Here’s to hoping the next entry isn’t too far away!

Yelly Writes

Now I’ve really done it!

7 Jun 201330 Sep 2013 Yelly

This week has been a wash out. A complete washout. I haven’t been to work this week because I was in hospital overnight Monday night.

I’ve had a niggling headache for a couple of weeks and it all came to a head on Saturday. I just starting feeling horrible and everything was out of kilter. Then I started losing all the food that I was trying to eat. And it went on throughout the weekend. I didn’t want to worry my family in Manila so I had to keep fairly still when I was chatting to them on Skype so that I wouldn’t feel nauseous. On Monday, I decided to go see the doctor because I still had the headache and I was still throwing up. I thought it was another stomach bug that I’d caught while commuting as the people I travel with on the trains have no sense of infection control.

At the doctor’s surgery, I was examined and told that I had to go to the hospital because my blood sugar was sky high and because my symptoms pointed to something more serious. It was slightly worrying because at that point I thought all I had was a bug. So I took myself off to the hospital where I was told that they wanted to keep me overnight for observation. So they popped an IV cannula in my arm to prepare me for what might be an insulin drip or something else. From what I understood from the doctors, they wanted to rule out any neurology problems caused by either a throat or a lung infection, or something else. It was the undiscussed “something else” that I didn’t like. I didn’t like not knowing. The fact that I was asked to do the Romberg test three times was a tiny bit worrying. I only breathed a sigh of relief when the consultant said that my Romberg test showed “nothing of concern”.

I hate hospitals. It reminds me of illnesses, deaths of family members and my brother being always ill when he was little. But there I was, in NHS haute couture (aka a pink hospital gown that opens in the back), with a cannula (IV needle) stuck in my arm. I felt really sorry for myself because hospitals in the UK are different from hospitals in the Philippines. Hospitals in the Philippines allow for “watchers” to stay with the patient, hospitals in the UK don’t. Mind you, I understand why people aren’t allowed to stay in the hospitals. It all boils down to infection control. So there I was, with a pounding headache, feeling completely sorry for myself and an iPhone that was running out of juice! It was a good thing I had my Kindle with me because otherwise, I would have been bored out of my mind! In hindsight, I found it funny that what I was most worried about was that my iPhone was running out of power. I think, subconsciously, I just didn’t want to think about what was wrong with me.

I know it might sound inconsequential, but one of the reasons I disliked being in hospital was the food. Hospital food is meant to nourish the body and not necessarily ambrosial! I was famished because after tossing my cookies for two days, I, basically, hadn’t eaten anything for days! So the evening I was admitted into hospital, I wasn’t really looking for anything to eat. I did appreciate it when a lady wielding an efficient looking trolley of hot drinks asked if I wanted a cup of tea. There is nothing more comforting than an cup of strong, milky tea! Breakfast was whole wheat toast and a small bowl of bran flakes swimming in milk. Lunch was minced beef, with boiled potates and vegetables with a bowl of rice pudding for dessert. Lunch wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t inspired either, and dessert was just not right for a diabetic because it was overly sweet. Don’t worry, I didn’t have any of it, save the little taste that I had.

I was placed in a ward but was in a side room all by myself. Mind you, I thought that was a good thing because, after I was settled into my room I started bawling my eyes out. There I was, a grown woman, wanting my mummy!

I was told the following day that I could be discharged and that after all the tests and a CT scan, it was only an atypical migraine. My blood sugar skyrocketing was due to the fact that I was throwing up and not keeping my meds in (at least, that’s my theory, and not the medical professionals’!). I still have a headache that comes and goes and I think I may need to see the doctor again because my headache still hasn’t gone completely. Although, that being said, it’s no longer a pounding, head-splitting pain and is more bearable with pain meds.

It was sort of a turning point experience because it made me look at how I’m taking care of myself. I can’t really deny that I am a diabetic and I can’t go on living the way I live. I can’t miss my medicines. I really need to watch what I eat and my excuse that if I eat in moderation whatever I want will no longer work. And I know I can still bake, but I need to bake more savoury things than the sweet things that I enjoy making. I need to take care of myself. I really need to. Otherwise, I will find myself in an even worse predicament than I found myself this week!

What a week it has been!