Category: Yelly Writes

My life is extraordinarily ordinary and this is celebrating and writing about my beautifully ordinary moments.

Yelly Writes

My keys are…where?!?

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!

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!

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!

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”.

Waiting for a hospital bed

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.

IV cannula

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.

Lunch

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!

Hospital bracelet

Yelly Writes

Cleansing ritual

Yelly

I did something really good yesterday.  I cleared most of my email inbox!

From 1,327 emails down to 93 – with all emails properly filed, saved and, when appropriate, deleted!  I feel absolutely cleansed!

emails

Yelly Writes

The Wall

Yelly

I have hit the proverbial writing wall.

I’ve got so many things I want to write about, I’ve take so many pictures that I want to post and I’ve started writing the blog entries, but I can’t seem to finish anything!  In my head I know exactly what I want to write about, I know exactly what elements are part of the entry but as I sit in front of my PC and look at that blinking cursor, I freeze.  The words just won’t come!

I think the writing muses have gone away somewhere.  I’m thinking they’ve gone to somewhere warm and sunny.  I feel a bit put out that they didn’t invite me on their spring break!  I really wish they would come back.  I really want to start writing again.

Yelly Writes

Looking for the blue door

Yelly

My feet were killing me (I’d been wearing only heels for months and on this London trip I only brought flats–let me tell you, that was not intentional!  My feet and leg muscles were telling me, in no uncertain terms, exactly how they felt about wearing flats after a heels-only arrangement for months!  They hated the idea and me at that particular moment in time).   They were absolutely murdering me.  But I walked on–completely ignoring Portobello Road (which was an experience in itself – especially when the market is on!).

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I walked on because I wanted to go to a Filipino food place.  But as the experience was definitely forgettable, I won’t talk about it again.

My disappointment was all but forgotten when I left the Filipino food place because a few doors down was a familiar looking bookshop.   People were posing in front of the shop, having their pictures taken and I couldn’t understand why.  And then it dawned on me: I was in Notting Hill and they were posing near a BOOKSHOP!  I ran (hobbled really quickly, more like!) the 100 meters to the bookshop and gasped (yes, out loud!) because it was THE bookshop.  It was THE bookshop where the scenes for the Travel Book  Company were shot for the movie Notting Hill (which rangs high up in my list of favourite movies, near enough to Sliding Doors for it to matter a lot!).  I tried to be cool.  I tried to be nonchalant and I managed to convince myself that I only wanted a photograph of the shop front, that that was enough.  So snap away I did!  Only just one photo!  Ha!

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So I walked away, and round the corner, I found the Notting Hill shop of the Biscuiteers.  I had a look around the shop and oohed and aahed at the lovely iced biscuits.  But I really wanted to ask the shop keeper if he knew where the house with the blue door was.  I figured if they were local, they’d know where William Thacker’s house with the blue door was.  I was told to go back to the Notting Hill Bookshop because the lady who ran the shop would definitely know.  So my crown iced biscuite securely stored in my purse, I went then went back to the Notting Hill Bookshop to ask directions.

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I went around to the bookshop because it was a bookshop and I LOVED bookshops.  There’s something about the smell of bound paper that comforts me.  Plus I didn’t really want to pounce on the lovely shop lady and just get the information and run out of the shop!  It didn’t seem right.  They had a copy of the Travel Book Shop Company’s sign up in the area where Rufus the thief stuffed a book down his trousers–or at least that’s where I thought it was shot.  Apparently the interior layout of the shop hasn’t changed, it remains exactly same as it was in the movie!  I couldn’t help myself and did a happy little dance because I was — sort of! — sharing a space with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts!

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I bought a cloth book bag and a fridge magnet (to add to my growing collection) because I felt that I owed it to the lovely lady who ran the shop.  As I waited at the till for her to ring up my purchases, I asked if she knew where the house with the blue door was.  I also apologised in the same breath as I know she gets asked the same question time and time again.  She laughed and gave the directions.  I was relieved to hear that it was only a block away because as excited as I was to be in the Travel Bookshop, my feet were still hurting!

After a few pained steps, there it was, the house with a blue door!  And for a while, I stared at the house, trying to decide why it looked a little different (I realised later that the pillars and the area framing the door were painted blue before and now they were white, except for the door).  But it didn’t matter so much that it looked only slightly different.

For one brief shining moment, I was a girl, standing in front of the door, living a dream!

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Yelly Writes

Thoughts of Lent

Yelly

I grew up going to church every Sunday.  I will even go as far as to say that I have 2 home churches, one that I grew up in and one where I grew up spiritually in.  I went to Sunday school.  I sang in the children’s choir.  I eventually taught Sunday school and daily vacation church school.  My summers were spent in church and I was there nearly everyday!  I sang in the church chancel choir and completely immersed myself in all the church activities.  I spent so much time in church that I think it would be natural for me to miss church at Easter.

I think it’s fair to say that Easter is one of the busiest weeks in the Christian calendar, apart from Christmas.  Funnily enough, there is a Filipino term (Pasko ng Pagkabuhay) which translated means Christmas of the Resurrection.  We start counting down to this week from Ash Wednesday.  But it all starts unfolding on Palm Sunday, when Christians celebrate Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem with a Palm Sunday service.  The Catholics in the Philippines have their beautifully woven palm fronds blessed in church and they display this in their homes, mostly on their windows.  I grew up in a Methodist church and while we didn’t have the blessing of palm fronds, children of the Sunday school class came into the church waving their palms to re-enact Jesus’ triumphant entry.  This Sunday also marks the beginning of a very busy week.

I remember choir rehearsals in earnest because we would be singing during a series of services.  Our church usually had a service for the last supper where we would have the washing of the feet ceremony.  Our minister and members of the church would recreate the moment when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet in a display of his humility and servanthood.  We would have a communion service to commemorate the last time Jesus broke bread with his followers before his death and when he foretold of Judas’ betrayal.

One service that is closest to my heart is the Seven Last Words on Good Friday.  We start off the service at one o’clock in the afternoon.  We have seven speakers, a mixture of lay members and ministers, all speaking about the biblical basis of Jesus’ seven last statements.  Interspersed with the short sermons are songs by the choir.  The choir chronicles the last 24 hours of Jesus’ life with songs commemorating the kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus’ journey carrying the cross through the Via Dolorosa, His nailing on the cross, His message to His disciple entrusting his mother into his care and His subsequent surrender of His spirit and His life into His Father’s hands.  Each song that we sings makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end because all the songs just underline the great sacrifice that The Lord undertook to save the world.  And because the songs paint a picture of how it was to be there, it just shakes me down to my foundations.  What it must have felt to be there!

We usually finish at three o’clock which is popularly believed to be the time of his death.  After all the speakers have finished their messages, and the choir have sung all their songs, the church is stripped as a sign of mourning.  Because Christ is dead and we are bereft without His divine presence.

Black Saturday is usually celebrated in silence, in contemplation.  Nothing really happens on a Saturday.  But the choir does try to sneak in a few hours of practice because we do have a sunrise service and an Easter Sunday service to sing in.

Easter Sunday is celebrated in so many ways.  But my favourite is a sunrise start.  We have an Easter sunrise service where messages of hope, joy and salvation resound in the sermons and the songs from the choir.  As a Christian, it is lovely to greet the brand new rays of the sun with the reassurance that Christ is not dead, He is alive and sitting at His Father’s right hand and waiting to come back for all of us.  We have an Easter Sunday service (yes, after the sunrise service, which is usually an ecumenical service with all the Christian churches in our community) that finishes with a lovely (and very traditional) Easter egg hunt for the children.

While I will enjoy the odd chocolate bunny and the occasional chocolate egg, and enjoy the bank holiday and the respite from the rat race,  the reason for the season will always resonate in my heart.  I will always know that Easter is the celebration of Christ’s resurrection, Christ’s ascension to heaven.  It is the fulfillment of the promises in the Bible.

Easter will always bring me hope, joy and a wonderful reminder of my salvation by Christ, but I will always feel a twinge in my heart because I will be missing my church family and the fellowship of Christians that I grew up with.  It is always wonderful to celebrate the fulfillment of God’s promises with like-minded individuals.

Fairview Park United Methodist Church - photo credit: Matt de Guzman
Fairview Park United Methodist Church – photo credit: Matt de Guzman
Yelly Writes

Good vibes!

Yelly

Today wasn’t such a good day because I am currently in the throes of quite a bad migraine episode.  The pain meds are fading and I’m due to drink my next round of painkillers.

I wanted to share this photo with y’all though because I thought it was such a positive little slogan that it won’t fail to make you smile.  This was taken outside the Spitalfields branch of The Breakfast Club.  They used to have this note on their receipts but for some reason the last receipt I got from them didn’t have this little cheerful tidbit.  I guess they thought having the sign outside the shop would be enough.  And, in my case, it was enough; and on the day that I saw that sign it was certainly a good day!

Good vibes sent out into the cosmos and all that!  Even if you start the day with a pounding headache or even if something negative manages to wiggle itself into the start of your day, if you tell yourself that you’re going to have a good day, you are.  Don’t let the negativity get you done!

If you tell yourself you’re going to have a good day, you are!

Today is going to be a good day!

Yelly Writes

Thank you!

Yelly

I must say that I am quite pleased whenever someone comes to visit the blog.

I know it’ll sound cheesy when I say this: but I am always challenged to write better when people come to visit.  It’s all about the quality of the posts, really.  It’s all about content.  And every time someone likes a post, or starts following the blog, it reminds me that I have a responsibility to the people who follow the blog: to write better, to post better photos and to share something relevant.

I started the blog because I wanted to embrace the fact that I am all about the food.  But I’m beginning to realise that whilst food might be the centre of my writing universe, it’s not the be-all-and-end-all of my writing world.  I started with a tag line on the blog that said “There is no love more sincerer than the love of food.”  I took my food posts from a previous blog and brought them over to this blog.  But I soon realised that concentrating on food did not allow me to express all my thoughts.  Sure, it’s good to have a niche blog, but  I have opinions and I have thoughts that I most certainly love sharing–mostly, selfishly, so that I can validation; that I can say that I’m not the only one with these thoughts.  It’s good to get validation and it’s even better when someone you don’t know in some other part of the world says, “Yeah, I think that too!”

If you’ve dropped by the blog, if you’ve liked a post, if you’ve clicked that button to follow the blog, let me just say “Thank you!” for without y’all to spur me on, I don’t think I’d put my thoughts out there!

This is my second thank you post, but I feel the need to say it over and over again.  You all make my heart sing (insert Dido’s Thank You song here)! 🙂

Thank you!