by Amanda
Leather jacket, metallic scales, the tip of a sharpened dagger gleaming in the moonlight. Silence. It’s midnight but that’s not why the air is as cold as ice. A mind abuzz with estimations and calculations, for one intent. Heels digging deeper into the earth, narrowed eyes, white-knuckled fingers strangling the weathered hilt. Liar, she breathed.
Inevitably taurean, I have once again reunited the worlds of dessert and flowers – the dreamiest of dimensions, an escapist’s paradise. Certainly a more pleasant alternative to life as I know it these days, which seem to be an endless loop of dread and disappointment (when will it end? Do we just live in strange […]
A couple months ago I spontaneously purchased more than a kilo of couverture chocolate and tackled the entire stash armed with an infrared thermometer and the steely resolve to perfect the art of tempering chocolate after a tragic first attempt at bonbon making, the evidence of which I refuse to retain in any form, mentally […]
I didn’t mean for two months to lapse since my last post but so much has happened in between. I decided to move from Tokyo back to Singapore permanently after days and nights of deliberation and was occupied with the logistics of it all for the past several weeks. Up till the point I boarded […]
Amidst the treacherous whirlpools of poison and bitter medicine, I have always found, no matter how minuscule, a kernel of light – a lonely but brave survivor casting its warmth through ashes and shadows. Over time hope feeds its strength. It swells up like the envelope of a hot air balloon starting to take flight, […]
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.) – Sylvia Plath
Finally the most torturous 365 days in recent history can be referred to in past tense and humanity has stepped into what one can only anticipate to be a more smooth sailing chapter. In short, happy new year! In conjunction with the new year and the accompanying notion of a fresh, clean start to old […]
The re-questioning of personal style seems to be an annual affair at this point. It’s hard to definitively say if the broadly sombre atmosphere of 2020 and the somewhat shaky prospects of the upcoming year play a substantial role in this shift, but my stylistic preferences are becoming increasingly monochromatic and very much less sunlight […]
I watched the hazy morning glow streaming in through the windows give way to tiled rectangular shadows on the wall like the black and white keys of the piano. I counted the seconds as I watched them slowly and gradually grow fainter. …seven, six, five, four, three, two, one… and they were gone.
Occasionally there are moments where my eyes land upon an image so strikingly beautiful that it feels like its beauty is collectively crystallised into a long, slender icicle, gliding through the air seamlessly, like an arrow through the heart.
“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, […]
Sun rays on bare skin. Cloudless cerulean skies. Crickets punctuating the muggy summer air with their unwavering high pitched cries. Afternoons so blindingly bright that everywhere you look is an overexposed picture. Flushed cheeks, floaty cotton dresses, long hair swept up in ponytails. Leaves a verdant green. An occasional breeze whooshes by. Sighs of relief. […]
Some days I lapse into moments where there’s a thunderstorm imprisoned in my mind and lightning bolts surging through my veins. I can’t sense anything above the chaos of dark thoughts churning and seething – not the sound of a Steinway piano played by angels’ fingertips or the perfume of a vaseful of ivory gardenias. […]
The first year of elementary school during an English class, my teacher posed us students a question that went something along the lines of, “Which is most important in discerning a person’s true feelings when he speaks – his body language, his words, or his tone of voice?” Majority of the class picked ‘body language’. […]
Products of 4 am writing endeavours scarcely endure, but due to that evening grande-sized latte here I am anyways, seated typing at my coffee table while listening to the abnormally loud whir of my heater and the sporadic whoosh of a vehicle speeding by on an empty road, wondering if those drivers noticed the warm […]
It’s not yet officially summer but it sure feels like it already – and I’m utterly living for it.
Oddly, I felt like typing up a rather lengthy side story a few hours ago but now I would rather just talk about this cake, which would take just a moment really because there are not many words needed.
So as you can tell from the very innovative title, today’s post is going to be all about waxing lyrical about the beauty of edible flowers and how they elevate a rather plain appearance to something that looks a thousand times more gorgeous.
Looking back, I’ve always favoured a minimalist approach to pictures, both mine and others’. Usually that entails having an unadorned white background and containing very few elements aside from the ones in focus. I guess it’s because these pictures stand out in a society so cluttered with information that it would reach its breaking point […]
There are some things that are just unwaveringly delicious – the combination of coffee and caramel, caramel and banana… this banana bread recipe specifically.
Lately I’ve been thinking, reflecting, assessing in overdrive. I feel like I rotated an imaginary hourglass more times than I should – I gave myself too much time to accomplish too little. And yet when I look back on my writing, on my pictures, on memories of past actions till this very moment, I cringe […]
In the logical mind of a baker, when one is gifted cute cookies, one does not simply eat them – there is an unspoken sense of duty to maximise their existence by using them as finishing touches to cupcakes only so worthy.
