LiteratInitiate

laniibegood:

MTV sucks

(Source: magicalmischief)

23.49

Thank god for air conditioner motors. They provide a nice little balcony outside my room in my parents’ new apartment, where my major issue has been a distinct lack of privacy - sure, I only need it so I have a spot to smoke out of view of the aforementioned parental units and yes, it is a little desperate, but I like knowing I can keep my vices to myself.

I’m back in Bangkok, where I spent thirteen years growing up as an expat. It’s funny that I call it my hometown when I don’t speak the language and am not really part of the local community. I’ll always be farang, a foreigner, but I think part of being an international student is the sense that you don’t truly belong in any one place. It’s also given me this ability, for better or worse, to live not in the moment but in whatever place I’m in. That is, I don’t particularly miss people who have left me or who I’ve left behind, and I focus all my attention on the things and people in my immediate vicinity. If it wasn’t for Facebook I’d probably never keep in contact with any of my school friends scattered around the globe. Luckily I’ve got a few of them in Bangkok with me now.

Hopefully I’ll spend some time writing while I’m here - although in all likelihood I’ll spend the month getting drunk on Kao San Road…

18.32

I took a Creative Writing subject last semester, and the advice from all the guest lecturers - Tony Birch and Claire Gaskin were just two of them - said that the key to being a good writer (and the key to being good at anything, really) is practice. So I guess I’ve started this blog as somewhere to spend an hour or two forcing myself to find something to write about, and hopefully something good will come out of it.

-

On Thursday night, my friend and I played grown-ups in my mother’s new apartment in Jolimont (Melbourne) and hosted a dinner party with a few of our friends from college. Since she was away all week in Alice Springs, I was left with all the inviting and preparing and finding recipes to cook. It didn’t help that it took me til the Monday to realise I had work to do. I’d let the weekend get away from me, having just finished my Uni exams and had left it all too late. Luckily everyone was able to come, even at such short notice.

But I got it organised and called up Mum for her risotto recipe. It’s an easy one - the main ingredient is patience. After you’ve diced the onion and crushed the garlic and thrown them in the pot with some olive oil, and added the rice, wine and stock, you spend about half an hour just adding cup after cup of water, constantly stirring, waiting for it to get soft. I may have inadvertently boiled the already roasted chicken because I was too eager and threw it in about fifteen minutes to early, and to make up for the potential lack of taste I threw in salt, pepper and the basil leftover from our bruschetta.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed cooking. A bit of a power trip, perhaps. When you’re at the stove cooking a meal for ten people, you get to be bossy and demanding of anyone foolish enough to offer help. You’re completely in control. And what I liked most about the cooking was the opportunity to be creative in a different way - creative with flavour. Cooking is where science and art overlap, and it’s an opportunity to experiment with both. I guess that’s why my sister’s copy  of Donna Hay’s ‘Seasons’ looks more like an artsy coffee table book than a cook book.

And it’s even better when it all pays off and it turns out you’re actually quite good at cooking risotto for ten. I played the expected role of self-conscious cook and made sure people weren’t just saying it tasted good. In my defence, I was genuinely unable to tell because of my cold.

There’s something very classy about a dinner party. The carefully arranged cheese plate (crackers round the rim, the circle of Double Brie cut in half by a row of dried apricots), drinking a wine properly suited to the main course, and having everyone sit at a dinner table. It’s a huge contrast to life in a residential college. Very proper and grown up.

And I guess it’s handy having a spare apartment just a few blocks away.

-

Chicken and Basil Risotto

Serves 8 - 10 people

Cooking time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

One and a half cups of Arborio Risotto Rice;

One cup of stock;

One cup of white wine;

One brown onion;

Two cloves of garlic;

Peas;

One whole (pre-roasted) chicken;

Basil.

1. Put a large pot on medium heat. Pour in 1tbsp olive oil. Throw in diced onion and crushed garlic. Stir and cook until onion is clear.

2. Add rice, wine, stock and a cup of water. (Stir continually, adding a cup of water as liquid levels decrease until the rice is soft enough to eat.)

3. Add peas and diced chicken, about five minutes before the rice is ready. Throw in salt, pepper and lots of basil for flavour.

4. Serve straight away!

00.43

So. This is blogging.

Up until now, I’ve been the type to shun the world of blogs and scoffed at the idea of keeping one. I could never figure out the appeal of following the inane comments of a complete stranger, or bothering to spend time unloading the dull details of one’s life to an unknown and invisible audience. But lately I’ve started buying literary journals (Meanjin and Granta) and have actually started feeding the interest in literature that I’ve always had. I’ve been following them online via Twitter (another internet platform I’ve only just found a real use for) and they’ve posted links to online literature and various blogs which have demonstrated an intellectual use for the internet - and blogging in particular. Rachel Hills’ Musings of an Inappropriate Woman and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency were inspiring.

The problem I have now is of not ending up as the shallow, vacuous blogger I envision… Which means I need to find something interesting to say. I keep a regular, old-fashioned journal and from what I can tell there no person would have any interest in hearing what I have to say. Perhaps the problem lies in the medium. A book can be closed and kept secret and isn’t necessarily available to an audience. The internet, however, is available to everyone and anyone, and while this is a truly terrifying fact, it is one that will hopefully propel me to write something interesting. As an aspiring writer, it’s probably what I should be aiming for. It should be helpful to write with an audience in mind, even if that audience is wholly imagined.

Now comes the question of what to write about. What am I interested in? If the aforementioned journal is any indication, it’s parties, boys, cigarettes and alcohol - just what you’d expect of a young gay man. (Man? I’d prefer boy, but it doesn’t quite sound right.) The answer in polite conversation would be theatre, music and literature.

I’d do a full introduction, but there’s a certain thrill in anonymity for the moment.

For now, it’s late, and I really need some sleep - I just needed to get this started, or I knew I’d never get back around to it. Over the next few days, I’ll see what I can make of this blog.