2nd Oct 2007 - My 1st encounter with cooking

I had a really busy day today, scurrying from place to place while carrying loads of stuff. Though I slept at 5am the night before, I was woken up at 8+ am by the college representatives to go for breakfast. It seems like during the orientation week, there’s some sort of breakfast being provided. Please don’t go all “wow”, because today’s breakfast is only toast plus some spread! Yesterday’s breakfast was much better, we had grill sausages and bacons to go with toast, which is lovely on a cold English morning. Anyway, I had to woke up early because I was supposed to meet a certain someone, of THAI origin (haha hope she reads this!), during breakfast. Apparently, I found out much later in the night that she didn’t go for breakfast. Guessed I got punked yet again… Haha, actually I had to wake up early anyway to go to town to get my tie as well as cooking utensils plus groceries. After starving last night with no dinner, I had to call a delivery which cost 5 pounds. It was then that I told myself that I’m not going to get caught in such a situation ever again. Thus began my journey into the aromatic world of cooking.

I had to travel from shop to shop so as to compare prices between the utensils i.e. saucepans and pots etc. It really isn’t cheap to buy your cooking utensils here, but it’s not like I’ve any other viable options. Buying groceries are expensive too, especially meat and veggies! 3 stupid garlic cost 90p, 4 onions cost 70p, 6 eggs cost 1 pound and so forth. Do the maths, and you realized that these veggies, that we take for granted in Singapore, are not cheap over in UK. I was in a mad rush shopping for my utensils, groceries and my neck tie because I had another appointment in the afternoon.

I was supposed to attend my college fair with my friends followed by the university fair in town. The college fair was really simple which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, the varsity fair was chaotic. The place was crammed and there were all sorts of peculiar societies such as paintball, varsity (this is misleading because it’s a bar, so I reckon this society is to promote drinking?) and many other societies which you wouldn’t find in Singapore because of the difference in our lifestyle and culture. Anyway, I feel that our matriculation fair back in Singapore is much better organized.

Though my day was jam-packed with activities, it was a satisfying day for me because I cooked for the 1st time in 23+ yrs of my entire existence! I whipped up a serving of cream based pasta, which I thought tasted pretty good. Hehe, I didn’t use the cream sauce from those ready made bottles, but I cooked it from scratch. Many thanks to my cooking teacher who showed me the art of making cream based pasta. I’m now looking forward to preparing my next meal as I’m going to experiment with another type of pasta which I never been taught. If only my engineering experiments are as interesting as cooking! Time to go for another round of grocery shopping tomorrow…