There are also some other smaller projects that I’d like to work on in the next few weeks:

1. Book all accommodation for our trip to China in April/May. I’ve already worked out a rough itinerary, so would like to start locking in some accommodation!
2. Start brushing up on my Mandarin language skills. They’re very rusty as I haven’t used Mandarin regularly for the past four years. I’ve already borrowed some audio language guides from my local library that I want to transfer to my iPhone so I can practice on my commute.
3. Start reading up on research methods for my last unit of study for my Masters. I should receive this year’s materials towards the end of this month, but because I have last year’s materials already, I can start doing some pre-reading.
4. Learn how to use Kieran’s new Nikon D3100 DSLR that he won the day before he left for Japan. He left it with me, so I might as well teach myself the basics so that I can appropriate the camera whenever I feel like being “artistic”. Inverted commas are actually necessary, because I’m not artistic in the traditional sense.

I also have a monthly pass to a gym in the city that I purchased for $19 off a Daily Deal site. It expires at the end of February, so I guess I should start going. I need to go at least four times to make the $19 investment worthwhile. Wish me luck?

This anonymous comment I received shows why racism is still a pertinent issue. Anyone who claims it isn’t, is just delusional.

I celebrated with a large family dinner in a restaurant with Kieran’s family last night – there were probably around 50 people in total. While we had the traditional feast foods like lobster on noodles and drunk chicken, we also had the choice of such foods like sea cucumbers, angel hair, chicken feet and jellyfish. Most people weren’t adventurous enough to try those options, but I got stuck right into it, and actually turned my nose up at the more Western sweet and sour pork option. There’s no better time than Chinese New Year to get your Asian on right?

I’m the lady in the red dress at work today (red for fortune and luck!), and have been trying to do my part in educating my colleagues about the Year of the Water Dragon…and of course, the most accessible way is through a universal crowd pleaser like horoscopes! I sent this link around in an email this morning for everyone to explore their horoscope for the year. Apparently, I can expect a year of popularity, more responsibilities at work, and growing to another phase in my relationship. What can you expect?

Anyway, I mention this dinner only because it was incredibly stereotypically Chinese. Discussion topics over the course of the night included:

1. How their daughter should become a doctor because she’s academically gifted and give up her idea of becoming an astronomer.
2. How my parents exclaimed over how pretty she was, and her parents firmly disagreed and said that she was alright, but nothing special.
3. How her parents always told her that she wasn’t a good sister because she didn’t look after her younger brother the way I did mine.
4. How she needed to ask me about what subjects she should study in school (in five years time) in order to get into a good university.
5. How I wasted my high academic scores by not going into Law because I was confident and good at talking (their words, not mine).
6. How an acquaintance was overprotective by following her twenty-seven year old son to another city to look after him, but how it would somehow be alright if it was a daughter, because daughters need to be looked after until they’re married off.
7. How I needed to find a boyfriend quick stat because I’m in extreme danger of becoming a barren old maid.

I was of course, questioned further on the last point, in a style not dissimilar to Spanish Inquisition. It’s much more frightening though – it’s the Asian Parent Inquisition.

The night ended when our two families parted ways and my mother spent the entire drive home berating my father for not taking a firmer hand with me over the entire course of my life and forbidding me from: a) moving out of home; b) getting an inappropriate boyfriend; c) not getting an appropriate boyfriend; d) moving to Sydney; e) staying under their rule forever. My father replied with “What am I supposed to do, she’s an adult and she’ll make up her own mind anyway”, thereby cementing his status as the cooler parent in my mind forever.

Given previous history, I was expecting her to get all Asian parent-y and find something to criticise about it, rather than appreciating it as a gift. Surprisingly she didn’t. She said thank you and she didn’t criticise it. She didn’t gush over it the way some mothers might to make their children feel like they’ve made a great choice, but the sheer fact that there was no criticism said enough as she never holds back harsh words.

In any case, we went out to dinner at a Thai restaurant on Sunday night on a Daily Deal voucher – seven courses for two people for $29AUD. I think my mother is a daily deal convert now, it appeals to her frugal Asian nature. We also went out to dinner again tonight, with king crab on noodles. Cause Asians celebrate with crustaceans. (I’m a poet and I didn’t even know it.)

You know, I kind of resigned myself to the fact that there are a million and one Amanda’s out there. Facebook tells me as much – it’s kind of like the John Smith for Asian females (that and names like Candy Wu, Lulu Zhang and Lisa Nguyen). There’s apparently even an Amanda in Iowa who works as a web designer.

But my Chinese name? I always thought that was unique to me. Obviously a stupid assumption given that Chen is the second most popular surname in a country with a population of 1.3 billion people, and that 静 and 文 are qualities that any traditional Asian parent would want to embed into the characters of their daughters.

I always think I don’t travel enough but in the past 12 months, I’ve clocked 7630 km (4741 miles) on a plane for three different trips.

Which realistically, is probably more than what most people do in three YEARS!

Just remembered – if I count the road trip to Canberra as well, I’ve actually clocked 8950 kms these past 12 months. Or, halfway to London!

Fact is, I really do quite travel quite a bit more than the average person. Relatively however, it’s just not a lot of travel for me as I’ve been used to working and earning enough to be able to finance an overseas trip each year. Now that I have a crippling mortgage however, the only trips I can afford are those that are financed by work, or domestic trips where I can get free accommodation (e.g. Sydney) and have fun on the cheap.

My father however, has been telling me that it’s about time I went to Hong Kong and visited his side of the family. I have apparently been neglecting my duty as the last time I visited Hong Kong was in 2004, with my last China trip to see my mother’s side of the family in 2007. I can understand my father’s point – I do love my family and I should see them as much as possible, as none of them are getting any younger. My maternal grandparents are getting into their seventies, and my eldest paternal uncle (and favourite uncle!) must be around that age himself.

However to be entirely realistic, taking this trip will cost me a bare minimum of $3000AUD. A more likely figure will be $5000AUD, as custom will dictate that as a returning visitor, I should be treating most of my family to yum cha lunches and banquet dinners. To put this into perspective, I have seven complete sets of aunts and uncles in Hong Kong (plus a few stray ex-aunts and ex-uncles), as well as seventeen cousins (almost all of whom are older than me and married with children). That’s about sixty to seventy people I’ll have to take out for a feed at least twice in my stay. Then there’s the expectation of the homage I will have to pay to my aunts and uncles in the form of gifts of money. Quite frankly, I couldn’t afford such a trip, even if my dad helped me with the plane fare as he offered! If the trip took place at Chinese New Year it would be a different matter – as an unmarried female, I would still be viewed as a child and would receive red pockets of money (no less than $50AUD) from every married relative.

My mother takes a different view to my father – she doesn’t think that there’s any need for me to return to Hong Kong any time soon. In her words, “there’s no point until you get married and have children and need to go show them off to the rest of the family”. Instead she told me to save up and travel the world a bit, and visit countries I’ve never been to before – to seize the opportunity now while I don’t have anything concrete tying me down. To do what she could never do because she doesn’t have the language skills to travel comfortably outside of any country but China.

Of course she did say all that while telling me off for not moving back into the family home so I could rent out my apartment and save money easily for such trips and other indulgences like clothing that costs more than $20AUD a piece. So really, she’s just encouraging me to travel widely for three weeks of the year so that she can keep a close eye on me under her roof for the remaining forty-nine weeks. I SEE YOUR ULTERIOR MOTIVE MOTHER!

Going through the most recent photos on Facebook of me, we have a mix of standing awkwardly with a metal helmet on, frowning, looking like a fat pig next to Miss Universe Australia, squinting into the sun, squinting with slitty eyes cause I’m Asian, a stupid grin, playing tennis and lounging in the sun. There’s no cute cartoon cat poses, no making cute hello gestures with my hands, no fake daydreaming poses, no surprised Home Alone poses, no blowing kisses, no V signs. It’s almost like I’m enjoying life instead of posing for the camera in a staged shot!

Which actually reminds me – for the past year I’ve been meaning to do a photo montage of staged Asian poses. Maybe I’ll do it this weekend as I really have no other plans (ironic, considering my previous statement about living life).

I’ve just watched Tangled. The role of the ‘mother’ Gothel (e.g. evil old witch who stole the baby) was actually quite disgusting, in the way she belittled Rapunzel and quite literally imprisoned her in a tower, locked away from the world. Her catchphrase was: Mother knows best, listen to your mother.

It reminds me actually of the recent article by Amy Chua in the Wall Street Journal. For those who haven’t heard of it, there’s been a huge controversy around some of the ideas espoused in the article – largely that children need constant browbeating and social deprivation in order to achieve academically.

There are certain ideas that I agree with in the article. I learnt discipline and academic responsibility from a very young age, sometimes through corporal punishment. By instilling self discipline in me from a young age, my parents gave me the tools I needed to continue that throughout my life – I credit my current work ethic and level of personal responsibility to my parents. I don’t think that I could have achieved (or continue to achieve) what I have and what I do if I’d had parents who’d been more lax or more indulgent. They gave me the focus from a young age that I needed to succeed in life.

I believe that parents have a responsibility to provide their children with these important personality characteristics: work ethic, personal responsibility, discipline, a desire to reach for the stars and to achieve. Sometimes, being a tough parent is what it takes to instill these qualities in your child so that they have the tools they need to succeed in life. Sometimes, you need to be a Tiger Mother. You just have to find the balance between disciplining your child, instilling regular routines, and allowing a reasonable amount of socialisation and extracurricular activities.

That’s precisely what Gothel didn’t allow Rapunzel, and that’s why she was an evil witch. =P

For the majority of my stir fries and other Asian meals, I don’t use a specific list of ingredients in a particular order. I use what I have in the fridge, and improvise accordingly to how long I know the items need to be cooked for. For instance if we’re having a chicken and vegetable noodle soup (what we had last night) with chicken, bokchoy, fish cake, and mushroom, I’ll know instinctively in which order the ingredients have to go in the pot to make sure they’re all cooked to the right degree.

To aid in this, there are a number of Asian sauces that I always make sure I have in the fridge which work well across a number of different cooking styles: soy sauce (one dark, one light), Chinese dumpling vinegar, Chinese cooking wine, chilli bean oil, hoi sin sauce, oyster sauce, plum sauce, tom yum paste, curry paste. With the exception of tom yum and curry paste, most of the above will go quite well together in various combinations – chilli and soy, plum and hoi sin, etc. It’s really a game of experimentation over time, to figure out which sauces go well together.

There are also a number of ingredients that work well in almost all guises – baby bok choy, fish cake, bean shoots, bean curd, enoki mushrooms. I buy these five ingredients each week when grocery shopping as they work in all types of stir fries, in plain dishes by themselves, in soups, etc. They’re very versatile.

Then there are other rules to keep in mind:

1. Meats (both red and white) is always sliced finely. You rarely see a large piece of meat (e.g. a steak) in Asian cooking – it’s more likely to be thin slivers of chicken in a stir fry, or a thin slivers of beef in a soup.
2. There is always a carb component to an Asian meal. Unlike Western cuisine where you can have a salad by itself, or fish by itself, you will always have either rice, or noodles, or steamed buns with an Asian meal.
3. The only items you roast are meats. You rarely roast vegetables as you want your Chinese greens to remain quite crisp and fresh when you eat them

But then again – all rules are made to be broken. You can get pork chops in Asian cooking, just as you get meals without a noodle or rice base.

So, cooking Asian food isn’t something you can follow a recipe for. It’s a skill that comes over time as you learn how long ingredients need to be cooked for, in what style they should be cooked, and as you learn to combine different sauces. It’s all about experimentation, so I wouldn’t want to dictate a certain recipe to you!