On Dancing When Everyone's Watching

I took this picture as I was walking to work last weekend in Penang, along the northeast coast. The sun was high and the sea breeze teased my hair. My music player chose Lionel Richie's 'All Night Long'. I started dancing like noone was watching. When people started watching, I realized it wasn't a big deal, and carried on dancing.
I love how one of my favourite singers, Jason Mraz, tells his fans at concerts to "Never let your mind stop you from having a good time."
May we all Party, Karamu, Fiesta, Forever.

On Staying Young, Part 2

I was catching up with a friend who's visiting from London. This year, he divorced his partner of 8 years and just resigned from his corporate job to fully pursue his passion for acting. He is anxious about starting life again at 39. But a friend suggested that he try turning back the clock ten years. Now as a fresh 29-year old (with a cherubic face to match), his mindset on life has changed.

"Imagine, all the people who lived before us, who did not yet create the concept of time," my friend mused. "There was no such thing as 'running out of time'. They must have just done whatever made them happy for however long they had on earth. I've decided to live like that now. I think everyone should."

My friend leaves to Mumbai on Saturday to shoot a Bollywood film.

On Staying Young

I heard someone singing at the back of the bus this morning. I thought it was a young man with headphones on. I turned and instead saw a Chinese uncle revisiting golden oldies, no headphones. I got up and sat next to him to hear him sing. I said he had a nice voice. I found out he was 70 years old. He didn't even look 60. I told him the singing must keep him young. He laughed. "I'm in my twilight years, many of my friends are gone. I also don't have much time left. I just have to be grateful and stay happy." And then we had a chat about Engelbert Humperdinck.

On Endurance

This is Malaysian singer-songwriter Ray Cheong. He's a killer guitarist. I've seen his career grow in the few years that I've known him. In fact, he will be opening for Tommy Emmanuel  in Malaysia next month. By coincidence I found him playing at a pub last night, passionately as always. He told me that one of the most important things we need to do, as performers, is keep on going. Even if you don't produce new material, we do all we can to stay in the game to show that we mean it; we're here to represent. They were great words to hear from a friend. 

To everyone who loves what they do, Never Dim Your Light.

On Slimey Surprises

About 15 years ago, my family went to a restaurant and when the food was served, my sister noticed something squirming about on her side salad. It was a green caterpillar, happily munching away on a leaf. Dad was seething inside. He and called the waiter, pointed at the critter and calmly said, “Look at what you are serving here.” The waiter was shocked and ashamed. The manager came out to offer profuse apologies and offered compensation in the form of a cash voucher.

With the shift towards a more sustainable lifestyle, I think back and marvel at how times have changed. Had that happened to me today, I would feel complimented, a tad excited even. I would call out the manager and shake his/her hand for serving food that is fresh and organic enough to have something still thriving on it.

I found this fellow in a bag of lettuce that I bought the day before. It survived the transportation from the farm to the grocery store, a night in the grocery fridge, a night in my fridge, a rude flush of water, and the possibility of being drizzled with tahini dressing.

(I can’t affectionately refer to the slug as ‘him’ or ‘her’ because slugs are hermophradites.)

I plucked it out of my rinse bucket, thanked it for being a trooper, thanked myself for spotting it, thanked the local organic farmers that provided their great services to my community, and put it in a bush outside.

Mom was flabbergasted. I doubt she’ll ever understand how I think. But I’ll make sure that my children will if I ever become a mother myself. And that’s all that matters.

Preloved + Pawsome Sale - Launching next week!

UPDATE: The Preloved + Pawsome sale launches at 12 NOON on FRIDAY 16th AUGUST 2012. We're so excited! Get ready for it!

 
Hi Everyone!

I have a most exciting announcement to make:

I'm selling my clothes for charity!



Lately I had been opening my clothes cupboards - all THREE of them! - and entertained thoughts of selling stuff I don't wear anymore. I had never thought of doing fundraising with my clothes of any sort, until I came across amazing new site, FriendlyFashion.my, and a brilliant idea came to mind to help out Pawsome Animals.


My friends Nadzirah and Diyana run FriendlyFashion.my, an online platform for people to sell, swap, buy or even give away their pre-loved items in their wardrobe. The community site's popularity has been booming, with currently almost 45,000 fans on their Facebook page, and their bagging of the 'Online Shop of the Year' Award at the recent Digi WWWow Awards says it all.


My friends Nicole-Ann and Ashvina are the forces behind Pawsome Animals, a social enterprise that focuses on the rescuing, rehabilitation and re-homing of stray animals in the Klang Valley. It also strives to create the awareness of animal welfare in Malaysia through education.

I proposed my charity sale idea to FF and Pawsome. Both took an immediate interest in it, and I am blessed to be able to be able to collaborate with them on this project of love.

Some of these items are pre-loved... a few of them I acquired on my travels... some of them were bought or given and just never worn. But I hope that each of them will bring a renewed joy to fashionistas everywhere, and towards a great cause too!

The 'Preloved + Pawsome' sale will launch at Friendlyfashion.my in the next few days, so do look out for it!

http://www.friendlyfashion.my/

(As all proceeds from the sale are going to charity, no cancellations, refunds or swaps/exchanges will be allowed.)

More info on Pawsome Animals can be found on their Facebook page.

In the meantime, if you have any questions with regards to my items on sale, terms and conditions, etc., feel free to email me at davina@pawsomeanimals.com.

On behalf of our non-human brothers and sisters, thanks a mill for your support!

Best wishes,
Davina

On 'Me' Time

Do you make time for yourself? Those moments you set aside to celebrate your existence with the joys of solitude? It enhances the awareness and appreciation of the self, and therefore makes the moments you spend with loved ones even more awesome. So go on! Go for a walk... go to the cinema on your own... dance around your bedroom in nothing but socks and underwear. You deserve it.

On Nostalgia

I bumped into an old friend at a party last night. I know her from the social circles we used to go around 3 years ago. We were talking about those days, a little saddened that everyone has moved on since. But we agreed that if things did stay the same, then there would be nothing to look back on for us to think to ourselves, "Wow, those were good times!" I'm glad all those lives converged at that point. May we appreciate the connections we have now, and acknowledge the winds of change.

On Grass

Over the weekend went to my favourite park in the neighborhood. It's the only park I know of that buzzes with the sounds of a rainforest. I sat on the grass under my favourite tree that overlooks an uneven field. The longer I sat, the more I noticed that the grass around me and stretching out to the field was all moving. Ants, bugs, moths, spiders... So full of life! Some communities we don't even see that are just as hectic as our own. It was a humbling moment... A strange, nosey four-limbed giant pretending to be invisible amongst their business.

Everyday errands continue to unfold beyond our cubicles, cars, houses, and our very own eye level... Isn't that exciting?

How To Make: Vegan Chickpea Patty

Making food is a relatively new frontier for me - I've only been vegetarian-cooking since 2010. I'm no professional but I love the process of creating things. I find it therapeutic, and the most fun part is that the end result can be eaten! My family members, partner, and most of my friends are not vegan/vegetarians, so my aim is to make food so good that people don't even care about it being meatless. Thankfully, I've had more hits than misses!

I normally don't share my recipes, firstly because most of them are lifted directly off the internet or from a cookbook, and often just amended slightly according to my own resources. Secondly, when I create dishes by myself, I don't use measurements, which could lead to a recipe with plenty of ambiguous statements like 'a handful of' and 'a gazillion itty bitty bits of'.

But my latest kitchen experiment - Vegan Chickpea Patty - was a huge success, and the picture of the final product has garnered enough online response for me to share my recipe to the best of my ability, with original web link references.

Vegan Chickpea Patty

(Serves 6-8 people)

INGREDIENTS

2 cans of chickpeas, drained

4 tablespoons of flaxseed

1/2 tablespoon of red salt

7 stalks / half a fistful of coriander

Half a large carrot

A medium-sized red bell pepper

A large red onion

5-6 cloves of garlic

1/2 cup of instant oats

A teaspoon of cayenne pepper

2 teaspoons of cumin powder

Black pepper

Water

Olive oil

Burger buns / Wholegrain bread

3 small tomatoes

A head of romaine lettuce

Guacamole

METHOD

1. Flaxseed is an excellent substitute for egg, which is needed to keep the patty together. Flaxseed adds fibre, protein and healthy omega-3 oil to the dish. Blend the flaxseed in a blender until fine, then simmer with water on a low fire for 2-3 minutes until it thickens to a raw egg type of texture. The flaxseed:water ratio should be 1:3, but the water evaporates easily so add a little more water into the pan if you see the mixture getting too goopy. Turn off the fire and wait for the mixture to cool.

2. Blend chickpeas, flaxseed and salt together in a food processor until most of it is mushy. Set aside.

3. Chop finely the coriander, carrot, red pepper, onion and garlic. Add oil into a saucepan on low heat and toss in the carrot, followed closely by the red pepper, onion and garlic together. Stir fry for 2 minutes at the most - we don't want to fully cook these ingredients yet. Turn off heat, and mix in cumin powder, cayenne pepper and black pepper.

4. In a large bowl, mix semi-cooked ingredients and raw coriander with the chickpea mixture.

5. Mold mixture into patties. Mine were slightly bigger than the size of my palm, which was enough to make about 8 patties.

6. Coat patties with instant oats. You may press the oats in to keep them there, but keep the pressure delicate just in case the patties break.

7. Line the saucepan again with oil, and cook your patties on low heat. You may apply brief slight pressure to the patties against the pan with a spatula. Let each side cook for 2-3 minutes. Try not to flip the patties more than once.

8. Remove from heat and serve on buns or bread with sliced tomatoes, lettuce and guacamole. For once I felt a little lazy and used ready-made guacamole straight from a jar, but homemade ones taste SO much better and can be easily made with this recipe.

9. NOM NOM TIME

Note: Leftover uncooked patties can be kept in the fridge for 3-4 days. You could even eat them 'raw' if you wish!

Link references: 

Was That Vegan? - Spicy Chickpea Burgers

101 Cookbooks -Ultimate Veggie Burger Recipe

Jeena's Kitchen -Vegetarian burgers (These look amazing!)

Thanks for your interest in this recipe, and here's to the Jamie Oliver in all of us!

- Davina

On Vegetarianism

So word is officially out that I'm a vegetarian. Some friends never knew, some still don't, and some thought that I've been vegetarian for years. So for those who are curious to know the real journey, do read on.

I've always 'felt' for people, even as a kid. I only mention people because it didn't start that way with animals. My earliest memory of abusing animals was when I was in Grade 1 in Noranda Primary School in Western Australia. One of the school gardens had a wire mesh cage full of fluffy yellow chicks, and one of my pastimes, when no-one was watching, was luring chicks to eat blades of grass I would hold at the corner of the cage, and pull at their tails sticking out through the mesh. I knew it was wrong but I felt a sort of satisfaction that I exercised power over something smaller than me. Then there was the time when I was 11, when my cousins and I lined up live snails on the road outside my aunt's house, laughing til our sides hurt whenever a car passed by and made shards of snail shell whizz in all directions. I have since then taken long, drawn-out dips in the karmic pool. But I still do very vividly recall that feeling of superiority over other defenseless living things, and deriving pleasure from it.

(I think that is why I do not react so impulsively to blatant cases of animal abuse in Malaysia. I know what might be going through their heads. Like me, they just didn't know any better. Now that I do, I do get frustrated and angry, but I know that letting my emotions get out of control will not aid much in nurturing better mindsets, which is the real solution.)

Luckily, I was given the gift of a proper education. I learned how to read, and devoured books on nature. The initial thought eventually occurred: If I like animals, why am I eating them? I first entertained the thought of going vegetarian as a college freshie at 16. For the first time, I was in a canteen, in charge of picking my own food. That mock 'char siew' sure looked interesting. I also met my first Malaysian vegetarian friend, Janet Lee. I ended up eating vegetarian food as regularly as I felt I could bring myself to, even if it was just once a week. It gave me such an ego trip that I decided to try skipping meat at family dinners. My folks would have had none of it. I was told off and humiliated into putting chunks of beef or pork back onto my plate. One day at a coffee shop, my father threatened to 'flip the table upside down' if I didn't eat my pork. Reluctantly, I gave up creating conflict on the home front, and agreed to the rule of “Whenever you are out, eat anything you want. When you come home, you eat what is cooked for you.”

But year by year, with the care taken by one tiptoeing through a room full of mouse traps, I executed my strategy of removing the meats one by one. First to go was beef and lamb. Ignorantly, I gorged myself on mock meats when I worked at ASTRO that year, in 2001. I couldn't help it – their cafeteria spread was delectable and hugely assorted. C'mon, if it's meat-free then it's healthy, right? Silly Davina. I refer to it as my 'Fat Elvis' period. Unfortunately, I barely have pictures from that era to illustrate this.

Then I went back to college, and dad's intimidating presence was lessened after starting a business in Sabah. I pushed my luck with my mom, with spare ribs being comically passed from one plate to another. Mother was relentless. Most times, I would let her win.

Dad separated from the family in 2007. By then I had already been making known my support for animal rights, and almost dropped chicken completely from my diet. I still felt like I was cheating my way into being called a vegetarian – to some people, fish doesn't count as a meat – but I was thinking to myself Hey, I care so much about animals, and I'm doing so much for them already... Isn't eating seafood a fair compromise? In 2010, I moved out and taught myself how to cook vegetarian food, and only relying on fish when access to my nutrient needs outside seemed difficult.

This year, shortly after recovering from my appendectomy, I gave up my pescetarian ways and emancipated myself from a life of self-doubt. My 12 years of patience and greater awareness had finally paid off.

Even with only fish in my diet, I felt lighter and more energetic. My skin cleared up. My frequency of sickness was the most apparent, from several times a year to once in a blue moon, and my recovery rate vastly accelerated. Mind-wise, I feel more focused. I no longer need to worry about the animals that died for my sustenance, and now I can invest the energy I used for doing that into other productive thoughts and nuggets of creativity.

The reasons why I have turned vegetarian has varied over the years. I was brought up to believe that compassion was a trait of human weakness (it is, in truth, the exact opposite!), so I usually covered up that stance with health, environmental and political reasons without even fully interpreting them for myself. But over the past few years I have exposed myself to research, to videos, to undercover findings. I have educated myself to the point of no return. One of my strongest reasons, at this moment, is the ways of the factory farm. It is to me the most impractical, unethical and unsustainable part of modern living. If I was brought up in a poor rural village somewhere, tending to a traditional farm, toiling the fields, tending to the animals, and slitting goat throats with my own knife and hands for dinner, I would most likely have not felt the need to go vegetarian. Alas, I live in a society that directly supports a system of gross maximum profit, minimizing financial costs at the expense of the environment, to animal welfare, and to our own health. Factory farming is such a money magnet that anything and everything is being done to keep the proverbial wool over our eyes. And we, as consumers, are more than happy to endorse this, choosing to stay as disconnected as possible to the food that is on our plate.

This extends to the fishing industry too. Over the last year I have learned about 'bycatch' and fishing methods that destroy the ocean floor that is likened to deforestation on land... Oh My Heck. So much inefficiency. So much wasted life.

So this is the year that I have chosen to not be a part of it anymore. I represent what people fear to know and believe and acknowledge. That is why my beliefs get shot down so quickly by some non-vegetarians. Taste has always reigned over principle. Food is ingrained in our culture. We use food to fortify, to bond and socialize, to rejoice, to honor and reward. Eating meat is such a sensitive subject because EVERYBODY EATS. There is no grey area: in the most literal sense, it's a basic case of supporting the suffering and killing of animals, or just not. So if one does eat meat and is faced with the facts, the choices are also naturally clear-cut: to reflect inwards, or to defend or attack because it's more convenient. Those who do accept me for who I am now apologize or ask for permission before they eat meat in front of me. When I 'came out' with my appearance at a PETA demonstration earlier this month, little did I realize that my decision to go vegetarian also became the decision to make most people feel slightly uncomfortable around me for the rest of my life.

But it is going to allow me to learn more about the human condition. One of my ongoing pursuits in life is the pursuit of empathy. Where I come from in urban Kuala Lumpur, from a conventional Bak Kut Teh-slurping Malaysian Chinese background, I now am part of a minority of vegetarians-by-choice. I will be judged and challenged for my values. And I will strive to spread awareness to the best of my ability, as much as I will strive to be aware of thoughts and values that are different from mine. If anyone feels that they have a (yet another proverbial) bone to pick with me, I want to know about it! My only expectation is one's open, logical mind for a conducive exchange of experiences. My involvement with the PETA demonstration was not an attempt to diss or preach or instill my lifestyle onto my fellow friends. It was just a way of me saying “Hi Everyone, I'm doing this and it rocks my socks, and I am celebrating by sharing this knowledge with you just in case it might benefit you too. Don't worry it's free.”

Picture by Tati Ambia

Twelve long, emotionally turbulent years have lead me here, to one of the most exciting and significant turning points of my life. I am grateful that you are bearing witness to it. I look forward to starting this new chapter of further understanding each other, and bringing great salads to your parties.

Thank you for reading.

Lettuce be loved,

Davina

On mental nightcaps

As you retire to bed each night, it may be beneficial to think to yourself:
Did I live out today the way I wanted to?
Did I learn anything new that will make me better tomorrow, and tomorrow better?

On the Present

Do not dwell too much in the past or worry too much about the future. The most important moment for you right now, is now. Put trust in that, invest power in that, and life will follow its natural course of providing in your favor.

On Fallouts

Noone likes fallouts, but it's a natural process sometimes.

That doesn't mean we'll ever stop caring.

We each work in different ways, we each have our paths to take, and all of us deserve greatness.

Good Morning!

Isn't this amazing?

My sentiments could not be echoed more beautifully than that.
I found this message above a reception counter of Tahan Guesthouse in Taman Negara (Malaysia's National Park). Although I didn't stay there, I did Love the vibe of the place.

This is what guests see as they leave:



Good Morning To Your Awesomeness!