Chef Clemens

 

Never be afraid to be creative

Random Observation/Comment #186: I love cooking because I tend to taste a little bit more than I should while making the meal.  Cooking for myself makes me half-full before I even have the plate prepared.  There is a level of laziness in presentation and utensils when I’m really just trying to learn by keeping track of past mistakes and successes.  After the chemistry experiment with these ingredients is over, the enjoyment of these fruits of my labor are not always the same.  I am my own worse judge – some times to the point where I ignore that it’s actually tasty and just devour it to fill my stomach and move on to the next activity.  Sigh – Es ist eine schade.

 

If you’ve tasted my mom’s cooking, you’d know why I was a chubby child.  Instead of a promise for a new car or a large sum of money to keep me from moving far away for college, night after night, she consistently cooked me wonderful meals that I will never forget.  These dishes were one of the main reasons I miss (and still miss) home.  I must admit that there were many times where I concentrated on my own “important high school life” instead of observing a master of the art, but I was not completely numb to my taste-buds’ expectations and holiday questions about meals.  It’s expected that my hobby of cooking didn’t grow until after I moved to college – how can I compete with the master?

My mom and dad protected me with huge stashes of MSG-filled instant noodles, but I wanted so much more than a reduced life expectancy.  I learned to cook to: 1) stay a little healthy, 2) save money so I could waste it on girls, and 3) impress girls.  Their cooking discouragements and heavy critique gave me the impression that they were protecting me from this secret to somehow maintain their hold over this part of my world.  Psychologically, it was magnificent and an absolutely genius plan, but now that I look back; I don’t think they needed to claim this role in my life as a heavenly, magical food-bringer.  They should always know that they have maintained their role as the most selfless and Clemens’-interest voice, and I will always ask them for advice and confide in them my burdens.  If not just that call once in a while, they should know that this is my view of family values.  I love them and I trust them (especially when it comes to recipes). (They are frequent and dedicated readers of my blog ^^).

Anyway, I started cooking like everyone starts.  I jumped in head first and burned a few pots and pans.  I’ve suffered through those terrible trial-and-error experiments, and slowly created (or recreated) new (or most likely, preexisting) techniques and systems for making specific meals.  Of course, there is need to follow a few recipes in the beginning, but after some time, I was able to walk through a supermarket and just see these ingredients mesh together in some higher dimensional food space. 

This particular eye for cooking has just recently begun most probably because German cuisine does not extend further than really tasty coleslaw and wurst (hot dogs, but 10 times better).  I currently walk the aisles of the supermarket feeling like an old woman – sniffing fruits and knocking on melons for no apparent reason.  In reality, I’m just grabbing whatever the person next to me grabs while I wander around enjoying the music and observing the price ranges.  As I pan around each section, my mood greatly determines my meal for the next few nights.  I always buy the backup pasta and potatoes just in case I have no idea what I want to cook, but lately, I’ve been looking at trying to make different sauces.  It’s hard to go wrong with tomatoes and those canned beans and corn actually combine to make some interesting concoction.

At the end of the day, I’ve made this hobby absolutely delicious and monetarily friendly (plus, girls love guys that know how to cook).  It really makes them take off their clothes.  Oops, that was supposed to be in parentheses.

~See Lemons Cook

 

Throwing random stuff together

Tribute

Random Observation/Comment #104: I never imagined it would have taken so much time to catch up with my Japan entries.  I thought I would have finished these summaries and reflections a maximum of two weeks after returning.  Now that I had gotten so used to writing about every passing day, how will I catch up with all of the things that happened after Japan?  Well, I won’t, because most of it was spend in the lab writing my thesis anyway.  I’m not worried though, there’s always something to write about.  What chaos doesn’t exist will be created to make things more interesting.

 

I could tell it was awkward giving everyone hugs because I made all of them blush – guys and girls alike.  I had formed bonds with these students and they have all influenced my opinion of Japan.  So many cultural lines were crossed through a gesture that I find normally fitting for farewell. 

It doesn’t even matter if I’ll see you later tonight, a hug feels good.  I can’t begin to describe how many things a hug means to me.  Let’s just say that depending on the type of hug, it can be more intimate than a kiss.  A hug says, “Welcome into my personal space – we can share.”  The body contact is maximized to spread warmth, and we physically transmit feelings of gratitude, sadness, or best wishes.  It could say “I’ll miss you” or “I love you” or “I’ll never forget you” within that short-lived tight squeeze.  I think my days are brighter when it starts with a hug.  This will be tested with another social experiment (I can already hear the hippie names you come up for me now).

This was a sad day for Japan, but I doubt they skipped a beat.  I had missed my home and it was my presence needed to be spread more evenly.  I needed to leave even if I didn’t want to.  There were lonely nights when I wondered how everyone was passing each day.  I predicted what they would say when I returned.  I imagined what they were wondering what I would be doing to pass the day.  My odd sense of thinking in recursion sometimes hurt my head because I’d fill in the whole three panel comic with pictures of pictures (that made more sense in my head). 

This entire trip was a real life example of that heart aching question: “Will I be missed?” 

When I had a girlfriend, my eyes welted whenever I thought of her cold hand without mine holding it.  I felt powerless with her, yet I could conquer the world at the same time.  There was nothing about her that I could control, but I felt safe letting my heart go.  It was a connection that I was certain, but could never satisfyingly prove.  If I were still with her, I think she would miss me.  I think I would miss her.

I’ve given parenting much thought just because I try to plan everything in my life.  I’m sure I could fill a book with my observations and conclusions, but an analogy comes to mind that reminds me of my current position as a son.  Let’s say I’m obsessed with cars and call them my girlfriends, mistresses, and wives.  Hypothetically, I set a project to build my own car and make it into my hunny-wagon.  Let’s say it takes me 4 years to complete and I document it every step of the way with photo albums and over-sized hats.  One day while I’m taking the hunny-wagon out for a spin, I get into an accident and it’s completely totaled.  I step out of the wreckage without a scratch, but I watch my 4 years of hard work towed away by a dump truck.  Imagine the heartbreak seeing the time and pure manly love that went into this gorgeous vessel that just disappeared in a flash.

21 years where something could have gone wrong with my engine, my brake lining, oil changes, suspension or whatever, but there was always these mechanics worrying about it and trying to fix it.  I had started off priceless, yet I will always accumulate in value.  My time with them should bring us closer, not drift us away.  I am a “good kid” because I always think about this analogy.  First and foremost, I want to succeed in whatever definition I place for “success”.  And second, I want to make my parents proud and give them the reward for putting up with me for so long.  How much frustration have I caused them?  How much do I owe them?  They will say I owe them nothing, but I think I will pay it back by teaching my children and showing them I figured out one of the most important puzzles.  (I’ll probably buy my dad a car and my mom some diamonds too.)

I am a life-long project.  My parents and brother have raised me and watched me discover myself into some sense of maturity or understanding of the vast world before me.  They’ve carefully planned everything one step ahead of me.  Whenever I thought about lying to them, they knew and they already had the next level of the tree filled.  It was so calculated, but I’m sure they would just say they made it up as they went along.  In my eyes, these were not responses or reactions to my decisions, but rather choices of actions based on a solvable game.  How could they know?  Why were they always right?  Every step of the way, they have been there with advice that would never corrupt me or see to my doom.  Although I may not see all of the angles they do, in the end, it never steered me in the wrong direction.  “You’ll understand when you get older” actually means something now – damn.  I am old enough to make my own decisions, but there will be no point in my life where I don’t consider their precautions – after all, they love me, and I love them.

~See Lemons Love Family and Friends

 

Wordlife.

A dedication to my parents

That charm can do everything

Random Observation/Comment #31: Sitting alone in a room with nothing to do and no one to talk to is my gateway to reflection. I feel a monologue coming on.

I am naïve. There is much I pretend to know, but it’s all based on my experiences and this acquired methodology of processing what I think I see around me. My intention is not to preach, but to reach out to my most loyal readers: my parents. Although they (and many others) sometimes fail to understand my rambling and little parenthetical commentaries to my own thoughts, I think they’ll understand my appreciation in the next few paragraphs (I’ll appease them with a shorter reading assignment).

Through these past 21 years, I (like most children growing up) have caused my parents much frustration and anguish. I admired their guidance until I was about 13, and then something happened in my subconscious due to this influence of my friends. For the next 5 years, my parents were the ones that I feared, yet the ones I wanted to make proud. Torn between my thirst for independence and my loyalty towards their teachings, I lived through middle school and high school as their burden and their gift. They smiled and treated me as an adult when I joined every honor society and hoarded every club imaginable for my resume. Yet, they flinched when outside influences pulled at my limbs and tried to overturn the earlier years of discipline and values. This is, of course, the path of most teenagers, but I recognize that the courage it takes from the parents to let go is far beyond my realm of emotion. I’m surprised they didn’t lock me up in my room and interrogate all of the friends I’ve ever had (too often).

As teenagers, we failed to understand that our parents were also once in our position. We think so highly of our deceit, and then wonder how they could see through our feeble attempts to fool them. I’ve noticed their change of attitude throughout my years of maturity. It all depended on the number of layers of analysis they expected me to achieve at that point in my life. Generally speaking, the early years are purely based on the phases of reward and punishment. I get good grades, they give me what everyone else in my grade wanted at the time (What was it? The little key chains that had digital animals that pooped? Tamagachis?) Granted, this tactic still works now and again (I’ll grow to take appreciation as a gift, but for now, I want that new i-phone =D).

Throughout the teenage years, it was about finding out where I belonged (fitting into a community) and what I enjoyed doing (hobbies and career). Education surrounded me wherever I looked, but most of this learning took place outside of school anyway. The funny part is that I thought high school was the peak of my life and everything was uber important – my image was the oil that fueled my selfishness. Defying anything that stood in my way, I reevaluated pieces of advice from dependents and pessimistically questioned authority. No longer was it enough to just say “because I said so.”

In these times, my parents adjusted by opening that retractable leash and letting me explore and make mistakes. They didn’t mind to pull back when I had wandered too far, but their leniency and understanding helped me see beyond what they knew (yes they very honestly admitted that they didn’t know everything). In the back of my mind, I knew that they would always be there to offer the crying shoulder or mend the wounds from the falling-flat-on-my-face incidents. I knew they were obligated to protect me, so I took advantage of this shelter and love. How can I apologize if they’d respond with “I know, we were in those shoes at your age and we don’t hold it against you for the normal course of actions (not in those exact words of course – maybe in Cantonese instead).” It’s important to note that the authority that I was always reminded of was that they were not smarter, but wiser.

After I built some sense of self (and directly before I left to college), my parents injected me with something that I didn’t think I deserved – Trust. They didn’t tell me “Son, I trust you.” No, no – that would be too corny and I wouldn’t have believed it if they said it that way. They said it with their shrink-wrapped eyes and uncontrollable smiles on the day I graduated and right before I left to college. They said it when I took on responsibilities and showed – not only a devotion to continue making them proud – but also the ambition of pursuing my own dreams. It was their own words of “you don’t need to impress us by getting good grades, just try your hardest.” These were the words that I transparently understood as a shift in motivation technique, yet they still influenced me in the same manner – I need to prove to them that doing my best would be enough to make them proud.

In college, my parents were a distant authority and independence tasted sweet – oh so sweet. Weekly visits home for my Mom’s cooking and my Dad’s new opinion about the changing world became bi-weekly and monthly days of sitting at the family table, saying everything I assumed they needed (and wanted) to know. My life was not a secret, but it was highly filtered. There were many parts that, to this day, are omitted from the experiences. They would have worried and their broken-record advice would not change any of the situations – only make me feel bad and more self conscious about my decisions. If only I had realized that their role had changed. In this phase, parents might try to exert their deprived grasp on that leash, but the ones that see the whole timeline know that these futile attempts only push their children farther away. They knew this and they didn’t pry about my life. I was old enough to tell them what they wanted to know, and they also enjoyed piecing together the bits of information like clues in their little detective game. I knew you were playing this game, Mom – how many layers do you think I think you think I think ahead? Maybe you won in the end because you always found out – damn mother’s intuition.

Parents have been regarded as the authority, and thus, the enemy. They are the ultimate judgment because they know you best (despite how much you’ve changed through college) and any of your actions will lean towards your desire to impress them. The worst thing you could hear is “I’m disappointed in you.” Those words disintegrate my shield and disregard all protection fortified around my heart. It stings to hear from the ones that unconditionally love you that their high expectations for you have, not only been unfulfilled, but completely disregarded. It would be less heart-breaking to hear anger, but the pain of sadness is the reflection of your own selfishness. I mention this weapon to remind myself to never bring this suffering to both parties.

When you grow older you learn that parents are people, and they’ve waited all their lives for you to treat them that way. To them, it means that you’ve realized that life does not revolve around you, and your purpose is greater than that of self improvement or materialism (Don’t worry, I don’t preach religion). They see their own success when you’ve joined a community and become a good person. It may seem like it’s selfish of them to breed these bragging rights, but if you’ve made them proud, let them have their moments of basking in their own accomplishment. They deserve a pat on the back, a firm handshake, a loving hug, and a round of applause. Thank you for putting up with me and thank you for reading to the end.

~See Lemons how seun fu mo