Lots of things going on at the moment, Part 3: Cooking.
It's been an insanely busy few weeks thanks to what happened during part 2 and assignments & projects starting to kick in. It's university life, deal with it. Still need to keep writing nonetheless. So far the series have been delayed by 2 weeks and counting but anyways here's part 3.
Part 3: Cooking.
Another cost cutting measure.
Since I started living in NTU when meals were concerned I had always followed this schedule: breakfast at home - 4 slices of bread with jam/ whatever bread spread I had available & a cup of milk with cereal; lunch at school canteen wherever's convenient; dinner at Canteen 1/2, depending on whether I needed to get supplies afterwards (which often includes bread and spread).
Not too shabby at all. Breakfast was full, lunch was enjoyable especially when I could afford the time and effort to get to NIE canteen and enjoy the $3 specials from the Chinese store plus friends are always awesome; dinner was replenishing.
But it didn't last very long. Suddenly I had an urge to eat more. For I had been exercising much more often compared to when I was in secondary or JC. Walking everyday in varying amounts thanks to the nature of our campus; frequent runs ranging from 2.4 to 5 clicks on top of the weekly Runners' Club runs (at the time of writing, the next run would be 5.3); cycling every other day to and from Jurong Point for reasons later you'll understand; sports' night every Friday with runs, more runs and soccer fun. More exercise = more energy lost = more energy needs to be replenished. Some days I would have snacks & supper, some days even full meals outside the normal breakfast-lunch-dinner cycle.
Until one day I realized I had been spending way too much on food.
Just like in part 1 with my transport situation, someone came in and rescued me. Sort of.
So I have my awesome friendly seniors staying with me for this period and they have been cooking their own meals. One random beautiful evening while having nothing to do, I came up with this random thought of following their path and cooking my own stuff. Of course I wanted to start small so I borrowed 2 eggs and bought a few tomatoes and made a simple dinner with rice and my all-time favorite scrambled eggs in tomatoes - the sole edible dish I could confidently make from scratch besides vegetable soup...
Kinda failed because the raw materials over here are so much different from home. But a good and edible attempt nonetheless.
So I started switching my dinners to serve-myself mode. Started cycling to JP every other day to get the raw materials for cooking. Also started learning to adapt to induction cooking style by observing my seniors.
Pretty worth it in the end even though I could only cut my spending on food by a few dollars a week and even though my food selection is pretty narrow (can't cook fancy stuff like my seniors). Gained a new skill - induction cooking - and most importantly, having certain control over what I would eat for dinner and of course having a full dinner. What's better than a full dinner after a exhausting day?
Fun fact: I'm writing this post after finishing my early dinner and finishing some brainstorming for my paired assessment. Insanely fun times ahead for this project as it's the first time in my life I could come up with insanely interesting ideas that people like (or at least my partner likes). For someone usually regarded as uninteresting, this is an achievement. University work can be fun if you have the right people to work with. And later after finishing this post, I'm rewarding myself with a movie at JP. And of course it involves cycling back and forth.
I'm starting to like the way this series' posts are linked together. If not for the emotionally driven and rather spontaneous part 2, everything would have linked together even more nicely, because the next part would be on the devices that enabled me to start this series. Thanks for reading and stay tuned.
Part 3: Cooking.
Another cost cutting measure.
Since I started living in NTU when meals were concerned I had always followed this schedule: breakfast at home - 4 slices of bread with jam/ whatever bread spread I had available & a cup of milk with cereal; lunch at school canteen wherever's convenient; dinner at Canteen 1/2, depending on whether I needed to get supplies afterwards (which often includes bread and spread).
Not too shabby at all. Breakfast was full, lunch was enjoyable especially when I could afford the time and effort to get to NIE canteen and enjoy the $3 specials from the Chinese store plus friends are always awesome; dinner was replenishing.
But it didn't last very long. Suddenly I had an urge to eat more. For I had been exercising much more often compared to when I was in secondary or JC. Walking everyday in varying amounts thanks to the nature of our campus; frequent runs ranging from 2.4 to 5 clicks on top of the weekly Runners' Club runs (at the time of writing, the next run would be 5.3); cycling every other day to and from Jurong Point for reasons later you'll understand; sports' night every Friday with runs, more runs and soccer fun. More exercise = more energy lost = more energy needs to be replenished. Some days I would have snacks & supper, some days even full meals outside the normal breakfast-lunch-dinner cycle.
Until one day I realized I had been spending way too much on food.
Just like in part 1 with my transport situation, someone came in and rescued me. Sort of.
So I have my awesome friendly seniors staying with me for this period and they have been cooking their own meals. One random beautiful evening while having nothing to do, I came up with this random thought of following their path and cooking my own stuff. Of course I wanted to start small so I borrowed 2 eggs and bought a few tomatoes and made a simple dinner with rice and my all-time favorite scrambled eggs in tomatoes - the sole edible dish I could confidently make from scratch besides vegetable soup...
Kinda failed because the raw materials over here are so much different from home. But a good and edible attempt nonetheless.
So I started switching my dinners to serve-myself mode. Started cycling to JP every other day to get the raw materials for cooking. Also started learning to adapt to induction cooking style by observing my seniors.
Pretty worth it in the end even though I could only cut my spending on food by a few dollars a week and even though my food selection is pretty narrow (can't cook fancy stuff like my seniors). Gained a new skill - induction cooking - and most importantly, having certain control over what I would eat for dinner and of course having a full dinner. What's better than a full dinner after a exhausting day?
Fun fact: I'm writing this post after finishing my early dinner and finishing some brainstorming for my paired assessment. Insanely fun times ahead for this project as it's the first time in my life I could come up with insanely interesting ideas that people like (or at least my partner likes). For someone usually regarded as uninteresting, this is an achievement. University work can be fun if you have the right people to work with. And later after finishing this post, I'm rewarding myself with a movie at JP. And of course it involves cycling back and forth.
I'm starting to like the way this series' posts are linked together. If not for the emotionally driven and rather spontaneous part 2, everything would have linked together even more nicely, because the next part would be on the devices that enabled me to start this series. Thanks for reading and stay tuned.
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