Guide to Hot Chocolate

There are several criteria to be met when you receive your cuppa choco. 

The first thing to do when you receive your cup of hot cocoa, is to inhale deeply. Does the rich aroma of chocolate waft gently into your nose? If there is hardly any smell, or you have to sniff so loudly that you disturb the people sitting nearby, then your hot chocolate will most probably be sub-standard.

Next, check the level of the foam using the teaspoon provided to skim the surface of the foam, and sample it thoughtfully.  Foam should be white and bubbly, with suttle undertones of the chocolate peeking out at you around the edges. In the most places, you will often find cocoa, nutmeg, or cinnamon powder sprinkled lightly on top of the foam. Alternatively, you might find a swirl of melted chocolate drizzled on top. This may or may not be good, depending on the quality of your melted chocolate - chocolate syrup is worse than any topping at all.  Depending on the size of you cup, the amount of foam vary. A small cup should have at least 1 cm foam. Bigger cups should have at least 2 - 3 cm foam. It would be ideal if the foam goes over the rim of the cup by about 3 mm.

Sometimes foam is substituted for cream. Once again, this can be a blessing or a curse. If the cream is of a high quality, it will complement the chocolate nicely, otherwise, it may be better to do without.

Once you have finished savouring the foam, you will generally be able to tell what temperature the hot chocolate is. The very best hot chocolates will be piping hot by the time you have finished the foam.  The true colour of the chocolate will also be revealed to you. It should always be uniquely the colour of hot chocolate. It should never be the colour of tea or coffee, in which case, it is either too weak or rich, respectively. Deep brown is best.

An important thing to note, however, is that many sub-standard establishments do not properly mix the cocoa powder, so you end up having a lot of very bitter, rich chocolate at the end, while the rest of your chocolate tastes rather bland. To test for this, stir the chocolate. If the colour deepens, then it is likely the case. While this does not mean the chocolate will be bad, true chocolate gourmets do not hold with this nonsense. Especially since you will have to keep stirring throughout the drink, losing precious heat.

The first sip of your drink should always be that - a sip. Nothing more, nothing less. If you have to use your teaspoon to drink it, it is too hot. Make sure that your sip is relatively soundless.  If you have to sip loudly, that probably means that the drink is too hot. 

Once you have had the first sip, you should roughly be able to tell whether it is worth downing the rest.

That said, my budding chocolate gourmet, appreciating hot chocolate depends on your tastbuds. However, there are some things we all agree on. The chocolate should taste authentically like real chocolate. If you are a fan of dark chocolate, it should have a slight tinge of bitterness. Most hot chocolates are much too sweet. However, beware the bitter hot chocolate! 

Lastly, don't judge a hot chocolate by it's appearance. While this has yet to have failed for me, some people claim to have found one or two hot chocolates which have deceiving appearances, and while lacking in foam, and looking distinctly tea-like, purportedly taste like heaven.

Simplexity

I wonder why, for most people, simplicity equates to plainess, inferiority, stupidity. The simplest thing is often closest to the most perfect. Short stories are to novels as champagne is to beer. In novels, the author simply throws words at you until some of them make an impact. In short stories, every word counts.

In great simplicity, there is often great complexity. It is the closest one can possibly get to perfection. For instance, a single strand of string can become a complicated knot. A straight line cannot be drawn freehand.

Basically, only through complexity can we find true simplicity. So the conception that simplicity is easy, plain, stupid is wrong. Simplicity is underated, understated, flawless. It is perfection.

A really lame limerick about a mudskipper

There once was a 'skipper from long kang,
who was too big for his barang.
He jumped out from the drain,
and then into a plain -
the garden of overgrown lallang.

The contractor said it was lucky,
for a fish that was so very plucky,
so he stuck out his wella,
and moved the ole fella,
into a bucket which was really mucky.

Lame limerick about the mudskipper who popped up one day at the house we're currently renovating. The real story goes something like this:

My dad and the contractor, Mr G, walk out, and see this fish-like grey thing on the porch.

Dad: Oh, look, a fish!
Mr G: Is it still alive? (kicks fish, it wriggles)
Mr G: Yep, it's alive.
Dad: Let's throw it back in the long kang!
Mr G: No, lah! The fish is lucky you know! Keep lah! (puts it in a pail of water previously used for cement) You don't want I want.
Dad: Okay lah, I'll keep.

So my dad brings it home in a pail, and I advise him to throw it back into the drain.

"It's an amphibian, dad, not a fish!" "Giant mudskippers can be found at Sungei Buloh Nature Park! They aren't meant as pets!"

But my dad decides to keep it.

Post-modernist art

Modern art still is based on the same principles that "olden" art was based upon. Modern art strove to progress in technique without first going back to basic principles, as it were.

Basic human instinct is that of reality. So when one paints a picture that replicates the reality of the world closely, it appeals to this basic human instinct. Put it this way, long ago, cave men drew on walls and stuff to comunicate (eventually this died out as other, more eloquent means of communication came about). Pretty soon, it became obvious that some were better at replicating reality than others.

When people realised that they could make a living off it, they slapped a cool name on it: art. Art sold for preposterous prices. Many rich people wanted themselves forever immortalised by art.

Some artists realised the superficiality of it all, and strove to attach a deeper meaning to the word "art". These people realised that art could also be used to represent things that one could not just see with the eyes, but could be felt with the heart. Because of this, lots and lots of people came and contributed new styles to art, feeling rather fine and dandy.

But with the invention of photography, the issue of reproducability came about. Artists who originally figured that they could make a living of reproducing reality were flummoxed and peeved by this new technology. Artists figured that with photography, the uniqueness of art was ruined, as mass productions of original works of art through photographs could occur, and they would lose big bucks. Luckily for artists though, with people's amazing logic, the opposite affect occured. The more a painting became a poster cliche, the more you had to pay for the original.

Artists were quick to buy into this new system, and exploited this philosophy and realised that any "ready-made" non-art object could be displayed as "art" if dissociated from its original context, use and meaning (abstract). Marcel Duchamp was one of the first to realise this. His best known example is a signed porcelian urinal.

Very soon the aesthetics of art flew out the window and a new era, Conceptualism, came about. Of course, the layman is easily impressed by novel ideas and is now, as a matter of fact, taking in this technique happily.

So with all this, what am I trying to say? In trying to find a deeper meaning to the word "art", artists went about the wrong way. Artists tried to progress in terms of technique, without realising that the reason why much early art was done was because of greed. Because of this, everything from there on was superficial. In trying to find a deeper meaning to the word "art", artists should've realised that their action was trying to find a righteous purpose, a true meaning, to the trade they worked in. In other words, they were trying to find hope.

Balancing ballet

Dancing ballet is the fine art of balance; the balance between relaxation and tension, the balance between movement and stillness, the balance between lifting up from the floor and resisting it. It is a delicate balance of these things that makes ballet art.

Greatest things God created

The other day I was in the bathroom observing the way dot patterns on the window netting made interesting lines and pictures and it got me appreciating the role of atoms.

The greatest thing god ever created is dots or, scientifically, atoms. The fact that these tiny, perfect - well - dots could come together and make up everything in the cosmos is mind-blowing. 

The second greatest thing god greated is water.  I think that without God's hand, those dots would never have combined to become water. Water is life-giving, life-taking, and has many anomalies that make it unique. 

I think angels are an extension from water. When water evaporates, it leaves behind whatever impurities that were in the water. When angels go in to heaven, they bring us along! Angels are beautiful, amazing, formless, anomalous.