bearing the burnt of small spaces

Guess we'd been away for long enough to forget what it's like to live in small spaces! Here's what I have to show 2 days after being splashed by hot oil while frying tilapia (mostly the result of my frustration):


Enough self pity - life must go on. I must get used to working in small spaces and the pan fried tilapia on saffron risotto is always so good to eat. I'm getting the hang of doing risotto - it's quite easy, actually, and with a dash of saffron and a squeeze of lemon juice, it's simply delectable!

It is good to be back and have our own space again. Maybe 3 months of bumming around was a wee bit too long although no complaints. We've had our fill of good food and great fellowship (although does anyone ever have enough of the latter?). I can't even begin to list the highlights - there were just too many. We still don't have high speed internet (the university failed their promise of having it installed over the summer), so we may not be able to upload our photos from the summer.

The weather here hasn't been feeling very summer-like. It's been cool and drizzly, and our friends tell us that they had a total of 12 days or so of summer weather. What's becoming of Massachusetts and our four seasons??! Hoping we'll get a nice New England autumn this year because last autumn (or fall as they call it here) was quite miserable. The fall colours were almost completely dulled and dampened by the incessant rain.

One more week of laziness and it's back to school! It's starting to feel busy, though. HA is performing (guitar) with a friend at the international cultural night tomorrow and we're hosting an open house for our apartment complex to get to know our neighbours better - semangat kejiranan, as we call it back home ;) And we're going shopping today to attempt to find the ingredients for rendang and curries to stock up for the school semester! Without our usual stock of prepared pastes, Brahims and A1 chicken curry, we need to prepare ourselves when those pangs strike...