store-bought Hanami Dango saves a failed Homemade Dango Day
I’m about 2 months half away from my 21st birthday and the angsty, emo and spotty 14 year old kid feels lightyears away - to think on her is to almost stand back and observe a whole different person. I reckon I can empathize with how David felt in David Copperfield, being haunted by the ghost child who was both one and the same David, and yet a totally separate and distinct being from himself.
Being stuck in an office hasn’t just affected my mood, my sleeping patterns, geez! - my diet; it has given me plenty of time to think and to try and keep up with myself. But I ain’t moving forward. In fact, I’m nostalgic pondering on my teenage years when I was so into fashion and drawing. Now that I have the time to catch up with the world around me, (God no! Not current affairs. I read fashion magazines, NME and The Economist at the most but not newspapers), I’ve become rather melancholic that I let my first dream slip away without a fight. Ah. The days of wanting to get into fashion school. The days of hoping, crying, worrying and bargaining with God. Of course, that hasn’t vanished from my life since I do hope, cry, worry and bargain with God many a time on some other sort of ordeal. And I do have hope that in the future, I will one day get back on the fast train and see what I can do with myself.
I can’t ride a bike but I sure can get back on track if I try (I’m a little lacking in confidence when I say this but boy do I hope it holds some truth). Then, I’m quite certain it’ll feel like riding a bike again and I’ll remember the tricks of my trade and pick it up swiftly. Besides, I haven’t stocked up on all those VOGUE & noi.se magazines, the Unseen Vogue photobook and shoes for nothing - they’re my visual reminders as to what I hold close to my heart, apart from food and literature! I suppose it’s one reason why I occasionally stroll into an art shop and purchase paper, pencils, Germany-made pencil sharpeners and good quality charcoal; why I have sudden spurts of fashion illustrating moments; why I get plagued by weeks of granite covered hands and fingers (of course I do forget about this for a while and it seems like a hobby but I’ve never let it go completely); why I’m now holding on very tightly, quite viciously to the admiration I have for world renown punk/cult designers Vivienne Westwood, Gareth Pugh and Jun Takahashi.
Somehow I believe dreams don’t just vanish or fade away. They turn into something else. Its morphing makes you stronger and I pray to God it helps you see clearer what exactly is the thing you are truly aiming for. These are some of the dreams I’ve held on tight to for so long — some I’ve let go, some I hope to pick up again and some I still won’t fucking let go even if you were to grab me by the neck (if I had balls I would’ve said balls) with an iron fist.
- Become a fashion designer; start my own label and shop, then take the world by storm.
- Become a rockstar; have a whole room with a see-and-don’t-touch collection of Fender guitars.
- Open a patisserie/bakery/ café with the girlfriends from home and show everyone that women really have beauty and brains (not me - the other girls do) — at this point, Sam & I kinda did run a baking business DIVANA and it brought and still brings us much joy, it’s wicked! We thought of renaming it since it didn’t give Sam any credit at all. Our next choice was SAMSON & DELILAH but the connotations didn’t quite coincide with our image.
- Let myself loose as an eccentric, insane, abstract, punk/rock, surrealist painter with no money for clothes, food, publicity and socializing since it’ll all be spent on rent for a cluttered, grimy apartment/studio, canvases, brushes and paints.
- Become the greatest Southeast Asian-born female novelist of all time! (lol…someone tell me to stop building castles in the air?) and have my name remembered even after death by people outside the family bloodline. (I mean like, don’t you think that’d be just ridiculously awesome?)
- Join a real fashion magazine that deals with the real, serious shit as a fashion writer. Talk about fashion for a few years then ascend the ladder as a journalist and shoot that shit.
- Become a band manager and join the coolest kids of the club on tours and gigs; really, I just wanna have a cool pen, funky shoes and be seen rushing here, there, everywhere with a mobile phone, a notepad and plan events, gigs and interviews. Oh yes, I would like to own a massive Mac desktop as well to go with the whole planning-important-PR woman image. JOKES.
- Turn into a hippie world traveler and travel the world for food and culture.
- Open my dream restaurant/bar/brasserie that deals with tired yuppie clients - soothing them with delicious plates of food, glasses of tasty but punch-packing drinks and tempting them with the Chocolate Hour (what’s that? I ain’t telling lest someone steals my idea). Oh yea, and sourcing for musicians to guest play once in a while, not to mention it would guest star some of my precious musician friends out there.
- This was dreamt up ages ago, but I once hoped to have loads of money just lying around and I’d donate that to building a new and architecturally impressive art museum for Singapore that would showcase some of the most sought-after art pieces in the world and of course, local masterpieces.
sweet adzuki bean filling is absolutely dreamy - God bless Isetan.
You must be wondering now, what does all this have anything at all to do with The Sugar Bar? I reckon that’s exactly it. The Sugar Bar itself was too, kind of like a dream for me. Think - a young kid, completely clueless about the internet, dreaming day and night about opening and running a café. I’m glad for small steps because I take them each day in hope that one of my dreams or that one by one, my dreams will come true.
I’ve craved Hanami dango for a while now and although it isn’t the hanami season at this point of time and there certainly aren’t sakura flowers blossoming in my garden (it’s too hot and humid for that - if you’d like to know I have loads of papaya and guavas just shooting off the trees), I think having hanami dango is apt for the hope that’s blossoming in my heart.
Don’t you get those days where you suddenly puff up with joy and pride and think, by golly, I could surely conquer all my fears and do the impossible! Well, although I’m mostly stuck in a three-walled cubicle for now, I’m all puffed up and ready to take on the next step.
What’s my new motto? Eat, sleep and be merry? Haha. You jest.
unsteamed & deformed dango that went all weird after steaming - it was a laugh!
I’d say it’d be : Dream; Have dango then conquer the world with a dango stick! (because like it or not, we’re always stronger and more capable than we think we are - thank Baz Lurhman for this).
My sticks of dango have been bought from Japanese sweet sellers. I’ve, however, put up pictures of my self-attempted ones which look a lot less voluptuous. They were failures actually as I didn’t quite get the dough right and it turned into a mess when I steamed them. But no worries! We all had a great laugh about it in the kitchen. My heels were sore from standing up for 3 hours slaving away and I ended the whole session with a joking ‘I hate my life’ but there’s always the sweet shop to run out to to get dango so that’s cool! Besides, after taking the piss out of my own dango, Clarissa decided to step in and make Sesame Milk Pudding so I suppose pud is sorted and I ain’t got nothing to worry about. Actually, I reckon some of you may be thinking - my culinary skills? They’ve been hitting the down/low recently. Haha!
Well then, my fellow friends, what have you been dreaming about lately (and any kitchen disasters too)? Care to join me in a Dango Tribute (failure or no)?
*p/s: I haven’t put up the recipe as I will only put it up as soon as I master it completely! Patience, I suppose is key. A note to any interested dango-makers, the dango should be skewered in this order: green, white, then pink.
