Yoghurt

So we're at dinner, and my mum has tapau-ed food, and my sister and I are back from a run. My mum's dinner is mango with yoghurt.

"Why is organic food so expensive wan?" my sister asks. She opens the fridge and takes a tub of yoghurt, and my mum passes her a smallish container of dried blackberries.

"Good food is always expensive." mum says, and she points to the blackberries: "This is RM9.90 ... which is just crazy right?"

There's a pause. I eat my rice. Then my mum begins telling us about this awesome greek yoghurt they found in KL, and how rich and creamy and hard to find it was, and how her friend who normally hates yoghurt took a taste and loved it and how we can't find it in Kuching (tell me the name, I say, and I can buy it in Singapore; but nooo, fates be damned, she's forgotten!) and how she wish us kids could try it but instead they missed the chance to buy one tub on their way to the airport.

"I tell you, if I were living in a Western country, I'd eat yoghurt and fruit everyday." A pause. "The fruit there would be so cheap! This - " (and here she taps the container of blackberries) "- would be so cheap!"

"Oh really?" I stop eating for a bit. "If we were in a Western country, we'd be longing for bananas and papayas! And then we'll complain how come the fruit over there so terrible wan -"

"You mean there are bananas over there ka?" My sister, she has taken a pack of dried apricots and is now mixing one in with her yoghurt.

"Yah, they freeze them and ship them over, with carbon dioxide to ripen them ... or something," I say, "Akong has this friend - a priest, I think, by the name of Father Melling - who always complains that the papayas in England suck; they taste terrible over there. So we've actually got a lot to be thankful for."

And now my mum pauses for a bit. "Yahor. Come to think of it, there are more choices over here. Because we're tropical. And I think I prefer tropical fruits -"

"Exactly!" I say, "So we don't need dried blackberries and apricots right! So expensive. Might as well get some bananas and dry them -"

"Why need to dry?" My sister asks - she has tried the apricot and doesn't like it, "can't we just cut the normal bananas?"

"Because if it's dried you only buy once and then you can keep it for a long time?"

"No la," sister cuts in, "Too much of a hassle. Just buy when you need the bananas."

"And then you put it with yoghurt and blend it -" my mum says,

"But why is he called Father Melling? What a funny name!"

"... and you add honey to your bananas and yoghurt and ... yum!"

I grin. "See? So we don't actually have to buy all these expensive dried fruits! Just local fruits would do. I think it's just because we want what we cannot have -"

"Yes," my mother says, and she gets up from the table. "Now finish your dinner and then help me wash the plates."

And that was dinner conversation for today.

Stuff During the Holidays

I'm on my end-of-academic-year break at the moment. It's three months long, and I'm planning to use it to learn a couple of new things. I've been back in Kuching for 3 weeks: my days have been filled with programming for my startup, and teaching debate, and running. Quiet, productive days.

What I haven't been doing lately, however, is writing. It's been a good 4 weeks since I last wrote anything of length, and I feel my writing muscles already fraying and rotting in my head. (Not that - you know - there are muscles in my head ... but yeah you do get what I'm talking about now, don't you?)

I've got a couple of things I want to talk about, and they're all in higgly-piggly rows in my head. Some of these topics interest me a lot, because I've been thinking about them for some time now, and while I'm not sure if the ideas are right, I suspect that the only way to find out is to hash them out, on paper. What I do know is that I need to get writing now, before the new semester begins. It's the only free time that I really have.

Things I'd like to do, before the holidays are over:

• Learn recursion (i.e.: work through The Little Schemer)
• Learn proper algorithm analysis
• Revise relations and set theory (I'll probably need this for database work, and soon)
• Learn Vim (mostly done)
• Learn Python and Django (covered basic syntax for Python, still at the learning curve for Django)
• Revise graphs and trees

Loosely coupled to that is a light reading-list that I'm nearly finished with, and probably a writing schedule that I'll need to adhere to.

This feels weird - writing again. I'll need to get used to it as soon as I can.

[Update]: Somebody commented on how foreign and odd-sounding my todo list reads, and so - an explanation:

Vim is a code editor packaged with most linux/unix systems, and programmers swear by it because it allows you to do code editing on a cramped keyboard, without using a mouse. (I've already used it while lying on a couch in my grandparent's place - it works, by gum, it works!

Python is a programming language. You know Google? Well, they run on Python. (I also like how it sounds like a snake. And that allows me to make up all sorts of pun-jokes, e.g.: Python is very pretty. As a programming language! Not, you know, as a snake. Though it is a pretty snake ...)

Django is a framework for building web applications (like blogs, or Twitter, or Facebook) and I'm currently using it to build some writing software. More on that in a bit.

And ... well, the rest (recursion, graph, trees, set theory) are math stuff - and I'm not going to talk about them now because I've yet to learn anything apart from recursion (and I don't think they make for polite dinner conversation). Don't you just love polite geeks?