Writing English

I have an English character in my book. Because. Well, because I’m a die-hard anglophile and I have this delusional belief that one day, just one day, when my book becomes published, David Tennant will play my main character. Since he’s free from Doctor Who.

Hey, a girl can dream right? We all need some sort of motivation when we slog through Nanowrimo. Although right now, my Nanowrimo novel is more akin to a pile of crud whereby characters sit by the River Thames and the beach and have long philosophical discussions rather than actually solving the crime.

You’d be amazed how many times I’ve written food into the novel just because I’m hungry. For instance, “Edward grabs a Krispy Kreme and hands it over to Alistair” and since I have been craving nachos since forever, it’d be a matter of time before on my characters grabs a nacho snack from 7-11. Even though they don’t really sell nachos in Malaysia in 7-11.

But I digress. I have an English character. Actually two. Right now, I have two English characters sitting by the Thames river (as all Englishmen do during their spare time. Just as how all Malaysians sit by the beach and collect coconuts during our spare time) and they are discussing about…well, life. And something is severely off about my characters. They don’t feel very…English.

I figured that my interpretation of English-ness is based on my short three years in the UK. And by reading the Guardian. And watching Doctor Who. Occasionally I’ll get my inspiration on BBC Entertainment but not that often, because if Englishness is defined by BBC Entertainment, the average Englishman not only spends time on the Thames river, they also try their hardest to appear on “The Weakest Link”. And by default, that means the average Malaysian angst away about our farm crops dying just like every Malay drama. And evil city girls stealing husbands away from the sweet village girl.

And we do stuff like ban yoga. Of which, if you’re curious about my stand it’s a “I don’t care. Really. I haven’t been to the gym in ages anyway.”

I was watching this clip off Neil Gaiman’s blog, it has Patterson Joseph, the most likely candidate to replace DT as the Doctor and I figured that’s what has been missing on my wriiting. Being eccentric. The British are so deliciously eccentric (really, a time travelling alien…who travels in a phone box. Take that J.J Abrams. Who needs millions of dollars to spend on concept art when you can just make Captain Kirk ride a bus all over space) and that is essentially who they are.

But capturing this eccentricity is as easy as the average Westerner writing about the average Malaysian’s paranoia and whiny-ness. You could easily overdo it and then it looks like nothing like the real thing. Which bothers me and now, my two English characters are sitting down by the Thames river, a shadow of their real-life couterparts.

The alternative, would be to British-fy them the American way. I can so tell if a book is set in England is written by an American. Usually by the copious amounts of tea the characters drink. And they are all related to someone posh, Lord something or rather even if they do something very common for  living. They also have a very strange way of speaking, something I’ve not heard in my three years that I was there.

So worst case scenario, my two characters by the Thames river. If I don’t find them to be British enough, I’m going to make sure they’d be drinking tea and eating crumpets and staying stuff like “Cheers” every other word so that we know, dammit, that they’re British.

The BBC Curry Experiment – Failed!

Motivational story of the week.

I am a failure when it comes to making traditional Malaysian dishes. The thing about local dishes is that there are few tried and tested recipe books. Most of the best cooking comes from mother to daughter, passed on for generations, that sort of thing.

And obviously, since I actually learnt to cook via the internet (Google! I love you!), I’ve been too proud to ask my mum or my grandmum on how to cook. That and the fact that it took my grandmother ages to accept that I can cook. She used to look at me and go, “You?! Cook?!” and laugh as though it’s the most hilarious thing she’d ever heard. Once she accused me of peeling an onion like a Westerner. I’m like, “There’s a Western way of peeling onions?”

But I digress. I’m a real failure when it comes to Asian cooking. My family has long lists of my failed attempts, the most famous one was referred to as the BBC curry incident. It happened when I um, decided to cook curry following a BBC website recipe (hey, the BBC website had yet to fail me!). It came out more like…a spicy soup rather than a curry. No, a mildly spicy soup. Needless to say, it went down very badly in the house.

So each time when I offer to cook Malaysian, everyone in my family would say not the BBC curry! Loudly, as though they’re in pain. So I tend to decline and I rarely cook Eastern stuff.

Except!

Two days ago, we ran out of food completely in the house and the only that was left was curry powder. Mum was sick and so I offered to cook instead. My mum had this slit eyed look on her, she was thoroughly unconvinced that I could cook it. Finally I said, “Fine, just stand behind me and tell me what to do.”

Okay, so with my mum standing behind me, I’ve figured out exactly why I’ve failed Eastern cooking. They have probably the vaguest description on earth. Like my mum’s “Traditionally, Lin, Malaysian cooking requires you to fry the curry paste until the oil breaks.”

“The oil what?! Breaks into what? How can I tell I broke the oil?”

And then she looks at me wisely. “Except since we don’t use that much oil, so that old adage doesn’t work.”

Gee…that helps. Will write a recipe book that way. “Oil will break sooner or later, please stand and watch out.”

So okay, when I do put in the chicken then?

“Oh, we add it in when the curry paste does not smell so powdery.”

Alright. Define smelling powdery. Curry powder generally smells of curry to me.How does one separate curry smell and powder smell.

“Oh you know! You will learn.”

And then of course, my favourite piece of advice:

“Now, Lin, we add the chicken into the curry paste. Stir them in and leave them for a few minutes, until you know the curry paste is one with the chicken.”

Oooohhhmmmmm. Curry paste is one with the chicken. OOoooohhm.

Surprisingly, I cooked a kicked-ass curry that afternoon. So, there is a possibility for success. There really is. And thankfully, the curry I made has finally stripped me off the “BBC curry reputation”.

So here’s to success and perserverance.

Oh, to anyone who is curious about my kick ass curry, here is a recipe, with the vague Asian directions included:

Chicken curry

• 4 pieces of chicken. Whatever size. Not a whole chicken. Preferably small-ish.
• 1 big onion.
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 6 tablespoons of curry powder – this shocked me. I thought two tablespoons would suffice. Apparently not. Preferably Baba’s Curry powder because Adabi’s one suck.
• Enough water to make the curry powder into a paste.
• 1.5 cups of water (if you’re cooking for four). More if you have more chicken (like duh! Obviously!) You can replace this with coconut milk if you prefer.
• One potato – cubed. Yes, we mix starches here in Asia, so get over it.

Directions:

1. Chop the onion and garlic. Fry them in some oil. How much oil is up to you. If you like oily food, add more in. Fry till the edges of your onion browns a little.
2. Add the curry paste in. Fry them till…well, either your oil breaks or it doesn’t smell as powdery. Hey man, I can’t help you there either. I don’t know how it looks like.
3. Add your chicken pieces. Cover your saucepot to allow the chicken pieces to become one with the chicken. Apparently, you’ll just KNOW when that happens.
4. Add water. The 1.5 cups.
5. Oh yes, add salt. 10gms for four people. 15gms for a little bit more than 4 people. That’s probably the most accurate part of the recipe. I think it’s best to throw the potato in at this point too.
6. Leave it to simmer till the sauce thickens. The thicker the better.
7. Once it’s done (oh you know when it’s done), serve with rice. Yes, we mix starches and proteins. It’s the Asian way of doing things. Eat.

***

And I’m still nanowrimo-ing. So much so that I haven’t had time to write the script I’m supposed to hand-in for NIDA. Nanowrimo is so much fun, I’m encouraging people to join in as I write. And now, for an excerpt . I’m going to try put in one every day.

If Edward’s brain had not been addled with as much alcohol as he had consumed that evening, Edward would have seen the young man’s fist coming and perhaps stepped out of the way. But he had, ultimately, spent the entire evening nursing his sorrows over champagne and when the fist came flying towards him, he was powerless to avoid it.

What happened next

It felt like the entire holiday was a dream. Did David really come over and we dragged each other halfway across the country? Sometimes I’m quite sure I made the entire ten days up in my head, that the entire part up the cable car was made up for drama, in between my struggles for plot ideas for my story.

Speaking of plot, I am officially trying for Nanowrimo this year, as you can see on the widget on the right hand side of the blog. Of course, it seems a little mental when I’m also trying to squeeze in work that I have been leaving behind for a while (which as always in Malaysia, requires chasing, chasing and more chasing) and then further chasing other people. I’m getting unnecessarily stressed but then again, when have I not been stressed.

Other than all that, I have been suffering from a bad headcold since Thursday with an irritating little cough that sort of goes like, “eh, eh, eh”. I’ve been loading up on medication and pain-killers. Occasionally I start veering off-kilter from so much medication, but I like medication, so there’s no complaints. Sure I start to sound a little druggie-like, but why should I detest stuff that make me feel better when my body breaks down.

And bodies should not be breaking down, they should be like the Tefal frying pan or something, good for thousands and thousands of uses.

***

And something I’m just going to do for fun, if I can bare to look at my writing. Writing something like Nano means the writing that comes out of it tends to be super rough and a little cringe-worthy. But at least y’all know that I’m actually doing something with my life as opposed to sitting on my arse and wishing the day away.

So here it is, in all it’s unedited glory.

The two of them sat together, next to each other on the pool chairs as other guests crowded around them. He hated to stereotype but most of the women guests were crowded amongst each other, whispering fearfully whilst the men gathered in front of their women in their vain attempts at protecting them against the hordes of insurgents that had crashed their party.

“Is insurgent the right word to use in this context?” Edward asked as he looked at the masked men with the banners and the placards.