7 Memes for 7 Bloggers

I'm IT. Been tagged. Now looking for other victims. Sign here ...


Thanks, Paz of The Cooking Adventures of Chef Paz, for tagging me. Before you, I was a meme virgin.


I've read about memes. Seen them and concluded they were a blog version of chain letters. Or those emails your mates like to send you about likes and dislikes and you get to know all about the millions of females who like moonlit walks on the beach with their loved ones. After the eighth moonlit walk listed, you automatically delete emails with the same header and you hope for a lunar eclipse.


However, in the world of food blogging, memes are actually quite interesting. I think food-obsessed people tend to be a rather unique lot and there is an eccentricity about them that makes reading their memes quite fascinating. (Yet I have seldom seen a more supportive group in the various online groups I am involved in.) So I am terribly flattered but also perturbed.


Perturbed because most of my friends do not blog sans 3A. In fact, a number of them, like my friend Mike, have been giving me ominous warnings about online stalkers in blogland. So finding 7 victims for this meme is going to be a real challenge especially since I am new to this and I really do not know many people in the food blog community.


But I will try and not let the wok stop here.


7 Things To Do Before I Die

Photo from www.geocities.com/ nowarski6/peru/machu/1.htm

1. Go to Machi Pichu

2. Dance in the Palace of the Winds at Rajasthan, both in the gardens and in that special little room with all the mirrors that glitter like stars when you light a match in there - thank you to the guides who secretly let me be alone in that room to dance even for 5 minutes

3. Paint in Angkor Wat before they put a Starbucks or McDonalds in it

4. Attend the Cairo Summer Festival

5. Have dinner at the French Laundry

6. Start a little artists village supporting visual and performing arts which will also feature the tiny cafe where I can cook my food!

7. Write the book about my family using a nom de plume so they do not hunt me down and kill me


I am so on the roll now I don't wanna stop. I would like to become a food critic and travel around the world sampling all the cuisines of the world. I want to travel the entire Orient Express and write a book about it. I want to fly a microlight on my own. I want to bungee from the tallest peak which I believe is in the Swiss Alps now (dammit! It used to be New Zealand and I could claim that I'd bungeed from the highest peak. Now I can only claim to have jumped from the 3rd highest. Am pissed!).


I also want to learn more about Chinese medicine and follow in my grandfather's footsteps. I want to visit the Sistine Chapel and spend months and years there learning The Man's technique. I want to have my own little chapel to paint a la the Sistine Chapel. I want to be able to do up an old house from scratch. Actually, I would like to try interior decorating as a profession before I die. And I want to learn how to play the er-hu if only there were lessons in English and my neighbours were deaf. I'll stop now.


7 Things I Cannot Do

1. Cannot say no to food

2. Cannot swim properly - very bad idea if you live on an island

3. Cannot sing to save my life - I do not even sing in the bathroom in case I scare myself

4. Cannot play any musical instrument - source of great disappointment to my concert pianist grandmother

5. Cannot stop being a softie to women in need or distress, especially if they have children - even when they totally take advantage of me (yes, 3A, I am hear you and I am trying!)

6. Cannot stand pretentious or bigoted people

7. Cannot stop dancing - it saved my life and taught me I cannot do without it


7 Things That Attract Me To Blogging


1. Food porn

2. Food

3. Writing about other things besides curatorials or technical papers or taglines or ...

4. Giving voice to my thoughts without other people's input - besides the voice in my head, that is

5. The opportunity to explore some of the more holistic aspects of cooking, especially Chinese medicine

6. The interesting people in the food blogging world

7. Being able to tell my jokes in a space where people cannot throw things at you


7 Things I Say Most Often

1. Actually

2. To be honest ...

3. Less is more

4. Make dance, not war

5. Get away from me, you perv!

6. ... kind of ...

7. So, what did you eat?


7 Books I Love

1. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel - what can I say? It's got food in it and the writing style is wonderfully vivid

2. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry - the first time I read it I cried for days and it never fails to move me


3. Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra - truly an epic read

4. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman - the man is a genius


5. 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff - can't remember how or when I first read this but I never forgot this amazing book. One day I found it in the "Half off" bin in a little bookshop in Germany. I thought it was a disgrace that this book should even be relegated there so I liberated it and now it is a treasured copy

6. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain - I never understood my father and the decisions he made but reading this book really enlightened me and explained a lot of things about my chef father

7. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt - beautifully sentimental without being manipulatively whining, humourous and sublimely touching. I bought this book to pass the time on a flight and spent the entire trip awake, engrossed in this book with tears and laughter bursting uncontrollably out of me in equal measures. Yes, I frighten my fellow passengers.

There are a lot more books which I cherish but I will not list them all. And the world heaves a big sigh of relief ...

7 Movies/DVDs I Watch Over & Over Again

1. Shawshank Redemption

2. Indiana Jones trilogy

3. Lagaan

4. Cinema Paradiso

5. Il Postino

6. The Piano

7. Red Violin

I can't stop now. Don't make me! Farewell My Concubine, Hudsucker's Proxy, Blade Runner, Immortal Beloved, Moulin Rouge, Once Upon a China (all of them!), Fang Shi Yu, Sin City, Gladiator, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Fifth Element, The Professional, Legend of 1900, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (sorry, old childhood thing), Chinese Ghost Story, Pulp Fiction, The English Patient, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, The Holy Grail, Unforgiven, Drunken Master, Fargo, Amelie, Willow, Eat Drink Man Woman, Space Balls (it's a classic OK?!), Sixth Sense, Trainspotting, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Tampopo, Original Star Wars - not the recent shite, Iris, Rocky Horror Show, Y tu Mama Tambien, The Princess Bride, Raising Arizona, The Green Mile, and Once Were Warriors, and Bullets Over Broadway, and Sleepers, and ... OK, OK ... I do know how to count. 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 4 ...

7 Tags

Uh oh ... er ... if these people have not already been tagged ...

1. Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen
2. Rachel of Tham Jiak
3. Lisa of Oslo Foodie
4. Anthony of Spiceblog
5. Jo of Amuse Bouche
6. 3A Gurl of Medaze - getting desperate here
7. Simone of Blingalicious - the desperation increases

Guys, if you hate memes, please forgive me and let me know and I will never meme where no meme should ever go again.

Categories - Rambling Prose