How did things go horribly wrong?
I lost a friend; our relationship will never be the same again.
I blame myself for everything and this feeling's overwhelming.
:'(

drown me in love.

"I miss the sound of your voice

And I miss the rush of your skin

And I miss the still of the silence

As you breathe out and I breathe in

So come on, get higher, loosen my lips

Faith and desire and the swing of your hips

Just pull me down hard

And drown me in love

.

.

.

It's all wrong, it's all wrong

It's all wrong, it's so right

So come on, get higher

So come on and get higher

'Cause everything works, love

Everything works in your arms."

Cause you and I, we were born to die.

Don’t make me sad, don’t make me cry
Sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough
I don’t know why
Keep making me laugh
Let’s go get high
The road is long, we carry on
Try to have fun in the meantime

A good read.

"I had sex for the first time when I was twenty-one years old. His name was Sam, he was my first boyfriend, and–as much as you can after two months–I loved him. I remember him being patient as I awkwardly jungle-gymed around his sturdy body–curious, eager, nervous. I remember not knowing what to do and being insanely relieved that he did. I remember laughing. I remember the whole thing going relatively quickly. I remember laying on his chest when we were finished and saying, “we just had sex,” and him saying, “yep,” and smiling. Contrary to what I’d been told growing up in church, I lost nothing that September night in San Diego: no v-card, no dignity.

I wanted to write a letter then to the pastors and peers who told me to wait until I was married to have sex, who told me that sleeping with a man was degrading, who demonized my deeply closeted identity: I wanted to write to let them know that they were wrong–that the erotic has power that should not be confined to the wedding bed. I wanted to write to let them know that the lessons they taught me about sexuality, the ones that clawed through my chest and marred my adolescent soul, took therapy and practice to undo. I wanted to write to let them know that, in spite of their fear-filled rhetoric, I have learned to have healthy, life-giving sex. Two years later, this is that letter.

Too many religious communities, the one in which I grew up included, prize–more than service to and advocacy for the oppressed–pre-marital virginity. To “lose your virginity” before your wedding day is to relegate yourself to the margins of the congregation–shame and self-loathing your near-constant companions. To get pregnant, unmarried, begets corporate mourning. To have gay sex–no matter the relational configuration–is out of the question. Like some sick, Pavlovian ploy, the erotic is almost immediately tied to guilt.

To be fair, while non-religious persons, in my experience, tend to be more sexually liberated, I have heard them speak with equal fervor about the value of virginity, heard them explain that people–more specifically, women–who retain their “v-cards” somehow have more sexual currency. This is the same psychosis, differently clothed.

In our cultural obsession with virginity and our privileging of marriage, we have done nothing but wed sex to guilt and loss–the very things that prevent sex from being good. Enough studies have been done to show that religious affiliation has a relatively negligible effect on people’s sexual behavior. The question, then, isn’t whether or not people are going to have non-marital sex: it’s how they’re going to feel about having it.

It was only after I was freed from my anxiety and took my first sexual plunge (no pun intended) that I realized how wrong my church was about sexuality. When mutually-attracted adults–possessing respect for and trust in one another–have consensual sex, I’ve discovered, no one loses anything. In fact, quite the opposite: we gain a fuller understanding of ourselves and are given access to new corners of our identities.

The devastatingly high rates of spousal abuse and rape will forever stand in protest to the juvenile and destructive assumption that marriage somehow magically creates an appropriate context for sexual discovery and intimacy to take place. It is time that the audacity of married couples claiming to be the sole participants in morally praiseworthy sex be checked. Good sex is not defined by the form of the relationship but by the character of the activity–particularly its ability to foster a deeper sense of self-worth and dignity for all parties involved. Good sex is happening non-maritally all the time.

Language is intrinsically connected to the shaping of our realities. Tying our first sexual experience to language of loss sets us up for unhealthy patterns; losing virginity is long overdue. Instead, I argue that we begin talking, simply, of the first time we had sex, of the power of the erotic to transform. We have, after all, much more to gain than lose."

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/good-sex-and-erotic-power-why-we-need-to-lose-virginity-and-de-center-marriage/

I haven't blogged in almost a month!

FINALS ARE COMING. PERIOD.

Coffee Loaf

So, I was feeling the baking itch 2 days back so I decided to use the TangZhong method to bake a loaf of coffee bread for breakfast!!! YUMZ always loved home-made bread!
It was really fluffy and stayed fresh longer than normal home-made bread!!!

Pandan cupcake with Gula Melaka butterscotch.

I used the recipe for the Magnolia Vanilla Cupcakes and added my own dash of pandan essence instead of vanilla.

Taken from The Little Teochew

Recipe
Adapted from Food Network

Yields 12 cupcakes
- I halved the measurements and converted everything to metric. Please refer to the recipe link for measurements in cups.
- 85g self-raising flour*
* I did not have any, so I made my own using these estimates: 85g plain flour + 1 1/4tsp baking powder + 1/8 tsp salt
- 70g all-purpose plain flour
- 113g unsalted butter, softened
- 170g caster sugar
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract (or vanilla bean for even more intensity)

1. Preheat oven to 170°C (350°F). (I used 150 because my oven is weird)

2. Line muffin tins with cupcake papers.

3. In a small bowl, combine the flours. Set aside.

4. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.

5. Add the dry ingredients in 3 parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not over beat. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended.

6. Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake liners, filling them about 3/4* full.
* I found that 2/3 full works much better ... those which I filled to 3/4 full actually spilled to the sides during baking. This batter rises quite a bit, so it's best to err on the side of underfilling.

7. Bake for 20 to 25* minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cupcake comes out clean.

*Reduce temperature at the end if needed

8. Cool the cupcakes in tins for 15 minutes. Remove from the tins and cool completely on a wire rack before icing.


Instead of buttercream, I made Gula Melaka butterscotch, which when refrigerated, can be spread like jam :)
I think I used 100g of butter to half a block of gula melaka, and then melted it over a water bath ^^