fathers' day


fathers' day weekend saw a lot of procrastinating, followed by many readings for my recent chinese history subject 'china since mao' and preparation for my class presentation for said subject for that week. lucky for me, the week's topics were quite interesting! i got to do a classpaper on 'women's magazine in the 90s'.

it was quite cool to read about all the 30 virtuous traits of the 'ideal chinese office lady', (a very extensive and impossible list i assure u!), including: 'intelligent, sharp-witted, well-informed, knowledgeable, well-spoken, having good taste, independent, self-respecting, conscious of women’s equality, principled, gentle, has a good sense of humor, easy to get along with, understanding, generous, sensitive, not suspicious, straight-forward, efficient and self-controlled among them. Her life should be well-balanced and love should never be her only concern.'

and then there was all the awesome advice for the office lady in regards to relations with her boss and male co-workers, the way in which warm understanding eyes should be employed (which are not flirtatious mind you!), and my other personal favourites: 1st) the office girl voice: describing how a breathy voice may give men a romantic fantasy, however this is probably more desirable than the 'loud and unfriendly tone' which 'will put the him in a bad mood all day'. haha. remember: this is in an office setting. hahaha

and 2nd) office talk: where it quite simply said, 'dont talk too much. it will annoy people'. i laughed and laughed and laughed. what fantastic advice from a womens magazine. i love it. other topics for the week were about extramarital affairs in shanghai, which have made me slightly paranoid about my future (haha), but was quite interesting to learn about all the same. very interesting to learn that in the past marriages in china were simply 'duties' for making a family, and that 'love and romance' was sought through extramarital affairs instead.


anyways, sunday was of course fathers day, and in the late afternoon/ evening my grandparents came over for dinner where mum cooked a form of crumbed chicken that looked suspiciously like what brendan had bought the weird chicken crumbing powder for at the asian supermarket. very odd!



i of course was instructed to make a pavlova for the occasion as both pa, dad and myself enjoy them immensely, and as 2 out of the 3 of us are fathers it seems appropriate for a fathers day occasion.


mum interfered at the end with my pavlova cooking and hence the middle sank.
but we filled it up with cream so no one could tell. strawberries and cream are oh so very yumm regardless.