Cupcakes, spilt milk and doctors

Today was productive. I woke up at 6am, marked essays until 12pm, took my mum shopping and then actually managed to do some cooking and by cooking, I obviously mean cupcakes. It took me a while to stumble across a recipe I wanted to try. I ended up making the fluffy version from the 2 listed here.


According to my sis, they're not fluffy enough. My brother was no help, he was just interested in scoffing the lot. I thought they turned out well, although if I ever make them again I'll be changing the quantities for the lemon mascarpone frosting as I ended up having to chuck most of it away. I didn't bother with icing bags and nozzles, mostly because I don't own any speciality items when it comes to cooking, just the basics. I didn't even have a measuring scale for the ingredients so I had to make do with counting everything out in tablespoons! That should give you a rough idea of how dedicated I am to cooking. Also, I ended up dropping the milk bottle so that was a total waste. I seem to have caught the clumsy bug this week (I even sent a bowl of salad flying yesterday when my brother's fiance’s parents were visiting...oh, the embarrassment). It's not that I don't enjoy cooking or don't want to cook, the opposite in fact. I just lack the time and more importantly, the organisational skills to fit cooking into my routine. I'm brilliant with managing time at work but somehow I can never manage my personal time effectively enough. Well, hopefully that'll change now as I'm adamant to not let work rule my life. Admittedly, for the past two years my job has been my life and only now am I beginning to realise the damage this has done to my social life.

And now onto the frogs. Not as in cooking but as in husband hunting. As you know from my first post, I joined a very well known matrimonial site about a week ago. Mr Hasty was my first, and not the best, experience. Second was Mr Shoes, I'm referring to him in the past tense because I haven't heard from him in two days. I'm assuming he didn't like a question I asked (while trying to ascertain his level of deen). Then there was the Doctor. There have been many Doctors in the past. And I'm not talking about the one who prescribes me my pills, although at least with him I always know where I stand. The first Doctor was last year. Everything was going well until I spoke to his mother. She had a real issue with the fact that I was 10 months older than him.

Her: (smugly) I don't think it's appropriate. Don't you agree that men should marry someone a little bit younger than themselves?
Me: o.O ....no, I don't but if that's your preference then I suppose we don't have anything more to discuss.

At the time I was completely gobsmacked by her attitude. Thinking about it later, I realised I should've said something along the lines of "no I don't because, as you're probably aware, the Prophet (pbuh) married Khadijah who was 15 years older than him". This was actually the first time I seriously began to wonder whether I'd left it too late to look for someone to marry. To be very honest, I wasn't ready at 21 or 23 or even at 26. In fact, I didn't want to get married. It was only after attending various classes and seeing how happily married some of my friends were that I began to change my opinion. So while during my more negative moments I berate myself for leaving it until I hit 27 to start taking this seriously (from 22 onwards I was being introduced to various men and one of my friends created a profile on a matrimonial site for me when I was 25 but not once during that entire time did the effort come from me), I have to also remember that I really wasn't ready at 22 and if I'd married back then, it probably would've ended in tears.

Two more Doctors followed and we didn't hit it off. Then I met Doctor#4 on the website. We exchanged a few messages and we seemed to have loads in common, apart from my not being able to speak Urdu... and that apparently is enough to put him off. After all my years of studying, I'm a real failure for not having learned Urdu. I'm being sarcastic. I don't see this as a deficiency in my character and I do understand that it would be difficult for his family, who all speak Urdu, to perhaps have a daughter-in-law who doesn't but... there's a part of me that gets really annoyed at this ridiculous excuse.

Seeing as I have no luck when it comes to Doctors, I’ll leave them for now. Well, apart from the delicious Matt Smith.

Movie post

I finally got around to seeing Shutter Island. Don't worry, no spoilers in this post because I'm too tired to go into specifics but wow. I'm usually brilliant at guessing twists in movies or novels but I didn't see that coming. Creepy movie. Leo DiCaprio looks even more amazing than ever. I think most men become more handsome as they age, although maybe not Macauly Culkin.



Another one I tried to see this month was Alice in Wonderland. I say "tried" because an hour into the movie, the cinema experienced a power failure... fun. It seemed ok from the first hour, although it was a little boring and I failed to see Alice's charm. I've not seen the actress who played Alice in anything else but I thought she was a little bland in comparison to the other actors. The visuals were amazing though, particularly the costume design.

After seeing the brilliant Shutter Island, I enjoyed a mediocre meal at a local restaurant with a fellow single friend lamenting over the whole lack of marriage issue. It's nice to have someone to share the confusion with. It actually terrifies me to think that someday, I might not have any unmarried friends. Of course I'd be immensely happy for my friends if they found the one, but I'd also feel completely alone. And on that sombre note, I shall head off to bed and try not to dream about Dicaprio on Shutter Island.

Easter Frogs

A weekend of chocolate is almost over. I was pretty good and avoided stuffing myself with novelty chocolate shells. Most of my time was spent ignoring the pile of essays I've got to mark and instead catching up on all the episodes of Glee I missed during term time (am I the only one who wasn't rooting for Mr Schu to get with OCD girl?)

Other than that, I also spent a bit of time delving into the world of matrimonial sites. I decided creating profiles on three different sites might help with the husband hunt. Now, I've tried this before with catastrophic results. I'll tell you about it some day. So I wasn't feeling too confident but nevertheless I rambled on about myself for a few paragraphs (the usual sales speech), uploaded some pics and decided to give it a shot because I'm pushing 29 and dang, this is getting harder.

Despite the usual players, I found myself messaging two seemingly ideal candidates/potential husbands/frog princes. The first guy got my sense of humour straight away and we hit it off over our shared love of shoes and the fact that he has more pairs than I do - 46 vs my rather measly 32 (I know what you're thinking. I thought it too.) The second guy seemed a lot more ideal in terms of what I know my family will love. He seemed nice. Both wanted to talk over the phone instead of messaging via the site but I decided I needed a day to think about it. Also, after two hours of being on-line, I needed to log off and go live in the real world. Little did I realise that this innocent act would be punishable via a blocking. I logged in today only to realise Mr Hasty (second bloke) had sent me a message saying he didn't believe I was serious about marriage and had wasted his time so therefore he was going to block me...

What's eating this frog? I reckon his bitterness and impatience is the result of past experience but what miffed me the most was that he didn’t even wait for me to reply to his previous message before going off on a tirade about how serious he is in wanting to settle down and doesn’t have time for the likes of me...

At least I've still got Mr Shoe Lover.

The delicious chocolate frog above can be found over at http://www.chocolatesmith.com/. If only matriomonial sites were as tasty.