Cakes and Being XL.
It was Trixie's birthday on Tuesday and to help her celebrate with her class I decided that it would be a fine idea to allow her to bring some cakes in to school. This nice idea of course involved work as both Lexi and I are far too tight to even consider buying cakes and, well homemade cakes look and taste so much better, don't they? I followed the good old stand by recipe for sponge cakes (4, 4, 4 to two eggs) and scaled it up to seven eggs. You can never have enough cake. Being in a rush, as always, I ended up making the mixture far too wet and so, when fully cooked,the buns themselves had sort of flowed over in to one another, resembling cooked bread rolls rather than fairy cakes. A swift application of melted chocolate and shake of coloured bits and our six year old couldn't tell the difference. They must have tasted ok as the tray came back from school empty.
During the making I had three small children hanging round offering to take on the most important job in the whole baking process: licker. I don't remember ever teaching our lot about this vital job so am becoming convinced that the spoon-licker / bowl-licker job is something that is more nature than nurture.
The idea for cakes came courtesy of Trixie's teacher who mentioned cakes and birthdays when on a walk on Sunday morning. It was a Pink Walk in aid of a variety of breast cancer charities in Malaysia and so at 8.00am Malaysia time (8.15 real time) a large squad of teachers and their off-spring plus a spattering of students went for a stroll round Bukit Kiara. The donations hat was passed around and Rm800 was raised by the pink t-shirt wearing masses.
Back in school on Monday it was officially Pink Day, continuing the fundraising efforts. All students and staff were encouraged to wear the official Pink Day t-shirts or just pink and make a donation. I managed to find a dreadful tie with pink in it and chucked in more cash for a good cause. And so it was a bizarre sight as the festivities started with a Pink Day warm up on the school field. Most of the Primary School and many of the Secondary teachers all focused on the dance leader as she got us to jig and stretch round to such up-lifting melodies as Gangnam Style. I did my best not to feel silly sporting work clothes and that awful tie doing semi-aerobics. Luckily I had Trixie and Edwin to give me back up and credibility. Rupert seemed to have melted away somewhere. Packs of year nine boys watched on self consciously secretly wishing they were taking part.
I would have thought that all this moving and shaking would have reduced me by a few weight pounds as well as money pounds, but apparently not. Last week I saw a polo shirt, reduced to RM59, in a Desa Park City sports shop and so bought it. Size XL. Colour black. Fine. Last night I tried it on and could hardly breathe. I looked like William Shatner's Captain Kirk in his nothing left to the imagination Captain's shirt. I took it back and, embarrassingly tried on a 2XL instead. It was only marginally better. It was then that I noticed a very important label on the garment 'Asian Sized.' While Malaysian male colleagues would look like body-building hunks in their XL shirts I looked like I had laundered mine on a boil wash and then eaten 16 cream cakes. Note to self: Always read the label.
I write this on the plane to Thailand and have just had a thought. What size t-shirt did I order from the Drama festival organiser? XL. Time to breathe in.