Burnt Garlic

A few moments of distraction was all it took to overheat the wok. I should have stopped proceeding but I thought I had a chance if I poured in the oil and pushed in the chopped garlic immediately. But it was too late. The garlic were burnt but I still pushed in the ikan bilis. What was I thinking? As I stir fried them around, I realised I had no chance to save this dish. The soup is gonna be bitter with the charred garlic. I'm gonna waste all the ingredients if I continued. I turned off the fire and started chopping fresh garlic again. 


Burnt garlic is no big deal. But like burnt garlic, some things in life have no U-turn. A moment of unthinking can be all it takes sometimes to make a irreversible mistake. This lesson was a valuable one for me, especially after the gift saga with KK.


We had bought 2 gifts of games, one Xbox and one PS3, for his friends. They were brand new so they came wrapped in plastic cling wrap. In his attempt to peel out the price tag, my son tore off the whole plastic wrapping completely. Not only that, curious he opened up the box to have a look at the instruction booklet inside, thereby breaking the seal on the Xbox game. Great. Now I not only cannot offer to get an exchange on the gift (if the parents object to the title we chose), it looks like we have bought pre-owned games instead. I was a pretty mad mum. 


I know he's still a kid and kids don't think so much when they do things. But the sooner he learnt there are merits to thinking before action or demerits to actions without thoughts, the better he will be at being independent. Too often, we read in the newspapers of teenagers or young people who get caught in situations such as molestation, possession of drugs or smuggling unwittingly. It might not be their intention to commit crime but it's a messy situation they can avoid if they were more alert, cautious and less ignorant. Certainly if they paused to think of the consequences of their actions, they might still be able to save themselves before it's too late. 


So the humble garlic has imparted some important lessons to life:

• Be on the watch out, a moment of distraction and you can get burnt.
• If something is not right, stop. You can't save the garlic but you won't destroy the dish.