gijasue's blog

“One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life.” Chinese proberb

Just something to think about.

I know that I’m impatient sometimes and this could be useful in my life.

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

— Virginia Woolf

It’s very interesting that the last two daily thoughts have been something relating to my life at this time. The way this one relates is that tonight I took a one night cooking class. My first one ever!

Actually, it was more of a showing and eating class, but who would quibble with such a small thing?

The important thing was that it was an Asian cooking class with a Korean teacher. Right up my alley. Both J. and I have had an incredible hankering for Korean food, especially since it’s hard to find a Korean restaurant here or even in Munich.

So, I learned how to make kimbap (literally translated dried seaweed and rice) but most everyone else called it sushi. It’s actually the Korean version of sushi rolls (without the fish) and I like it better. I also learned how to cut the meat for bulgogi. Which is a Korean style of marinating sliced meat and then grilling it. We also learned how to roll spring rolls, but I don’t consider those Korean or plan on making them very often.

After she showed us those things and had a few people try out the techniques, we ate the same kinds of food we were making but most of it was stuff she had cooked previously. It was great and I stuffed myself to the gills.

The funny thing about these recipes that she give us and the stuff she showed us is that it was so easy. When I was in Korea I it just all seemed so hard and the recipes were so badly translated into English that I never cooked any of this stuff. Not to mention that it was so cheap to eat out, that I had no reason to cook any of the stuff.

Now I will try to cook some of this stuff and slake this need we have to eat all things Korean. For those of you who know what kind of cook I am, you know I’m going to need all the luck I can get.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life…and the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either then they know how to use. — Samuel Johnson

This was today’s daily thought and it kind of hit home.

Money and time. That’s one of the things that is so frustrating about my job right now.

I get paid by the hour and I’m contracted to work 25/hrs a week. At first, I thought this was enough time to do other activities as well as spend some time with A. But, when the opportunity arose to work more hours, I took it. Although, after each week was up, I lamented the time I didn’t have to do other things, I was greedily adding up my hours and spending my pay in my head.

And I planned on what we would do with this extra money each month — pay off the bills, put some in savings, take more and nicer vacations. Until I was told that I had to cut my hours and they took away one of my projects.

At first, I was outraged. I’m good at my job, and I do it better than what was done before. How could they think of doing without me?

But after thinking about it for a while, and talking with J., I realized that the extra time I would have and the absence of stress would be worth the hours and money I would lose.

Now I’ll have time to take A. to the library again or on outings to the pool or movies (they just started showing English language movies in town). And I’ll finally get back into working out, after skipping so many workouts in the last few weeks.

Yes, money and time can be a problem. There’s never enough of either. But, I think that finding out what you can live with and be happy with is the most important thing in life.