It’s the first day of 2026. Happy new year!
This morning, I woke up at almost 8am (such a luxury for me), had a simple cup of coffee with oats for breakfast, laid down to rest for a while more, and then went for my morning jog after 9am. I managed to push myself to hit 4km today (about 30 minutes non-stop except at traffic light and when I stopped to pray at the temple), so good job to me. That’s about 500 meters more than what I used to do, and I hope I can keep this up for the rest of the year, in order to hit my 5km target by the end of 2026 (one of the targets set for myself in 2026).
We then went for brunch at the nearby Hua Bee Restaurant. It’s a treasure that’s hidden away at Moh Guan Terrace, with 2 stalls inside the space side-by-side selling simple fishball noodles, drinks and simple toast and simple soft boiled eggs. My hub and myself found this place only recently, when we passed by it to have our lunch at The Rogue Coffee earlier in the week. The owners here were very friendly and warm, and the food was straight up simple, authentic and unassuming. You get what you see – no fuss about it. The fishballs were nice and not too chewy, and there’s red chilli slices to eat the noodles with too. It was all in all just what we needed on the first day of the year. We will definitely visit this place more frequently.
I think I did enough in 2025 to make it a fruitful year for myself. I started the year off by writing down a list of things I would like to accomplish. I tried out a few volunteering stints including time taken to be an F1 Road Marshal, sharing about my work experiences with school students, gave tours, and attended a bicycle maintenance workshop with the hub right at the start of the year. We recently completed a round of biking trail, clocking 48km in 3.5 hours. That was also an achievement for both of us, or at least for myself. I read a lot of books and shared with some in the family about my mishap with misophonia. I also managed to hit a milestone in my finances, so it’s something worth celebrating for sure. I am happy with what I managed to achieve altogether in a year and I feel my report card looks great.
In 2026, I hope to achieve as much, if not more, but in small and steady steps. I hope that I can finally let go of some things and move on to other more important things in life. I hope to be able to plan towards the eventual aim and come out stronger and more hopeful.
To round back to this recipe which I have carefully selected to start off 2026, it is a classic French recipe of omelette au fromage (cheese omelette), which simple as it looks, does take good skills to handle properly in the pan. It needs to be fluffy enough but not too fluffy, cooked enough but not too cooked. The shape needs to be nicely formed into a rectangular form as well. Once you can do all these things nicely and confidently, you will have a great omelette that tastes authentic, slightly cheesy and fluffy on your plate. And then you don’t need anything else anymore.
It’s a recipe which makes for a good metaphor in life, because sometimes, it takes a lot of effort to consciously live a simple life, isn’t it? Just like how it’s difficult to stop yourself from adding too many things into an omelette in order to keep it simple. As we age, it’s really easy to get lost in too many things around us. We need to say no to living a complicated life.
It’s not too difficult, so give it a try!
Ingredients:
- Butter: 2 tbsp
- Egg: 4
- Salt: a pinch
- Ground blackpepper: a pinch
- Mozarella cheese: 2 tbsp
- Parmesan cheese: 1 tbsp
Method:
- Heat butter in frying pan. Spread butter in pan.
- Beat eggs with salt & blackpepper. Pour into pan.
- Continue stirring the egg mixture with a stirrer so that the omelette becomes fluffed up.
- Once the omelette starts to curdle, stop stirring.
- Sprinkle cheese at one end of the omelette. Leave to cook for 30sec.
- Using the stirrer, start to roll the omelette up starting from the end without cheese.
- Tilt the pan and slide omelette onto a plate.
- Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese to serve.
Trick:
- You can add in additional ingredients such as bell pepper (diced), ham (diced) and tomato (diced) into the omelette if you like, to make for a fuller meal.
Serving:
1 omelette
