This is a supplementary post for Bon Om Touk's Task 1: "Make a paper boat and post a picture of it."


A little birdie (**coughcoughPennicoughcough**) was starting at me from the ledge above my desk, making me realize I'd forgotten something very important in my boat post.

"We ride the boats!"

Okay, now that Penni, Monkey, and Teddy Bear have had their fun, let's move on.

In a comment previously at Booklikes, I'd mentioned that I recalled having worked on an origami dragon boat when I was younger and never having finished it.  Well... apparently, I lied.

This is just an origami dragon... no boat involved.  And apparently, I made a lot less progress with it than I'd thought.  There is still a pretty thick stack of gold papers left to fold into little triangles.  I mean, ultimately, it's supposed to look like the photo in my box above...

Meanwhile, the origami dragon boat, DOES indeed, exist!

Here's the YouTube video for a relatively simpler one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP3H3zn5_-o.  I have yet to try this, but might at some point.  All this talk about origami has got my fingers flexing.

And here's a photo of some more elaborate ones similar to what I thought I had:

Meanwhile, as an added bonus, here are some of the other things I found while digging through my closet looking for my origami dragon.

I found my canister of lucky stars!  Aren't they pretty?

And then I found my shoe box full of paper cranes.  I used to sit and fold these as a fun past time!  While watching television, listening to music, or just hanging out with my family, I'd sit there and fold paper cranes out of any and every scrap of extra paper I could find.  My mom used to keep stacks of colored paper sitting around, mainly for whenever she needed to print a fun signs or some such stuff.  I would nip a couple sheets just for the cranes, as they were all in different pastels that made me itch to use them.

I also did some of the little hearts on the right side there as well.  These were typically done with dollar bills (much like the origami dragon boat in the video above), but I just started using colored paper, because I didn't want to waste the dollars.  Do I remember how to fold them today?  Nope.

All of my origami kind of got set aside, then put away as college rounded the corner and I just couldn't find any time for anything other than study and school.

And no, I have no idea how many there are.  I haven't counted them yet.

Updates

11/26/2018:  Completed Tasks 1, 3 and 4.  I will more than likely skip Task 2.

Task 1

Make a paper boat and post a picture of it.  Instructions, if needed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiAWx8odStA
-- COMPLETED 11/26/2018 --

It's been a very long time since I folded boats.  This is something I used to do with my mom and aunts when I was younger--folding origami to pass the time.  My folding skills aren't what they used to be.  I used to be extremely precise about my folds, making sure every edge was perfectly aligned, and ever fold pressed and pressed and creased, over and again.

I don't really remember how to make all of these, so had to look up the other ones.  So here is my rather flimsy fleet.

Task 2

If you’ve ever attended a procession or an event involving festively decked out boats, post a picture and tell us about it.
-- SKIPPING --

Unfortunately, this is something I don't recall ever having done.

Task 3

Bon Om Touk celebrates the end of the rainy season.  Tell us: What’s your favorite type of rainy day book – and do you have a favorite drink or snack to go with your rainy day reading?  Photos welcome!
-- COMPLETED 11/26/2018 --

I can read just about anything, rain or shine.  But going hand-in-hand with my comfort reads, I suppose picking up an exciting Romantic Suspense is always a great rainy day read for me.  Meanwhile, tea and some sort of sweet makes a wonderful rainy day reading snack.  Barring that, sometimes I like cheese and crackers.

Task 4

Which are your 3 favorite books where a key character is “moonlighting”?
-- COMPLETED 11/26/2018 --

1.  Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire // Verity Price -- a bar cocktail waitress who moonlights as a cryptozoologist, hunter, and ballroom dancer!

2.  Veronica Speedwell series by Deanna Raybourn // Veronica Speedwell -- a lepidopterist who moonlights as an amateur sleuth // Stoker -- a taxidermist who moonlights as an amateur sleuth

3.  Colorado High Country series by Pamela Clare // various main characters -- they all have daytime jobs (firefighter, professional mountain climber, dog trainer, etc.), but also volunteer as a Search and Rescue team


So I have more than three books here, but eh...

Book Task

Read a book that takes place at sea or on a river OR with water on the cover OR where the plot involves a festival or the moon plays a pivotal role in the plot.
-- WORK IN PROGRESS --

This may require a bit of searching, unless any of the books I plan on reading will end up fitting.

Updates

11/25/2018:  Updated with completion of Task 3.

11/07/2018:  Task 4 completed; other tasks in progress.  Book task with options.

Task 1

Share a picture of your favorite light display.
-- WORK IN PROGRESS --

This task under consideration.

Task 2

Cleaning is a big part of this holiday; choose one of your shelves, real or virtual, and tidy / organise it. Give us the before and after photos.  OR Tidy up 5 of the books on your BookLikes shelves by adding the CORRECT cover, and/or any other missing information. 
(If in doubt, see here: http://jenn.booklikes.com/post/1782687/state-of-the-database-booklikes-database-halloween-bingo-and-a-mini-rant-with-pictures).
-- WILL PROBABLY SKIP --

This task is also under consideration.

I've had a 'To-do' list involving tidying up my bookshelves and my closet for a couple years now... and it has never actually happened.  I try to purge my shelves of old books that will go in the donation bin to make room for new books... so I might complete this task.  I might now.  I'm going to play by mood for this task.

Task 3

Eating sweets is also a big part of Diwali.  Either select a recipe for a traditional sweet, or make a family favorite and share a picture with us.
-- COMPLETED 11/25/2018 --

I'm a big fan of sweets.  Growing up, my idea of desserts had always been the various sweet soups that my mother made for special occasions... or sometimes just because she felt like it.  Rather than cakes and cookies, or pie or ice cream, we got warm sweet soups, sweet herbal soups... just sweets in soup form, warm or not, but most especially warm.

For the Cantonese, sweet soups are absolutely a cultural delicacy.  Amusingly, the translation for them, tang sui, literally translates to "sugar water."  In a way, that's not far from the truth, as most of the soup bases are pretty much rock sugar (in some cases, cane sugar or brown sugar) and boiled water.  It's all the other added goodies that give them their uniquely wonderful flavors.

The following are my personal favorites of sweet soups: Sweet Potato Soup (fan shu tang sui), Ginkgo and Tofu Skin Sweet Soup (bai guo fu zhu tang sui), and Tofu Custard (dou fu hua).  On a side note, when I started compiling this task, I realized that I was coming up with more sweet soups than I had intended, so I decided to cut my selections down to my three favorites.

Unfortunately, the only photo I could find of any sweet soups my mother made in the past only include one for Sweet Potato Soup (recently made), so the rest were borrowed off a Google search.  I've also linked the recipe to the other two under each photo.

Sweet Potato Soup

According to my mom, Sweet Potato Soup was known as the "poor persons' sweet soup."  Unlike other herbal ingredients often found in sweet soups, such as ginseng, sweet potatoes are very common, and one of the most abundant foods grown in China, making them easily accessible and affordable for all kinds of recipes.

The basic gist of this sweet soup really just involves boiling everything together into a soup.  Ingredients include sweet potato, ginger root (chunks or slices), rock sugar, water, and about a half teaspoon of salt.

One large sweet potato is enough to make a pretty large portion of soup, serving at least four to six.  The sweet potato is chopped into small squares, size of the sweet potato chunks is typically based on preference.  Following, we boil water, rock sugar, salt, some ginger root slices, and the sweet potato until the sweet potato is soft.

I personally prefer to use rock sugar when available, but due to the fact that it's a bit more expensive than brown sugar, my mom prefers brown sugar.  Either way, I do not recommend regular sugar, as it seems to lack some sort of quality that doesn't really bring out the sweet soup taste.

Ginkgo and Tofu Skin Sweet Soup @ Nasi Lemak Lover

Ginkgo and Tofu Skin Sweet Soup is one of my personal favorites, and unfortunately, I don't have a photo of it, nor am I really all that well-versed in it's creation.  The recipe that my mom makes usually has tofu skin, gingko nuts, barley, and hard boiled egg.  The above picture is the closest likeness I could find, though missing the egg.  Other recipes will sometimes include quail eggs.  Also different than the recipe I've linked, we also don't have screwpine leaves or pandan leaves.

Mom likes to soak all her ingredients before boiling everything together, as she says it helps the cooking process move along faster and more smoothly.

And of course, the sweet soup base, in this case, has to be rock sugar, as brown sugar will turn the soup brown and we don't want that.

The photo depicted above includes the egg, as well as some cooked, whipped egg in the soup itself, but no gingko nuts.

Tofu Custard @ Quinn's Baking Diary

Tofu Custard is called dou fu fa in Cantonese, which translates into "tofu flower," as it is suppose to resemble a flowering blossom... somehow.  I've still not been able to figure that one out.  But the dessert is delicious and that's all I care about, really.

We don't actually know how to make this from scratch at home, and it seems quite complicated, as there are a lot of tedious steps involved.  So my family will just content ourselves with store bought, or in other fortunate cases, restaurant made, especially from restaurants that serve dim sum.  I always get a bowl for myself when we go out for dim sum.

The only thing I'm certain about is the sweet soup that gets drizzled into the tofu custard to make it into a soup-like dessert.  In this case, you simply boil water, ginger root, and enough brown or cane sugar to create a very syrupy soup.

Task 4

During Diwali, people pray to the goddess Lakhshmi, who is typically depicted as a beautiful young woman holding a lotus flower.  Find 5 books on your shelves (either physical or virtual) whose covers show a young woman holding a flower and share their cover images.
-- COMPLETED  11/07/2018 --

You would think that, being a reader of romance, I'd be able to readily find five books with a young woman holding a flower (or flowers) on the cover.  So imagine my surprise when I realized that most of the books on my shelves, both physical and digital, as well as the majority of the books I've read, have more covers with women holding anything and everything but flowers.

Even my Goodreads To Read shelf (books I may not necessarily own) is sorely lacking in covers of a woman holding a flower.

I've got covers of women holding weapons of all kinds: swords, guns, bow and arrow, daggers, and so on.  I've got covers of women and girls holding books, women holding shoes, women holding jewelry, women holding staffs and wands or candles, women holding their own dresses...  I've got a ton of romances with a woman holding a man, or a woman holding a man's hand.  I've even got a cover of a woman holding a trowel, a woman holding a pair of scissors, or a little girl holding a pig.

But enough about that.  I eventually DID find a good number of books where a woman is holding a flower, or a bunch of flowers.

I might have taken a slight stretch with Origin, but I always saw the cover as the silhouette of a young girl, who is coincidentally holding a flower.  Set Me Free's cover has a young woman holding a picture of flowers, so that works, right?  The other three are a bit more obvious.

Book Task

Read a book with candles on the cover or the word “candle” or “light” in the title; OR a book that is the latest in a series; OR set in India; OR any non-fiction book that is ‘illuminating’ (Diwali is Sanskrit for light/knowledge and row, line or series)
-- DECISION BEING MADE --

I'm considering reading one of Tessa Dare's newest releases, The Governess Game, which is her latest installment of Girl Meets Duke.  I have another two books I could use for this task as well, including Dim Sum of All Fears by Vivien Chien, the most recent installment available of her Noodle Shop Mystery series; and The Woman Left Behind by Linda Howard, the latest installment of her GO-Team series, which really hadn't been a series when I read the first book.  I'm still awaiting my wait list library copy for The Woman Left Behind, though...

I've been able to update a bit more regularly than I did in the past, so that's something.

Since my last update, I've added completed tasks from Mawlid (Tasks 1 - 4), Penance Day (Tasks 1 & 3), and Thanksgiving (Tasks 1, 2 & 4).  This brings my total points to 26, which is pretty darn good for me considering I only managed 18 points last year for the whole game.  We've still got one more month of game and 13 doors left to reveal.  There are, even, two more revealed doors I'm still working on, as well as a few books that I have yet to start reading yet!

The Festive Card:

Peek-a-Boo Penni Claus = Completed Book Task

Magnetic "Elfin" Monkey = Completed Non-Book Tasks

My Progress:

Overall Total Points Earned:  26
Books Read:  2
Tasks Completed:  24

Current Tasks:

• Door 1 | Dia de los Muertos Book Task -- Reread of Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
• Door 9 | Thanksgiving Book Task -- Reading Midnight Sacrifice by Melinda Leigh

**For my own sanity purposes, I will link the main post for each door at the top of each table.  All tasks listed under 'My Activity' will more than likely be found at the main post; otherwise, the link will be included for that particular task if a separate post is published outside of the main post, such as book reviews.  Thanks!**

Updates

11/24/2018:  Two tasks done.

Task 1

“Confess” your book habits. Dog-earring?   Laying books face down?  Bending back the spines?  Skimming?   OR: Confess your guilty reading pleasure, or comfort reads.
-- COMPLETED 11/24/2018 --

In an honest admission... yeah, I am super guilty of laying my books face down and open rather than using a bookmark.  This only ever happens when I'm not really thinking about it, and something suddenly requires I take my attention away from said book.  I am very consciously trying to eradicate this bad habit... I promise.

Meanwhile, my comfort reads comprise of any and all things Romantic Suspense.  Some favorite authors include Jayne Ann Krentz (in all her various pseudonyms), Laura Griffin, Cindy Gerard, Pamela Clare... this list could go on, really...

Task 2

It’s “Pennants” day according to MbD’s husband: post a picture of your favorite team’s logo / mascot and the last time they’ve won a championship (or not).
-- SKIPPING THIS ONE --

I don't really sports.

That being said, I made a feeble attempt at finding a pennant for my favorite non-sports team.  Failing that, I made my own:

I don't think there are any documented championships, but I'm sure there are many out there!

Task 3

In centuries gone by, penance would often end up in what might be described as a very extended bad hair day (complete with sackcloth and ashes).  Tell us: What’s a bad hair day to you – and what (if anything) do you do about it?
-- COMPLETED 11/24/2018 --

I'm a member of the "Everyday is pretty much a bad hair day for me" club.  Just like many of the others here have mentioned, I also have extremely unmanageable hair.  I was born with super thick strands that, barring using a flat iron, really will never lay in a natural fashion outside of two settings: 1) the humid frizz, or 2) the this-is-obviously-not-a-fashionably-trendy-type of tousled.

I actually had an interesting conversation with a coworker lately about our hair.  I told her about how I'd tried many different styles as I grew up, and even the one that even remotely looks like I tried was not easy to maintain.  Because, let's face it, I'm an extremely lazy person.  How my hair looks is not as important as sleeping in.  And yet, sometimes I just wished it would cut back on the frizz and static.

I once cut my hair extremely short, thinking that it would be easier for me to handle.  Long thick hair pulls on your scalp and is very uncomfortable in a pony tail.  But when working, loose hair just gets in the way.  Little did I realize that short hair was even harder to manage than I had thought.  Because instead of having that fashionably tousled look (see above), I had random chunks sticking out like embarrassingly over-eager cowlicks.  So rather than looking like I meant to make my hair look that way, it looked like a "why didn't you comb your hair?" style.

So... long hair it is now, yet short enough to tie into a pony tail, so that it's not too heavy and won't tug on my scalp as badly.

Task 4

Early Christian spiritualists would sometimes do penance by spending time in the desert.  If you’ve ever visited a desert region (or even live there), post a picture and tell us about it.  Alternatively, post a picture of sand dunes (NOT with water in the background!).
-- Probably SKIP --

I'm not sure that, outside of doing some Google work, I'll actually be able to complete this one.  I might come back later.

Book Task

Read any book concerning a man / woman of the cloth, a book about a character hiding a guilty secret or searching for absolution.
-- SEARCHING --

This task made me think of nun assassins.