Sarcarsm and sincerity

I find it amusing how people use sarcarsm before giving a sincere response. Shooting a sarcarstic remark actually gives the other person an idea of your typical sarcarstic response and hence, he/she can generally identify how you'd reply sincerely. In some way, sarcarsm elevates the level of sincerity when you're giving genuine responses (when in fact, you don't really mean it altogether).

I think it's a pretty useful communication device especially when you don't feel like giving a frank answer. It's a little deceptive but I think it's a good way of staying away from offending someone ;) (Anyway, I don't really employ this method of communication much, this post is a product of observing other people)

Right.

As a child, I was raised and taught to abstain from anything or any form/depiction of evil that may eventually induce me to negative conduct. That's not to say that I didn't watch cartoons with villains but, ultimately good trumps all in those animated series. So that wasn't anything that involved moral dilemmas.

As idealism and images of a perfectly-run world of law and order get washed away with time and experience, beliefs in realism form a core of my principles; my eyes now see a world of grey. Religion tries to define what's black and what's white. Ironically, it makes things all the more grey. In attempting to draw a line, the line actually creates a new split and an additional school of thought; generating more confusion, conflict and endless debate.

I've been wondering why we shun the sight of evil when in fact, it grants us the ability to empathise with victims of evil. I don't mean that we should participate in all these acts of horror or allow ourselves to be influenced by them. Is it wrong to see how POWs get tortured? Wrong to witness the brutality of humanity? I say, if we get a grip of ourselves, disallow ourselves from being shaken by these images, we receive that very gift of empathy. We share the pain of these victims, we understand the state of their souls, we grow to care for others.

There may be other means of caring for others without having to undergo the traumatic experience of reliving the victim's story. You can say that you can love the person, love every single person in the whole world and so you'd care for everyone. Love everyone for who they are. But you won't truly know the circumstance of each individual. It's hard to see how you can artificially effect an emotion without having a proper stimulus. Yes, I'm a realist. I believe in opening one's eyes to see events or people who are forgotten in the illusion of utopia.

Chocolate records

As a self proclaimed chocoholic, I shall heed the advice of others to record my profound chocolate experiences. Each chocolate bears a different story of its origin- the effort placed into nurturing the cocoa beans, the climate, its location, the surrounding plantations, the processes undertaken by the chocolatier etc. And thus, each chocolate reveals a different taste to the senses, indeed, it takes more than just the sense of taste to capture the entire aroma and passion put into making that bar/piece of chocolate.

Let me describe how to taste a tiny cube of chocolate. Break one from the bar and it'll require an ounce of effort to do so. If not, there's probably a lack of cocoa butter- the expensive ingredient used to give chocolate bars their solid state and familiar to the cosmetics industry (used in lipsticks, make-up etc.). I tried Teuscher, a Swiss chocolate brand, and its 66% bar melted much more easily, leaving me to conclude and agree that the chocolate's composition is largely made of Swiss milk. When appreciating chocolate, one goes for the cocoa beans, not the side ingredients. So avoid swiss chocolate if you're a true blue chocoholic.

Upon the first contact with your tastebuds, you won't taste the cocoa. Instead, you taste the scent that the cocoa beans absorbed from their surrounding environment. For instance, cocoa beans grown in Jamaica have a lot of woody trees, so it captures a woody aroma that layers over the cocoa. Chocolate is prone to absorbing the surrounding smells, so avoid exposing the chocolate to the atmosphere to prolonged periods of time. As for me, I placed my secret stash of chocolates into a tupperware and they ended up tasting a little like the tupperware!

Slowly, the cocoa flavour seeps into your system. It could come in many forms. Sour(acidulous) or bitter or mellow or nutty or intense or it could be a combination. Amedei's my favourite as it has a different level of complexity above the other brands, I don't exactly know how to describe it but it isn't overwhelming. It reminds me of how the butler in the Remains of the Day described the countryside in Britain. It isn't full of grandiose or mind blowing but simply elegant, classy while easing gracefully through transitions, revealing another angle of each masterpiece.

After going through the process of appreciating the chocolate, the end note should be clean and palatable for good works of chocolate. Chocolate's the life. It was made for royalty. So be a king/queen/princess/prince and let that cocoa release those endorphins!