A crash course in cooking...and life in general

I have been studiously picking up a trick or two from my mum on the fine art of putting food on the table over the past few months.

And though I am not capable of whipping up a feast fit for kings yet, I can now proudly declare that I can put together a wholesome, edible and likely-to-be palatable meal that will not require the diner to make a dash for the emergency room and go home (gleefully) with a 1-week medical leave.

Now, my still-slightly-questionable-but-gradually-improving cooking skills aside, I realise that life is like a session in front of the stove and wok.

I hate to go all Forrest Gump here, but sorry folks, that's the truth.

You see, when it comes to cooking, getting the raw materials for the dish is easy. Getting the array of seasonings required is easy. And getting a rough estimate of the cooking time is easy too - just refer to the recipe or the mums/mum-in-laws etc of the world.

The tough part is everything else that follows once the cooking begins and you are left on your own.

Different woks react differently to heat, and the cooking time can differ vastly. And heat control is another intellectual-meets-intuition topic altogether. And of course there's the amount of each seasoning to use, which may not always be in direct proportion to the amount of raw materials you have. That is, it is not always a simple mathematical question of 1 teaspoons of soy sauce for 1 chicken breast and therefore 2 teaspoons for 2 chicken breasts...after all, it is a matter of personal taste.

Life's just the same, isn't it?

It is not that tough to set a goal and know what you have to do to get what you want.

The difficulties instead lie in figuring out just when to exactly to start, when to stop, when to go all out, when to hold back, when to stick to the rules and when to improvise...and the list continues.

So now you know...if you would like to rule the world someday, it's time you worked those woks.