Reintroducing Myself – Jumani, Your Language Enthusiast

Hello, world! It’s Jumani—your friendly neighborhood English lecturer (and occasional tea enthusiast). Some of you might know me as Jujuqtpie, a nickname I’ve carried for years. At home, I’ve always been called Juju, and the ‘qtpie’ bit was a fun touch to my email handle (because, why not?). Though people sometimes mispronounce it, I’ve always found it playful and endearing!

I’ve been teaching for years, primarily focusing on making English less of a chore and more of a fun, easy language to learn. My students range from engineering undergrads to Master’s students tackling language policy. And you know what? I love every bit of it!

Beyond teaching, I’m deeply into lifelong learning, believing that we all have the tools to help ourselves improve. I’m a strong believer in blending technology with language learning, having worked on projects like Kindy Talk, a module for early childhood educators. I’m also passionate about intercultural communication and impoliteness studies (yes, there’s such a thing!).

This blog is my space to share thoughts on language, life, and maybe a few odd rants (like how I once accidentally threw an ice chip at a smoker—long story). But more than anything, it’s a place for me to connect with like-minded people who love learning and growing.

So if you’re here to discover some language hacks, pick up tips, or just enjoy a bit of lighthearted banter, welcome back to my little corner of the internet!

Reviving my blog, breathing new life

I recently joined a course called GENACITY 2.0. I would be part of their second cohort. It is really exciting to have the opportunity to learn from these VERY HEAVY practitioners such as Dr Tazli, Prof Abd Karim Alias, Don and Chuah Kee Man.

Being a lecturer at UMPSA for how many donkey years, I figured I have to keep up with the times, embrace technology, particularly AI! I am all for us using AI, it really helps with productivity, shortens my thinking time and produces wonderful writing. But that's for us; we have gone through our Bachelor, Master and PhD. Even without AI, we can survive; even if the work produced wouldn't be as fast but there would be output produced by our God-given human brain. However for students, for me to say, go ahead, use AI to your heart's content, they would have to know BOTH the long way and the short cuts. How can we let them out into the world by just AI-ing everything? What is a language class if the language is generated by AI? They have to have the knowledge in their human brain so that they can fall back on their own brain coz believe me, technology has the tendency to fail at the most inopportuned times. 

Here's a FACT: Technology has failed me at several significant life events! First example, my VIVA VOCE! On the day I was to present on my PhD, the university had a major blackout. I presented in near  darkness with natural light coming in from the windows. My supervisor said, "Only you. This could happen to only you". In a way, it was a blessing in disguise. The room was hot and stuffy and the whole process finished in half an hour. Of course, credit also should be given to easy readability of my thesis, which is a proud achievement. Remember, no chatGPT yet at that time! So it's all me! Of course I wouldn't want to read through that "masterpiece" coz somehow, the eyes could catch mistakes better post submission.

Second example: I was in the middle of presenting my poster for an online Teaching and Learning Innovation Competition and suddenly I realised I was talking by myself, to myself as I was disconnected. It really killed my mojo. Even when I was reconnected, I was a bit more flustered than before.

There are other instances but these two instances are the most memorable for me. 

Blogging again...but do people still read blogs?

I cannot even remember the last time I blogged. The last baby I blogged about turns 17 today! Here is an interesting fact. FACT: I totally forgot what happened giving birth to Hana (<-- my birthday girl!). I remember how, more or less what time each child came into this world except for Hana. This was because there were too many false alarms when it was her turn that when the actual deed happened, I had no recollection!

But guess what? I documented every detail in this blog. Isn't that amazing? Here's the link if you are curious. But mostly it is for my own record: http://jujusthoughtsgalore.blogspot.com/2007/12/on-roll-again.html

Reading back my old posts, I can't believe I was so verbose. I wonder if my blogger friends are still blogging and whatever happened in their lives now. Have they abandoned ship? Or still going strong, blogging through time and space?

Perhaps this won't be my last post. Maybe this is my new beginning. Maybe...who knows. 

Churros!

This is the last of the churros that I made. I had to stop the kids from eating in order to snap this pic. This I made before Ramadan. I just want to share that churros are actually pretty easy to make and they are supposed to be dipped in hot chocolate sauce but I was not that adventurous and so I didn't make the sauce. You can get the recipe here. Remember to fry the churros for about 4 minutes. My first few churros shrank the moment they came out of the pan even though they were gorgeous in the pan. So I reduced the heat and cooked them longer and they retained their shape. I also sprinkled cinnamon onto the churros (see the brown specks). Yum. Maybe will make churros again but this time will try the recipe from this website which uses vege oil instead of butter.

Basil Chicken Wantan Soup

Assamualaikum and ramadan mubarak to all Muslims particularly my Muslim friends.

I am posting here this recipe due to to a friend's request. She says this style of cooking is not the typical wantan and it's refreshing. This is the most fuss-free wantan I have ever made and it is good for berbuka and sahur, and of course way after Ramadan.

I say fuss-free because when I made these I only had minced chicken and wantan skins. I did not even have carrots or water chestnuts or Japanese mushrooms which I would normally add to my minced chicken if I make wantans. For greens, I asked my daughter to go to the garden and pick me some Thai basil and you can also use the sweet basil. FYI, it's very easy to grow basil, I bought some from the night market and planted the basil stalks in soil and watered them every day. The same goes for mint leaves and daun kesom. However, mint leaves always die on me. In the end I bought a pot from the nursery. They seem to be surviving. So now I have mint leaves in my garden as well.

Okay, enough digressing.

I marinated the chicken with olive oil, light soya sauce and oyster sauce, pepper, a little ginger powder (optional) and corn flour.

To make the soup, I simply boiled water, enough to cover the number of wantans I'd like to eat.

While the water is boiling, I took a fat pinch of chicken, placed it in the middle of the wantan skin, added a basil leave and pushed the skin inward to close. I made about 9 fat ones and kept the rest for next time. Then I just dump the chicken wantans into the boiling water. And some basil leaves. I seasoned the soup with a little oyster sauce, fish sauce and pepper. The moment the meat is cooked (you can see the white through the wantan skin), turn off the heat and serve. Super easy and super fuss-free.

Finally the recipe!

Chicken Posole
This Mexican soup can be an entire meal by itself. I had bowls of it when my friend, Carmen aka Siti Khatijah served it when we went to her house for a Mary Kay party. It was muy delicioso that when I had some friends coming over, I practically begged her for the recipe and it's really easy to make. The recipe below has been slightly adapted from the original recipe but it still tastes similar to the original. Have fun making it!

1 whole chicken put in pot, put in water enough to cover all the chicken. Boil with one whole clove
garlic. Take chicken out once it’s cooked. Shred the meat when cooled and return bones to the stock.

In a frying pan, put in 1 tbsp olive oil and fry one medium sized big onion, thinly sliced until golden brown with some salt and black pepper. Once the onion is done, pour into your soup stock.

Put in one chicken cube, 1 can of stewed tomato (you can use Del Monte) pulped, 1 box of tomato puree, 1 tin of Leggo's tomato puree, 2 tins of Kimball chickpeas, 1 bottle of mixed vegetables (I normally get this from Carrefour and it costs around 7.90-9.90 (or you can substitute with cubed carrots, green peas, French beans, radish). Add 1 ½ tbsp coarse chilli powder to the stock. Put in some of your shredded chicken.

If you have the powdered version, you don't need to grind jintan manis/ cumin , and ketumbar/ coriander, add to paprika powder and black pepper. (1tbsp of each to 3 bowls of water). Season with salt and sugar.

Garnish with grated cheddar cheese, shredded chicken, lettuce sliced thinly, cucumber julienned, onion sliced thinly, mint, tomato deseeded and cubed. Serve with tobasco sauce and lime wedges for extra heat and sourness.

Chicken Posole

Haha, thanks Lin, for taking such a nice pix of my favourite soup in the world. Leave it to me, there won't be a picture at all; just the recipe. Now we have the pix, no recipe. Will do that in due time.

Burmese Briyani or Danpauk

This was a recipe I stumbled upon. I had one and a half big tubs of yogurt and went into Jamie Oliver's website. I found this: Cucumber yogurt. I had cucumber, I had yogurt, I had cilantro. But no salmon for the tikka recipe. It didn't matter coz I was only interested in the cucumber salad recipe. Here goes:

Peel and halve your cucumber lengthways, then use a spoon to scoop out and discard the seeds
• Roughly chop the cucumber and put most of it into a bowl
• Halve your lemon and squeeze the juice from one half into the bowl
• Add the yoghurt, a pinch of salt and pepper and half the chopped chilli
• Pick the coriander leaves and put to one side

Then I googled for Burmese Briyani. I thought the cucumber salad would be a nice accompaniment for that. So why Burmese Briyani? When my Burmese friend got married many many years ago, we had a very memorable briyani but it was different from the usual kind we eat at weddings. It had loads of caramelized onions that gave the rice an extra but natural sweetness. And it was so nice that even though I wasn't a big fan of briyani that I had two helpings and resisted a third helping. Here's the recipe: Danpauk
Ingredients:
300g Basmati rice (2 cups Ecobrown brown rice/ Jati Basmati brown rice)
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
4 tbsp margarine (1 tbsp and 2 tbsp canola/ sunflower/ vege oil)
250ml plain yogurt
1 tsp salt
900g chicken, chopped into large pieces (1 whole chicken, a bit larger than bite sized pieces, marinated with salt, paprika powder, a bit of pepper, a bit of oil)
80ml cooking oil (canola oil)
2 tbsp ghee (1 tbsp margarine/ butter)
5cm cinnamon stick, lightly smashed to break up

(A)
4 slices ginger
10 shallots, thinly sliced
3/4 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp coriander powder

(B)
5 cloves garlic
1 star anise
5 cardamoms, lightly smashed
1 tsp ground fennel
1 tsp poppy seeds

Garnishing
10–15 cashew nuts, deep-fried
50g raisins
1–2 tbsp shallots crisps

Method:

1. Wash and soak Basmati rice in water mixed with turmeric powder for 30–35 minutes. Drain rice in a colander. (yup, I did this first too. How much water to cook? At the bag of the rice packet, it says for every one cup add two cups water. So it should be 4 cups water, except some I substituted with the "gravy?" from the chicken and also added a chicken cube. Anyway, while the rice is soaking, I'd prepare the chicken coz I wanted to use the excess gravy as stock to cook the rice. So if I had 1 1/2 cup of chicken gravy, I'd top up with 2 1/12 cup of water, so it becomes 4 cups water.)
2. Heat margarine and fry ingredients (A) until fragrant. Add 2 tablespoons yogurt and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Mix in (B) and chicken. Fry well, then add in another 2 tablespoons yogurt and remaining salt. Continue to fry until chicken is tender. (You will realise at this point that you have loads of gravy from the chicken, later you'd only be putting the chicken in, so the gravy seems wasted, so I decided to pour out the excess gravy and use it as stock. Continue to fry chicken till the chicken browns.) Leave aside till it's time to put it into the about-to-cook rice.

To cook rice:
3. Heat oil and ghee (I use margarine) in a clean wok. Put in cinnamon stick and fry until fragrant. Add the remaining yogurt to mix. Toss in rice to mix, then transfer the well-mixed ingredients into a rice cooker.
4. Add sufficient water to a level that is 2cm above the rice (As mentioned, I substituted some water with the chicken gravy and added a chicken cube, add salt and a bit of sugar to taste). Cook rice for 20 minutes.
5. Open the rice cooker and add in the precooked chicken and continue to cook until rice is done.
Remember I said the wedding briyani I ate had caramelised big onions? Anyway, I browned some thinly sliced onions and put them in when i put in the chicken. I fried this separately.)
Add garnishing before serving.

I have made this 3 times now. It's nice...Really!

Corn Muffins Update!

They were so delicious! Not exactly like Kenny Rogers but much better than the 1st recipe I shared. I think I should delete that now that I have found something better. Will put a note there or something or try to improve it. So if you come across corn meal, go buy it so that you can make these lovely muffins. I reduced the sugar content to 1/3 cup but not the honey. If you still think that's still a little too sweet for your liking, I'd suggest you reduce the sugar to 1/4 cup.

Found another Corn Muffin Recipe

This time I went for the obvious. Who knows, Kenny Rogers might share his recipe on the world wide web. I searched for "Kenny Rogers Muffins recipe" and lo and behold, stumbled upon this site where the top secret recipe is shared. It really does use cornmeal. Will try this tonight with Inez. She'll be pleased.

Ingredients [ View Metric ]
1/2 c Butter
2/3 c Sugar
1/4 c Honey
2 Eggs
1/2 ts Salt
1 1/2 c All-purpose flour
3/4 c Yellow cornmeal
1/2 ts Baking powder
1/2 c Milk
3/4 c Frozen yellow corn
Preparation

He knows when to hold em, and he knows when to fold em. He also knows how to make awesome corn muffins that come with the meals served at his chain of fire-roasted chicken restaurants. When Kenny Rogers isnt singing "Ruby," hes out promoting his fast-growing chicken chain. And its working out pretty good. Already there are 203 stores in the chain, and when Kenny cant do the promotion himself, the chaps over at the TV show Seinfeld help out by featuring the restaurant in one of their popular episodes. Now, with the help of this Top Secret Recipe, you can make some sweet corn muffins of your own that taste just like Kennys. 1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 2. Cream together butter, sugar, honey, eggs and salt in a large bowl. 3. Add flour, cornmeal and baking powder and blend thoroughly. Add milk while mixing. 4. Add corn to mixture and combine by hand until corn is worked in. 5. Grease a 12-cup muffin pan and fill each cup with batter. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until muffins begin to turn brown on top. Makes 12 muffins. (http://www.topsecretrecipes.com) Posted to recipelu-digest Volume 01 Number 438 by eyesopen@ix.netcom.com (linda /tennessee) on Jan 03, 1998

Am planning to reduce the sugar to 1/4 cup. And put in the same amount of honey required. Let's see how it goes.