Tubing on Mt Titlis + Quick Herring Spaghetti!

If you live in Switzerland like I do, you need to take advantage of the numerous mountains with visitor-friendly facilities such as chair-lifts, cable gondolas and Rot-air bubble cars. Not to forget free 'tubing' runways.

On Mount Titlis at Engelberg, hundreds if not thousands of visitors swarm the place - tourists from China and Taiwan (even the cable guy has learnt some Mandarin greetings for the Chinese New Year) as well as locals and residents who want to ski and snowboard.

(above right) You feel like luggage being conveyed up a 'belt' with your tube before spinning down again.

In the snow cave somewhere on the top slopes, there's a display of buttons for you to press. One of the buttons plays 'Negaraku', the Malaysian national anthem. In the Rot-air gondola, there are greetings in myriad languages including Indonesian and Malay. The only difference between the two is how 'keretakabelgantung' is all one word in Indonesian. ^_^ Old women from China like to stick their faces in the 'face holes' of cut-out figures of extreme skiers and snowboarders -- to show their friends back home gleefully, perhaps. Not that it'd fool anyone.


If you don't ski or snowboard (those crazy gravity-loving sports!) like me, you'd appreciate tubing. You sit on an inner tube covered in canvas and push off a winding path. Soon it careens out of control and you're facing backwards and sideways. You learn to relax and enjoy the ride because it's all out of your control. At the most, you might spill over the snow bank and sprain a muscle or two. It's not likely you'd break your neck and die.


And then, when the skiing friends and family converge at the igloo bar outdoors, you can join them in the oh-so-strenuous apres-ski activity of eating and napping in the sun in a hammock or lying sprawled on the bean bags so considerately provided by the mountain ministers.


After you come down from the mountain and an hour's drive home, you'd want a quick hot meal, right? (I'm entering this in Presto Pasta Nights http://onceuponafeast.blogspot.com/.) Break out a can or two of herring or mackerel in tomato sauce, cut up some onions, boil a pot of spaghetti. Heat a bit of oil in a saucepan, cook the onions with some parsley or coriander, add a generous sprinkle of chilli powder (or sliced fresh chillies), salt and pepper, throw in the canned fish, break it up, and finally swoosh in the cooked spaghetti. Turn it a few times and voila! A hot, appetizing meal within minutes.

Interview with Bissme S

Here is my email interview with Bissme S, one of the writers of 'Dark City 2', who contributed the story, 'Dad'. He is a journalist with The Sun in Malaysia.

1) What is the difference between writing fiction and journalistic writing (your day job)?

With journalistic writing, you deal with facts. You write what you see. You write what you hear. For example, when you are interviewing an actor and he talks to you about his life, about his career, about his love life and about his future projects. It is your job then to present these facts as interestingly as you can.
Fiction is an entirely a different story. You start everything from scratch. You create the characters. You create the mood. You create the beginning and the ending. Your imagination can go as wild as you want. The way I see it, with fiction, the ball is in your court and you can do whatever your heart desires.

2) Does one inform or enrich the other?

Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Journalistic writing helps me to add realism to my work. Journalism is also about meeting deadlines. It builds the discipline in you to keep writing.


But there is also a drawback. As a journalist you spend eight hours chasing stories and typing them in front of the computer. So when you get home, the last thing you want to see is a computer and the last thing you want to do is to type another story. You literally have to drag yourself to the computer to write fiction.

3) Which authors' works do you read, including Malay ones if any? How do they help you in your writing?

I do not have one particular author that I adore. Instead I will pick some of my all-time favourite books.

a) 'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens

This is my all-time favourite book. My favourite character is the spooky character Miss Havisham who got ditched on her wedding day. Since then she has not changed her wedding gown and has left her wedding cake to rot. Then, as part of her revenge, she adopts a child and trains her to break men's hearts.

b) 'Keluarga Gerilla' by Pramdoeya Ananta Toer

The story centres on a family during the fight for independence. My favourite character is the mother who went mad thinking of the sad fate of her favourite son who has joined the revolution to fight for freedom.



c) 'Flowers In The Attic' by VC Andrews

This was my favourite book when I was a teenager. Recently I had the opportunity to re-read this book and I do not feel the same passion for the book as I used to feel. Still, there are moments in the book which thrilled me. A mother who's willing to kill her four children just to gain wealth.

d) 'God Of Small Things' by Arundhati Roy

I wish I could be as talented as Arundhati. The way she uses words to describe situations and feelings is simply amazing.


e) 'Reading Lolita In Tehran' by Azar Nafisi

It takes place in the Islamic Republic Of Iran, where lecturer Azar Nafisi secretly gathers seven of her committed female sutdents to read the forbidden western classic. I love her usage of words. The book simply tells you that you can't take the simple things for granted.

f) 'Before Night Falls' by Reinaldo Arenas

It is the autobiography of the cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas who recounts his difficult childhood years and being oppressed under the regime of Fidel Castro. Another writer whose writing style I wish I could emulate.


g) 'Choke' by Chuck Palahniuk

His imagination is simply superb. The way he writes is never to impress.

4) What are your fiction-writing habits like? Do you only write when you're inspired or do you put in a number of words every day or week no matter what? What are your inspirations?

I would love to say that I write every day. But that is not case. I try to write as much as possible. As for inspiration , I just have to look around me. Finding inspiration is never a problem to me. But turning my inspiration into a full-fledged story is where the trouble is. I have so many ideas roaming in my head. But I never take the trouble to turn them into stories. I have to confess that I am a lazy writer. *hahaha*

In fact, late last year, I had a bad episode in which the computer caught a bad virus and wiped out my hard disk. This included all the short stories and poems I had written for years. This fact has demotivated me to write. I am slowly picking up the pieces and learning to write my stories again.



5) What are your ambitions as far as fiction-writing is concerned? Do you intend to submit more stories for 'Dark City 3'? Will you author your own novel or anthology?

I have submitted a story to 'Dark City 3'. Whether it will be accepted will depend on the editor/publisher. It is my dream to have an anthology of short stories published. When this dream will become a reality - that is something I can't say for sure.


6) Which is/are your favourite story/stories in 'Dark City 2'?
'The Neighbour' by Jennifer Tai. I must confess I loved the emotional impact the story had. It was written rather beautifully. Best of all, the story sounds real. It is as if the events really took place. I like fiction that sounds real... very real.

Happy Chinese New Year + Poppyseed Honey Cookies

A very happy, healthy and prosperous Chinese year of the Rat to you and your family.

With my brother and sisters in Malaysia and Australia, it is a quiet day indeed. Only on Saturday will we throw a party for a few friends who have volunteered to provide some CNY cuisine while I, as usual, make a fav curry of the moment, carrot-celery-head pickles and biryani rice.


There's no holiday here and the other half was out of town for work, so I went to visit a friend up in a village 10km away for lunch. The dog I'm dog-sitting was left at home to mind the floor. (Didn't think she'd appreciate the twisty bus ride up some mountain roads.)


Dog-ward for five weeks Tigi says: 'Call me Sister Tigi. I was self-ordained. Did you say Year of the Rat? Yikes, bats without hats! Now be a dear and pass me one of those fragrant cats.'



I have made two batches of cookies for fun. Here is the recipe which I adapted from a nice square book called 'Big, Soft, Chewy Cookies':





Poppyseed Honey Soft Cookies

4/5 cup honey (that's almost a cup!)
50g butter
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbs poppy seeds

Place honey and butter in a medium saucepan and boil for a minute. Remove from heat and stir baking soda into it. Set aside to cool.

Heat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350 degrees F). Beat eggs in butter mix. Mix baking powder and salt with flour, adding salt and poppy seeds. Stir flour mix into butter mix till dough stiffens.

Line cookie tray with baking paper. Drop a tablespoon of dough for each cookie, leaving 5cm space in between. Bake cookies for about 10 minutes, or when they're firm to the touch. Be careful not to overbake. Use spatula to transfer cookies to wire rack for cooling.


This soft, tender cookie has the lovely subtle taste of honey and the light crunch of poppy seeds - perfect for teatime or coffee!

Tobogganing down Rigi + Ripping Rendang!

Downhill skiing seems dangerous and too fast, and requires clunky equipment. Whereas snow-shoe walking would involve a lot of uphill trudging -- my heart will not go on and on (unlike Celine Dion's).

Now how about sledding? It looks relatively safe and fun. I had always thought tobogganing was a tame sport for lily-livered wussies like me.



How wrong I was.

The tobogganing path on Mount Rigi, near where I live in Switzerland, was twisty with requisite speed bumps, which meant bumping along at hair-raising speeds while my other half tried to steer us away from the steep precipice on the left of the lane. There was no railing, just an itty-bitty bit of a snow bank, between us and the blankety-blank yonder way below. 'Braking' meant putting your heels in, and 'steering' was merely putting down your right heel if you wanted to go right.

After one particularly vicious bump, both of us fell off and my right shoulder joint was dislocated (old tennis injury, happens once in a while). After it clicked back in, we rested at the side for a bit before we continued our slip-sliding journey down the mountain.

I'm amazed Swiss parents let their wee children go down on their own toboggans. No doubt their light weight meant less momentum (unlike the hefty combined weight of my other half and me, ahem! Maybe we shouldn't have shared a toboggan, but the rental ain't cheap) but the steep bank on the left is always threatening to swallow up a few delicious, winter-fattened mortals.



Here are lovely diamonds. Bet you didn't know they grew on twigs, huh? ;-)












Anyhow, after coming down a snowy mountain, what's a welcome sight and taste is Rip-roaring Rendang. I've adapted Rohani Jelani's recipe in her 'Homestyle Malay Cooking' booklet to what's available here:

Had no dried chillies, so this Rendang Veal looks less reddish-brown (aside from unsuitable kitchen lighting).


500g lamb, veal, duck or chicken, sliced into bite-size pieces (I found beef too tough or took too long to soften)
3 tbs dessicated coconut, dry-fried on medium-low heat till golden brown
3-8 shallots (depending how big they are; they're HUGE here!), sliced (substitute: 2 onions)
2cm ginger root, sliced
2 (or more if you like it hot!) big red chillies, seeded and sliced
4 dried chillies, softened in hot water for 10 minutes (substitute: 1 tsp chilli powder)
150ml coconut cream
1 tbs sunflower seed oil or corn oil
2/3 tsp turmeric powder
3 stalks lemongrass, the fat part sliced, the remaining stalk trimmed and smashed lightly
1 small fennel, sliced or julienned (this is untraditional - for added flavour, bulk and texture)
3 kaffir lime leaves, torn
1 tbs dark brown sugar
sea salt to taste (about 1 to 1 1/2 tsp)

1. Pulse the shallots, ginger, chillies and sliced lemongrass, adding enough of coconut cream to make a thick paste.
2. Heat oil in a thick-bottomed non-stick saucepan till medium hot. Stirfry the shallot paste for 2 minutes. Add turmeric and smashed lemongrass stalks. Cook for 2 minutes.
3. Add sliced meat. Stir-fry for 5 minutes. Add sliced fennel.
4. Add rest of coconut cream. Cook on medium-low heat till meat is done and quite tender, and curry sauce is very thick (you're lucky if the timing of both coincide!). If curry is getting dry before meat is tender, add a bit of water.
5. When curry is thick and almost dry, add fried dessicated coconut, brown sugar, salt and kaffir lime leaves. Cook for another 5 minutes.
Serve hot with plain white rice. Mmmm!

:)

A jolly good 2008 to you!

Hope the new year has begun well for you. We were near Munich over the new year and went walking up Wallberg as the queue for the sleds and chairlifts was too long.

The collected snow between branches and twigs reminded me of the Malaysian ice-kacang, one of my favourite desserts.


The night before, we went with friends to the heart of Munich. I experienced for the first time the lighting of many, many fireworks by private individuals at Odeonplatz. It amazed me that people would spend so much on pyrotechnics. It was also a bit scary as 'rockets' whooshed past quite nearby, and there were lots of broken bottles in the
Marienplatz after the fireworks. 'Collective irresponsibility' I called it, as normally people would not break glass in the streets or leave so much litter for the street cleaners the next day.



Here's a toast to a year in which we achieve more than we felt we could. May your days be full of love, discernment and peace.

May everything you do and say be measured if not positively spontaneous. Be true to yourself!


P.S. There is still no snow on the ground in Cham, Switzerland, where we live. Is it going to snow in February or March?! It's six degrees Celsius today - so 'warm' for winter, no?



For lovers of Pannacotta, that smooth and creamy but not-so-calorie-laden Italian dessert, here's a recipe I adapted from German chef Schubeck:

400ml milk (can be low-fat)
4 leaves of gelatine
1 tsp of vanilla sugar with bits of real vanilla in it
4 tbs sugar
100ml cream

Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water. Gently heat the milk with the vanilla and sugar till simmering. Remove from heat. Stir in the softened gelatine leaves till dissolved. Leave to cool.

Whip the cream till thick but not too stiff. When milk-gelatine mixture is cool and starting to gel, stir the whipped cream into it. Scoop into 6 bowls. Place in refrigerator to cool and completely gel for an hour or more.

Note: You can increase the milk amount by 80ml without adding more gel leaves. Lessen the sugar if you prefer Pannacotta less sweet.


For topping, choose your fav: caramelised sugar syrup, poached peaches, rhubarb in sweet ginger sauce, thawed blueberries or raspberries.

You can also vary the flavour of the Pannacotta. I've substituted the vanilla flavour with ginger, stirring in a packet of ginger tea granules. Adding half a teaspoon of fresh ginger juice would strengthen the 'heat' deliciously. This reminded me of my late mum's steamed egg custard flavoured with ginger. Mmm...



:)

Mellow Days and Evenings

The days are short - 7.50am till 4.40pm -- and the sun shines like a shy maiden (now you see her, now you don't). Daily temperatures tell us winter is here but there's no snow on the ground yet.


(Right) The bakery round the corner from the apartment building where I live.

Many bakeries in Switzerland like to decorate the store facade according to the seasons and festivities. They sometimes remind me of the edible house in the story 'Hansel and Gretel'.


















(Above) The children's books in German I borrowed from the library and have read. I love the illustrations.

Learning German is hard-going if one does not use it every day. However, I enjoy choosing and reading children's books in the language. My other half helps me with the vocabulary and turns of phrases.


(Right) Where the lake in Cham pours into a river, there is a fishermen's boat-house with a backdrop of a church spire.


Other than writing and reading, I take walks in the lake park. When the day is sunny, despite the cold, lots of people stroll about - mothers with prams and children, people with their dogs, and a motley crew of other folk.


At the beginning of winter, a flock of greylag geese made a pit-stop at the Cham lake park. What's the marching soundtrack?!

For me, the best part of the lake park is the wildlife, the many swans, ducks, geese and water fowl that change their feathers with the seasons - just like fashion!


(Right) This could be Small Duck, actually a female Common Pochard (Tafelente in German), all grown up now and probably has a mate (the rusty-headed chap below). There are around 20 of her breed, both males and females, on the river and lake these days - Small Duck is no longer one of a kind.





Nearby is a yoga school, the building of which is fronted by a restaurant that was probably a milk-collection place - hence perhaps the cow statue?



Now that this is such a mish-mashy post, tell me which recipe you want and I will blog it:

Lemon iced cupcake

Naked coconut-milk cupcake

English scone (below right)




Or, lemon curdy pudding (below)?













Here's the recipe for Coconut-Milk Cupcake as requested by Cynthia:

80g butter
5 tbs sugar
7g packet of vanilla sugar or 1/2 tsp of vanilla essence
1 egg
4 tbs coconut cream or coconut milk
3 tbs plain yoghurt
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Cream sugar into butter. Add vanilla, egg, yoghurt and coconut cream. Mix gently. Mix baking powder and salt into the flour and mix the whole lot gently into the butter mixture. Spoon 3/4 full into paper cups in medium cupcake or muffin tray. Bake in a preheated oven at 175 degrees C for 22 minutes or until top is golden brown. Cool on wire rack. Makes 7 or 8 cupcakes.

Note: To make it extra special, top each cupcake with a few chunks of white chocolate before baking.


For Wonda, the Lemon Iced Cupcake:

For the cupcakes, use the cupcake recipe above, except that instead of the coconut cream, use 1 more egg, 4 tbs lemon juice and 1/2 cup of ground almond or hazelnut.

For the icing, use a handmixer to whip up:

100g butter
1 cup icing (powdered) sugar
3 tbs lemon juice
(add a drop of food colouring if you like)

Ice cupcakes when they've become cool.

:)

'Dark City 2' promises a disturbing read

Dark City 2, published by Midnight Press of Venton Publishing, is a spicy anthology of short stories by writers ranging from well-known ones such as Xeus, Tunku Halim, Lydia Teh and John Ling to emerging ones such as Jennifer Wan, Chua Kok Yee and Bissme S.


You can buy the book from the MPH megastore at Mid-Valley, Kuala Lumpur, and Kinokuniya, according to bloggers residing in Kuala Lumpur.

My story in it is named "Till Death". It's about a couple who is harbouring thoughts of murdering each other, but just who kills whom in the end?


As advised by Xeus, I'm posting an SMS review sent to me by a newspaper editor:

"Just read 'Till Death' and wanted to say how much I enjoyed it. Ally McBeal meets Norman Bates. A true black comedy on one level; an exploration of parental poisoning; a look at how murderous fantasies are translated into reality."


I would like to thank Xeus and Venton Publishing for letting me edit DC2 for grammar, just as they had engaged me to edit the original Dark City, an anthology of stories all penned by Xeus.

A Farewell to Fall

Good-bye, Autumn! You leave us golden, you made them fall;
you gave a melancholic feeling to us all.



You whispered through the shimmery leaves
of the wiry, pale-faced birch.
You gracefully bowed to winter
in a time-honoured search

(for where in the cosmos do you go in the meantime?)















And you tip-toed away in a veil of
delicate lace of leaves.


How you have gifted us with cool balls of fiery rustling!


Ahem.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest - waxing a tad lyrical on a cold afternoon at the onset of winter...

Here's a moist carrot cake recipe I've adapted from a Canadian one (you can replace carrot with zucchini for something different and green-flecked!):


















1/2 cup sunflower oil or melted butter
2/3 cup sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/4 cup flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
a pinch of salt

1 cup grated carrot (or zucchini)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 raisins (optional)
3 tbs dessicated grated coconut


Mix together the first 3 ingredients in a large bowl. Mix the dry ingredients together and add to the egg mixture. Finally add the last 4 ingredients. (Top with pieces of white chocolate if you want an extra treat for flavour!)
Scoop into a longish cake pan (approx. 4"x9", 3" high) lined with baking paper.
Pre-heat oven to 150 degrees C. Slow bake for 45-55 minutes for a moist cake.

For the truly sweet-toothed, make a cream cheese topping:
50g softened butter
120g cream cheese
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
vanilla flavouring

Whip it all together till smooth and well-blended. Spread on top of cooled cake.

Zucchini cake (above) naturally looks less orangey than carrot cake.

(Above) One of Small Duck's male relatives or mate (front). I found out they are Tafelente, or Table Ducks in German (!), Common Pochard in English. Behind him is a nasty-looking Eurasian Coot.

Greylag geese came again to the Cham lake park for a few days on their way south. Behind the two are lake gulls.

:

Shorter Days Call for Sweet and Sour Pickles

Winter is upon us in Switzerland. The cloudy or rainy days are between 3 and 8 degrees Celsius here, whereas in the north-west of Italy by the Mediterranean, where I was for 3 days last weekend, it was sunny and warm (up to 22 degrees).

The water level at Zugerlake is noticeably lower now - compared to summer when it was flooded for a week (see pic below).


One tries not to let the cloudy days affect one's mood. It's not encouraging to see the sun set by five o'clock - when it had hardly made a showing during the short day. Sadly, Daylight Savings Time is a thing of the past.

If you are centred in yourself, and feel happy and content wherever you are in the world, you will not be affected so much by your surroundings.

I have at least one thing to look forward to: the book 'Dark City 2' is scheduled to be arriving in my letter box soon from Xeus. Yes, I have a story published in it - yay!

To tickle your tastebuds, here is a simple recipe for you to try:


Cucumber Carrot Pickle

1 medium-size cucumber
1 medium-size carrot
1 red chilli
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
3 tbs vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
4 tbs sugar

Wash and dry the cucumber and carrot. Remove the soft centre of the cucumber; slice the rest into 2mm-thin pieces. Slice the carrot thinly with a potato peeler. Deseed the chilli and slice it as small as possible. Put all ingredients into a clean, dry jar and mix with dry chopsticks. After several hours, mix again. Keep jar in refrigerator. The pickle is ready the next day.


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One of Bread's Best Playmates

My best memory of kaya making is of my late mother. When I was a youngster, she would double-boil the kaya (Malaysian coconut cream & egg jam) for hours with a bunch of pandan leaves tied together (no instant essence in those days). After she decided to discard the leaves, I'd take them over and carefully lick them for the lovely kaya clinging to them.

Why 'kaya off the pandan leaves' tasted better than kaya from the jar is a question that beats me. ^_^

Other than butter, kaya is my favourite spread on bread. My previous post featured two bread recipes, and here's the simplest kaya recipe which I made recently:


Express Kaya

1 cup of egg (4 or 5, depending on the size)
1 cup of coconut cream
almost 1 cup of sugar
half teaspoon pandan essence


To get your cup of egg, break eggs into a cup till it fills up (tip - if you can put in only half an egg to fill up the last bit, choose the yolk rather than the white - for a lovely coloured kaya). Stir the first three ingredients in a heavy bottomed non-stick saucepan over low heat. Keep stirring for 18 minutes. Add pandan essence. Stir for another 5 minutes. If you like the texture of your kaya, take it off the heat -- it is ready.


(above) A sharper pic of the kaya nestling with a bit of better butter on homemade bread. The white cow is a milk dispenser I bought in Copenhagen many years ago. She spits milk into my coffee!

:
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Argus World: Bread Baking Made Easy#links

Argus World: Bread Baking Made Easy#links

Don't like kneading bread dough? Jaden of Steamy Kitchen has a gorgeous and ultra-cute No-Knead Bread story:

http://steamykitchen.com/blog/2007/09/10/no-knead-bread-revisited/

Where Art Thou, Small Duck?

About a month ago, my other half and I began noticing a extra-small duck -- probably a Common Pochard (Tafelente in German) -- in Zugerlakeside, Cham. The tail was curtailed, so to speak, and its neck very short and curved. Its bill though was longish and slightly upturned.

Being very energetic and resourceful -- to make up for its size perhaps -- Small Duck caught our attention and charmed us with the way it caught bread pieces and avoided Eurasian coots and mallards by diving under them or hopping over them.

We singled out Small Duck and a sole Carolina Wood duck (yes, that sweet timid fellow) to feed our few leftover bread pieces to. Some people came by with a biggish bag of bread and in the feeding frenzy, Small Duck seldom got a crumb because it was a bit wary of joining the quite violent fray among the swans, coots, mallards and lake gulls.

Small Duck would charm us by paddling furiously towards us whenever we stood by the shore to hurl bread chunks to it. With its relatively big webbed feet, it could manoeuvre its small body very artfully and make sudden turns to gain some space around it. Small Duck knew it needed that advantage to beat the coots and mallards to the bread.


(Right) Small Duck (possibly a Ferruginous) surrounded by Eurasian coots.

In the past few days, after it rained a lot for almost the whole day and night, the lake overflowed at certain places and poured strongly into the river in our small town. We no longer saw Small Duck in the evenings when we took our walks there. This morning, neither did I see it on the lake. I'm worried Small Duck might have been swept upstream into the river.


(Right) The Carolina Wood Duck in spring. It has now a shorter, snazzier 'haircut'.

Wherever Small Duck is, I hope Mother Nature is looking out for it -- in that it is safe and healthy and has enough to eat. Small Duck has stolen our hearts and it is sad not to see him or her anymore.



Below are some portraits I took of my favourite teenage Mute swans. Swan yoga, anyone?




(Above) Can you see light passing through the 'nostrils'?


(Above) This teen pen (female swan) gives a comical front view of her mug -- does it somehow remind you of the front view of an aeroplane?
:

Update (Aug 19, evening): We were throwing a few pieces of stale bread to the Carolina Wood Duck and the 'Dazy' swans (the three young pens often seem to be in a daze, or 'blur') when I spotted a familiar silhouette backlighted by the evening sun -- curved bill and small body with a short tail. Yes! Small Duck is back on the lake at Villette Park in Cham. Yahoo! She is safe and slightly bigger, at one point raising her small brown body and flapping her tiny wings. We are overjoyed to see her again.

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