Soh Peng and Gim Hwee are actually Nic’s coursemates from those days in USM.
They all did Pendidikan together. Except that now you know which one didn’t end up a teacher. He was always a rebel and in a way, that’s comforting!
Anyway, both of them have not been back in Penang for a long time. When they arrived, it was food all the way.
From durian which I packed for them from Paya Terubong to Lorong Macalister’s famous chee cheong fan, we were on a foodie getaway the next 3 days of their stay in Penang.
And we ended with a Makeover.
I managed to convince these two teachers that they needed something totally un-routine, un-teacher-like. Particularly for Gim Hwee as she loves hanging out in her t-shirt and shorts.
I’ll let the photos do the narration.
I put up more of the behind-the-scenes photos and of course, the FINALE photos of these gorgeous friends in my Facebook page! 😉
Musings
My Estee Adventure, Part 1
I wanted to join the Estee Lauder Model Search a few years ago but never really found the time or had the guts to do it. Of course, I have been blessed with other opportunities similar to this but this has been on my mind for sometime now.
When my sis called me and asked if I wanted to join, I immediately said yes. We planned to rope in our two cousins but in the end, it was just me and my sis.
I think there’s something about growing older that makes one more daring. I never would have dared to do this when I was in my 20s. Age must be catching up with me, or thoughts of mortality are!
Coincidentally the Estee Lauder Model Search was happening in Queensbay Mall (and which I proclaim to everyone that it is just 2 minutes away from my apartment) during the 10 to 13 June weekend. My sis, the teacher, came to Penang at the right time. It was the school holidays.
I’m not that stupid to think that it is not a marketing thingy. It is. Estee Lauder knows that every woman wants to look gorgeous, even those who never admit it to themselves. I’m vain enough to admit that I like dolling up and looking good. Well, I’m only 36 once in my life.
The deal was, you paid RM280 for the whole package: they put makeup on you, styled your hair, get you changed into Eclipse clothes. They then put you in front of the camera for 10 minutes. You get to pose for 20 photos. Then you sit with the digital artist as you pick your best photo from 20 photos. The digital artist then does her magic – Adobe Photoshop magic that is – and airbrush your imperfections out.
That is how those picture-perfect models on magazine covers get so drop dead gorgeous. That is how regular women like me and my sis get our 5 minutes of wannabe model aspirations realized.
You will look ravishing and delicious and hot. You get to go home with this instant A4 print-out. (They also try to sell you all sorts of packages – 4 touched up printouts for how much etc.)
I had made up my mind not to buy anything else but I was quite surprised that my husband wanted all the 20 digital images and paid RM150 for the CD. He said he would do the touch-ups himself – that’s the Photoshop artist in him talking.
Of course, we also get RM230 in a redeemable voucher for Estee Lauder products which we had to redeem on the day itself. There’s also an option – if we decide to join the Model Search or not. Guess which option my sis and I took? We took the chance to enter ourselves into the model search. After all, why not? The worse we could do is end up as a semi-finalist haha.
The most important thing is, Mei and I had lots of fun. It was the first time I wore fake eye lashes (it was irritating as hell as I was wearing my glasses then and it brushed against the glasses all the time). My mom, dad and aunt came to support our little adventure that Saturday afternoon. Oh yes, Nic too. He almost walked past me as he didn’t recognize me in all that makeup!
The best thing was, I managed to drag two good friends, Soh Peng and Gim Hwee, to the Estee makeover the next day. They were visiting us over the weekend.
I knew Soh Peng was game but Gim Hwee was shy, even reluctant! Both are teachers and I knew Gim Hwee would be absolutely beautiful with makeup. (She thinks she looks good in her t-shirt and khakis but dear girl, you don’t know the beauty you have in you! All it needs is a bit of makeup and glamour.)
Come to think of it, all women need a bit of makeup and glamour once in a while.
Catch Part 2 where I show you how Gim Hwee and Soh Peng look like after their makeover!
Pssst..the secret I found out is that the makeup artist really highlights your eyes with intense colours and fake lashes and plays down the lips. The lips get the gloss which makes them all pouty and shiny. Hair is also important. Styling one’s hair dramatically changes one’s look. So the focus is on the eyes, the mirror of your soul. Corny? Yup. Oh we are such suckers. Sigh!
More photos at my Facebook page.
Design For a Good Cause
Starting from last year, I’ve been volunteering to tweet every Tuesday for The Pixel Project.
This is a project that I got involved in when I met Regina at the Great Women Of Our Time Awards presentation ceremony.
Regina is the founder of The Pixel Project, an initiative to raise US$1 million for Malaysia’s Women’s Aid Organisation and the U.S.A.’s National Coalition Against Domestic Violence by getting a global audience to collectively unveil a million-pixel mystery collage of Celebrity Male Role Models at US$1 per pixel.
She contacted me a few months after the event and we got talking about violence against women and this pet project of hers. Regina mentioned that the global recession was hitting NGOs hard, particularly our own Women’s Aid Organisation. She wanted to do something to help and asked me if I would like to contribute our company services and do something for women worldwide.
For one, I’ve always been supportive of women’s issues.
Even when young, I had wanted to be a lawyer but then I changed my mind when I realized just how much studying that involved! (My best friend did law and even she got disillusioned by the state of law-lessness in Malaysia. She decided to teach law instead of practise law.)
Anyway we volunteered our services first to help The Pixel Project get its website up and running.
This was one of our pro bono projects last year. I always feel that doing good is its own reward (in fact, we don’t even have the customary “Designed by Redbox Studio” at the footer of the website).
Initially it was designed to be a HTML website. When I realized that the Pixel Project team was growing bigger and bigger and everyone had their part in updating the website, we had to make a quick decision to switch to WordPress. It was a headache because of the huge amount of content. We were basically struggling with a growing mini-portal!
Anyhow, we managed to change over the design from the backend. From a HTML website to a WordPress blog, content, images, banners and all. Tiffany and Vern worked side by side to port it over completely from the ground up as a WordPress blog. They both worked hard despite it being one of our busiest times last year.
Right now, the Pixel Project team spans a few continents and different timezones. The Pixel Project website is now in the able hands of the team and I’m on the team still but as a volunteer tweeter each week. We play twitter tag where we have round the clock tweets going out as we are assigned our time slots. My time slot is Tuesday afternoon till 6pm. When I clock out, Emily in the UK clocks in for her session. This is how we go round the clock, tweeting news about violence against women, hotlines, helplines and more.
I can tell you that I’m still doing this because our tweets do help women leave their abusers. Just a few weeks before we heard great news. Someone emailed and said our tweets had helped their family leave an abusive relationship. She sought help finally.
It is this kind of news that gives me hope that what we do does touch someone out there. Especially when we combine it with technology and social media tools like Twitter and Facebook.
If you want to volunteer with the Pixel Project team, please do so. You can help tweet, like me. Or you can help in many other ways. But whatever you do, you are contributing positively to help raise awareness about violence against women.
Sometimes we may not know the effect of our volunteering but you may have helped prevent a woman from dying in the hands of her husband-boyfriend-lover-abuser.
You would have saved a life.
The HK Sojourn Part 2
This continues from this HK sojourn Part 1. It chronicles my trip 10-day trip to HK. I’m the dissecting sort so I plan to take my own sweet time to journal these good bits of my travel.
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SP told us that Hollywood Road housed a good many art galleries, many of them showcasing contemporary artists. As we’d just eaten a good dim sum lunch, we felt we could stroll down the streets of Central HK with ease. Everything looked and smelled fresh and new to us, who had just gotten off the plane early that morning.
Unfortunately many galleries weren’t open on a Sunday. We contented ourselves with peering through the glass, looking at quirky artwork.
One of those things I really love about HK is the ease of getting a glass of herbal tea. Of course there are modern shops like Hung Fook Tong or HerbalWorks which sold herbal teas (HK$18 per 500ml bottle, roughly about RM9) for every ailment you could possibly have – just ensure you know how to read and order the drinks in Cantonese.
Then there are those quaint shops which smelled like centuries old, dishing out herbal teas. (During one of our jaunts in Mongkok, we found more reasonably priced herbal teas at HK$6. But then again, Mongkok is one of those working-class neighbourhoods.)
One other thing I marveled at was the enormously expensive apartments.
Here’s a real estate advert I snapped off the shop window of a property agent’s shop. Tiny lots (which we call flats) are priced in the millions. Even the moderate 500-square foot apartment where SP is renting costs around HK$1.4 million (she’s living in east Kowloon so that’s literally the boondocks to HK folks). This advert for a 379 square foot flat costs HK$2.48 million. You know how small 379 square feet is?
The one shop SP dragged us into was G.O.D, the acronym for Goods Of Desire. In Chinese characters, G.O.D translates into Zhu Hao De or Live Well. This shop, says SP, is one provocation indeed. All the kitschy and kooky are sold side by side with common yet uncommon.
“You have to take a look,” she beckoned, drawing us into one shop that sold tongue-in-cheek items.
Apparently, the founder-owner-artist-provocateur Douglas Yeung has quite a history indeed. Educated abroad as an architect, he came home to HK and decided he wanted to pay homage to his HK roots. Like most people who’ve lived away from home, HK represented something strange yet familiar. Of course he was wealthy to begin with. His grandfather ran one of the bus companies in HK.
Douglas turns the familiar into something that’s worth a second look, and a snigger, and a giggle. He turns everyday pieces into conversation starters, or at least makes tongues waggle ferociously. I think he’s really clever and he enjoys a good joke.
Like the bum-shaped mooncakes sold during Mid-Autumn Festival, a collaborative effort between G.O.D and Kei Wah, a famous HK confectionary. A lot of what he does is tied closely to the Cantonese love of word play. That’s why it’s so hilarious. You’ll need to be an English-speaking Chinese person, immersed into the Chinese context, to grasp his subtle and not-subtle jokes encased in his products. If you don’t know why his bum-shaped mooncakes sold out, go ask a Chinese friend when Mid-Autumn Festival usually occurs.
He also takes a jibe at common HK emblems such as the Chinese T’ung Shu, a book which no respectable Chinese household in those days would be caught dead without. I still remember my Grandma having one. She refered to this book for picking auspicious dates. She used this book to learn English (imagine a word like ‘Mother’ – the T’ung Shu made it easy for the Chinese to learn English by putting 2 Chinese characters – ‘ma’ and ‘de’ which sounded like Mother!). The T’ung Shu is so recognizably Chinese; in the G.O.D shop, you can tote the T’ung Shu around because it is made into a woman’s clutch! I would’ve bought it if the price wasn’t so crazy.
Aside the jibes and jokes, G.O.D is as much as a controversy-stirrer as it is a retailer. I suppose that is extremely clever marketing because how else can you explain that Douglas and his employees were taken in by the police for questioning when they found out his shops were selling t-shirts with the words “14K”?
In HK, 14K is the name of a notorious triad. He says he didn’t know about that – he just wanted 14K because it was referring to gold, not to the triad. In HK, strangely, you aren’t allowed to wear anything, t-shirts included, insinuating that you belonged to a triad. Whether he knew or not, the t-shirts sold like crazy. Douglas’ point was, what logic held that you can make movies about HK triads but you can’t wear a t-shirt which seemingly has the same name as a notorious HK gang? Good point.
But he’s not stupid. G.O.D has made a name for itself in the area of décor and stylish living, whether the police love him or not. They’re quite famous actually despite their price points.
And inside G.O.D (yeah, one has to be cocky enough to name one’s shop G.O.D and then turn around to say it’s just an acronym!), there’s a line of products called Delay No More.
Again you have to be Cantonese and a bit filthy-minded to figure out what he’s really saying. Try saying “delay no more” in typical Cantonese fashion and a lightbulb will go off in your head and you’ll go, Oh I see! Oooh, that’s dirty.
Here are some of the photos I took inside the G.O.D shop. See if you get the joke behind each piece or item.
Finally, we got tired of G.O.D (imagine!) and decided to rest our legs with an early dinner. The sky had grown dark although it was only 6pm. The cold was descending too. A warm dinner would do wonders. This shop which called us was brightly lit.
Small with hardly enough space for two elephants, we were happily welcomed into Ngau Kee Food Cafe by the efferversent owner, a lanky Cantonese. We looked a bit lost so he happily rattled off his recommendations. We had to try the famous HK milk tea or ‘nai cha’ (HK$18 per mug) – it’s similar to our Teh C but with lots more smoothness with each sip. Don’t do any currency conversion because if you do, you’ll never want to drink their milk tea at RM9!
Our dishes arrived – claypot beef brisket stew, stirfried kailan and fried bittergourd with salted egg. I’ve never had such homely food and I never had such a good appetite.
It’s true that HK food, even those served by shacks, are very tasty. Our beef brisket stew was to die for, thick and rich beef chunks in a robust broth good to the last drop. The brisket was tender and smooth.
The kailan was firm and crunchy to the bite and not oily at all. And I’ve never had such good fried bittergourd either. Price-wise, it wasn’t cheap (HK$200 +) but taste-wise, I’d go back again!
Only later we discovered that this little shop on Gough Street, Central, was famous, having been featured in newspapers. What a serendipitious discovery!
Next: Up the Peak, down the Garden!
(While you wait for my Part 3 to roll around, why not go here for a map of Hong Kong and then take a look at the 40 best foods of Hong Kong.)
Remember This Game?
If you remember this game, I know your age. And you know mine.
When this game first burst into the scene, I was a pre-pubescent kid.
In those days, the best I got was that we had a video player! Imagine. That was our technology back then. And a phone. A house phone where you had to turn the dial a few times! But that was our technology.
And then ATARI came into my life.
And with it, came Pac Man.
You must know Pac Man celebrated its 30th anniversary this year and Google paid tribute to this game which back then enthralled me to no end.
I fought my sisters to play this game on our ATARI set, a luxury back then.
Don’t you love classic games like this?
Speaking of games, tomorrow I’ll be joining some (younger) friends to go play DOTA at Infinity, a cybercafe here in Jalan Sungai Dua. I’ve never played DOTA. It looks daunting. But then again, I’ve never really played these network cybergames either. It will be an experience!
If digital games are a clue to our evolution as humans, we’ve come a long way!
The Draw of Daiso…
Had a tiring but totally fun weekend in PJ, meeting up with old friends, checking out the food and of course, shopping at my two favourite places – Daiso (at The Curve) and IKEA.
Daiso was one of those lovely discoveries because CC bought me some excellent and practical household items from this shop where everything goes for RM5. Which is cheap but then again, one always blows one’s budget because one loses count of the number of items! Our brain is wired to think, aiyah, it’s only RM5. But when the basket is full of items, errrrrgh!
When I was in HK, I ended up at Jusco’s version of Daiso too (HK$10 store). And to think we only found this section in Jusco HK on our LAST day! Still we grabbed quite a bit of items which I still can’t find here. That includes lugging home a chopping board holder!
Anyway, after that I got terribly hooked on Daiso. So when I was in PJ, I visited Daiso at The Curve 3 times in 3 days. And each time, embarrassingly I bought something and even introduced my best friend to Daiso! She’s now as addicted as I am, as she found some hard to find toys for her children. CC told me there’s a new Daiso at One Utama but she concluded that branch was too small to be of interest to me. This Daiso was bigger and better and had lots more interesting items.
Example, how about a ladle holder? I always don’t know where to put my soup ladles but this gadget solves the issue. The ladle stands happily with this holder.
Or how about a silicone pastry brush? Easy to clean and you don’t lose hair over losing bristles from your pastry brush.
Or a very clever way of disposing cooking oil? There’s this substance which you stir into your used cooking oil and it hardens the oil, allowing you to lift it out of your pot and dispose of it. This beats pouring the oil down your sink. (Actually you can re-use your cooking oil to make soap. I learnt it’s very easy. I am going to learn it from a friend soon!)
And finally on our last day in PJ, I managed to get my friends (the ones who drove us down to KL) to visit Daiso.
And how could one go to The Curve without going to IKEA?
Oh yes, what a lot of stuff we bought. I keep wishing IKEA comes to Penang but I last heard that we in the Northern region don’t have buying clout. Which is strange because almost all Penangites I talk to are happy to drive down to PJ and cart home boot-loads of flat-packed furniture!
I think I love IKEA because the solutions are so smart and practical. They make decorating one’s home so easy and so convenient and so well-thought out!
IKEA is also about food – I sometimes think they make pots of money from their food too (beside the furniture). Their 99 sen breakfast specials are always a big draw (with free coffee from 9am to 9.30am). When we were there yesterday, they served fried spring rolls and char kueh teow. CC told me the breakfast specials are always changing so it’s quite fun to try different offerings each time.
For lunch, I always enjoy the Swedish meatballs with lingonberry sauce and french fries. Somehow I cannot be tempted to try other dishes. I fall back on this over and over!
But the best has to be their curry puffs. Best eaten when they’re fresh and hot!
The Grand Old Dame
I meet people in the oddest ways. And sometimes the oddest ways are the best ways.
Over the years of blogging, I’ve met people who read my blog and they tell me they like reading what I write. That’s actually quite lovely to hear because like I said, when I first started out, the blog was a way for me to vent, to rant, to muse, to wonder aloud.
And since then, I’ve still done my fair share of venting, ranting, musing and wondering aloud and yes, sometimes the comments aren’t so beautiful but I take it as part and parcel of the world of blogging.
Many months ago, I got a tentative email from someone who reads my blog.
I do get lots of emails from people who are often wondering about things like:
* why a Chinese woman takes on a Muslim name like Maya (to which I’ve had to let her know that Maya is not a Muslim/Malay name. Maya comes from Sanskrit.)
* why I don’t have Advertising on my blog when every other blog out there is cashing in on their popularity (I think some spaces are sacred and this blog is one of them. Somehow this ‘baby’ of mine does not need to be tainted by Ads.)
* why people know me as MayaKirana as well as my real name (I started off not wanting people to know who I am and in the end, after 8 years’ blogging, everyone kind of gets the connection so in the end, it’s an open secret.)
* why I do this and what benefits I derive from it (a blog allows me to record my observations, my life, myself captured in a moment. I look back and see the person who was and the person who is.)
Anyway, that is how I met Reese. She contacted me via my blog and she told me she knew a friend of mine. We started emailing back and forth and she even took time to come meet me despite not having a car. She took a RapidPenang bus to USM. Other people would have balked at the idea of waiting for a bus.
We chatted and became friends.
She’s residing in Penang for a while she decides her future.
Which is really like taking a gap year.
Only that her gap year is a gap year from work.
She’s exploring Penang and in the process, understanding her birthplace.
I like that idea a lot.
Most people don’t take time to reflect about what they really want to do. Most people fall into a routine of going to school, graduating, getting a job and getting married, having kids, buying a home and buying or upgrading their cars.
Some people stop and think.
Reese is one of those people. And she cares deeply about Penang, her little island. Just like I care for Penang, my little island.
Time and again, I’ve said to people that it’s most wonderful to live and work in Penang. Penang has a charm that wraps itself around you, and you fall in love with this Grand Old Dame despite her dirt, her clogged drains, her lack of transportation.
And Reese is one of those who have fallen in love again with Penang with her blog being a true testament to our love for our little island in the sun.
Reese draws and paints and takes photos. She also blogs besides volunteering with Penang NGOs. She learns, she observes, she thinks. And she thinks there is a better way.
Enjoy her blog!
The HK Sojourn, Part 1
This is the beginning of the many parts of our Hong Kong sojourn, a trip we made in late March this year.
Nic and I decided to make good on our promise to visit a dear friend who works in this vibrant country. I’d been to Hong Kong in 1996 but that was a long time ago, when my uncle was working over there. I’d also gone in the summer of 1996 so my first impression of HK was a humid, sticky, sweaty city which frankly I didn’t enjoy. I hadn’t gone exploring much on my own as I’d gone with my grandmother, grand-aunt and aunt; they were worried I’d get lost! So much of what I saw was part of Nathan Road despite my two-week trip to HK when I was in my 20s.
HK was beautifully cool this time around, with daytime temperatures of 18C and night-time temperature of 14C. The days were not wonderfully sunny as some days were quite overcast but it did not rain. Strolling down the narrow streets wasn’t tiring but exhilarating as the wind could really get into your bones.
If you intend to visit around March, it is best to bring a jacket as the days can get quite chilly. I had always wondered why HK people were always talking about the weather. I fully understood this preoccupation with the weather because the temperature can dip and you can be caught unawares and feel all cold and uncomfortable as evening falls.
Days get dark quickly and as early as 6pm, the sky would turn onyx black as our 8pm here in Malaysia. Plus the chilly weather really didn’t make it easy to hang about outdoors so most HK people huddled inside cafes and restaurants or went home.
From the airport, we’d bought 2 single-journey tickets costing HK$160 to the Hong Kong/Central MTR station where we would meet our friend, SP. We’d be bunking with her for the next 10 days. Later on, we realized that one could very well reach the Hong Kong/Central MTR station using a cheaper route.
As the airport sits on reclaimed land, it is technically an island on its own. This island is connected to Tai Yee San or Lantau Island (where the famous Big Buddha statue is) via a bridge.
Now if you wanted to save some money, you can take a bus from the airport to the Tung Chung MTR station on Lantau Island which is a quick and efficient 5-10 minute bus ride. This being HK, everything is pretty damn efficient so when I say 5 to 10 minutes, it is really 5 to 10 minutes and nothing more than that.
At the Tung Chung station, you can buy your ticket to Central station which is really much cheaper! We got ourselves the popular debit card called Octopus which allowed us to travel easily on the MTR and buy stuff without needing to use cash.
Most, if not all HK shops allow you to use the Octopus card for your transactions. Initial cost of this card is HK$150 where HK$50 is the deposit (which you get back once you surrender the card, minus HK$7 as processing fee) while HK$100 is the actual usable value. Topping up or checking remaining value is easy with Octopus reload kiosks everywhere.
By the way, the Tung Chung station houses a huge shopping mall of most big name brands. This is the must-stop for brand-conscious people as the mall consists of factory outlet stores for Adidas, Nike, etc. Apparently the branded items are cheap but since I have never been a fan of branded wear, I didn’t know if the prices were dirt cheap or not.
I’d gone direct to the supermarket and bought luscious strawberries (the size of ping pong balls) and blueberries! In fact, for all of the 10 days we were in HK, I didn’t really go shopping nor did I visit Disneyland which is odd because most people’s travel itinerary to HK means shopping and Disneyland.
The first thing we did upon meeting our friend, SP, was to get to her apartment, dump our luggage and go for breakfast! She lived on the east Kowloon side, in Tseung Kwan O which the MTR conveniently serviced.
Actually in HK, the MTR services every imaginable place you wish to visit so you can get from city to boondocks without breaking a sweat. I wish we had a similar train system in Penang. Imagine going from Bayan Lepas airport to Georgetown in a train in just 10 minutes. No more haggling with scheming taxi drivers.
HK urban planning is such that new apartments are built a distance away from the central commercial areas. It’s all right because the MTR services the outskirts well. I noticed that most new apartment developments (usually a collaborative partnership with the MTR company and the developer) are on top of sprawling shopping malls and these malls are located near MTR stations. The irony is this: the apartment sizes aren’t spectacularly huge and it gets claustrophobic if one stayed too long indoors BUT the malls are gigantic (even the ones located off the central areas or what I consider a bit “ulu” kind of place) with lots of space for walkways. What gives?
After we ditched our luggage at SP’s apartment, we took the lift down to the mall for brunch, a typical noisy affair at the mall’s Chinese restaurant which served dim sum. I was raring to try some HK specialties like ‘har gow’ and ‘siew mai’.
True to HK style, the waitress almost flung the white plates at us as we sat down to order. I found this rather disconcerting. Much later, I realized most HK people aren’t really rude; they are just too quick to the point of impatience. They may not even realize that their quick actions may come across as rude to most travellers.
On the flipside, I’ve encountered some really amiable HK people, from waitresses in the regular ‘char chaan teang’ (HK tea house, much like our kopitiam) to the ‘ah sum’ (auntie) who cleans the supermarket toilet to strangers on the street. Even the security personnel of the apartment we stayed in were highly polite and accommodating.
It was only much later that I understood why taking Sunday dim sum (“yum cha”) was such a big deal for HK families. Sunday “yum cha” was a time for families to catch up leisurely, peruse the newspapers, watch news (yes, there are TVs rattling off news while you munch your dim sum) and gossip.
More than that, it was special because they didn’t have the space at home to do so! Unlike us here in Malaysia, we could sit around our dining table and chat away while having breakfast or lunch or dinner. For them, weekdays are days where they have to rush off to work.
And even if they didn’t have work on weekends, they wouldn’t have space in their own apartments to linger leisurely. Five members of a family might be living in an apartment of approximately 500 square feet. Where would one put a dining table in such confined space? Hence, getting out on a Sunday and lazily eating lunch was a pleasure and pastime.
Of course, it helps that dim sum items are half their price once it is past 2pm. So brunch spills over to a very economical lunch and tea and beyond if you arrive after 2pm. SP says it is rather unfashionable to arrive too early on a Sunday for dim sum. We are Malaysians so we really didn’t care as we dug into our dim sum. Plus we were hungry as hell after our 3 hour 40 minute flight.
A note here – portions of HK food do not reflect the size of their population. HK people often are slim and petite and we didn’t really see any fat folks during our 10 days there. But their food portions are humongous. Their dim sum portions are large – even their braised chicken feet seemed larger than (Malaysian) braised chicken feet. Their all-time fave is curried fishballs which we sampled during our dim sum session.
Do not let the word ‘curry’ fool you. It’s bloody mild, more like turmeric-infused fishballs. It tastes more like Japanese curry than our Indian or nasi kandar curry. I don’t know why fishballs are so popular, they’re sold on street corners, ladled piping hot into bowls; they’re even sold in the frozen section of the supermarket. Then again, I am not a fishball fan unless the fishball is made with real ‘sai tow’ fish meat. Not for me the rubbery commercial fishballs with a ton of preservatives.
Next post (coming soon)… we explore Central, snigger in Delay No More, stumble upon dangerously good food in Gough Street….
A Stab at Freedom
I was visiting Grace last Friday evening when we ended up talking about her work. She runs a business but at the same time, she is also helping out with the Vietnamese workers who come to Malaysia.
Grace is in a very special position to help her fellow Vietnamese friends – she herself is Vietnamese and she speaks both English and Vietnamese. She is also kind and warm and nurturing.
Talking to her was such a breath of fresh air because she truly shines with optimism despite the hardships she sees happening to Vietnamese workers who come here to work. In her eyes, there’s a fire of compassion and gutsiness.
She and her husband both volunteer with Tenaganita where they help with court cases involving Vietnam nationals. It helps that her husband is a lawyer who is proficient in Vietnamese too.
She recounted tales of how Vietnamese girls were duped to work in Malaysia. When they arrive, they are immediately sent to East Malaysia (Sabah particularly) to work in massage parlours. In these seedy joints, they are forced to become prostitutes to service male clients. They cannot escape as their passports are held by the ‘agent’ who brought them into this country.
One Vietnamese girl braved herself to get help by contacting Vietnam through fax. Eventually she was rescued.
But she’s only one of the lucky stories.
What about the unlucky ones who never get a chance at freedom?
Another case was of male Vietnam workers who came to work in Penang but their employer never pays them their salaries, withholding the salaries for a reason. And because their passports again are held by their agent, they have no means of escape. And they still work 12-hour days.
“But how do they live if they have no money?”
Grace gives a grim smile. “They borrow from their fellow Vietnamese friends. They live on credit.”
Through a network of friends, some are lucky enough to get in touch with the organisation that Grace volunteers for. Then comes the tedious process of making police reports, going to court, getting their passports back and all that jazz.
Human trafficking in Malaysia is a serious matter. Malaysia always gets into the news for the wrong reasons and we’re in Tier 3 in the 2007 U.S. Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report.
Reason? For not fully complying with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and not making significant efforts to do so.
Accordingly, “Malaysia is destination country for a significant number of men women, and children who are trafficked from Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma, and the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.), India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan for sexual and labor exploitation. Many victims voluntarily migrate to Malaysia to work in factories, construction and agricultural sectors, or as domestic servants, but are later coerced into debt bondage or involuntary servitude.”
It’s a sad fact.
It’s happening under our very noses. Sometimes we don’t know it because we don’t come across people like Grace. Sometimes we live in our middle-class world, ensconced in our material comforts and don’t bother to know.
Another friend also works closely with the poor. And he told me that he was shocked beyond belief when he visited a squatter area which had burnt down not too long ago in Seberang Perai.
“I couldn’t believe this is Malaysia,” he said.
He saw the poor in their wrecked hovels, with nothing to call their own and who had lived for decades without running water or proper sanitation system. And no one did anything to help them. Initially when he and his friends went to help them by giving them food and blankets, the poor were suspicious. They looked at outsiders with unfriendly eyes and they didn’t feel comfortable talking to them. Many didn’t go to school because they did not have birth certificates! Their fathers were drunkards. This wasn’t a Tamil movie. This was real life and it was unfurling before my friend’s eyes.
He’s trying to help in the ways that he can.
And that is why I am grateful for him and Grace and countless others who have the heart to help people we normally don’t see in our everyday lives.
These folks are under the radar. They are not visible to us because they live in a totally different world from us.
But it brings home a concept we take for granted: freedom. Freedom from poverty, freedom from bondage, freedom from modern-day slavery.
I say we are all very lucky. Very lucky indeed.
Why I Stayed…And Other Such Rubbish
I know I’m supposed to regale you with my traveller’s log but I had to interrupt and put that on hold for a while while I get this off my chest.
This topic bugged me to no end especially after I watched last night’s Oprah Winfrey show where this pastor’s wife spoke about her husband’s infidelity and wrote a book titled “Why I Stayed”. Yes, you guessed it right. She stayed put in the marriage after her husband confessed that he took drugs and had a gay lover!
“I loved him and I still do.” She said something to that effect.
Of course locally we don’t have to look too far for such marital trangressions.
What I still cannot understand (and no, don’t tell me that personal is personal and public is public because when one is in the public eye, everything is public but try telling this to our Malaysian politicians!) is that some have the gall to bounce back victoriously!
Yeah, so Malaysian politicians are cheap.
Tell me about it. They’re cheap and men”siahsuay”kan.
Even after their bed prowess videos have been circulated like no one’s business, they’re still back in business. Either some voters are as blind as masturbating bats or they really think a man without morals can lead them. Either way, that party’s going to the dogs.
But his wife. His wife stuck to him. Weathered the damn storm with him.
And of course, that great drama by Jack Neo during the press conference not too long ago in Singapore takes the cake for him being the most cowardly man who got found out for infidelity.
Not only did he not dare to face the media alone (come on, where are your balls?), he dragged his poor wife with him, traumatising the woman to no end. I used to have great respect for Jack although his movies are on the preachy side and sounds like the Singaporean Government mouthpiece at times. I thought he had heart. He made REAL movies. It’s sad that even men like that can be brought down by sheer lust and power.
And let’s not forget people like Tiger. But he’s old news now that he’s back in the golf circuit. All’s forgiven because without this man on the green, there really isn’t much to cheer about for golf is it? At least Tiger was man enough NOT to drag his wife into his press conference.
But my point is, why do women stay on?
Why do they stay on and give their men a second chance? Or am I the only ruthless, heartless one?
Why do they quietly accept that men are men and they will stray? Or do they accept that no matter how far the man strays, he will still come back to the home?
What about women? If women strayed, will their husbands be as forgiving?
Someday I would like to meet with women whose husbands have strayed and I really want to interview them and understand why they stayed.
I wouldn’t. I couldn’t live with myself if I did.
Would you? Could you?