I know.
What luck isn’t it?
When all I wanted was a book of his when I entered the contest organised in The Star some 2 weeks ago. I was thinking, cool if I could get his book and read it (and add to my already heavy bookshelf).
But late yesterday evening, I got a call saying that I’d won a ticket worth RM2,800 to see him LIVE in action, in Sunway Resort this Monday.
You know the thing about surprises. I had to pinch myself to see if it was for real.
It was.
Then began my mad dash to figure how to get myself down to KL in time for the full-day seminar on Monday.
Luckily, I had a pile of friends I can count on, thanks to ALL my friends having relocated to KL since our college days.
It also meant cancelling some appointments but wouldn’t you cancel appointments if you had just this chance to watch leadership guru Robin Sharma live?
Anyway, it will a very short trip to KL – practically a whirlwind one just to go for the Monday event so if I don’t have time to call on friends in KL (yes, you and you and you) please forgive me. I’m not being rude. I’m squeezing time to its max for this event.
Anyway, I hop to be a groupie and wheedle a photo opp with Robin Sharma on Monday but even if I don’t, I will have lots to tell you when I get back.
PS: The power of the law of attraction is very real for me. It’s demonstrated to work very well in so many times in my life. This is one of them. When I entered the contest, I only sent in 1 entry. But I told myself “Damn if I don’t win this and see Robin live.” And damn, I did!
Left To Die On An Island And You'll Never Guess What It Is
Imagine being a castaway. On a deserted island. No food. This tropical island is never like what you see in glossy travel brochures. It is muddy, it is far from civilisation, it is full of deadly snakes, it is not livable. You get the idea.
Like some horror movie island. Where you can check in and never check out. Ever.
If you are deported here, you will die. There’s no food, nothing. There’s danger aplenty. Snakes, mud, flies.
And you cannot swim. You will drown anyway due to tiredness as it’s really far away from any other island.
And sadly, you will die.
I read something sad today and while I am normally positive and upbeat, I want to help spread this news. I tweeted about it but it needs your support.
Bloggers always rally around to help be it a missing child, someone needing blood, raising funds for a good cause. And that’s why I feel it’s time as a blogger to not only write about fun things, good things, happy things but also to write about this. It’s horrible to think that Malaysians can be so stupid but I’m a Buddhist. I believe what goes around comes around. Life’s a big karma dish.
Anyway – to cut it short – dogs are being left to die on an island near Pulau Ketam.
Stray dogs.
I heard about it from Donald first this morning at his blog. Then I followed the links and went to TV Smith’s blog where he had a very touching photo essay of the rescue mission. And this is where you can get updates about the mission.
I think it’s outrageous that dogs are exiled to an island. I’ve always felt that the cruelest beings on earth have always been humans. While we have the power to do good things, we’ve also the power to do extremely horrifying things. And I consider this one of them.
So what can you do? (I hope you are a blogger and you can spread this message far and wide. If you are a flogger aka food blogger, why not blog about dogs for a change?)
1. Help by embedding the puppy poster on your blog. Get it here.
2. Any other assistance is much appreciated. Again, the email and phone numbers are listed here.
I’m just disappointed that human beings are so bloody cruel and thoughtless! And Pulau Ketam now probably will not only be famous for seafood, it will be notorious for killing dogs!
Oh yes, they’re also overcharging for the boat trips to rescue the dogs. What irony! They were the ones who put the dogs there! Perhaps we should all boycott the Pulau Ketam seafood restaurants – NOW that’s something floggers can write about!
What is Your Favourite Appliance Brand?
We were at the Jusco for the annual Members’ Day where Jusco Card members get discounts off selected items. I was actually there to buy a vacuum cleaner since my old Toshiba died on me last year (yes, people, I have not vacuumed my apartment since last year! I know. How awful. But I use the broom ok? But still, with Margaret the cat around, sweeping still won’t do a good job.)
That was why I found myself in the Home Appliance floor.
The thing with vacuum cleaners is – we have too many choices. I know some people live and die by the brands they grew up with (Nic for instance hates Pensonic products and won’t ever buy any Pensonic product – his fave brand is Panasonic). My aunt lives by Philips – anything she buys must be a Philips appliance. It must be a throwback to the days when my uncle (her brother) used to work for that Dutch company. I don’t have such a preference though I know that I’ve always had a National rice cooker and when my old rice cooker died, I went in search of a replacement and bought a National rice cooker!
So when we were hunting for a vacuum cleaner, so many brands popped up!
Electrolux, Hitachi, Toshiba….the list was endless. Plus many China brands we’d never heard of. And then there was the tough choice – bag or bagless? No wonder serious shopping trips are such a headache. So many decisions, so many risks to take!
I was thinking, let’s be environment-friendly and get a bag-less vacuum cleaner which is all the rage now.
Actually if given a choice, I’ll buy the iRobot Roomba cleaning robot but that’s a real luxury to save up for!
This little cool device is a robot that helps vacuum your floors automatically. You don’t need to lift a finger. But hey, robots don’t come cheap. So that’s on MY wish list. But really, it’s easy justifying why I need a two thousand ringgit plus vacuum cleaner. I’ll save so much of time!
Anyway, while we were discussing whether to buy a bag-less vacuum or not, we kind of detoured to the refrigerator section. My fridge is so damn old that I really need one but as consumers, again, we’re so confused by all the shapes and sizes of fridges.
A sales promoter bounced up to us when he saw me opening and closing the Panasonic fridge.
So we asked him what was a good size for a fridge say for a family of four. Besides NOT knowing the answer to that question (I was thinking maybe 355 liters is a good family size), he said we could buy whatever size we liked!
Of course we could but that’s not the answer you dummy. I mean, he could have asked questions like – do you cook? How often? Do you buy lots of fresh food to stock up? Do you have a budget? Are you looking for a green, eco-friendly fridge?
Well Nic being Nic – he gets turned off by fools easily so that day, the sales promoter could have closed a decent sale (since we were captivated by the sale price of the fridge!) but he didn’t. We walked off because we found the guy to be totally inept and untrained to focus on customers’ needs.
Anyway, if you, like me, are looking to buy an electrical appliance and don’t know how to choose, why don’t you go for something that does not guzzle electricity? It’s hard of course to decide what is really suitable but this Singaporean website gives you tips on which home appliances to buy especially if you are a greenie like me. It even has a database of registered goods for you to search for that energy consumption saver.
In the end, we bought our vacuum – a compact little thing from Hitachi. We decided on a regular vacuum with bag because I really didn’t fancy washing out the vacuum container (in the bag-less version).
By the way, what is your fave appliance brand? And more importantly, why?
Got An Old TV You Don't Need Anymore?
If you are moving home or just want to clear out old appliances, why not give them a new home?
St Nicholas Home for the Blind needs your old TVs! This is an email I got from a friend today so please pass the word around.
And while it may seem like an oxymoron (why do the blind need TVs?) it really isn’t. They want to listen to the TV.
Read below for details.
YES! We’re talking about the television set(s) that you have at home. If you wish to discard or give away your tv set, St. Nicholas’ Home, Penang dormitory is more than happy to be on the receiving end. All they are asking for are two (2) TV sets that are still in working condition.
What does ‘working condition’ mean? = still sound emitting, but not necessarily with clear vision, as they just need some mode of contact with the outside world, whereby they can listen to daily news, entertainment and songs, anything… to accompany them through day and night, ups and downs…
Wouldn’t it be nice if you can be the one to bring in music to their ears and sounds to their hearing?
Please pass this email around to your friends and families.
If you wish to donate your tv set, please contact Joyce Yeoh or Grace Ong, or deliver the tv to us, the TV Collector @ Resource Development, St. Nicholas’ Home, Penang, 4, Jalan Bagan Jermal, Penang. You may also wish to contact us at 04-229 0800 for more assistance.
Remember, the blind may be out of sight, but they shouldn’t be out of mind. Let’s help bring some joy into their lives.
I'm A Religious Chameleon
I’ve wanted to update this blog with so many things but business gets in the way. (I can tell you, if you want to live a normal life, don’t wish to be an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur does not have an ordinary life.)
Anyway, this is not about business today. It’s about spirituality.
In the past 2 years, I’ve started to become a teeny weeny bit interested in Tibetan Buddhism. I’ve been a Buddhist all my life but I really started knowing Buddhism when I was an undergrad in USM. That opened my eyes to what real Buddhism is about. (What you think is Buddhism today is really Buddhism-Confucianism-Taosim all rolled up like some california roll.)
But Nic and I aren’t really the temple-going sort. I don’t think I’ll be a better Buddhist just going to the temple and looking as if I’m horribly pious.
Besides, most friends think I am a Christian.
Yes, I have a lot of Christian friends (and I have dinners with the clergy) but surprise, surprise, I am a Buddhist. I don’t advertise my religious leaning because let’s face it, it’s personal (just like your sex life. If you’re gay, it’s your choice). I don’t wear anything that puts me in a specific category of spiritual people either. And this neither-here-nor-there confuses lots of people. They’re not sure if I’m atheist, Christian, Buddhist, or what-have-you.
So it’s sometimes difficult to proselytize to me. I could be anything. As my best friend is Catholic and the other is Hindu, I am familiar with the festivals and practices of both. (In fact, I schooled in a missionary school and I remembered being a 10-year old and memorizing the Lord’s Prayer!). So you could call me a religious chameleon.
But yes, back to Tibetan Buddhism. What appeals is that the visiting monks or rinpoches can speak English. Their Dhamma talks are easy to understand. They’re less fussy about protocol and understand that everyday living makes keeping the precepts a challenge all the time.
If you’re keen to hear a real rinpoche speak, a few events are scheduled in Penang this week by His Holiness Phakchok Rinpoche.
Tonight’s talk is on Amitabha Buddha at Jalan Concordia (contact Andrew Ho 012 483 3212). There are 3 other events happening – 30 April (meditation class), 1 May (7 point mind training) and 2 May (puja). All are conducted by His Holiness who really, if he weren’t a monk, would be a truly fun guy, by the look of him.
(Another Tibetan monk has an even more amazing story. He used to be a male model! Tsem Tulku Rinpoche strikes me as an extremely good-looking man! I suppose therein lies the attractor factor why he has legions of fans besides the religion of course.)
The Simplest Bread Recipe Ever
I know I’ve made claims about my special banana cake recipe and that recipe is simply superb and just too easy BUT this time, I take my topi off to Yeo for the easiest bread recipe ever.
Even if you haven’t baked anything in your life, I bet you could bake this bread.
Especially if you enjoy chewy bread that’s stuffed full of pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds.
Bread that is not made with white flour. (Ooooh, the white culprits.)
Bread that’s healthy. Made with organic rye flour and organic (unbleached) wholemeal flour.
When Yeo told me about this recipe, I didn’t really believe him. After all, he is a bread maestro. He makes things sound easy.
But I did taste his bread and I must say I was impressed. (As an aside: Did I tell you that I took home to Penang 3 slices of his homemade bread on the AirAsia flight from KL and the bread still tasted divine upon arrival? Make that 3 slices of homemade bread AND a box of sinfully rich butter cake and marble cake, tar-pau’d from the famous OUG weekend market.)
He made it sound too easy so I was keen on trying his recipe out only to find that I didn’t have the flours needed to make this bread and I had been way too buggered by work and projects to pop into Jusco to get my organic flours.
Until last week when I managed to get to Queensbay Mall.
I say this recipe is easy because I didn’t even need to knead the dough.
I just mixed everything up, put it aside to rise for a few hours, came back to stir it a bit, left it to rise again for an hour and then scooped the dough into a loaf pan and popped it into the oven. About 40 minutes later, the bread was ready!
I am not kidding.
If you’re new to bread-making/bread-baking and want something fail-proof, this has got to be it.
For this wholemeal rye bread, you’ll need to mix together in a fairly large mixing bowl:
3 cups wholemeal flour (I used Country Farm brand from Jusco, 500gm for RM4.10)
1 cup rye flour (also Country Farm brand from Jusco, 500gm for RM4.50)
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon salt (mine’s Himalayan Rock Salt)
2 cups warm water
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
You’ll get this gooey mess when everything’s nicely combined. Leave this in a warm corner of your kitchen for 3 hours. It will rise and become double its size. After 3 hours, stir it a bit (to deflate those air bubbles created by the yeast activity) and leave it for another 1 hour. It will start to rise again.
Get a loaf pan. I didn’t grease it but just sprinkled plain flour in it. I was worried the bread might not come out of the pan if I didn’t do that.
Scoop the dough into the loaf pan. (Remember to pre-heat your oven for 20 minutes at 180C before this.) Put the pan into the oven for 30 to 40 minutes. Once done, cool and pop bread out.
As this bread does not have any preservative or bread improver or anything faintly synthetic, it keeps well in a tightly covered container in the freezer. To serve, just thaw it by leaving it out at room temperature for a few hours or warming it in the oven for a few minutes. Great with pats of fine butter.
I found that a slice of this dense and nutty bread keeps me full the whole morning! It must be all those healthy seeds!
Thanks, Yeo for a brilliant bread recipe. This will probably be my fave bread too!
PowerPuff Gals for Charity
Now I am embarrassed.
I know a few friends read this blog but to be told that on a certain morning can be quite unnerving (yes, BL, I mean you!). Especially on the morning of a certain treasure hunt. Ahem.
OK, embarrassment aside, I had a bloody grand time on Saturday during the Charis Hospice Charity Hunt with Ai Lee, Ming and Lerks.
And out of 58 teams, we got 4th place!
Imagine, with all the big guns of treasure hunts at our backs, we four gals actually won and each took home a Dell printer. I tell you, it was such beginner’s luck. And what a blast it was.
But I think it was our blase attitude/let’s play for fun/let’s not stress ourselves out which helped.
Lerks drove her Kelisa like a wild woman (man, I love her driving. She puts lots of love in her illegal u-turns and tight corner turns!) despite being a hunt virgin like Ai Lee. Now Ai Lee, bless her, was the ‘momma’ of our group – she bought us charsiew pau’s when we were hungry at the Chew Jetty.
Not having any real strategy helped too.
We didn’t get up that morning thinking, OK, we want to win this hunt. Nah, we were the only team who adamantly refused to wear the oversized sponsored shirts. We were the ones who did not go with laptops. We just went as we were, praying that our brains were enough to help us through.
But having Lerks and Ming, two Penangites, helped considerably. They knew all the short cuts through the housing estates. They knew stuff.
Lerks was smart enough to think like a typical Penangite – let’s go to the furthest point (Hill Railway Road where Penang Hill was) and work our way back to the inner city of Georgetown instead of the other way. This helped save us lots of time plus we even had time to stop for drinks at Ecco Cafe on Chulia Street to properly copy down our answers and brainstorm the last few answers before driving happily to Berjaya Georgetown Hotel to submit our answer sheets. This must be one of the most relaxed hunts I’ve ever been on!
The best thing about the hunt was the heritage sites we had to visit while deciphering road names and solving puzzles. I had never been to P.Ramlee’s kampung house and finally I did. I had never gone inside Fort Cornwallis and Chew Jetty (ok, that is embarrassing right?) until last Saturday.
And I never knew so many delicious facts about my little fair isle, the island I choose to call home for the past 15 years. I had never stared so hard at the cabinet interior at the Sun Yat Sen Penang base on Armenian Street. And I never knew Penang had so many beautiful, historical war memorials until then.
I also discovered many places where I would love to visit again, especially the little tea house where tea is brewed by the jug and you can sit down for a cup of Chinese pu-erh tea for as little as RM1.20! (By the way, that’s on King Street). And of course, I will never look at any war memorial or temple or clanhouse the same again.
My favourite question of the hunt?
“It lets a yacht refit here.”
I knew the answer immediately because the heritage site in question is located on a street I used to roam about. Plus I had visited the inside of this heritage site. (Answer: Cathay Hotel on Leith Street. Did you know that Leith Street is also called Lotus Flower River?)
See, I DO know my little island well! My great grandpa would be so darn proud!
(More photos over at my Facebook page….)
Do I Know My Fair Isle?
This has been a strange week. For one, I didn’t get much work done due to a couple of things.
Headache (major freaking one), meetings, friends popping by (not that I minded really…good distraction) the office, visiting bookstores (MPH and Borders both in a week, am I having a grand time or what) and a full day workshop on setting business goals.
Phew.
I AM tired out.
But the week isn’t officially over. Not by a long mile.
I have a treasure hunt tomorrow morning.
Damn. I hope I can crawl out of bed at 6am.
It’s a treasure hunt across Penang heritage sites and I hope all my site visits with PHT have been worthwhile. Anyway, this was a last-minute decision to join the Charis Hospice treasure hunt because my gal pals were missing a fourth person. I know most of my treasure hunt friends are joining (after all this is Penang!). I didn’t want to barge into their already formed groups until Ai Lee invited me on Monday.
Frankly, I’m not a big crazy hunt kaki. I like the prospect of a good challenge but that’s it.
Actually I can be a bit snooty now that I’ve chalked up some hunt experience (by paying ‘tuition’ – well, hunt fees are usually considered tuition fees anyway – you pay to learn, geddit?). I actually hunted with the professionals once and did they enlighten me some. They came well equipped to win!
Ai Lee and I spoke on the phone on Monday evening and she exclaimed that 6 hours for a hunt was long.
“My dear! When you’re frantic for answers, time just flies by!” I said.
It does seem long – 6 hours. But wait till you’re in a car with 3 other people, frantically searching for answers and googling your own brain till its juice dry up. 6 hours seem more like 6 minutes!
Here’s what I learnt from the pros:
1. Always have a 5th person stationed at home, in front of a PC with Net access. This will be crucial in helping you win. Call this person to get facts checked and answers compared if you are dumbfounded.
2. Calm down. It pays to be still like a Zen master in the car when all your team members are going crazy with tension you can smell.
3. Equip yourself with good general knowledge. Everything helps! (Bring all the necessary dictionaries, laptops, world book you can find)
4. Bring lots of water and snacks. You will get hungry while thinking. Load up on sugar so your brains work properly.
5. Have your mobile phone fully charged and ready to speed dial all the people you know to ask for help.
6. A good thesaurus wouldn’t hurt either. Make sure it’s nice and thick with lots of words. Duh!
7. Get a paperbag. You will be sometimes asked to buy items from supermarkets or shops and you certainly don’t want to give the other teams big ideas what you’re buying if you carry them all in transparent plastic bags. This is a competition after all.
8. See #4 but don’t overdo the water. You don’t want to stop all the time for toilet breaks!
9. Eat a full breakfast. Nothing annoys more than a gurgling tummy when the brain is trying to think.
10. If you cannot get the answer the first time around, panic not. Jot down ALL the visible answers (usually signboards of business premises or road names) and do the brainstorm later. No point hyperventilating at the street junction and blocking traffic.
11. Bring a sense of humour. This is not a life-and-death matter. If you win, great. If you don’t, you can always join another hunt later to redeem yourself. Don’t bark at your team mates.
12. Being relaxed is the best way to solve hunt questions. Sometimes the very answer is right in front of our eyes but being tensed makes us all raving blind.
13. Hunt in a spacious car (try an MPV). Nothing peeves people if they’re cramped, hot, frustrated and sitting in a tiny car! What with all those books and thesauruses lying around, people DO get annoyed!
How about you? You enjoy treasure hunts? Got tips to share? Or your own two cents to add?
Muffins for Charity and More…
Never underestimate the power of the ‘Net. Remember the muffin charity call sometime ago?
While I’m horrible at making muffins (Nic will attest to this fervently), I am thankful I have friends like Beng Choo whom I can fall back on whenever there’s a need for yummilicious muffins.
Anyway, Beng Choo wrote this email to everyone today and I want to update all of you (especially those who ordered her banana walnut raisin muffins) that she has far exceeded her goal of collecting RM1K for charity.
The second time she sent out her email to us (asking if we would help her get to her goal of RM1K) I emailed my cousin and sister and within 2 hours, we had lots more orders. It helped that Beng Choo’s muffins did its own word-of-mouth advertising – the proof of its deliciousness was in the eating.
In between her baking ‘days’, she (plus friends and nieces) even managed to go to the hospital to donate blood to a friend who had been severely injured (and who is now in a coma) due to a snatch theft incident near Queensbay Mall.
Finally after the second batch of orders were delivered, Beng Choo sent us all this email below.
Never underestimate the power of a dream.
Thanks to everyone who helped Mindy fulfill her muffin project for charity (see below for the list of homes she is donating to).
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Email from Beng Choo
The second round of orders for Mindy’s Muffin Project was even more overwhelming than the first time around. We calculated that we will need an order of 40-48 boxes (depending on the pisang raja market price) to hit our target of RM1K.
However within 5 hours of sending out the message, we received a total order of 113 boxes before we could managed to send out the stop order message.
As a result our profit achieved exceeded our target by 43%, with the total profit amounting to RM1,430. Lee, my husband topped up to make a total of RM1,500. He has also sponsored the electricity for our baking and petrol for our delivery. Special thanks to Wai Hau who has been a great help.
After discussing with Mindy, today, we sent out the total profit to the following homes :
1. Pure Lotus Hospice
2. Bodhi Home (children home run by Pure Lotus )
3. Penang Children’s Protection Society
4. Penang Shan Children Home (located at Bodhi Heart premises)
We also decide to channelled a token sum to Mr. Leong Pow Neng who is still in coma in CCU at Island Hospital. His daughter Cecilia said they will donate the sum to other children/senior citizen home on behalf of their father to make merit to support his recovery/healing. Today is the 13th day Mr. Leong has been in the CCU and has not regain conciousness though there were several occasion he partially open one eye. Thanks for your overwhelming response to the request for blood. For the moment, I understand from Cecilia that they do not need more blood.
Thank you very much for all your generosity and kind support without which this charity project would not have succeeded. Many of you pay more than RM8 per box as on many occasions you all asked us to keep the change which we duly added to our profit amount.
May all the blessings be with you and your family.
With lots of metta,
Beng Choo
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Talking About Penangites' Passion
I’m a Penangite if your definition of Penangite is someone who is born in Penang. I wasn’t brought up here but I love this tiny island which is very community-minded. We live here like closeknit kampung folks.
And there’s a thread that knots us all Penangites together – food!
No one can bravely say that Penang is not built on food.
Every corner you turn, there’s bound to be something to tickle, entice, pander and flirt with your taste buds. And everyone who is a Penangite knows that we, either of the adopted-status, or born-here status or the migrated-here status, never leave a conversation without dipping into our fave topic – where to get the best food for our tummies.
That annoys some Caucasian friends because they cannot for the life of them understand why we Malaysians are nuts about stuff we put into our mouths for survival sakes.
My British friend grumbles not-so-good-naturedly that we Asians/Malaysians talk about food a bit too much. He can survive on a week of the same grub and won’t bat an eye. He can eat bread and more bread and still thinks it’s OK. (I don’t mind bread but I’m Asian/Chinese – give me some rice at some point in time!)
Actually, truth be told, Asian lives are tied up with food. Food is the culture that keeps families together, gets us back to the fold and gives us a reason to have a party/celebration. Food is also a status symbol at times, prompting lavish banquets which gives PETA people heart attacks (shark fin anyone?).
More than any other culture, we Chinese take our food seriously. Malays don’t go mad over food like us. And neither do Indians. Look at Malay weddings or Hindu weddings – food is just there as a side accompaniment, it does not overshadow the main event (Hindus are the best; they serve vegetarian food and do not kill any animals just to satisfy man’s hunger).
But look at Chinese weddings and you will suddenly have a throve of food critics who anticipate each of the 8- or 10-dishes and attack food with such vengeance we probably look like we’re some starving nation. And we tsk-tsk all the way on our way out of the wedding dinner, giving snide comments about the quality of the dishes served (and the portions too).
If you take away the Chinese yen for good food and all sorts of food, you take away some Chinese-ness too. That’s the sad truth. We do live to eat, not the other way around. And going by food blogs focusing on Penang food by Penang bloggers, well, we probably have the most number of food bloggers in this tiny state. (Thanks to Derek, here’s one Penang food blog you can peek into)
But it’s not just us Penangites. I was in KL last month and met up with friends.
And of course, our conversation turned to food too.
Yeo raved about this to-die-for butter cake and marble cake sold at the OUG morning market. Before the woman opens her stall for business, there’s a LONG LINE of people in front of the stall. People stand in line on a Saturday and Sunday morning (this is about 7-ish or so) just to buy her smooth as silk butter cake and espresso-fragrant marble cake.
Yeo even said that most people were skeptical about the cake – were the cakes really so damn fantastic that people woke up early on weekends just to buy them in large quantities? Yeo said he was intrigued and so he lined up too, only to realize, damn, the cakes were THAT good. And the lady only sells on weekend mornings.
Just as he was a bit unconvinced, so was I.
I mean, how great can a butter cake be?
Fortunately for me, Yeo did wake up early on Sunday morning, lined up and bought us the cakes so we could bring home to Penang to try.
The butter cake was so fine and rich. The marble cake was full of flavour. They were quite incomparable to any other butter or marble cakes which I’ve tasted. Now I know why it’s worth waking up early for!
So if there’s one unifying factor for Malaysians, it’s got to be food. We will do mad things for food. Another friend is willing to drive miles and miles (even out of Penang) just to discover some snack/food that’s not available on the island. We’re willing to brave traffic for our favourite fruit.
I myself have done it too once – all the way to Taiping to get some popiah and Hainanese chicken chop based on the recommendation in my Flavours magazine. I didn’t get any popiah or good Hainanese chicken chop but I did find a smashing place for kopi and toast!
Even when I get to Kuching, food is the first thing on my mind and they’re pretty damn good. It’s a good thing that I can still eat and NOT have the food show up on my waistline (though my waistline is enlarging….I try to exercise like gila and hula-hooping to get rid of the jelly belly!)
But then again I can tell you, I eat practically everything. I have no problem with chicken feet, chicken intestines, sweetbread, liver, pig brains, duck blood, pig blood, duck tongues, crocodile tails and what-not. I’m not easily frightened of strange animal parts and when I say I can eat anything, I am inherently proud of my Cantonese upbringing.
When I was in HK many years ago, I tried but could not find stinky tofu. I would’ve loved to try that. Also, when I was in Bangkok, I was looking out for fried insects to munch. Unfortunately, I could not seem to find any!
I would like to try some Sarawak sago worms though. I heard they taste like prawns!