Home

One thing I must say is that the wireless at home is really super fast, compared to the one in Langkawi. I can watch video without the annoying delay and buffering. I am spoilt by the convenience and speed of the fiber optics line.

One other note: the weather in the Boston area is cooling down. You can actually say it is chilly in the morning, although we still have some very nice afternoons. The afternoon sunshine is warm, but not hot, and the air is dry. Very comfortable weather.

Lucy, I'm home!

I started packing my suitcase around 5 PM. Done by 6, I showered and changed. By the time I went downstairs, I was sweating again. It was a very warm and humid day. I dampened my towel, and wiped down, but immediately, I am sweating again.
By the time I arrived at the Penang airport, I seek and found an air-conditioning vent, and stood underneath it for the longest time to cool off. Seng said it was because I was nervous about the trip, plus running up and down to fill up the suitcase caused me to sweat.

The flight from Penang took an hour. Something strange here. I thought it only take 30 minutes. Presently, we arrived at KLIA, the KL International Airport.

The airport is beautiful, if underutilized. I have to take a train to the next terminal. Right before the train terminal, there was a Old Town White Coffee shop. I was very tempted to go in and have a coffee, and maybe grab a last curry mee, but I did otherwise. I took the train to the next terminal, went through the Immigration checkpoint, and of course, from there, there is no going back. The new terminal has all kinds of food stalls, but no white coffee. Bad decision.

Even at the new terminal, it is still very warm. I fanned myself with my detective magazine to keep cool.

The flight MH002 left KL around midnight. The trip to London took 13 hours. I was up most of the time, watching TV and alternatively dozing off.

At London Heathrow, I wiped myself down and changed into a new shirt, then Horrors! my pants zipper broke. I noticed that as I was rushing to the transport that will carry me to the next terminal. Flanked by people all around me, I have no way, and no privacy to correct the problem, so I have to stand there with my fly open and tried very hard to cover up myself, you know, the look at the ceiling and whistle thing. As soon as we got out of the transport, I found the nearest bathroom, and pinned the fly close with a safety pin. It sort of look okay after that. The moral of the story is: always carry a few safety pins with you when you travel.

The flight from London to Boston took 6 hours. I arrived at Boston around 2 PM, but the luggage did not come out for half an hour, so coupled with the car accident at Granite Street, it was 4:30PM by the time I got home.

Paula had a "Welcome Home!" sign up for me at the door. She had bought some Chinese food for me: wanton soup, chicken curry with rice. I ate some for dinner. It is good to be home.

One Day More!

Well, today is the day. Today I will take the flight to KL, then to London, and finally to Boston. I can't say I look forward to the journey, but I do look forward to getting home, even though I will be sad to leave mom, Loon, Seng, Sui Fun, and all the family members.

To make sure I get my fill of Penang food, Seng and I went out this morning to eat Char Kuay Teow. We came here during the last trip, and this is the first time this trip I actually ordered Char Kuay Teow. During the week, Kong Chan and I had shared a plate of this delectable dish when we went to the New World Park.

This vendor is quite famous, and by the size of the plate (he only gives you have a plateful of food), you can tell he is making big bucks. We wolfed down the plate, and ordered another one to share.

For fun, we went down to Komtar around noon, and bought a couple of wireless mouse (mice?) and a Chinese DVD of the movie "Heavenly Sword and Dragon Slayer Sabre". I must have owned four or five versions of this movie, but it seems this is the only story I can sit down, and watch until I finish. This box contains 16 DVD. My previous version contains 32 VCDs, but I will sit down and watch it day after day until I finish it.

For lunch, we went back to Four Seasons. We have Loon and Lilian, Sui Fun and Peter, and mom with us. Seng took the pictures in his camera phone, because I didn't have my camera with me, so no pictures for the blog.

Today is new year for the Malays, so most of the shops and schools are closed. Upstairs from the restaurant is a dance studio. In fact, it is where Theng2 goes to dance lessons. Because of the school closing, the teacher puts up a notice, something like this:








Loon thought about it all through lunch. Finally, he can't stand it anymore. He had to ask for a pen, and corrected the notice:






and had a good laugh over this.


We all came back to the house after dinner, where we started our beer drinking. Loon regaled us with stories of Phoon, and how she went underground with the War Lord's money, and how she ended up as a laborer down under.

When Theng2 showed up, Loon told us of an idea he hatched up. Seng's house is quite hard to find unless you know the area. So, one day, he noticed some sign board someone put up for directions: "Mohamed's wedding this way" with an arrow pointing the way. So, for Theng2, he is going to make up some life-sized cut-outs of Theng2, pointing one way or another, with the words saying "Theng2's wedding this way". He will put these cut-outs strategically at road-junctions all around the area, pointing the way to the house. At the front of the house, he will have a cut-out of Theng2 with both hands extended, saying "Welcome!".
We all thought that was a pretty funny idea. Theng2, we can't wait until you get married.

I will be leaving the house around 7 PM, arrive at the air port around 7:10PM, and the plane should leave around 8:30PM for KL. I will not be able to complete this blog until I get to Boston. See you all at home.

Theng2 To the Airport

Thursday. Theng Theng has a trip to Kuala Lumpur to a practice dance examination. This is the practice run. The real exam is in October. Because of the Muslim new year, the roads are congested, so the dance teacher who is escorting four or five students decided they should all go by plane.

To Theng2's credit, she signed on to the web site and booked the tickets herself. She was told to use Firefly.com, a budget airline (code shared with MAS). Seng was horrified to find the fare came to RM 400+. Well, this is the holiday season here, so the tickets are in high demand.

The day started (relatively) early at 6:30AM. Seng and Theng2 came downstairs and prepared to go to the airport. I tried to take a picture of Theng2 for the blog, but as with all teenagers, she artfully dodged the camera every time I tried to take aim.

I followed them to the airport, and again tried to take a picture of her with my camera phone. Finally, here she is. She is the one in blue jeans, facing away from the camera. Paula is very interested in seeing all the kids' pictures, and she wants to know how old they are, and what grade they are attending now. I am afraid I am not able to get them stay still long enough to pose for me.

We had rice with mixed meat topping for lunch. This is good, fragrant rice, with extra toppings: barbecue pork, soy sauce chicken, and roast pork. Very nice flavors.
The rice came with packets of garlic chili sauce. This is good to spread over the rice and meat mixture. The chili sauce has a lime taste, so I presume it is made of lime juice, chopped garlic, and chopped fresh red chili. It is good as a dipping sauce for the meat as well.




At the end of the day, Seng went to the front door and burned some "silver paper". This is as an offering to the nether world. In the Chinese traditions, the seventh month is the month of the ghosts. On the last day of the month, the 30th day, the ghosts are let out to roam, to settle scores, to visit, etc. The faithful living will light up candles, burn incense, and 'silver paper' as offerings to the ghosts. This was supposed to be a couple of days ago, but we forgot, so this is a make-up offering.
Seng was burning the silver paper as is. I tried to roll up a few to fold into the shape of silver ingots, but did not do a very good job. I remember rolling hundreds of them when I was little, living with my grandmother. We will make a big pile of ingots and set fire to the pile, sending them to the under world as offerings.

On some occasions, like funerals, people will burn paper furniture, paper cars, even paper TV as offerings, sort of a Western Union for the dead. Since death is an unknown, people try to play it safe and send whatever they think is necessary. I suppose paper laptops, and paper modems is not far behind.

Beef Noodle Soup, Part Deux, Part Deux

One thing about Kong Chan is, he knows about the food in Penang. He is a regular foodie. What I don't understand is why he is so skinny. He heard me talk about Ah Goo's Beef noodles soup, and commented that he does not like the clear broth. "That is the Tew-teoh (province in China) variety. You will like the Cantonese version better."
So, off we went searching for the Cantonese-style Beef Noodles Soup. Actually, we headed straight for the hawker at a coffee shop near Penang Road. We met at Komtar, and it was a pretty good walk to the coffee shop. Along the way, we were faced with many challenges and temptations: dim sum shop, curry-mee hawker, Chinese cakes vendors, Moon cakes,.. so many mouth-watering food along the streets to our destination.
I was glad when we finally sat down at the coffee shop and ordered our noodle soups and coffee. It took about three minutes for the soup to be served. When it arrived, I could smell the beef broth. It has a traditional Cantonese five-spice smell. The noodles are the type you have in a Wonton noodles soup, the very thin, long, yellow wheat noodles. On top of the noodles is a big scoopful of beef tendons and tripe, cooked until very soft and tender, and not at all chewy. They were tasty too. They were so good I did not want to swallow them right away. I savored the meat very slowly, trying to keep it in my memory.

To Kong Chan, the whole purpose of coming downtown, all the way from Sungai Ara (where I was staying with Mom and Seng), is to eat the noodles soup. Now that it is done, he has no problem leaving downtown and go somewhere else. He decided we should go to the Queensbay Mall next, to eat at a restaurant called Canton-I. So off we go, trotting through the backstreets behind Penang Road to the bus station at Komtar.

Along the way, we passed through a market place. Kong Chan is familiar with some of the fruit vendors. He stopped and bought some Langsat, which we peeled and ate on the bus to Queensbay. The Langsat is a yellow-skined round fruit that comes in bunches. They are about the size of a quarter to a half-dollar in diameter. The skin is relatively thin. When you peel off the skin, you exposed some translucent white meat in wedges, not unlike orange wedges. The meat is sweet and succulent, but sometimes with a small seed, which you must spit out (it is okay in Malaysian culture to spit out food.) The seed is green in color, and is very bitter. It will be a very bad mistake if you bite into one of these green seeds.

We took the new city council bus, number 401E, to Queensbay. Kong Chan paid for the fare, because he can speak Malay.
At Queensbay, we headed straight to the restaurant, Canton-I. As the name implies, it specializes in Cantonese food. The menu lists a lot of tempting, mouth-watering suggestions, but we finally settled on two dim-sums: bean-curd rolls, and spareribs. We each ordered a dry-mixed Wanton noodles with two toppings: wonton and roast port for Kong Chan, and soy-sauce chicken and beef tripe for me. For dessert, we each have a cup of peanut soup. (I am sorry I cannot find the pictures of this meal)

The dim-sums are okay. The bean-curd roll came three in a small dish, and in stewed soft in a very light sauce. The spareribs are very tasty, but not the 'meat-fall-off-the-bone' variety, so that is points off for the restaurant.

The noodles are pretty good. The noodles, mixed in a soy sauce mixture, is very tasty, as are the toppings. It would give it three out of five stars.

The best part of the meal is the peanut soup. Now if you are not familiar with Chinese food, you will think it is funny to have soup as the last course. It is actually a dessert drink. It is very common to have some warm dessert drink, like peanut soup, black sesame soup, red bean soup, and a fav of my family: bubo cha-cha, which is a sweet coconut-milk soup with cubes of yams and tapioca.

This peanut soup is thick, sweet, and warm. It brought back a lot of memories for both Kong Chan and me. We talked about the old street vendors where we used to frequent for peanut soup. They are all gone now. I don't think you can find a street vendor that sells peanut soup anymore. I recall one of my favorites, a stall near China Street, in front of the temple of the Goddess of Mercy. The stall has both peanut soup and black sesame soup. It was always a big dilemma for me to pick one. Peanuts or Black sesame? I love both.

This would have been a good food day, and one would have been satisfied for what I have today. I was surprised and happy to see that we have my favorite dish for supper. Pictured here is a vegetable, that can best be described as a Chinese turnip. It is like a turnip, the size of a small basketball. After you peel the skin, the white meat is of the consistency of a pear, slightly harder. Brother Seng cooked it by cutting it into julienne strips. It is then cooked in a pork broth with garlic, and shrimp, until it is soft. To eat it, you scoop it into lettuce leaves rolled up, optionally with hoy-sin sauce, or hot chili sauce.
The lettuce you see in the picture here is actually the wrong type of lettuce. It should be the long type, not the round one you see here, although they are both lettuce. The round type is for salads. The long ones are for wraps. We argue with mom for a long time, but when we asked the vegetable seller, they told us it should be the long type, so mother does knows best.
This is a fine repast to end the day.

What is with this picture of a leafy tree? When Sarah came to Penang as a little girl, she has an assignment from the teacher to find the largest leaf. She brought one of these leaves to school after the Summer. The tree is still there behind Seng's house, and is growing very nicely. Some of the leaves are even bigger than before when Sarah was here.

Dim Sum

At 6:30AM, Seng and I sneaked off to Maxim Restaurant at the Lipsin Garden, where Seng and Mom used to live. It was early, but there were already some customers inside enjoying their early morning dim-sum.
Dim Sum, literally translated "Touch Heart", are small dishes of delicious tidbits that we Cantonese take for breakfast (not every day, of course). There are some staples, like rice gruel (choke, in Cantonese), that are taken every day. The restaurant sells the fancier versions cooked with pork or fish.
Dim sum is taken with tea. The waiter will ask you what kind of tea you want, and they will bring you a tea pot, along with a bucket with tea cups soaked in hot water. You can rinse out the tea cup, and wash you chop sticks in it as well. In modern restaurants, that is not a necessity, but can still be a ritual that most follow. It is good to have an idea of what type of tea you want before you go in, otherwise you will be on the spot when the waiter ask you what you want. Throw out words like "Po Lay". "Cok Po". and the waiter will get you a good pot of tea.
We ordered Cok Po, a combination of Cok Fa (chrysanthemum) and Po Lay (brown fermented tea), which has a nice scent of chrysanthemum and the strong flavor of tea, a good mixture.


In most of the bigger restaurants, as well as in the States, the dim sum comes around to you in a steam-cart or on a tray. The wait staff will show you the food, and if you like what you see, you point at it, or nod your head, and the wait person will place a dish in front of you. A score card is used to keep track of how many dishes you have taken, and what size (price), and you tally up at the end of the meal. Very efficient and civilized.

In this version, the restaurant is self-served. The food is arranged in a steam table. You walk up with a tray, pick what you like, and the server mark up your score card. You pay at the register later. Also very efficient.

We picked a 'few' items.
The first is wo-kok. A dumpling with pork mixture wrapped in a outer layer of yam, and deep fried. This is one of my favorites, especially when it is fresh out of the frier. The skin is crispy. The little wisps of yam at the edges are small, crunchy, crispy, and a bit salty is a perfect complement to the moist yummy pork fillings inside. Taken when it is hot and crispy, each bite is a small bite of heaven.



This is the siew-mai, pork and shrimp mixture in a dumpling, steamed. This is a popular item. Most people who go for dim sum will order siew-mai and har kow (shrimp-dumplings).
This one did not disappoint.










The chicken feet is an oddity. Fancily named "Phoenix claws", these are chicken feet, cleaned, declawed, and deep fried, then stewed in a savory herbal plus all-spice sauce, with bits of garlic and pepper in the sauce. This shop makes pretty tasty ones.








The shrimp dumpling is mostly shrimp, with some port, wrapped in a translucent dough skin. My mother likes it when the shrimp and pork is ground up together. She detests the kind with the whole shrimp in it. This one meets her half-way. The shrimp is chopped into halves, and mixed with the pork. It is okay, but not memorable.





Every one's favorite is the Big Pau, or the Tai Pau in Cantonese. The buns are a couple of sizes bigger than the regular steamed pork buns (Char Siew Pau). It is a think dough skin wrapped with a lot (and I mean a lot) of pork. Mom was very critical about this. She thinks they should have some chicken, black mushrooms, Chinese sweet sausages. Nevertheless, she ate two of these.


The gluttonous rice in a bowl is one of my Children's favorites. Pictured here, there is a piece of chicken breast, sweet sausage, roast pork, and sticky rice. All these fit into a small metal bowl, and the entire contraption is steamed until the rice is cooked, and plopped upside down onto a plate.







This last item is very unusual. I mean it is not usual to see it at a dim sum restaurant. It is pork hock (feet) stewed in a sweet vinegar with ginger. The pork and bone is cooked until the skin (which contains all the fat), and the meat are soft. The juice or the broth is at once tangy, sour, and sweet. This is traditionally cooked for women after they have given birth. They are supposed to take this for an entire month. (How do they stay slim after a month of pork hocks?)

Besides these dishes, we also bought some porridge, paus, dumplings, and what-nots to take home. It was a very nice breakfast indeed.

There is a very popular food chain here called the Old Town Ipoh White Coffee. I have often wondered about how good they are. Tonight, when Seng and I drove by one of them in Perak Road, we decided to drop in to try it out. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they offer food as well as coffee. There are about a dozen varieties of coffee, from the black to the cappaccinos, hot or iced. For food, they have buns, cakes, rice, noodles, so it is quite a good variety.

We ordered two white coffee Kuo (thick, extra concentrated), and they came in demi-tasse size or cappuccino sized cups. The coffee is whipped, so it is foamy on top. It is thick and rich, and very flavorful. For food, we ordered a Polo bun (buttered bun), and a, guess what?, curry-mee. The bun does not look extra-ordinary. The curry mee is good. It is as good as those outside from the street hawkers, except for the lack of key ingredients like blood clams and octopus. It its place, they substituted food ball slices. I definitely recommend this place for coffee.

Beef Noodle Soup, Part Deux

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Ah Goo's Beef Noodle soup

The much anticipated journey to Bukit Metajam (BM for short) for Ah Goo's beef noodles started at 12:45PM. Loon and Lilian came by with their Toyota. Of course, we found time to down a couple of beers, ate some murukka, before venturing out the door.
The trip took us over the Penang Bridge. A third lane has been added to the seven-mile span of the bridge. This is suppose to lighten the traffic on the bridge. Notice in the picture, how this bridge look like the Zeikum Bridge in Boston.
Once over the bridge, we are in the Prai / Butterworth area, and we are promptly lost. We took a few wrong turns, with Loon pointing out the directions, and Lilian at the wheel. "Straight, straight, straight", he would bark the orders. And so, under his capable hands and guidance, we found ourselves at the Terminal Ferri, the complete opposite direction from where we should be heading.
"Take a U-turn here", barked another order. On the road again, we paid the toll again, and soon found ourselves on the road to BM.
The road to BM has not changed in the last 30 years or longer. It is still the one street going into town, and the same one street coming out of town. We must have hit some holiday traffic, for the road was jammed on both sides with cars, trucks, and motor-cycles. Cars and bikes here don't seem to follow the traffic rules; they cut in and out of traffic without signaling. On a two lane road, there are frequently three cars running abreast. Drivers and riders also lack the common courtesy you see in most other countries. On a narrow road, I saw a car on the road side trying desperately to get out of its parking spot. It has the signal on, begging to be let into the traffic, but no car would stop for it to go ahead and get out. With the long lines of traffic jam, it will be a wonder if it ever get out of the parking spot at all.
I noticed this lack of civility when embarking at Kuala Lumpur and Penang from the air planes. In the West, passengers will wait until the forward row has exited, before moving forward. In Malaysia, it is everyone for himself. Passengers just rush forward towards the exit, blocking the way for the forward row passengers to get out. I think this is a shameful trait.

Traffic in town is just as bad as that on the way into town. We have to meander a few roads, and finally arrived at the destination -- Ah Goo's Beef noodle soup store. Ironically, Ah Goo translates to Cow, or Beef, so he is the perfect person to sell beef noodles.

Siew Kai has already arrived, and is already onto his second bowl of big bowl beef noodles soup. We order three big bowls, and one bowl of ingredients-only with soup.
The beef noodles soup, pictured below, comes in a clear broth, with beef and beef tendons, tripe cooked in the soup. This is added to the cooked kuay teow noodles, the white, flat, rice noodles. The soup is very tasty, having cooked with the beef and tripe all day. The beef is a little tough, also because it has been cooking all day in the soup. The beef tendons are very well cooked and soft, the desired effect and tenderness. It was almost worth the one-hour drive to BM to sample this tasty noodle soup, but I think this may be the last time I am willing to do so. The road to BM is not going to change in the next few years, so the traffic congestion can only get worse. I shudder to think what it will be like next year, when I come home for a visit again.
We bought a few bags of the noodles soup to bring back.

The Sunday Dinner

We have planned to have a family dinner today, but that did not stop Seng and I from running down to Batu Lanchang for a good bowl of curry mee. We think this is one of the best places for curry mee, because of its tasty curry and good ingredients.
Back at the house, Seng busied himself cooking the Sunday dinner while I chilled the beer.
The family started showing up around 11:30. Siew Loon, Lilian, and May Ling arrived first. It was a nice surprise to see May Ling. Siew Kai arrived with more mangos. Since we have a quorum, we started with the beer drinking. We brought out the murukku, a tasty, salty, spicy Indian snack food. You can see a bag of murukku in the picture with the sliced mangos. It is a perfect complement for beer.
A few moments later, we were joined by William. I have not seen William in the last few times when I came back to Penang, so I did not recognize him, and mistook him for Ronnie, whom I have also not seen for a while.
Sui Fun and Peter came in fashionably, amidst shouts of "here comes the movie star.", but she brought an important contribution - a big roast duck. Mom said we must all be drunk to make so much noise.

We were still waiting for Ronnie, but Sui Fun gave the word that we should start eating, because we were expecting a teacher to come by at 2:30PM, so we have to finish and clean up the place for the study group.
Ronnie actually showed up not long after, and we squeezed him in at the table.
Ronnie is Sui Fun's son, and works as a software engineer at Dell. That is why Siew Loon's first words to him is "Ron, any good deals for a Dell?" It does not matter how many times Ronnie says he is only involved with software, and has no connections to the hardware, the question gets asked again and again.
The questioning turned to teasing. Siew Loon found out Ronnie has been to the U.S., and started telling him he should hide in the U.S. next time he goes overseas. "Don't come back, just hide in the Chinatown. They will never find you there." Poor Ron. I bet he regrets coming to the dinner.

Of the dishes served today, my favorite is the "Loh Hon Chai", Buddhist vegetable dish. It is mostly Napa cabbage, bean curd sticks, sweet bean curd, black mushrooms, and glass noodles. I like to eat it over rice.

Besides this, Seng also made Roast Chicken. It is an amazingly tasty chicken, made in the microwave oven. I must get the recipe.


After dinner, we made plans to go to Bukit Metajam, across the channel, tomorrow for a good bowl of beef noodle soup.

My friend Kong Chan

At 5:30 AM, we tried using the Gmail chat to call up Sarah and her family. Actually, it was Tim was replied and called me. This is the first time I tried Gmail. I had it on full screen, and the result wasn't too bad. We did have some audio problems, but all in all, it was not bad for a free program. I think Skype may be better.

Lena was playing with a green blanket. She had it wrapped around her waist like a dress. Great Gradma (mom) said she looked pretty. Mom could not stop smiling when she sees Lena and John Paul. She remarked how healty they are, and how handsome and pretty they are. Even after we shut down the video, she was still smiling.

During the video chat, Sarah and I talked a little about how it was when I was a little boy. Actually it was Lena who asked Great Grandma what I was like when I was a little boy. Mom said I was a good boy, and played well with the brother and sisters. From there, we talked about how it was with seven children and two adults living in a single room smaller than the size of Sarah's living room. Sometimes, I sleep under mom and dad's bed with Siew Cheong. There are times I sleep in the corridor outside the room. Some nights, after the mandatory lights out (our grandma believes in turning off the lights early to save on the electric bills), we brothers and sisters will still continue to talk in the dark, loudly, until mom gave the final warning, then we will slowly hush up and fall asleep.

My friend Kong Chan had called last night. We are going to meet at KomTar downtown this morning around 9 to 9:30 AM.

We met at 9 AM. After the hello's, Kong Chan proposed we walk to the old New World Park and have breakfast there. The park has been demolished. In its place, a new food court has taken its place. This goes to show how Penang people, the Penangites, love food. Where this park stood, there used to be two movie theatres, shop stalls, amusement areas. It was a full time amusement park. In my junior high school days, I used to go to the movies very frequently. I used to go to Lido theatre and watch a 3 PM movie after school, then stay behind in the park and watch another movie at the Globe theatre. I also documented my movie-goings in a log book: what seats I took, what movies I saw, how much I paid for the movie tickets, etc. That same year, I watched 364 movies. The park has a lot of memories for me.

I met Kong Chan in Form 4, and became fast friends. We went through Form 5, and the two years of Lower and Upper Sixth, then keep in touch through college (he went to the University of Malaya, and I went to Nanyang University in Singapore.) After college, we kept in touch, and still remain friends 44 years after high school. He is one of my oldest, continuous, friends.

Kong Chan knew I like curry mee noodles, so he just went ahead and ordered it for me. He also ordered a plate of char kuay teow, and 'pig intestines noodles" (it is just plain white noodles with sauces: sweet hoy-sin sauce, hot chili sauce, and shrimp paste.)

All three dishes were great. I love the curry mee, and the char kuay teow, for the spiciness. The noodles with sauce were very good as well. The sauces were very flavorful. It was so good I amost licked the plate.

After we finished breakfast, we moved on to another food court, where the New World Park used to sit. Kong Chan announced that the old Iced Kachang vendor have moved from the street into this food court. Of course, we have to sample it. Two bowls for 4 Ringgits, a bargain. I pulled out a five ringgit bill, and Kong Chan spotted it. It is an old bill. He said it may be worth something, so I gave it to him. He said if I have some with Queen Elizabeth's picture on it, it is worth more, and if it has Prince Phillip's picture, it could be worth as much as 4000 ringgits. I am pretty sure I don't have any bills that old.

By the time we finished the Iced Kachang, we have talked reminisced about every known old classmates - living or dead, so we moved on to other topics.

Kong Chan has surprisingly good and long memories. He remembers things I don't even know existed. When we walked by a restaurant called Eden, he said we went there a few times with the Sixth Form group. We each paid 3.50RM for a buffet lunch that included soup to nuts. I don't even think I have ever heard of this restaurant.
There is another restaurant that I remember quite well, but it is closed, and the building sits rotting, dilapidated, at the corner of Penang Road and McAlister Road. Kong Chan, myself, and a couple of other classmates have dined there a few times, on the top floor. This is a Hainanest restaurant that also served western food Chinese style. I remember a friend WC ordered steak, and what got served was a meat loaf or hamburg served steamed in a dish. I guess they thought we young kids could be fooled.

Day of good food

Around 10:30 AM, Siew Kai arrived carrying two bags of mangos and holding his GPS - it is the latest version, the Garmen nuvi 1350. He always has some new gadget with him whenever he shows up: shortwave radio in the past, new Renault, Ford Ranger, ....
We, of course, started with a couple of beers, and started talking about mangos, insect bites, poisonous inserts, etc. Referring to the last trip here with Becky, a trip in which I contacted the sap of a champeda fruit, and my face swelled up in response, he informed me that he didn't think it was the fruit, so I conceded that it could have been an insect bite. Siew Kai informed me, characteristically, that there are no poisonous insects in Penang. Oh, well.

Siew Loon and wife Lilian showed up shortly, and Seng came home and joined us. Now it is four Mui brothers, three beers, and a lot of noises and laughters. Mom and Lilian sat at the next table, talking softly, while Loon and the rest of us just had a jolly old time talking about HDTV. Loon has his eyes on a 52-inch HDTV, but has been awaiting the approval from the fininace minister (wife), and from there the topics goes on to hardware, software, DVR that won't die, Mao's TV (Chinese-made TV).

When Seng suggested lunch, it was welcomed by all. We filed into his new five-seater car (7-seater if your have two with very small butts.) Someone suggested the "Four Seasons" for lunch. Now don't get too excited. It is not the Four Seasons Sheraton hotel. It is a Chinese restaurant of the same name, and not too much of a threat to the sheraton's hotel. Even so, they serves up some good food, as evidenced by the full house when we talked in.

Bear in mind I don't have my camera with me, so I can exaggerate on how good the food is in this restaurant, but this is a repeat visit. We came here last time when Becky was in town with us, so it must have been pretty good.

We started with a bowl of free soup: Salted vegetable and chicken soup. Even though it is complimentary, it is good. The saltiness of the vegetable is subtle, and the chicken bones gave out a lot of good flavor.

Next was stir fried vegetable, very similar to the "water cress stir fry" I had in Langkawi. There is a good dose of shrimp sauce, and chili, making it very flavorful. We quickly devoured it with rice, before the next dish is server.

Next came stewed pork hock. The meat was cooked until tender, falling off the bones. The skin layer, with a small layer of fatty meat, is easy to scoop up and easier going down. The gravy is tasty, and went very well with rice.

The seafood tofu was next. A thin layer of green vegetables (like spinach) was bonded to a small layer of tofu, and cooked in a sauce. It was then sliced into one inch by three inch size, serving about eight to ten pieces. Despite the fancy work, it tasted so so.

The curry prawns is everyone's favorite -- a hot steamy spicy curry sauce bubbling in a earthen pot, with prawns cooking inside, I love the curry sauce on rice, and had a few helpings of that. I did not get to sample the prawns, so I cannot comment, but I can vouch for the curry sauce - it was great.

I wish I had brought my camera to lunch, to give evidence of such a great meal.

In the afternoon, I went downtown to Parkson, and bought a sorely needed USB cable for my camera.

On the way back, I swung by sister Sui Fun's office, and hitched a ride home with her. Peter and Sui Fun decided we should have dinner at Fish Mei Fun - fish with rice noodles. Now Peter mentioned the name of the place a few times, but they did not stick with me. All I can hear is Fish noodles, and my mind is frozen at the mention of food. I can tell you it is near the Fairchild Semi-conductor factor, on the left side of the Shell gas station.

It took us about an hour to get there, because of the Friday after work traffic. Peter thought it might also have been because of the holiday traffic. It is Hari Raya Puasa (New Year) for the Muslims, and they have to do some new year shopping.

We started the feast with Balachan Tofu, and Balachan chicken (wings). The tofu and chicken wings were coated in a Balachan (shrimp cake, a cake of dried, salted, sun-cured block of shrimps) sauce, and deep fried. This is the perfect appetizer. It is salty, crunchy, and very tasty at the same time, and not too filling.

For the main event, we all ordered Fish with Mei Fun (white rice sticks). We all picked the skinny rice sticks, preferring that over the fat rice sticks.

For the ingredients, you can choose to have fresh fish, fried fish, or other concoctions. I chose to have fish balls, sweet bamboo sheets, pork liver slices, and Taiwanese sweet sausages. These are cooked on very high flames with a broth, then the rice sticks were added to the broth, and every scooped out to a very large bowl.

The vendor put a good teaspoonful of fried garlic and oil on top of the soup before serving it.I can smell the fragrance of the soup before it arrived. Since it came very hot, I had to leave it to cool down before eating it. Ah, this is one good soup. As I savored the soup, I dipped the fish ball into a small plate of hot peppers soaked in soy sauce, the perfect condiment for the fish balls. It was fantastic! The rest of the food in this bowl is likewise fantastic, and tasty. It is going to be a memorable meal.

Sui Fun, being the generous one, also bough more chicken wings and tofu to go for mom, curry mee (to go) for me, sar hor fun, yee foo mein, all to go, for mom and Seng. I took a picture of the curry mee vendor, and I told him to look for the picture in tomorrow's paper. On the way home, Sui Fun was laughig at this. "The poor man is going to buy every paper in town tomorrow, looking for his picture. He is not going to find it. Next time you go, he is going to spit in your food." Okay, mental note, don't buy from him in the future.

Peter said "the guy probably thought you are a foreign newspaper reporter. He must think he is going to get international recognition." Just think, the guy may be rushing home to tell his family he is going to be famous. Somehow, I doubt that.