On the way to Penang again

Day 1 and 2 - From Boston to Penang

(Today is Saturday, March 10. )

The trip started on Thursday, March 8, 2012.  I could not have picked a worse time to travel, because of all the personal things happening around me. To begin, brother-in-law Peter is diagnosed as having cancer and undergoing treatment. At work, there is a whole management change that also directly affected who I am going to work for and what my next project is going to be.  For now I have to put all these aside, and hope to enjoy catching up with my family.

The taxi dropped me off at Logan airport just before 4 AM.  The waiting line is already long.  Fortunately, I know the international passengers have their own waiting line, and I went directly to the head of an empty line. The line promptly started at 4 AM, and I was just congratulating myself of the good fortune, when disaster struck.  United airlines has recently merged with Continental airlines, and switched over to the latter's booking system.  They cannot find my bookings with All Nippon Airlines, a Star Alliance member.  The young lady hit keys randomly and finally decided to call for help.  Help came in the form of an old lady with scratchy voice, who barked different commands that the young lady entered, and miraculously, my reservations came upon the screen.
"You have checked in through the Internet!", announced the young lady.
"No.", I said definitely.  I did not.  I know so.
More randomly keys typed into the keyboard.  Ten minutes later, "You have checked in through the Internet!".
"No!"
I am thinking to myself, "This is going to be a bad day."

The scratchy voiced lady came back to help, and a good ten minutes later, they finally found a way to override the reservations, rebooked the tickets, reentered my seating choices, and I am on my way to the gate.

Fortunately, the rest of the day turned out to be uneventful.
From Boston, I flew to Washington, D.C. Dulles airport.  The layover is a good two hours, so I had a lot of time to get to the next gate,

I boarded the All Nippon (ANA) plane around 11AM, and settled down to a long 14 hour flight to Tokyo.  On the way, I enjoyed the J-meal, a Japanese type bento box meal with chicken rice, meso soup, cold noodles, and fruit.  Very delicious, especially washed down with cold green tea.  The hot green tea served after the meal was great too.

I spent most of the trip watching movies. I watched "Tower Heist", which I believe is a pretty new movie.  I think it is still being shown in the theatres. It was about a building manager, played by Ben Stiller, organized a robbery in Robin Hood fashion.  He robbed a Ponzi scheme owner, and distributed the loot to the people who lost money in the scheme. So it was a whole lot of running around, silly make believe actions, and in the end everyone got their money back.  I was glad I saw it in the air, because I wouldn't have paid money to see this in the movie theatre.

I watch a couple more, nondescript movies just to past the time.  When I ran out of choices on movies, I watch some random videos. Nothing outstanding.  The last movie I watched, which turned out to be the best, but I did not have time to finish, was "Good Will Hunting."  This is a very old movie, to be sure.  I had never cared to watch it, but as I watched it, I was fascinated by the story.  Matt Damon played a gifted but troubled young man.  He has the gift of memory and quick understanding. He read widely, and knows everything from history to law to Organic Chemistry.  He worked as a janitor at MIT, and every night, he past by a black board outside the Mathematics department, and read the posted problem of the day, and solves them.  Meanwhile, after work, he goes drinking with his buddies, and gets into trouble.  One day, he was sentenced to prison after a fight.  The Mathematics professor rescued him from prison to work with him.  The movie goes on to show him, his girlfriend, his psycho-analyst, and the interactions between these people.  I did not get to finish the movie because we landed about twenty minutes before the end.  I must catch up again some time.

At Tokyo airport, I was feeling a little hungry.  I ordered a bowl of noodle soup (pictured) for 750 yen (about $9). It was delicious.  The noodles is covered with a tasty soup, and two pieces of very thinly sliced pork floated on top of the noodles, next to half an egg.  The egg is probably duck egg, because the yolk is dark yellow, and heavier than the usual chicken egg yolks. A black piece of sea weed floats around in the noodles.  It did not make a lot of difference to the noodles.  All in all, it was good and was swallowed with gusto.  I did not drink the soup, trying to avoid the salt.

From Tokyo, I boarded another ANA plane to Singapore. Again, I was lucky to have two seats to myself.  Having a lot of space for a long flight is a godsend.  I can stretch across the two seats and relax, and not feel cramped.

For meals, the ran out of J-meals by the time the came to me.  I was seated way at the back of the plane, so that is the risk you have to take.  I did not enjoy the penne with spaghetti sauce, because I had my heart set on the beef and rice J-meal, but I did enjoy the green tea again.

I arrived Singapore at mid-night. Going through passport control was a breeze.  The luggage came out quickly.  Everything about Singapore had an air of quiet efficiency.  Things just happened.

Following the signs for taxi cabs, I went out of a door and came to a taxi.  I hopped in, gave the address for the YMCA, and was transported there in about 20-25 minutes.  The taxi driver was not chatty, and who can blame him at midnight?

YMCA had my reservation and room key ready when I came to the desk.  He confirmed that the Kopi Tiam (Coffee Shop) is still there across the street, behind the Management University building.  I dropped off my luggage, and make a beeline to the coffee shop.

Becky and I discovered this coffee shop on our first trip to Singapore together, and spent many happy meal times there.  I wanted a bowl of curry noodles (curry mee) badly.  I missed it, and sometimes dreamt about it.  Sadly, there was no curry mee stall at the Kopi Tiam.  For whatever reasons, only a few food stalls were open this night, so I chose to order a plate of dry wonton noodles.

This is the Kopi Tiam.  In contrast with the coffee shops of the old days, the modern version is enclosed, air-conditioned, clean, and open 24-hours.  I was still a bit surprised to see so many young people in the shop.  This is way after midnight.  Why are people still up and out?  Don't they go to sleep?




This is the dry-mixed wanton noodles.  On top of the noodles is a layer of roasted BBQ pork (Char Siew).  I poured myself a small dish of chili sauce with garlic, to go with the Char Siew.

The wonton soup came on the side. It included two wontons and two shrimp dumplings.  I fished out the wontons and dumplings and left the soup alone.  Salt! Not good for you.  There is enough salt with the noodles already.




In the morning, I reversed the way back to the airport, and picked up the Air Asia flight to Penang.
It was an uneventful flight that lasted about an hour.  I was among the first ones out the plane, but the last ones to get my luggage.  Ann and Seng were outside waiting for me, and declared that they have the week planned for me.  Every meal is planned, so all I have to do is eat.  How can you go wrong with that?  For the afternoon, they had curry mee and pig internals rice soup waiting for me.  Now this is how to start a vacation!

Mom was already waiting in the parlour when I arrived.  After the greetings and pleasant back-and-forth, I lighted some joss sticks for Dad and the altar, I settled down for a nice bowl of curry noodles.  It was heavenly, just the way I imagined it - spicy, hot, tasty and salty all at once. Ann offered to heat up a bowl of pig's internals rice gruel for me, but I have to respectfully decline.  I was full.

Big brother Loon stopped by with sister-in-law Lilian.  Right away the house resonates with laughter and loud conversations.  Seng kept us supplied with beer for lubrication, and we laughed and talked about every topic that comes to mind.  Sister Molly had called to say she may not be able to make it over to mom's house today.  She was asked by her neighbour to take the old lady in the house to the hospital.  Apparently she had fallen a few days ago and had fractured her shoulder and arm bones.  I was glad when she showed up an hour or so later with Pete.  We sat around for more beers and enjoyed the snacks she brought.


(not finished..)