As Suanie Sees It

Having been tagged by Shannon Teoh via Le Paultan.org, I figure I’d better do this before my week is up, because:

1) It would get Paul off my back for not writing the post
2) Me break the chain and incur the wrath of the well-meaning bloggers who participated in this meme? Nooooo!!!

Heck, even the great Daft Oi followed through, so who the heck am I to stop the flow, so to speak? Me not worthy.

Having said that, one of the reasons I’ve procrastinated was because I honestly didn’t know what to write. Nizam Bashir started this meme and he vaguely mentioned something about ‘Malaysia… special… to me…’ It is quite a challenge, because I am of that age when I am no longer idealistic and dreamy about Malaysia and its workings (age does weird things to you), and I am yet of the age to really give a shit about the way things are going. I moan and bitch about dumb and dumber local news of course, but hey, that only makes me a Malaysian. Nothing special there, move along.

When I was little, I used to buy all the nonsense about Malaysia is great because she is a melting pot, blend of many cultures, colourful people, bla bla bla. Right. Now that I am older, I don’t know why that is so special anymore. For one, the world is getting smaller, everyone migrates here and there, and people are mixing all the time that we have so many culturally-confused kids resulted from the all the lovin’ mixin’. Second; I have never been to London or LA or [insert metropolitan here], but I do not need the plane ticket to know that other countries are as melting-potness as us, if not more. We are losing on this whole multi-cultural thing, kids. Need to find something else to sell our tourism.

Home is where the heart is. Since the majority of my loved ones are stuck in this country, it makes sense that I am stuck here as well. Sense of nationalism, pride, patriotism? Heck, I LOVE my country, but if I could, I would migrate to somewhere else. Maybe I could wash dishes somewhere in the middle of America, and over 15 years make so much money that I could set up a restaurant and retire a ridiculously rich businesswoman. That’s my Malaysian dream.

I could even pay for everyone in my family to participate in the MM2H programme twice over. Is that love or is that love?

Before someone bust my talentless ass for being a narcissistic, irrelevant, self-centred, nonsensical, waste-of-good-bandwidth wastrel (a blogging wastrel, mind you), I would like to say to you, cap Paul Tan’s first I was absolutely not kidding when I told him I had no idea what to write. I wanted to write about my grandparents, but he said Nizam did it first (obviously) so could I be a bit more kreatif and squeeze whatever grey matter I have left to elaborate on why Malaysia is so speshel to le Suanie? Hmmm…

So about my grandparents…

When I think of family values, I think of my parents. When I think of Malaysia and being Malaysian, I think of my grandparents. I don’t know why, but it’s just the way I function and for the sake of this post, I am going to stick to that. A few days ago, I was driving to work and trying to come up with a simple analogy for this post. Turns out there is none, so here goes:

My paternal grandparents lived right in the middle of town. If you are familiar with Batu Pahat, you would know where the famous Ah See wantan mee shop is located. Well my grandparents lived somewhere along the same row of shophouses. For a while, a younger Lim Kit Siang lived there too.

The British’s evil and very successful racial segregation of the country meant that my paternal folks were mostly exposed to the Chinese community. At least that was my impression when my family was living in the same townhouse. We did very Chinese things, ate very Chinese food, mixed with very Chinese people, celebrated very Chinese festivals.. you get the drift. I don’t recall us mixing with other races in town, except for the guy who sold newspapers by the street.

(And the old bank security guard who asked if he could touch me before I ran away.)

On the other hand, my maternal folks live in a village full of Chinese, Malays and some Indians. I didn’t talk to the Malays as much as I did when my family moved into our own home, but I noticed my grandparents communicating a lot with folks of all races.I distinctly remember my grandmother exchanging pleasantries with a round-face ‘makcik’ on our way to the village market. Every Hari Raya, my grandmother’s dining table would be laden with delicious ketupat and rendang, courtesy of the Malay neighbours. Of course we did many Chinese-y things as well, but there were some racial integration thing involved. Like eating lontong and roti canai for breakfast.

Later I found out that my maternal grandfather was once the ‘ketua kampung’. No wonder he knows so many people there, and so many people know him.

I am not sure if the stuff I’d written above has anything to do with anything, but I suppose I was trying to illustrate how I was exposed to people when I was a kid. Fully-clothed, thank you.

So…

My memories + special + I am Malaysian = reason why Malaysia is special to me! *bows*

I guess it is high time that I pass the baton to someone whom I know will definitely have more worthy things to write about. Xpyre, you are it.

… kocek ajaib!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For those who keep up with medical dramedies (House, Grey’s Anatomy), it is easy to feel detached from hospitals and its on-goings, especially if you are not in the medical or nursing profession. Personally I am not very good with sick people, mostly because I have never been exposed to a lot of sick people. Of course there have been deaths in my family, but I’ve never been involved with taking care of them when they were sick. Probably because there were others in my family who did a hell of a better job, and I was a tad too young then.

Now that I am older and am more aware of what is happening around me, I understand the fear of losing someone close to you to death. It is inevitable of course, rhetorical at best, but as a consolation it seems somewhat inadequate. But in retrospective, I think fear is good. Fear shakes you up hard and at the risk of this sounding clichéd, make you realise how dear that someone is to you. And hopefully that will make one utilise whatever remaining time one has to the max; make you a better parent/ child/ husband/ wife/ friend. Some people need the wake-up call. Some don’t. Good for them.

I hope and I pray that my grandfather recovers soon, well enough to jump around like he usually does. We all love him to bits.

- I like my current blog template, but it has its limitations also lor. For example, I can’t install NuffNang’s skyscraper ad, and I really want to because I like Tim. He’s a great kid (bwahahaha no I am not that old )

- For some weird reason, my Sitemeter broke. As in, rosak. Koyak. Kaput. Died-ed. Kthxbai. And I can’t for the life of me figure out what the fuck went wrong, when I didn’t change anything also… The counting/ referral/ who’s on stuff just stopped working. So I am relying on Google Analytics to get my blog stats, and to my surprise the number of everyday readers is significantly higher than what Sitemeter would show. And I don’t know why it’s just me — I checked ShaolinTiger, Fireangel and Monsterblog’s site meter — they all seem to be working!!! WTF!!!!!!!

- I have so many things I want to blog, but those posts require some thoughts. So, blah.

- Going home this weekend.

- Blog links of the day:

1) Mentera.org: Who to bantai - a guide
2) Monsterblog: Don’t blame the Internet (you should really check out the video link!)

- This Sunday is the deadline for my ‘Win an Estee Lauder Perfume Contest‘. Go go go!

What is a churrascaria?

A churrascaria is a Brazilian or Portuguese steakhouse. Churrasco is the cooking style, which translates roughly from the Portuguese for ‘barbecue’. However, in order to avoid confusion, it is important to state that in the rest of South America other than Brazil, the ‘barbecue’ method of cooking meat is known as asado.

Distinctly a South American style rotisserie, it owes its origins to the fireside roasts of the gaúchos of southern Brazil traditionally from the Pampa region, centuries ago. In modern restaurants, rodizio service is typically offered. Servers come to your table with knives and a skewer, on which are speared various kinds of meat, be it beef, pork, filet mignon, lamb, chicken, duck, ham (and pineapple), sausage, fish, or any other sort of local cut of meat.

Source: Wikipedia.org

I thought we should get that explained and be done with

Many many days ago, The Paul, The Spongefox and I zoomed around for a bit to look for a place to have dinner. They decided on a place I’d never been to before; even though it was a bit out of my budget, I agreed because they said it was one of the things I’d have to do before I die. Or something to that effect. Or I just totally made that up, but who cares IT’S MY BLOG AND I’M A LIAR OMG

Once we were seated, the manager (I think) came over and explained how the whole thing works. For the half buffet, you get to clear the entire salad bar. For the full buffet, you get to clear the entire salad bar, AND their storage of meat barbecued Brazilian style.

We opted for the full buffet, and so we helped ourselves to the salad bar while waiting for the chefs to come round our table with meats. I took note of the following dishes offered at the salad bar:

Coleslaw, green salad, macaroni, rice, potato salad, fried aubergines, kidney beans, mango kerabu, diced tomatoes in garlic and basil, wedges, deep-fried lady’s fingers with sambal, some meat and other stuff. There were altogether 18 dishes, I didn’t take any photographs because I couldn’t really be bothered

Then came the meat ……

The chefs, some Brazilian and some not, came around the tables with a long skewer, and if you want ‘em, they’d carve you a slice there and then. Actually it was a bit scary — I kept thinking the guy was going to cut me or something — the carving knives looked bloody murderous. But they were real professional (and tolerant of my lame jokes).

I took note of the meats offered: Chicken, chicken gizzard, chicken liver, chicken sausage, smoked chicken ham, grilled prawns, fish fillet, lamb shoulder, lamb cutlets, roast beef, garlic beef, beef tri-tip, beef topside, and another cut of the cow that I forgot which.

The non-meat type also served on a skewer were: bread with sour cream (warm, crispy) and grilled pineapple (very sweet).

They were all AWESOMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! To quote The Spongefox,

This Brazilian meat is like orgasm in my mouth…

My favourites in order of preference: beef topside (tasted like the best ’siu yok’ in town, grilled prawns (damn fresh!), garlic beef and lamb cutlets (extremely tender). The photo below shows the beef topside that I still yearn for at this very minute….

For dessert we had Caramelised Banana — oven-grilled banana served with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce.

I thought it was okay only.

But the beef… the prawns… the lamb………. *slurpssssssssssss*

Not a cheap affair though. The full buffet costs RM48++ per person, and the half buffet costs RM30++. Dessert was RM9++, a glass of Coke was RM5++, and a glass of water was RM1 ++. Not sure if they charge every time they refilled the water — we had one glass each.

But if ever you feel generous and would like to ’spend’ me some Brazilian bbq, this is where we’d go yeah

CARNAVAL CHURRASCARIA
77 Jalan SS22/19
Damansara Jaya
Tel: 03-7725 2252
Opens daily for dinner (6pm-10.30pm)

I also added the restaurant on Wikimapia here.