Archives for 2008

the great penang getaway: august ’08: day one

September 23, 2008 By Suanie 11 Comments

About a month ago, my dear Pinky was in town for a week for a short holiday before she begins work at a new company. She suggested that we go to Penang, as she’d never been there before. Obviously the main reason she wanted to go there was because she’d heard that they have really great food up North. You can take the Singaporean out of Singapore… 😛

I took a couple of days off work so I could go to Penang with Pinky. We took the Aeroline coach which departs from Corus Hotel at 8.30 a.m. (the ones at BU depart at 10.30 a.m.). While waiting to board, I looked up the sky and felt so happy when I saw this:

Morning sky

Blue skies and nice fluffy clouds do weird things to me.

The journey was quite nice, as my sister had kindly loaned me her neck pillow. We reached Penang on time, and I made a call to HotPenangChick (HPC). She is this really awesome Penangite who reads my blog sometimes. After I blogged about feeling cheated by certain vouchers, she contacted me and asked if I needed help to get a decent hotel room in Penang at a decent price. She’d also offered to take us around in Penang for food and what-not. In short, HPC was a major, major reason why Pinky and I had such a fantastic time in Penang. In case I forget to write it down later (though I don’t think I will), thank you so much HPC. We really, really appreciate everything and more that you’ve done 😀

So HPC picked us up at the bus station and took us to Lorong Selamat for lunch. She, like every other Penangite I’ve encountered dislikes the tourist-famous Lorong Selamat char kuey teow, due to the haughtiness of the proprietress. Turns out that the tourist-famous Lorong Selamat char kuey teow is no longer where it used to be — the proprietress now has her own corner shop just selling char kuey teow. We wanted to taste other food as well, so we opted for the shop where the tourist-famous char kuey teow used to be. We had ais kacang and some lobak, Pinky had prawn mee and we both ordered a plate of char kuey teow each (another dude was selling it). I ordered mine with extra ingredients — check out what arrived on my plate:

z0mg the biggest prawns I’d ever seen!

After lunch, HPC took us to our hotel at the Hydro Majestic. We got the deluxe room (with breakfast) for RM 270 a night, quite decent. When we arrived to check-in, we got quite a shock because there were police trucks, cars and bikes all over the parking area. Later we found out that there was a police function/ training thingy at the hotel. Well, at least we’d feel safe that night… 😛

For dinner, we went to Gurney Drive and had assam laksa. It was bleurgh. I remembered a grilled cuttlefish stall at Gurney Drive which tasted fantastic when Jaime introduced it to me a few years ago. The stall is still there and we bought our fill.

Scrumptious sotong bakar/ grilled cuttlefish

We walked to Gurney Plaza and shared a bowl of beef noodles at a Taiwanese beef noodle shop, as recommended by HPC. Not bad. I can’t remember the name of the restaurant now though. Maybe later.

After loitering about at Gurney Plaza (including getting lots of stuff from Cold Storage and chilling out at Starbucks), HPC and her boyfriend took us to Restaurant Kapitan at Chulia Street. HPC claimed that they serve the best tandoori chicken ever, and ordered one to share along with a garlic cheese naan. Her boyfriend got a claypot briyani; we had a taste of it and it was absolutely delicious! I know I always claim that there’s no better briyani than Mat Shah’s in Batu Pahat; guess I have to revoke that one. But it’s different lah, as Mat Shah’s briyani is more Malay kampung type, and Kapitan’s claypot briyani is… uhm, more Indian, I suppose. Both are awesome and I wish I could have either one just about now.

Then came the garlic cheese naan and tandoori chicken…

Hands down the BEST tandoori chicken I’ve ever had

OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG.

(That should be indication enough on how out-of-this-world the naan and tandoori were)

After supper, HPC suggested that we check out Momo, a popular club along Upper Penang Road. She parked her car at Cititel so we walked along a road dotted with eateries and pubs. Then out of nowhere, I heard someone yelled out my name. I looked around and saw Patrick! Hah! Of all places!!! Turns out that it was his last couple of days in Penang; he had been there for some time now to shoot for a movie, The Funeral Party.

Pinky, Suanie and HPC at Momo

After a couple of hours at Momo, we decided to call it a night. Lots of activities planned for day two!

*Click here to view the entire Flickr set for ‘Penang, August 2008’, which includes photos not published here.

11 Comments Filed Under: Travel + Trips Tagged With: char kuey teow, clouds, kapitan, lorong selamat, naan, penang, pulau pinang, tandoori

suanie @ the sept 15th malaysia day rally

September 17, 2008 By Suanie 7 Comments

If you were at the Sept 15th rally and you parked your car at the side of the road, you should probably check if you kena saman. I’m not laughing at your misfortune or anything; it’s just that I’d parked my car by the road side, and as I was preparing to walk to the stadium, I saw a few cops giving out ‘lottery tickets’. Just so you know lah.

By sheer luck, we (Erna and I) managed to get the last legit parking spot in a proper parking place. About time too, because I was pretty pissed off with the universe by then; unfamiliarity with the area caused me to take a wrong turn, and so I had to make the biggest round in order to get back to the stadium. A Malay dude was directing me to park my car properly (as those illegal car jockeys would). I thought he wanted some money for that but turned out, he was just helping out of the kindness of his heart. I was very touched.

As we entered the stadium, we were handed a Jalur Gemilang each. Some people were passing out those rubber bracelets but we didn’t take them. Then the speakers blared out our national anthem, and we stood still. We were quite a distance away from the main crowd but people around us were singing the ‘Negaraku’ loudly. I felt so many things at once — flashbacks from my primary and high school assemblies, pride and joy from nowhere, etc that I got goosebumps throughout the song.

Leaders of Pakatan Rakyat on stage, some reading the doa

We made our way to one of the top of the covered spectator area, next to the media area. In hindsight, it was probably not a great decision because the speakers were way in front of us, facing the crowd. So I had some difficulty trying to understand the speeches. But it was great for photo ops though. Not as awesome as some of the photos uploaded to the journalists’ notebooks (I peeked) but my Panasonic Lumix TZ15 did the best it could. The 10x zoom really came in handy.

Dude wearing a DSAI face mask. I can’t begin to tell you how eerie this can be

The Chief Minister of Penang, Lim Guan Eng took the stage. I thought he was really good, really funny, really pro at working the crowd especially with his Chinese accent. Other speakers were Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim (I think), a PAS leader, Lim Kit Siang and finally, Anwar Ibrahim.

As you would have known by now, nothing major was announced at the rally. There were lots of ‘we have the numbers (crowd cheers), we have the numbers (crowd cheers)’, but they have been saying that since forever. There were lots on the ISA, which I used to brush off as a necessary evil. I have since changed my mind on that issue. However noble the original intentions may be (depending on whose perspective), its implementation and enforcement especially in this country where the government’s low tolerance for dissenting views is well-known and well-publicised (by foreign publications and non-mainstream media in Malaysia) has been nothing but cruel and vile. Sounds slightly generic, yes but it has been a long process for me to come to these beliefs.

I thought the speakers were rather funny when they made fun of Syed Hamid’s ridiculous explanation that the arrest of the Sin Chew reporter was necessary for her own safety. They (the speakers) also peppered their speeches with words and sentences in Chinese and Tamil. I cracked up when Anwar Ibrahim proclaimed, “WO MEN SHI YI JIA REN” (crowd cheers).

Will the real Anwar Ibrahim please stand up?

After Anwar’s speech, the ‘Negaraku’ was played again. Another goosebumps moment. I took a video of it here. Then everyone got up to leave the stadium; there was a slight jam at the stadium exits and at the parking lot to go home, but it was okay.

And it’s already September 17th. It’s funny how some people expected a sudden change in the government yesterday, and got sorely disappointed when that didn’t happen. Heh. Why do I find it funny? I don’t know, it just is. It’s like, people expecting something major to happen after Pakatan Rakyat took over the 5 states this past March 8th, but life goes on as usual for the wage earners. It has only been a few months lah, give it some time. After all, BN has been at the helm since 1957. Rome was not built in a day and all that jazz. Bla bla bla bla bla.

A stitched photo of the crowd at the rally. Click on the photo above for a larger version

By the way, I heart Zaid Ibrahim (crowd cheers).

7 Comments Filed Under: Assorted Blah Tagged With: anwar ibrahim, malaysia, malaysia day, pakatan rakyat

You eat the frog’s what?!

September 12, 2008 By Suanie 32 Comments

I hate frogs. I think frogs are disgusting. I know that I do and eat a lot of things deemed disgusting by other people. But I stop myself at frogs. I can’t stand frogs — whether they are alive and croaking in front of me, or stone-cold dead and served with ginger.

As a kid, I spent a lot of time in Sri Gading with my grandparents. By 9 p.m. or so, the kitchen lights would be switched off, everyone huddled in the living room to watch the 9 p.m. Chinese drama on Channel 8 (when it was still SBC). One night I had to dash off to the kitchen real quick. Then I stepped on something round, cold and slimy. Then I ran all the way back to the living room. To clearly remember these details and feelings of the heart-stopping moment when I stepped on the damn frog shows you just how bloody traumatised I was from the whole affair.

A few years later, I was at a restaurant with my family. My mom had ordered “tian ji”, literal translation is ‘field chicken’. I refused to eat it because it was unfamiliar food to me. My mom then cajoled me into eating one, telling me that it tastes just like chicken. Five minutes into eating one, I overheard someone saying that it was frogs’ legs. I felt sick to my stomach and refused to eat another bite.

About four years ago at the SS2 night market, I passed by a stall with a metal cage filled with live frogs. The lady stall owner took one out and proceeded to skin the frog alive. It was one of the most horrific things I’ve ever seen and I only saw about 10 seconds of it.

Last night, Reuben asked me what was bird’s nest. So I gave him the Wikipedia link. Then I remembered something that my mom used to prepare for us when we were kids. She called it ‘xue ge’; in Cantonese it’s known as ‘shuet kap’. She’d spend hours picking at the fluffy, jelly-ish substance (to clean it), then double boil it as a dessert (tong sui) for me. I didn’t know what it was but I hated it because I thought the texture was disgusting. I remember asking her what was it, and she offhandedly told me that it was ‘something from the sea’. At first it was ‘something from the sea that’s like seaweed or something’, then as I grew older, it became ‘something from the sea that’s like animal or something’.

Well, 10 days before my 27th birthday, I finally discovered the truth.

Do you want me to spell it out for you?

I think you can read these links instead: Link One and Link Two.

32 Comments Filed Under: Food Tagged With: frogs, hashima, hasma, snow jelly, xue ge

hk june 08 – the obligatory ‘i waz there’ photos

September 2, 2008 By Suanie 9 Comments

Finally, the last post on my Hong Kong trip in June 2008. Heh, I thought I should finish this off before blogging about recent trips… Just photos la, but still, to put it out there…

View from our hotel room @ BP International

Somewhere along the Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade

Me somewhere at Victoria Peak

Thanks to Nokia, Text 100 and 141 (M) for everything 😉

Links:

– Hong Kong June 2008 :-
hk june 08 – food food food
hk june 08 – things you can buy with money
hk june 08 – what little alcohol tales
hk june 08 – when relieving yourself is not a relief

– Flickr set for Hong Kong 2008 trip
– My first trip to Hong Kong in 2004
– Flickr set for Hong Kong 2004 trip

9 Comments Filed Under: Travel + Trips Tagged With: esplanade, hong kong, hong kong island, mount austin, tai ping shan, the peak, tsim sha tsui, victoria peak

the letter z

August 18, 2008 By Suanie 14 Comments

The last letter of the alphabet is the bane of my existence, especially when it comes to Scrabulous/ Wordscraper. I don’t know that many words with ‘z’ in them, and the ones that I do require too many vowels that I do not have. Last I checked, they don’t recognise lolspeak.

Then there’s the pronunciation. I was in my very late teens when I learned that the Americans pronounce it differently from us (us meaning those who grew up saying lorries instead of trucks, autumn instead of fall, rubber instead of eraser, petrol instead of gas, holiday instead of vacation… you get the idea).

What we call ‘zed’, they call ‘zee’. Though I suppose we don’t really call it ‘zed’, but ‘zack’. But ‘zack’ is not too far away from ‘zed’, whereas ‘zee’ is akin to a different planet altogether. I may have immersed myself in some American culture, but ‘zee’ is something that I cannot bring myself to say. Memories of my Standard Six English teacher haunt me till this day.

Unless it’s a brand, e.g. TMZ. Then I have no problem with that.

Most of you would also realise that those educated in Chinese schools pronounce it as something else too. In words, ‘zoo’ becomes ‘joo’, ‘zero’ becomes ‘jilo’ and sometimes ‘New Zealand’ becomes ‘New Jeeland’.

I am not taking the piss. Since I didn’t really pay attention in my Mandarin classes, I wonder if there’s something in the phonetics/ language that hinders the Chinese educated peps from pronouncing it as ‘zack’ or ‘zed’. I know that KY spent his primary and secondary school years in a Chinese school, but this mispronunciation doesn’t apply to him.

Well, if you have any insight, I’d love to know.

14 Comments Filed Under: Stories + Conversations Tagged With: alphabet, words, z

hk june 08 – food food food

August 11, 2008 By Suanie 18 Comments

1) All photos taken using my super duper sibeh canggih Nokia N82.
2) You can click on the photos to view a larger version. It’s okay, we are all a bit blind sometimes.

When we touched down at the airport, the first thing that came to my mind was… KRISPY KREME! Well, what to do… we don’t have it here in Malaysia (yet) and all you people kept going on about how marvelous it is and how delicious and how everything, that I felt I ought to give it a try. Not VERY affordable, okay… half a dozen for HK$110 for freakin’ doughnuts!

The Krispy Kreme outlet at the Hong Kong international airport

Erna and I bought half a dozen to be shared. And this is my Krispy Kreme New York cheesecake doughnut that I could not finish consuming, because my family has a history of diabetes and I didn’t want to take my chances.

Got my saliva somewhere

My colleague tumpang a dozen from me. When he received and tasted it, he remarked that the Hong Kong version was too sweet — apparently he got some in Jakarta and the sugar level was very much acceptable. But not the Hong Kong one. I am sticking to Big Apple for my doughnut fix 😛

We stayed at the BP International for our first night in Hong Kong. Package included breakfast, so…

Breakfast of champions!

Erna was very amused by my sandwich. It tasted awesome! The bacon was crispy and crunchy, the omelette had cheese and mushroom and ham and capsicum, the thousand island sauce because I am Malaysian. As I bit into my very delicious sandwich, I could feel my arteries clogging up. But it was worth it. I suppose in 20 years’ time I’d look back and slap myself for wittingly screwing up my internal organs but that’s 20 years away!

Second evening in Tsim Tsa Tsui, we decided to eat cheap(er). Wandered into a random restaurant but the only available table was next to the toilet. So we decided to tar pau balik to our hotel room instead.

Beef ball noodles with oyster sauce

You know, when it was written ‘beef ball noodles with oyster sauce’, I didn’t expect beef ball noodles WITH oyster sauce… I thought they’d at least mix the sauce like how we get our wantan mee here. I suppose I should not take such things for granted. It doesn’t look very appetising, right? Well, it wasn’t.

One evening in Central district, we walked back to Lan Kwai Fong for beer, and decided to have our dinner at a German pub called Schnurrbart. Mostly because it was cosy, we were tired and lazy to go elsewhere, beer is always fantastic, and the bartender was very helpful with giving us directions to Stanley etc.

Typical German pub food – PORK sausages, fried potatoes and sauerkraut, yum!

We also ate at McDonalds once, at Burger King once and a quick sandwich at Pret a Manger. And a English breakfast set on the morning before we left for home. Familiar stuff can be comforting, heh.

Another noodly meal at one of the roadside restaurants:

Bread, egg, and noodles with pork chop

We had our last evening meal in Hong Kong at a restaurant located a short distance from our hotel. Looked promising because there were a lot of people eating there. Heh, that’s almost always my gauge for edible (hopefully food) food. A typical conversation would go something like this:

“Let’s check out this restaurant/ food place!”
“Oh? What do they sell?”
“No idea. But there are lots of people in there! Shouldn’t be too bad.”

We got an order of deep-fried chicken wings because we saw it being delivered to one of the customers. Apparently the restaurant was well-known for it. Not bad.

Deep-fried chicken wings with spice

And more noodles! Thankfully this one was a bit different, with the soup being of the hot and sour kind. Plus you could add whatever ingredients you wanted — assorted parts of the pig, sotong balls, etc.

A big bowl of noodles in hot and sour soup

I bought back some ‘lou poh bing‘ because Pinky insisted that I get some to try. Hmmm… tasted like any Chinese pastries that I can get here in Malaysia 😛 I shared it with some noobs and they seemed to like it 😛

Noobs eating wife’s cake

For the record, Kim had only one. I took two photos of her eating that single one, that’s all 😛

.::. .::. .::. .::. .::. .::. .::. .::. .::. .::. .::. .::. .::. .::.

All blog posts on this trip:

– hk june 08 – the obligatory ‘i waz there’ photos
– hk june 08 – food food food
– hk june 08 – things you can buy with money
– hk june 08 – what little alcohol tales
– hk june 08 – when relieving yourself is not a relief

– Flickr set for Hong Kong 2008 trip

18 Comments Filed Under: Travel + Trips Tagged With: bacon, Blogs I Read, hong kong, krispy kreme, noodles, pork

the birthday boy with his birthday cake

August 6, 2008 By Suanie 11 Comments

We had a little party for Ryan on Sunday. Funnily enough, none of his friends were there 😛 So I guess it was just an excuse for the grown-ups to get-together, and gobble up the ‘taufu far’ made by my brother-in-law’s mom. Heavenly!

As mentioned earlier, me and my eldest sister got him a specialty cake by Min. I brought FA with me to collect the cake, so it could sit on her lap while I do my usual F1 stunts. Min asked me what Ryan likes, and the first thing that came to me was ‘Cars‘. Maybe I am out of touch with him, seeing that he loves guns now. But a cake that resembles a gun seems wrong for a 3 year old, no? Anyway Min got to work on the cake, and…

Click on the photo above for a larger version

The above is a scene from Cars the movie, when Lightning McQueen fell into the ditch in an unsuccessful attempt to win at a race against Doc. Mater stood by, ready to fish McQueen out. Everything is edible, except for the toy cars and the paper signboards, hand-made by Min.

Ryan with his birthday cake
The birthday boy with his birthday cake!

The cake was most delicious! We got the moist chocolate, and it was very rich and rather awesome, heh. You can get your own specialty cake from MamaMin, just check out her blog and Flickr for oodles of photos.

As for Ryan, the kid grows up so fast. His punches are beginning to hurt. Wish I could freeze him at 8 months old.

11 Comments Filed Under: Assorted Blah

Archives for 2008

the great penang getaway: august ’08: day one

suanie @ the sept 15th malaysia day rally

You eat the frog’s what?!

hk june 08 – the obligatory ‘i waz there’ photos

the letter z

hk june 08 – food food food

the birthday boy with his birthday cake

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