My 𝘊𝘰𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺𝘯𝘦 𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘩𝘶𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘪

I began cultivating some interest in orchids sometime in the early part of the last decade when I stopped writing my chess articles for The Star newspaper temporarily. Along the way, I picked up an orchid plant from, if I'm not mistaken, a nursery somewhere in Sungai Petani. This Coelogyne rochussenii took pride of place in my front patio but for about four or five years, it grew but never flowered. In exasperation, I almost threw it away. Then I decided to tie it around the tree outside the house. The plant didn't die but continued growing and attaching itself to the trunk permanently with its new roots. But it still didn't flower. Recently for weeks, there was a prolonged cool and rainy spell in Penang. Suddenly, I noticed that the orchid plant had thrown out two(!) short flowering stalks. So finally, after more than 10 years, the plant has flowered. I'm happy enough to see the flowers but boy, it needs patience. A great deal of patience. More than 10 years of patience. I would have grown several feet of beard already, if I had not cut it off regularly....

US Potatoes cooking demo

The promoters from US Potatoes were back in Penang last week and in a jam-packed afternoon session at 218 Macalister, they brought along a dietician-nutritionist to bolster their mandatory and ever popular cooking demonstration. 

Georgen Thye was the dietician with more than 10 years of experience in nutrition and dietetics. He founded Georgen Cooking, a platform that aims to make healthy eating and cooking easy and fun. He sits in the editorial advisory board of Health Today magazine and is a council member of the Malaysian Dietitians' Association. He is featured regularly in the local media, including on TV and radio. 

Georgen kicked off the session with a fascinating talk on nutrition (what else?) and brought home the point that the potato is a healthy food. For example, the potassium content in potatoes is three times more than that in bananas. And I was surprised to learn that the potato can provide 38.5% of our daily requirement of Vitamin C. Of course, all these numbers do not tell you the whole story because at the end of the day. it also depends on how much potato you need to consume to achieve these figures. 

Although Georgen didn't term himself as a celebrity chef, there was no doubt that he could show his familiarity with the kitchen by whipping up some simple but interesting snacks that used potatoes, in particular, US Potatoes, as a main ingredient. His main demonstration was to make crispy US Potato snowflakes.

The appearance of Chef Federico Michieletto was the obvious highlight of the session. I must say that this Italian chef was not unfamiliar to me. In a previous US Potatoes cooking demonstration here, he had been one of the featured chefs. Last week though, he was the ONLY chef. Thus, all eyes and ears were trained on him. Chef Federico has lived in Malaysia for 15 years or so, and well settled down as the Executive Chef of Equatorial Kuala Lumpur. For his cooking demo in Penang, he had devised two recipes. The first was a Homemade US Potatoes Russet Gnocchi while the second was a US Potato Frittata.

By the way, I bumped into a number of friends at the cooking demo. It so happened that there was quite a number of ladies around. Actually, they quite filled up the room at the 218 Macalister. I found out later that they were from the Rose Charity, Penang Women Chamber of Commerce, the Joyluck club and the Penang State Chinese Association, the last mentioned now serving as the de facto baba-nyonya organisation in the state.

Corner kick

So much have happened to my wife and I in the last two and a half weeks or so. I'm actually having some difficulty deciding how to begin this narrative. But I think the best is to start from the very beginning. 

Anyway, in the morning of the 29th of November, my wife stubbed her little right toe against the corner of our bed. It was quite loud, or at least, I thought that it was quite loud. She was in the bedroom and I was outside at my computer when I heard a loud crack from the room. Rushed in to find my wife clutching at her little toe. We had stubbed our feet many times against the bed and we thought this time would not be any different. But it was not. 

By the afternoon, she complained of a nagging pain that wouldn't go away. The doctor's X-ray confirmed that there was indeed a hairline fracture. The following day, we consulted an orthopaedic surgeon at the private hospital and her toes were immediately bandaged up. It would take about six weeks for the fracture to heal partially, the specialist said, and three months for it to heal totally. Our hearts sank. We had planned for an overseas holiday and now, it was completely shattered by this little bad luck of a freak accident. Worse was that we had already paid for the holidays and it was impossible for us to get all of our money back. The stumbling block were the airline tickets. Cancelling the tickets would come with a hefty loss as obviously, the full amount won't be reimbursed. We made a frantic search for our replacements and luckily, we did find two persons to go in our place. Still, it was a monetary loss to us.

My wife had a follow-up appointment with the surgeon two days ago and luckily, the good news was that her toe was healing well. The bandages have come off and she can now put her weight on the whole foot. There'll still be a final check-up in another three weeks' time.

PCA 50th anniversary

It's not mentioned in the above image, but the celebration of the Penang Chess Association's golden anniversary will be held this Monday, 19 December 2022, at the school hall of the St Xavier's Institution at 2.30pm, where this year's Penang heritage city chess open tournament will take place daily until Christmas Eve. 

Why use the SXI as the tournament venue? It's because after the pandemic lockdown of the past two years, the Penang Chess Association is forced to cut down on expenses when carrying out their activities. Previous editions of this annual event were played at the Red Rock Hotel and I understand that the fees of using their old cinema hall were very expensive. Thus, the need to seek an alternative venue. The school hall here fitted the association's needs as it is cheap and centrally located. 

Occulted Mars

The night sky was heavily covered by clouds last night and I was unable to sight the moon. However, i was awakened this morning at about five o'clock by moonlight streaming into the bedroom. So, I went to the window and was met with a bright round moon, 99.9 percent illuminated, shining in a cloudless sky. I grabbed the camera and went outside to take a better look:

That tiny dot of light at the top of the picture is Mars, still bright enough to be noticed with our eyes in spite of the moon's brightness. According to astronomers, the sun, Earth, moon and Mars are roughly aligned today in an approximate straight line. The bonus today is the moon occulting Mars on 08 Dec 2022 but unfortunately, this can't be observed from Penang as it happens around noon here. But yah, people of the other side of the world will witness the event.

This is how the moon looked like when I underexposed the shot.

Seventh student leadership workshop

The last time that the PFS student leadership workshop was held was some two years and 10 months ago. Even then, it was only half a workshop. Because of the nationwide lockdown due to Covid-19, my friends and I never got to continue with the second half of the four-day workshop. Since that 2020 workshop, Penang Free School had even undergone two significant changes: Omar bin Abdul Rashid had retired as the headmaster at the of 2020 and his replacement, Shamsul Fairuz bin Mohd Nor, lasted only a year before he was eventually transferred elsewhere. 

The new headmaster is Syed Sultan bin Oothuman; he's not an Old Free per se as he had never studied in Penang Free School. But Syed Sultan had taught at the Free School from 1992 until perhaps three years ago when he was transferred out. When we learnt that he was to be transferred back to Penang Free School as the new headmaster in January this year, we welcomed it because we knew that we could depend on him to uphold the many traditions of this Grand Old Lady. He would have been very familiar with them already.

When I had met Syed Sultan some three or four months into his new role, one of the first things he expressed was a desire that the PFS student leadership workshop be continued. I told him that he should also speak with Lean Kang since he was one of the main initiators of the workshop in 2017. I wasn't; I was only roped in to help in the workshops later. 

After many months of discussions with the school, the 2022 edition of the workshop was finally realised. The first two days of the workshop was held over the last weekend with 25 participants comprising the pupils from Form Four and Lower Six. Lean Kang did most of the talking in this workshop as coaching isn't my forte. I chose to be in the background most of the time to provide the necessary back-up. But on Sunday afternoon, I stepped forward to take charge of the history section and I must say that I enjoyed the interaction with the participants very much. 

Both Lean Kang and I missed the presence of Siang Jin and Soo Choon. The latter, as many people already knew, had shocked us with his passing in March 2020, barely a month after the end of that year's workshop. And Siang Jin is now basking in the warmth of his revived interest in art, so much so, I'm afraid, the leadership workshops have temporarily taken a backseat for him! 

All said and done, Lean Kang and I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions over the weekend. It says much that we could still interact with today's youths. In our own ways, we were still able to mold their minds and their thoughts. We were assisted during the two days by some alumni from the previous workshops, namely, Farhana, Afiq, Michael, Kar Yang and Norman.  We shall be meeting up with the participants again at the end of January next year to conclude the workshop.

ADDENDUM: For the record, I had made this posting in the facebook page of The Old Frees' Association:

After a lapse of two years and 10 months, we resumed the PFS student leadership workshop last weekend with 25 participants from Form Four and Lower Six. Skeptics may ask why we continue to run this four-day workshop year after year, giving our time without personal financial reward (we stopped only during the pandemic lockdown), but let me say that having gone through the first weekend with them, there are still a lot of bright sparks among the present batch of students! My friends and I shall continue to help the school as long as we are able to. I hope others will too.

https://m.facebook.com/groups/ofapg/permalink/2888696967931834/?mibextid=Nif5oz