Photo-bombing

I had tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. After all, it was the gathering of the Penang Free School batch of 1971/73 and I had only gone to their dinner function to meet some of my old friends there. I left after saying hello to them and to some of the former teachers present. But somehow, I still managed to be captured in one or two of their photographs. This one, for example, I wasn't even posing for the group shot. I wasn't even aware that the picture was being taken. I was, in fact, talking to someone off the camera. Yet, I found myself unintentionally photo-bombing. BTW, that's Michael Devaraj in the picture.

Oh yes, also this one. A little bit of me in the background. Like everyone else, I was startled to see a very frail Leong Yee Fong being helped to the teachers' table. According to one of my friends, one of the best history teachers ever!

Relatives...

Oh yeah....the relatives had come a-visiting on the second day of Chinese New Year....

Old teachers

I gate-crashed a reunion last night. I got to hear about the gathering of the Penang Free School batch of 1971/73 and decided to go see some of my old friends. Was pleasantly surprised to see that they had filled 11 or 12 tables, which meant that there were at least 100 of their year at the function!

Technically, I'm one of them but because I got into an express class in Standard Two whilst at the Westlands Primary School, I jumped to Standard Four in the following year and thus ended up as their senior in the PFS.

Nevertheless, I know several people whom I've known for quite a long while: people like Ooi Eng Hong, Lim Eng Chong, Lim Eng Swee, Tan Leong Wah, Ong Charn Hong, Khoo Boo Teik, Cheah Cheng Hye, Neoh Chin Boon, et cetera....

But what I didn't expect was to meet so many of our old teachers too. I half-expected to see Tan Boon Lin but he couldn't turn up. Instead, there was my other headmaster, Poon Poh Kong, as well as Ooi Keat Leong, Phang Pheng Yoke, Tan Sean Huat, Khor Gark Khim and Poh Guat Cheng who had all taught me. Present also were Padmanathan, Hwang Hong Shi, Ang Chin Bean, Leong Yee Fong and Yeoh Oon Huat who didn't get to teach me.

After saying hello to the people I knew, I left soon after this picture was taken. It's their party, after all; no point intruding too much, no point wearing out my welcome.

Chinese New Year with friends

Small gathering yesterday at the Northam Beach Cafe in Northam Road, George Town, which was the second day of Chinese New Year. Glad to have seen them. Kim Bok was not in the pictures as he arrived after this "professional" photo-shoot was over.

There's this reddish tinge in the picture because a string of red lights was overhead. Anyhow, from left to right were Teik Wah, Oon Hup, Phang Peng Yoke, Huan Chiang, Chye Chye, Soon Chye, Andrew and myself. Phang was our Geography teacher. Last met him about five years ago, or maybe even longer!

The night wore on and this picture was snapped at about 11.15p.m. Even then, we had Kim Bok arriving much later just about when I was about to leave this gang of old school friends. From left to right: Soon Chye, Jessie, Hock Leong, Michael, myself, Kah Kheng, Chye Chye, Huan Chiang, Andrew, Teik Wah, Seng Oo and Oon Hup.

Joey Yap says: Power up for 2015

Here are the auspicious directions for Wealth, Helpful People, Nobility and Good Fortune, Career and Business Success on Feb 19th, the first day of the Lunar New Year. 

For those of you who want to receive the Wealth Star (culturally known as Receiving the God of Wealth), receive the Qi from the East.

For those seeking mentors and helpful people, use the West.

If you prefer to give value and contribute, serve others more this year - use the North. This is the direction of Nobility and Good Fortune.

If you seek career advancement and progress this year, tap to the NorthWest.

For Business Opportunities and business growth, access the NorthEast.

The auspicious time is 12.30am. Allow the Qi to flow into your home from the direction you desire. Make sure the Qi from this direction can enter your home.

Traditionally, people also do a full prayer facing that direction. Or if you are like me, who prefer to keep things simple (but equally effective ), make a wish facing that direction.

Can we use more than one direction?

Why not? :-)

The Qi (energy) is free for all. Tap in and access it as much as you'd like.

More importantly , share the wealth and good fortune with others. The more we can help others succeed and be happier in life, the more we will receive in return. Please share this post with all your friends.

Wishing you good fortune and happiness in The Year of The Wood Goat.

(The above story was reproduced from Joey Yap's facebook entry.)\

Indian Summers in Penang

The Bellevue Hotel at Penang Hill is a photographer's private delight. From its vantage point behind the restaurant, one looks down at the promontory which is George Town. When my wife and I were there at the turn of the new year, we truly enjoyed our stay there despite the somewhat quaint service from the kitchen. To the left of the vantage point, one can see a huge structure in the distance, somehow positioned at a slightly lower elevation than the Bellevue itself.

A long time ago, this was the well-known Crag Hotel, established in 1895 by the same Sarkies Brothers from Armenia who had also developed the Eastern & Oriental (E&O) Hotel in downtown George Town and the Raffles Hotel in Singapore.

In the late 19th century, a certain Captain J Kerr had leased a plot of land at Penang Hill and erected his bungalow which he called The Crag. Later, the Sarkies brothers acquired the bungalow from Kerr and turned it into the Crag Hotel. The hotel operated until the Second World War and after that, it fell into disuse. From 1955 to 1977, the International School of Penang (or Uplands School) used the building as its primary boarding school.

When I was at the Bellevue on 31 Dec 2014, I had trained my camera at the former Crag Hotel and captured this picture. The place actually looked spruced up and not as dilapidated as originally thought. Even from this distance, I had noticed that the lawn and garden was very neat. Evidently, someone was taking care of the place. It had been so cleaned up.

Then in the past fortnight or so, I've been reading that a new 10-episode television series was about to be screened in the United Kingdom. The Channel 4 TV series, called Indian Summers, would take viewers back to the summer of 1932. It would be the last days of British rule in colonial India: there's the decline of the British Raj and the birth of modern India.

The series is set in Simla - the capital of the Himachel Pradesh state in the north of India. It was here during the hottest months of the year that a burgeoning community of Brits would descend and govern from the foothills of the Himalayas, where it was cooler. However, modern-day Simla posed too many practical obstacles: too many modern high-rise buildings that couldn't be avoided in any location shooting.

Then the producers happened to visit Penang and they were swept away by our colonial past. The buildings here have far too many similarities with Simla in the past. Penang was an ideal substitute. And the former Crag Hotel became the Royal Simla Club, the focal point of the whole series. But there was still a problem.

Simla was located at the foothills of the snow-capped Himalayas. Where on earth could we find snow-capped mountains in Malaysia? Luckily, this problem was easily solved. No big deal. Like many film shows nowadays, computer-generated backdrops have come to the rescue. And so, here we are, Penang Hill has been relocated to the foothills of the Himalayas.

Year-end send-off prayers to the ancestors

The last week or so had been very busy for my wife and I during this run-up to the Chinese New Year. We have been spring-cleaning the house almost daily and we couldn't believe the amount of dust that had accumulated since about two years ago. My hospitalisation in January of 2014 meant that we hardly had time to spring-clean the house last year; this year, it was back to the mops and brooms with a vengeance!

Anyhow, we did manage to slot in some time to visit Ipoh last weekend and gone out to the island for our weekend yoga classes. Yesterday, we awoke very early at six o'clock to prepare for the annual end-of-year prayers to my departed ancestors.

That would mean my grandparents on both my paternal and maternal side, my parents and my aunt. I had written in the past how challenging it once was to throw the old pair of coins that would signify whether they had, erm, arrived at our house for our little prayer session. These old coins were meant for divination purposes: a heads-and-tail combination would mean that yes, your inquiries have been answered while a tail-tail or a head-head combination would mean a no, and you will have to try again.

My past run-in with the door guardians or door spirits was that I had failed to request them to allow my ancestors unhindered passage into the house. They would be stopped at the door  and not allowed in until I had prayed to the door guardians and told them my purpose.

This time, I pre-empted the potential sticky situation by purposefully praying to the door guardians first. After that, my first try with the divination coins was a successful head-tail combination. Yes, my ancestors had arrived for the feat of fruits and Chinese New Year tidbits. After an hour, I tried again to inquire whether my ancestors had finished. And yes, they had. They were indeed satisfied.

And with that, ended our simple prayers this year-end....

Balancing an egg on Li Chun (立春) day

I did it on this very day last year and I managed to do it again on Li Chun (立春), the fourth of February. It's a special day in the Chinese calendar as today signifies the beginning of Spring. And what did I do again? I balanced an egg upright on the kitchen top. That's all, that's all I did.

In the meantime at noon today, I placed this new packet of rice in my rice bucket to signify abundance. Purists may be horrified that I did not actually empty the packet of rice into the bucket but to me, it is still the same. I'm filling it up. Happy Li Chun (立春), folks!

Full moon, plus planet Jupiter

Another attempt at photographing our nearest celestial neighbour tonight: it's the full moon. The last full moon before Chinese New Year. I'm quite happy with the moon...it's full, it's round and it's bright.

But more than the full moon itself, there was also a bonus: I see the very bright planet Jupiter to the south of the moon. Jupiter has been very prominent in our night sky for months now, and I had first noticed it in April last year.

Small reunion of old schoolmates

The occasion was the wedding dinner of Swee Poh's daughter at the Eastern & Oriental Hotel in George Town, Penang, in early December last year. Swee Poh is my old classmate from our Penang Free School days. Several of my old school friends also took the opportunity to attend the function and it became sort of a mini-reunion for us. An added bonus was the presence of our old geography teacher, Ms Tan Joo Sin, who is well into her 90s.

(Left to right) Abu Huraira, Abdullah Sani, Quah Chei Jin, Yeap Leong Teik, Andrew Choong, Loh Choi Choon, Choi Choon's daughter, Mrs Cheah Swee Poh, Cheah Swee Poh, the happy couple, myself, Ms Tan Joo Sin (in wheelchair), Ooi Kah Theang, Mrs Ooi Kah Theang, Boon Choong Meng, Chang Yew Keow

Almost a full moon

I was stepping outside the house just a while ago and I caught a glimpse of the moon. It is still not fully round yet as the full moon is still two days away. Nevertheless, with the long shadows cast at the lower outer ridges of the moon, where the pock marks are, the sight is rather interesting. I just can't wait for the evening of the third of February....

Sunrise right on cue

My wife and I woke up at five o'clock this morning. We had a morning appointment with a friend to climb up the Bukit Mertajam hill at Cherok Tokun. Reason was to catch the first rays of sunrise.

So we arrived at the foothills at 6.05a.m. and immediately, we set off for that little observation post about three quarters of the way up the hill which overlooks the Mengkuang Dam. Tiring walk in the dark; took us slightly over an hour to reach there. But what a reward once we got there. Magnificent view. To our right, we could already see streaks of orange to deep red light through the breaks in the cloud cover.

At first we thought our climb up the hill would be disappointing because of the thick cover of clouds but suddenly, a golden pinpoint of light broke through the clouds. A wonderful sight. Mesmerised, the three of us started clicking furiously with our cameras to capture the rare moment of the sun bursting through. But all too soon, it hid behind more cloud cover. The magical moment had come and gone. But we caught it, all right.

Andy Murray's gonna freeball

Generally, I don't read the newspapers anymore but yesterday, while waiting for my wife at her former office, the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers, I had nothing to do except to pick up the copy of The Star which was lying around the lobby.

Turning from one page to another, my eyes rested on a small story about tennis professional Andy Murray's forthcoming marriage later in the year. Actually, I don't know what caught my eye first: was it the grey background colour of the story or was it the heading?

Here's what it reads:

"When Andy Murray marries his long-time girlfriend Kim Sears later this year he is likely to wear a kilt." Okay, fair enough, Murray is a Scot where the kilt is Scotland's national attire.

"Kilts are generally worn with nothing underneath and the proud Scot will follow protocol." That, by the way, has always been a curious matter. Do they, or don't they?

"I think I'm going to have both options and see what I feel like in the morning," he said when coaxed into talking about whether he will wear a suit or kilt by an on-court interviewer. Personally, I would want him to wear a kilt. That's their heritage, it should be followed!

"When the interviewer probed further, he said: "Obviously proper kilt, yeah, freeballing," before quickly saying: "I've got a match to play in a couple of days, can I go now."

Freeballing. Oh yeah, Any Murray will be freeballing at his wedding. And what's freeballing? It's going about without wearing underwear. Letting all hang loose, balls and penis. And I tell you, it's the freest form of motion expression open to men.

Ao Nang sunset

When I bought the holiday package in Ao Nang way back in November, I had deliberately timed it such that my wife and I could take our holiday right after she had resigned from the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM).

This was an organisation that she had worked in for almost 21 years, rising to the position of the branch manager. She decided to leave because she wanted to take things easy, especially since our children were all grown up, independent and working.

We had promised each other that for once, our holiday would not be such a rush. No, we would not be pressured into squeezing every bit of activity into the confines of a 24-hour day. No, unlike our previous overseas holidays, we shall make time to relax. And that is why I had refused to do much homework to decide the where, what, how and when to do anything.

The day of our arrival in Ao Nang, right after lunch, we spent the afternoon resting in the hotel room. It was not until late afternoon that we ventured out into the streets, walking to the beach front, because we wanted to watch the sunset. So there we were, taking a relaxing walk and then sitting down by the beach side, enjoying the sea breeze, people watching, and casting our eyes out towards the horizon. The changing colours of thelate afternoon, changing into a glowing golden hue before dimming into a dusky grey. The setting sun turning red and slowly creeping behind the far, distant islands....

This was our schedule repeated for the next two nights. For three consecutive nights, we made our way to the beach front just to watch the sun setting before turning our thoughts to dinner. We only missed the spectacular sunset once and that would be on our final night in Ao Nang because we decided to go off to Krabi town and enjoy their weekend night market.

Holiday package in Ao Nang

I've just realised that contrary to what I wrote a few days' ago, our recent holiday in Ao Nang wasn't planned just some five months ago. It was actually mooted some five years ago, at a time when my son was still planning to enter college after his Form Five. We had bought some hotel coupons for a Krabi stay through Groupon but at the last minute, we decided to give it to his friends. So yes, my wife and I had been thinking about Krabi for quite a while.

And this didn't materialise until September last year when Firefly introduced a new Penang-Krabi route to their itinerary. I picked up some cheap fares fairly quickly.

Then came the search for hotel rooms two months later. I looked through Groupon but there weren't any deals available. This forced me to look at other sources.

There was an attractive offer of a 4D3N stay at the Aonang Cliff Beach Resort which I booked subsequently after reading the favourable reviews on the hotel. However, it left me still having to find another night's accommodation as our inward and outward Krabi flights were five days apart.

At first, I toyed with the idea about staying in Krabi town itself but somehow, after reading through the comments on TripAdvisor, I decided that perhaps staying all five days in Ao Nang would be less of a problem of moving our luggage around. I was glad to have made that decision. For that additional night's stay, I plumbed for the newly opened Ibis Styles Hotel.

But it was the Aonang Cliff Beach Resort that provided us with such good services. We were picked up from the Krabi international airport and driven directly to Ibis Styles. The next day, their transportation came to transfer us from the Ibis Styles to the Aonang Cliff Beach Hotel. And when we checked out five days later, the hotel brought us back to the airport. What a wonderful arrangement!

I should also mention here that when we checked into the Aonang Cliff Beach Resort, the hotel decided to upgrade us from their standard room to the deluxe room. As part of the package, the hotel provided us with a complimentary full-day four-island hopping tour. On top of that, we were also given the option of either a free dinner or a one-hour session at their Infinity Spa. Tell me, what more could we have asked for? Fabulous!

Sinfully unhealthy

Somehow, I found myself back at the Seng Thor coffee shop at the junction of Carnarvon Street and Kimberley Street in George Town, Penang, at lunch time today. Well, not exactly lunch time but a little past lunch hour, in fact. Anyway, never mind.

While I was eating my bowl of noodle soup, I noticed the man selling oyster omelette was just opening his stall. I've written in the past how unhealthy his plate of oyster omelette could be, but I never got the opportunity to video him do the cooking.

Today, I was placed strategically at the table behind his stall and thus, had an unhindered view of his frying technique. Here's what I saw:



Would you countenance buying a plate of fried oysters from this hawker, knowing that possibly tons of lard had gone into the frying?

When this video started, the hawker had already poured a ladle of the omelette flour mixture into the pan. A second ladle of flour mixture was then quickly added, followed by some eggs. Then came a huge bowl of lard oil. And afterwards, after some five minutes of frying over an intense flame, the excess lard oil was scooped back into the bowl.

You can imagine how much lard oil had gone into the six minutes of preparation. Tastes good, but think of the cholesterol and the problems that go with it from excessive consumption. Be warned.

Ao Nang food adventure

The last two weeks have been pretty busy for me and my wife. First, it was a last-minute trip to Seremban and Malacca, and then there was this short holiday in Ao Nang, Thailand that we had planned for since September last year.

Having just returned yesterday, there's no time for me to write anything about our holiday yet but here, at least, is a collage of the variety of food that we sampled in the streets and restaurants in Ao Nang. It is well and good to be carried away and enthuse about Thai food but mind you, not all were up to my expectations.

Nyonya cakes, peranakan kueh-mueh

It took me a while to hunt down Baba Charlie's nyonya cake shop. Firstly, I couldn't locate it properly on Google Maps. Secondly, when I keyed the co-ordinates into my GPS, it led me round and round and round. It was only after a painstaking search of Tengkera Road on the GPS that I finally managed to see the cake shop as a point of interest.

But once you know where to look, locating the shop became very easy. The only possible big danger was to scrape the side of the car on the road kerb when negotiating into the narrow lane. Apart from that, once in the lane, you must realise that further in, the lane would become impossibly narrow for a car to pass through and it was necessary to park it in the open space nearby and walk to the shop.

Baba Charlie's nyonya cake shop is actually housed in a small wooden hut. Inside, Baba Charlie's family and staff were busily making nyonya cakes. All sorts of traditional nyonya cakes. And the cooked cakes were all on display in an adjoining room, waiting for buyers who came in droves when my wife and I were there.

My first impression was that there weren't much difference between the nyonya cakes in Penang from those available in Malacca. There are a great deal of similarities but of course, there are nyonya cakes that are unique to Malacca only. Or made in a slightly different way.

One of the unique nyonya cakes is the kueh bongkong. I've never come across this in Penang before. We bought a packet to try and we found it simple yet delicious. Maybe a tad too sweet for our tastebuds as well, but hey, practically all nyonya cakes would actually require you to have a sweet tooth!

I don't normally find tapai (fermented glutinous rice) sold by the nyonya community in Penang, only by the Malays, and so, I was very happy to see this delicacy available at Baba Charlie's. We bought six packets, brought them back to the hotel, and happily enjoyed them all the way to Kuala Lumpur.

We couldn't possibly buy a piece of everything in the shop and so, we had to be very selective of the cakes that we bought. One of them was a nyonya popiah. I had noticed that in a corner of the kitchen, a lady was making the popiah skin in several frying pans. That was so unlike the way the popiah skins are made in Penang. The Penang version can be paper thin and it is an art in itself to making the skin. In Malacca, the popiah skin tend to be thicker.

My second impression was that Malacca nyonya cakes tend to use a lot of the clitoria flower. The locals call it bunga telang but its actual scientific name is clitoria ternatea. The clitoria is blue and it is a natural colouring agent for many of the nyonya cakes in Malacca.

Almost all the nyonya cakes I saw in Baba Charlie's shop had a tinge of blue in it. Elsewhere, I know that the clitoria blue is also used as a whitening agent when washing white-coloured clothes. Lam chneh was how my mother called it.

And my final impression was the quality control at Baba Charlie's nyonya cake shop. While we were there, all the packets of ondek-ondek were suddenly swept away from the counter. Even the packets that had been bought by their customers were asked back from them. I asked them why, and Baba Charlie's son said that the batch had been rejected. Somehow, there was not enough gula melaka inside the ondek-ondek. It wouldn't be sweet enough, he said, and customers had complained in the past when the nyonya cakes lacked enough sweetness.

Durian chendol, not!

Fact: Much of Jonker Street is dead during weekdays. Fact: much of Jonker Street is a tourist trap with exorbitant prices.

There is nothing like a gullible tourist to part with this money. Foremost among these tourist traps is a small shop called Bibik House. When my wife and I walked past the shopfront during our recent trip to Malacca, our eyes latched onto a sign touting durian chendol.

Many of my friends would know that usually, I cannot resist the calling of a durian. "Smell me, eat me, taste me," the durian would call out to me and I, like a zombie, would throw caution to the wind and buy the fruit.

Only this time, there was no fruit. But there was the word durian displayed prominently on signboards outside and inside the shop. So with high expectations, we ordered a bowl of chendol and I asked the lady at the counter to include durian in it.

The first sign of danger was that she opened a plastic container and scooped up some miserable portion of frozen durian flesh - I do hope it was durian flesh and not durian ice-cream - and placed it in the bowl of chendol. Then she pushed the bowl to me and said, "RM6." I dutifully paid up, brought it to my wife and we tucked into the bowl.

Let me say that the chendol was nothing like what we expected. Hardly any taste of durian at all. Just a sickly sweetness from an overly liberal dash of gula melaka. Great disappointment, to say the very least. And to pay RM6 for it was a great injustice to our pockets.

At any time, let me just say categorically that the two Penang Road chendol stalls in Penang are miles ahead of this Bibik House when it comes to serving quality chendol, without durian. Elsewhere along Jonker Street, other stalls were selling chendol at RM3.50 to RM4 per bowl. Of course, they were without durian pulp but hey, what a world of a difference in the price.

Sun sets over Malacca

Malacca wasn't in my original schedule. After our visit to Seremban, my initial plan was to travel to Kuala Lumpur and stay there for a night. But my wife had different ideas. Since Seremban is so close to Malacca, she suggested, why don't we go there instead?

Frankly, this was a spiffingly good idea. Immediately, I booked ourselves into the Hotel Puri, which is one of Malacca's better-known boutique hotels. And immediately after that, I had second thoughts whether a single two-day, one-night stay in Malacca was enough. Without any further hesitation, I booked for a second night's stay there.

Let me say that it wasn't a bad decision to stay three days in this old former Portuguese/Dutch/British colony. It gave us more leeway to do whatever we wanted to do. And I did tell my wife, let's try to make this a food trip. But when we arrived in Malacca, we were wondering whether we should go all out on a makan spree. We've already had crabs in Seremban the day before and we were mindful of our cholesterol level going out of control at our age.

But visiting the Portuguese settlement in Malacca had always been in our plans and we know that there are restaurant there, and a very popular item on the menu are the crabs cooked in whatever way we wanted. How to avoid crabs when this crustacean keeps popping up everywhere in menus? In the end we succumbed to temptation and we did order one large crab cooked with salted egg (double danger for cholesterol: crab and salted duck egg).

Apart from the food at the Portuguese settlement - or more accurately, Portuguese Square - we had a little bonus in watching a very glorious sunset. Here is a series of pictures I took, all within five minutes, between 7.10p.m. and 7.15p.m. Pretty dramatic, don't you think so?