Hi From KL

I am in Kuala Lumpur with Hub. Our interview at the American Embassy took less than 3 minutes. We took a 2 1/2 hours flight here.

"You two are husband and wife?"
"Yes"
"What do you do Sir?"
"I'm a (blahblah)."
"What firm?"
"(blah)"
"And you?"
"I'm a homemaker...but I was...a banker.." (waste of words for he already started on the next questions)
"How many kids? Where are they?"
"(blahblah)", I replied.
"You are going to the States for ONE month? One month? That's a long time. What will you do there for a month?"
("Er, work as a maid, a fruit picker, dish washer? nanny? pole dancer?" Wild thoughts) "Travel, travel with my daughter." (Grinned, tried to look humble, ignorant and innocent)
"Any friends, relatives, in the US?"
And so on. Anyway, he told us that our visas were approved but can only be picked up the next afternoon. Please, I said, can we have it same day? Sorry, NO. (All US Embassy staff and Immigration people--the Americans, not the locals--have that same polite standoffish no-nonsense attitude, have you noticed.) Aiya, how come the Americans are working like Malaysians? So slow one. My daughter got her visa approved on the spot  right after her interview in Shanghai.

Anyway, getting a visa to visit the States is not that hard. They don't ask for proof of financial competence or other documents but it's best to bring, just in case. Also, make sure to bring an extra photo. For those of us who have to travel to KL for the interview, it is inconvenient and costly. For once, I wished I was Bruneian or Singaporean. They are exempted from visas to most countries.

We received a few calls from friends about reports of our daughter's latest art installation in several local newspapers. We will be back tonight but here's a clip from Shanghai's English TV channel. ICS. Notice that they made several mistakes. My daughter's Malaysian, not Indonesian and she's been in SH nearly 11 months, not 1 1/2 years. Finally, she's going to a conference in the States, not a workshop. And yes, that's Doo Ma in the video. 89 years old and very cool.

e.g. Conference

After my daughter's Yao Ming portrait video went viral on Youtube, she received many offers. The two I liked best were an invitation to exhibit her art, along with other young artists, in Casa Batlo, Barcelona, and the other was to participate in e.g. Conference in Monterey, California in April this year. After checking e.g.'s site, I told Yi that the e.g. invite could be a hoax. The people invited to speak, and the people who attend, are renowned astronauts, scientists, musicians, explorists, writers, people from Ivy League schools. In e.g.'s words, " EG convenes 500 of the most extraordinary talents from an rich array of fields: artists, scientists, educators, entrepreneurs, entertainers; Oscars, Nobels, Pulitzers, MacArthur laureates; rising stars, and living national treasures.  I told Yi that maybe she was asked to attend or help in workshops.

Then Mike Hawley, an MIT professor and one of those left and right brainers, called to tell her last month to inform her that she is to be one of the presenters at the conference. She can speak on any topic, 20 minutes being the max time given for any speaker. There will be 50 to 60 other presenters plus hundreds people from around the world attending the conference. Yi will speak on 14th April morning, so if any of you are interested, do sign up at e.g.'s website. The fee is not cheap but you are going to hear extraordinary ideas and network with top industry people. Here's a description of the conference:

EG is the premiere gathering of and for innovators in media, technology, entertainment and education. The conference explores our most creative enterprises, by engaging a gifted mix of people — from rising stars to
living national treasures, the people who attend EG are among the most industrious and iconoclastic talents of our time.

If you want to out-think or out-create your competition, you need more
than fresh ideas: you need individuals and teams who are driven to
develop them. EG overflows with these exemplars.

I thought it was so great I want to attend every one.

Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder

e.g. has found a sponsor who is paying all expenses for two of us. Other than the chance of visiting the pacific coast of the US, which is gorgeous, I will also have the intimidating privilege of rubbing with the the top brainy and talented people of America and the world. I'll think about who to present myself as when I get to Monterey. Home maker I think.

As I sat in my car today waiting for my son to pick up his SPM results from his school, feeling anxious and unhappy, this thought came to me. I think God in His wisdom gave me both types of kids--the easy and the hard--so that I can empathise with others. Many people tell me that they envy me because of Yi. Yi is one kid. They don't know what else I go through as a mom. When friends tell me about their struggles with their kids, I truly understand because I've been there. The highs and the lowest lows. The people I can't stand are those who ask their kids when they score 80, 90% and above in their exams, "Why can't you score 100%?!" What ungrateful parents! These people just haven't been there. Some of us just ask for passing grades.

Wey passed SPM. He didn't do well. But I am hopeful.

Yi's profile on e.g.:

6

Red (aka Hong Yi)Architect and Unconventional Artist

BIOGRAPHYPHOTOSNEXT >< PREV

Red grew up in Sabah on the beautiful tropical island of Borneo. She dreamt of becoming a cartoon animator and Lion King is still her favourite cartoon.

Red’s paintings of Yao Ming, painted with a basketball for a brush, and Jay Chou using coffee and a cup, were Youtube hits, giving her 15 seconds of fame on CNN, ABC, Gizmodo and other media around the world. Her previous work includes portraits of Ai Weiwei using 100,000 sunflower seeds and Justin Bieber using gochujang (Korean chilli paste). Red is currently experimenting with unconventional materials and exploring structural design principles for her next projects.

Red holds two degrees from the University of Melbourne (Architecture; and Planning and Design). She was awarded a Melbourne Abroad Scholarship to study at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands, which broadened her perspective and exposure in the field of European architecture.

An Australian national finalist in the SONA Superstudio competition in 2009 and 2010, she was given Jury Special Mention and awarded the Elenberg Fraser Prize for Best Presentation in both years. She also received Special Mention for the AA Prize for Unbuilt Works 2010, and featured in the Jan/Feb 2011 issue of Architecture Australia Magazine.

She is currently working in the Shanghai offices of HASSELL, an established Australian architecture firm. She absolutely enjoys being an architect by day and an artist by twilight.

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KK Food Festival

The KK Food Festival (KKFF) is on, 3rd to 18th March 2012! This event, organized by Lifeandstyle and supported by the Ministry Of Tourism, Culture and Environment Sabah, was only held for the first time last year.

KKFF is an exciting yearly event where people can discover the cuisine of KK, meet other foodlovers,  educate themselves on the latest culinary trends and food offerings and just eat themselves into a culinary frenzy for two weeks. It is also a great chance for people in the food industry to promote their restaurants and/or products, and provides the perfect ground for networking for people in the food and services industries.

The 30 participating restaurants, hotels, bistros and cafes participating in this year's event have each come up with a special offer. For the next two weeks, hang up your aprons and go restaurant-hopping in town. You can win fabulous prizes when you join the Stamp and Win Contest by dining at the participating restaurants and Fringe events. Fringe events are cooking classes, wine tasting nights, food tasting sessions and more. Come on, support KKFF and encourage the food business in KK. Who knows, with succeeding events, the KKFF can encourage and stimulate the food business in this town-city to higher standards and make KK a top food destination.

Photos taken at the opening of the KKFF on 3/3/12:


Wonders of molecular gastronomy: edible 'soil'.


Foams and 'caviar' spheres.






One of only three places I know of for assam laksa in KK.




A welcome sign to pork lovers.


Duck eggs noodles.

Participants Of the KKFF 2012:

Bistros:
Bar Tzar Bistro and Bar
Jarrod & Rawlins
La Fuente
Lava Resto Bar

Cafes:
Boutique Cupcakes
Huge Cafe
J's Kitchen & Cafe
La Fetta
QQ Cafe
Tenom Station
The Teahouse
Yu Cafe

Hotels:
Coast
Ferdinand's
Naan-Flavors of India
Nagisa Japanese Restaurant
Peppino
Silk Garden
Soul Out
The Chinese Restaurant

Restaurants:
Beijing BBQ Steamboat
Bintulu Korean Restaurant
English Tea House and Restaurant
Fish & Co
Hong Kong Recipe
Party Play Lifestyle Cafe
Secret Garden BBQ Koran Restaurant
Seven Sea Restaurant
Sushi Tei
The Chubs Grill

See you there!

Standing Eggs On Lap Chun

My siblings and I couldn't have nian xiao (the 15th and final day of Chinese New Year celebrations) together as we all have our own in-laws to eat with so we had dinner together the next day instead, partly to celebrate my bro Joe's birthday. I always find nian xiao a 6 out of 10 on the depression scale. The festival is over, the lion dances are gone, people go back to work and all the red decorations and cheer disappear, like there's a before and after CNY decorum. We only had 2 kids present for dinner, my son Ming and my sis's daughter Chloe. All the other kids were either away at work or studies. I felt the empty nest for us all.

My sister asked during dinner if I made any eggs stand on lap chun, the spring equinox , the first day of spring, which fell on 4th Feb this year. Frankly, I've not heard of lap chun because I didn't go to Chinese school and my parents were not Buddhists or Taoists or superstitious. One of the things I appreciate about my parents was that they were not superstitious. My father especially disdained superstitions although he was very Chinese in regard to traditions. Because of this upbringing, I drink cold water anytime of the month without getting cramps and I go out into the rain without ever getting sick. I also give peddlers, water filters and food supplement sales people a hard time. Don't even sell me detox programs, especially enemas. I get my enemas from eating okra.

Lucky for me, I had seen some photos of standing eggs on Facebook on the 4th Feb and that led me to google on it. The Chinese believed since thousands of years ago that an egg can stand on its end only on lap chun. The theory is that the astronomic conditions--the moon and the earth are perfectly aligned and the gravity pull is optimal--are perfect for that phenomenon on that day. That's enough to make any of us who are astronomy ignorant to shut up and buy the standing egg. But not me, even though I can't tell Uranus from Saturn. If conditions are perfect, why can't everybody make eggs stand during those four or six critical hours on that day? And why eggs? Why not a walking stick or a rugby ball? It's optimal gravity after all.

While many Chinese believe in lap chun, westerners and those who never grew up in a household of lap chun egg believers debunk it as a myth. Somebody told me yesterday that his science teacher in TTSS made eggs stand on lap chun and from what I've heard, Chinese science teachers in Malaysia love to propagate the myth. Non-believers and the scientifically-inclined (meaning not Malaysian Chinese science teachers) say that anyone who has the patience can make an egg stand on its end, anytime, anyday, especially if an egg with a rough end is used. If all else fails, a pinch of salt or sugar (or sand, I think) will do the magic. And that's exactly what I did.

I used a pinch of salt and balanced the eggs on the smooth surface of a table. They stood.




My niece asked if the egg could stand on its pointed end too. It did.


With a bit of practice, I can make an egg stand on 3 grains of salt. The finer the salt, the easier the egg will stand without being found out. Fine sugar works too, I've tried it. You can either put the salt on the egg or the table but when you stand the egg, gently and firmly grind the egg on the table to crush the salt. It's all friction, baby.

Trivia from Wiki: An egg of Columbus or Columbus's egg refers to a brilliant idea or discovery that seems simple or easy after the fact. The expression refers to a popular story of howChristopher Columbus, having been told that discovering the Americas was no great accomplishment, challenged his critics to make an egg stand on its tip. After his challengers gave up, Columbus did it himself by tapping the egg on the table so as to flatten its tip.

Columbus needn't have tapped the egg. He didn't even have to wait until lap chun. He just needed three grains of salt.

Dinner For K & D

The last day of the CNY celebrations will be tomorrow, after which it's back to serious stuff like work and school. And blogging.

Our relatives and friends who came home for CNY have all gone back. There's been so many eating feasts that my tongue hurts. To give my mouth and stomach a rest, I've been eating congee (rice porridge) in between the feasts. It feels so good to eat light after all those rich carnivorous CNY dishes. Last week, I did two dinners and one lunch consecutively in two days, stressing myself because I didn't get into the kitchen until mid-afternoon.  I make the same two resolutions regarding punctuality and non-procrastination every year.


Since everybody's sick of rich dishes, I chose some lighter dishes and cut back on the portion of each dish. Instead of serving the dishes buffet table style, I seated the guests at two tables. This one's in my back patio where it's casual but cooler. Nice hand. I wonder who the owner is.

One of the dinners was for my ex-colleague and friend K and her American husband, and other colleagues whom I worked with in the same department. We practically grew up together, having joined the bank when we were fresh wide-eyed young graduates, going from being courted to getting married, having babies and now having children who are working or in uni. It is strange how we still feel the same, after all these years. I treasure these old girls.


I simplified my yee sang this year, using whatever I had in my kitchen. The pickled half-ripened papaya was from my garden. The yee sang was rather bland and the reason suddenly occurred to me when I was in bed that night: I didn't bother to buy apricot jam, had reduced the salt and totally forgotten to add peanut butter and toasted peanuts because I couldn't find them when I was making the dressing. Yes, WH was right. I need a better, more organized kitchen.


When chicken is free-range, the best way to cook it is to just boil it in low, gently bubbling water. I saved the hassle of making the traditional dip of ginger and spring onions and instead mixed sesame oil, light soy sauce and some of the stock from boiling the chicken and poured that over the chopped chicken.


Stir-fried kailan stems with stewed stuffed mushrooms (recipe one day soon), sea cucumber and black moss fa cai.


One of my no-fail dishes, marmite prawns.


This ginger soy sauce duck was the hit of the night, which was surprising because it was so easy to cook and I didn't even taste it when cooking it. I decided to use duck breasts instead of a whole duck because the breasts are the meatiest part of a duck and so much easier to cook than a whole duck. Recipe to follow.


Home-made Sichuan sausages stir-fried with celery.


Beef satay with blocks of compressed rice from a satay stall near my house.


I made Khong Aunty's  fa cai soup too. It's one of my fave CNY dishes and I was told that it was good (I was too bloated to eat any). There were 10  ingredients in the soup: pork bones, dried oysters, dried scallops, water chestnuts, chestnuts, fa cai, gingko nuts, dried Chinese mushrooms, beancurd sticks and red dates.


They're in season and the price has gone down so right after dinner we stuffed our faces with durians.


Dessert was my sakura swiss roll (a bit of a flop here because I lined the baking tray with ordinary baking paper, not greased proof paper, and the cake stuck to the paper) and a great Junior's New York Cheesecake. 

After everyone had left, I found that I had forgotten to serve my home-made prawn crackers. K and D will have to come back again next year.

Red And Her 15 Minutes Of Fame

And so the best part of CNY is over as everybody goes back to their routine today. My daughter left for Shanghai this morning and my youngest left at noon for NS camp. I'm not feeling so bad, even though the vacumn is there in my heart, because Middle Child is here for another two weeks.

This CNY seemed more subdued to me than previous years, probably because of the burglaries in my neighborhood and the awful incident where a guy died while checking on the fireworks he had lit and another case where a young man crashed his car into a signpost on the road outside our taman. We just feel so bad for their families each time we hear fireworks. The fact that such commercial public-type of fireworks are so easily available despite the ban just shows how out of control everything is. I strongly feel that we should report neighbors who set off those big fireworks. It's both dangerous and annoying to the public, especially in housing areas and at wee hours.

We had our reunion dinner in a hotel for the first time and not at MIL's because we had relatives from Shanghai and MIL couldn't cope, so I didn't bother to take photos of the food. No unicorn or lion dance troupes came to the house until the 3rd day and I was so happy when they came that I let them into my garden where they rolled and pranced around like little lions. It was a big difference to previous years where I had to sometimes pretend that no one was home because too many troupes came visiting. I think that the tradition of lion and unicorn dance troupes coming to the house is dying out as it is more lucrative and less tiring to perform at special events than to go house to house. Likewise, when I was a kid, bai nien was families taking turns to visit each other, with the younger families visiting the older ones first but now bai nien means big dinners where so many people are gathered that nobody really gets to catch up with the hosts.

I must clarify that I DO love CNY music, but only the traditional ones from the 60s, not the West Malaysian ching chang chong stuff that we get now. There's nothing I love better than cranking up the radio (yes, radio) to CNY music the first thing in the morning of the first day of CNY.It's a tradition that my dad practised, and it meant that we had to be up early, dressed in new clothes to wish our parents "Gong xi fa cai" (happy properous new year) before the visitors arrive. I have always wanted my kids to wake up early on CNY, come to Hub and I as we are seated happily, and bow with clasped hands the traditional way and wish us "Gong xi fa cai" as we smilingly hand them their ang paos (lucky money). But that never happens, especially as they got older, as my kids don't come down until past 10 am despite all my hollering. Usually by the time they get to the table, I'm so busy and upset that I don't give them their lucky money until days later.

Oh, we have been getting exciting news recently. My daughter Hong Yi had posted a video of herself using a basketball to paint the basketball giant (oops) Yao Ming about 3 weeks ago and Gizmodo, a bigtime American website that features new ideas in technology and science, had posted Yi's video on its website on 25th Jan. Gizmodo, btw, had its 15 minutes (and more) of infamity in 2010 as it came into possession of the iPhone 4 prototype that was left unattended at a bar in California. The video quickly became viral, spreading to other online sites such as ABC, CBC, NBC, Hufftington Post and Yahoo! ESPN and NBA also posted the vid and the Good Morning America people wrote to her too for permission to air the vid on the show. People from as far as Sweden and Serbia wrote in to say they saw the video on their TV. The vid continued to spread to England, where my niece had the funny experience of friends showing her the vid on mobile phone and looking at her in disbelief when she said that the girl in the vid was her cousin. Yesterday, the Taiwanese newspapers picked up the news, followed by the West Malaysian Chinese papers who gave her front page coverage. Today, the Phoenix Channel in Hong Kong posted the vid and we've been told that the news have finally arrived in Shanghai too. You can go to all the links by typing "Girl painting Yao Ming with basketball" on Google.

See Hwa Daily News: "Sabah Girl Hong Yi Famous Around The World", Sin Chew Daily: "Malaysian Girl Dares To Dream", China Press: "Beauty Uses Basketball To Draw Yao Ming" and The Star: "The Basketball Is In Her Court".

Yi--who goes by her arty nickname Red because in China 'Hong' is red--has always loved to draw, especially cartoons, and even when she was studying architecture, her secret ambition was to work for Pixar. Now's she's happily working in the Shanghai branch of Australia's largest archi firm and she draws when she has the inspiration and time. We are proud of her but the deluge of phone interviews and attention is worrying too. That's it, I should stop the shameless pitching. Back to regular food blogging tomorrow.

Getting Ready For CNY

La rou and la chang (Chinese winter sausages and bacon) being dried in the winter sun, somewhere in Guilin, China.

One week before Chinese New Year and there's so much busyness you can feel it all around. I don't even bother to go to the city because of the traffic. I hate having to queue on the road, queue at the check-out counters, queue to get out of parking lots. Another thing I absolutely hate this time of the year is the crazy, noisy CNY music. Absolutely hate it, nearly as much as I hate the wooden clucking of Dutch folk music.

I was just at Thai Seng Supermarket last week and people were buying canned food, cooking oil, Chinese winter sausages and all those CNY stuff and I was thinking "Am I the only one who hasn't started doing anything about CNY?" So I grabbed some cassava flour, some sugar, some veggies from Hong Kong (they have sweet pea sprouts for the first time, so there's no need to them get from Hong Kong) and I got home and made prawn crackers. We haven't had the sun for weeks and the last two days when I needed it, the sun came out. Somebody does like me. The prawn crackers turned out perfect, smooth, full of flavor and they puffed about four times their size. Again, I urge you to make your own prawn crackers because there's no way commercial prawn crackers are made with prawns.

Addictive home-made prawn crackers. This year, I made my prawn crackers with yellow prawns and sand prawns. The cheaper paper-skinned white prawns are all farmed. In fact, all prawns served in restaurants are farmed and the redder they are, the more likely they are to have been fed a diet that includes dye.

The fried prawn crackers expanded more than four times the original size. Specks of minced prawns are visible, unlike commercial prawn crackers which are clear and translucent before frying.

I made chi ku chips too. This year, I didn't peel the chi gu to keep the fiber and also to reduce wastage. I over-fried them but no matter, they are still delicious. 

With the huge CNY meals looming ahead, I've cut back on my intake of carbs so that I won't spill out of my new dress. CNY is that time of the year when we are likely to meet friends we haven't seen since the previous CNY so there's tremendous pressure to look better or at least unaged. With all the busyness, or the busyness in being busy, I'm taking it easy and a meal can be just fried veggies with winter sausages or la rou (Chinese bacon). On our visits to China in the wintry months, la rou and la chang are always on the menu. In the villages and smaller towns, every family makes their own la rou and la chang. I am so blessed every year because my friends from China would get their moms to make extra la rou and la chang for me, and since one friend is from Sichuan and the other from Jiangxi, I get different varieties of la rou and la chang. Home-made la rou la chang are SO different, SO SO much more delicious and fresher than those in the stores.


If you are wondering what to cook during this busy period, just slice some Chinese sausages or la rou or both (I used home-made Sichuan sausages and store-bought Cantonese la rou) and toss with with a bit of veg oil in a smoking hot wok or frying pan, add parboiled veg, sprinkle some salt and rice wine over and that's a light dish that goes well with rice. 


Kailan stems are all stems and no leaves, available this time of the year. Very crunchy and sweet.

And now excuse me while I run off to make pineapple tarts and almond crisps.

Christmas Dinner 2011

I went straight from church to my kitchen where I worked until the guests arrived. I didn't even have a chance to shower or step into the washroom! I had moved my Christmas dinner to Christmas Day (Christmas dinner is always on the eve this part of the world) and forgot that my helper celebrates Christmas at home too so I had to do everything myself. Dinner parties are a cinch here because we have help to clean the house, set the table, prepare the ingredients and all that. Anyway, Vero came in after 4 pm and she helped me more than all the three men in the house did the whole afternoon. For that, I gave her Boxing Day off so we'll just have bread and turkey soup today.

Okay, I should give credit where it's due. Hub arranged the tables, got the drinks and did last minute shopping.  He did a great job chopping nearly 1.7 kgs of pork because I forgot to tell the butcher I wanted ground pork. Machine-minced pork is rather pasty and not right for what I wanted to make. Ming set up the speakers in the patio and was in charge of music. We had Michael Buble and Diana Krall singing for us. So good, especially Diana Krall. Buble's too commerical for me. Wey helped here and there, disappearing upstairs to play computer games whenever I'm not looking. I miss my daughter. The family just misses her so much this time of the year but she was on Skype with us and she was happy at yet another dinner party, third in a row this week.  Shanghai seems like the happening place for expats.

Initially it was just a party for 17 including my family but the guests swelled to 24 so at the last minute I bulked up the veggies and added an English trifle. The trifle was the worst I've made and I think the spoilers were the cheap rum and store-bought Swiss rolls. The surprise hit of the night was something new to us: Bacon Explosion, which is really a pork meatloaf wrapped in a layer of weaved bacon strips. I am told that it was very very good--I didn't get a chance to eat it except for a thumbnail-sized bit when S was about to stab it with her fork. I did eat the what was left--the bacon bits and dried cranberries--and it was SO good, the crispy, tasty, smoky, salty bacon and sweet cranberries were perfect together.

Great food, wine, music, weather, friends and family and a reminder that we are so blessed because Jesus was sent to redeem us.

                   Roasted turkey with traditional chestnuts stuffing.




My version of Bacon Explosion.

Radicchio (which I've learnt from this dinner, should not be cooked if you want to keep the pretty color), mixture of brussel sprouts, baby carrots and asparagus, and fennel.

                    English trifle.


White Christmas log of creamy silky coconut cream and durian Swiss roll!

                  Dark choc cupcakes with marzipan stars.

                            Traditional fruit cake with home-made marzipan.

                        Australian cherries.

Pumpkin soup (pumpkin from my garden) and bread photos to be uploaded later.