Meeting up

This weekend is very special. Yesterday I met up with my former classmates for a simple lunch at the Sunway Pyramid shopping complex in Kuala Lumpur. Last evening my daughter Grace and I had dinner with my youngest brother and his wife. Earlier today my two younger sisters fetched me after church service and we had lunch in the Midvalley Megamall.

There were four of us who met up for lunch at Sunway Pyramid had been classmates from form one until we completed our secondary school education. Yuet Wah and I continued to form six while Mo Tsing and Eu Kwan did not. Yuet Wah went on to varsity while I went to the UK for teacher training at Brinsford Lodge in Wolverhampton. Mo Tsing and Eu Kwan went their separate ways. However we have been keeping in touch all this while and Saturday's lunch was arranged by Yuet Wah when I flew into Kuala Lumpur from the Land below the Wind. Since MAS introduced its promotional cheap flights it is now more affordable for me to fly in to visit my daughter Grace who works in Kuala Lumpur. It's a two and a half hour flight from Kota Kinabalu to Kuala Lumpur.

Mo Tsing chose the restaurant. It served Teochew food. We opted for plain porridge and orderd a la carte dishes to go with the porridge. Yuet Wah decided on the fried noodles ( mee sua ). We chose the yam paste & gingko nut dessert. Over our meal our conversation centred on........ guess what? Our grandchildren of course!! We are now grandmas, the modern generation grannies, who are educated, independent and mobile.

From left: Peggy, Yuet Wah, Eu Kwan, Mo Tsing
We all had another thing in common. We help our children to look after our grandchildren. Our children go to work and we are the ones that fetch the grandchildren home from school, see to their meals and ferry them to their various activities. However, Eu Kwan's grandchildren haven't started school proper yet so she babysits them at home. She has three, the youngest being a few months old so her work as grandma is really cut out for her. She has a lot more to do than the three of us. Yuet Wah's and my granchildren are in primary school so they are older and easier to manage. It's a matter of cooking their meals for them, and being their chauffer.

We don't mind doing this as they are our flesh and blood, so to speak and if we don't help them, who will? Baby sitters are not an option as these children do not really need babysitting and maids cannot be trusted as they have been known to abuse children under their care. Housemaids are hired to do the housework and the older generation, usually the grandparents, supervise the children even though there is a maid in the home. We stopped having a maid after she abused our trust and the privileges given to her.

Mo Tsing has two grandsons who are still very young, the older being 2+ and the younger about ten months old. She doesn't look after them as she is still working. She babysits when required. Eu Kwan says the boy is very handsome. I asked Mo Tsing to put their pics on Facebook so that we can look at the photo albums. Before the end of the meal we had exchanged email and I exhorted them to sign up for Facebook. So I'm looking forward to meeting them again on Facebook.

Mo Tsing is a very dear old friend. When I entered form 1 in the Methodist Girls' School, Kuala Lumpur, I could not speak a word of Cantonese, the lingua franca in Kuala Lumpur. Neither did I know how to hold a pair of chopsticks. She was the one who took me under her wing. She taught me to speak Cantonese, how to use chopsticks and she introduced me to peanut butter. She also taught me how to sew so that I could sew my own clothes. Coming from a large family, this was a very important skill as we could not afford to have our clothes tailored.

Dinner with my youngest brother was at a restaurant somewhere in Cheras, a suburb in Kuala Lumpur. The food was Cantonese. We had steamed towfoo, crispy belly pork, smoked chicken and leafy vegetables sauteed with minced pork and mushrooms. We found the food to be tasty except the smoked chicken which had a very pungent odor. My brother Allen, as I discovered later, has a side of him which I didn't really know until last night. I learnt that the stray dogs around his home usually wait for his return each day as they knew he would give them dinner and dinner was different each day. Sometimes he even gave them breakfast!! I know my brother is a very kind and generous person but I didn't realise that his generosity and kindness extended to stray dogs as well! He has also just adopted a stray cat, a white cat which has been named Putih. Coincidentally my poor old cat was also named Putih as she was white as well, with lovely blue eyes. Unfortunately she was run over by one of my neighbours while I was out of town. We enjoyed a lovely dessert of dragon fruit from Allen's own garden.

This morning my two younger sisters, Doris and Rosalind fetched me after church service and we went to the Midvalley Megamall for an early lunch. After a walk-through viewing what was on offer at the restaurants, we settled for one which had a variety of dishes. I had dry curry mee, Doris chose assam laksa ( noodles in a sourish spicy soup ), while Rosalind settled for roti jala ( noodles rolled up like a tube) which came with a bowl of chicken curry. Doris also selected a variety of nonya kuih for dessert and we all had kopi-o ( black local coffee ).

Assam Laksa

Dry Curry Noodles

Roti Jala

We chatted about Doris' children, two of whom are in the UK, one doing his finals while her daughter will be completing her masters soon. Rosalind's two girls are undergraduates in Australia. My children are all working and independent. Time has flown by so quickly. I find it almost incredible that I'm a grandma on the wrong side of sixty. We reminisced about our younger days and the experiences we had gone through. All too soon it was time to leave and as they dropped me off at Grace's place, I realised how precious family is, siblings and children and grandchildren. With age comes wisdom as the adage goes, but sometimes it comes only after the fact, more often than not, only on hindsight. God Almighty is good and has been very good to our family. We thank Him for his blessings.

Doris, Rosalind, Peggy

Assorted Nonya Kuih

Spring Flowers

It's still spring, in temperate countries and that means

beautiful flowers and blossoms on trees

that had been hibernating

during the winter.

The variety and colors of spring flowers never cease to amaze me

and looking at them fills me with wonder and awe. Who

but the Almighty could have created such varied beauty,

such colors, such fragrance?

The variety itself is astounding and credit must also go to the gardeners who have coaxed such beauty from seeds or cuttings and landscaped them into artistic displays.

Even those that are considered weeds have their own unique beauty, such as the dandelions or the little daisies that sprout everywhere.

Children are like spring flowers. They are born innocent, like a piece of

white canvass on which patterns are painted by parents, people they come into contact with and the experiences they go through.

So that they develop to their full potential, we as guardians,

must nurture them carefully just like the gardeners tend to

their plants, fertilising, weeding and watering regularly.

All parents strive to do their best for their offspring and it is a fact of life that some are able to better than others for many reasons. One can distinguish the children who have been nurtured and taught well, whether from privileged or under-priveleged homes from those who have been maimed emotionally through neglect and abuse. As members of a community, adults should strive to make it their collective responsibility that each child has a fair opportunity to grow and develop into the person he is capable of becoming. Let us paint vibrant colours of beauty on their canvass.

Let us not forget that children, just like the spring flowers, are gifts from God, to nurture, love and cherish.

Running in the Rain

Have you ever walked or run in the rain? Maybe you did in your childhood days or in your youth when it was romantic to walk in the rain with your heart throb, with the melody of "Just walking in the Rain" running in your mind or with you humming it.

I remember playing in the rain in my childhood days, making paper boats to float down the running water in the drain, sometimes walking in the drain too, just to feel the running water flowing round my legs even as the rain pelted down on my head. Getting wet was a great sensation, the rain a shower from the sky. Of course the result was a few strokes of the cane on my legs from my mother who scolded me for being a bad role model. The big sister should know better than to lead her younger brother and sister to romp in the rain. Each scolding and reminder of my role came with a whack of the cane. Ouch!!

Fast forward a decade or so. In my undergrad days, it was a slow walk in the slight afternoon drizzles as my room mate and I made our way back to our residential college after lectures. We walked in companionable silence. There was no need for talk. We just savored the feel of the fine droplets on our faces, musing....

Fast forward a few decades.... two days ago, after a prolonged period of oven-like afternoons, rain descended on us without warning. The skies just opened and the much longed-for showers came down, slaking the thirst of the grass on brown fields and road edges. It was all too short; just a burst of rain and it was over. The sun came out with a vengeance. I was waiting to fetch my grandchildren home. Since the sun was out, I didn't bother taking the umbrellas with me. I had my book which I usually read while waiting for the school bell to ring and for the children to come out.

Suddenly without warning, the skies opened again and the rain came down, pelting the overhead shelter, drumming out all conversation among the waiting parents.

Oh dear! My little darlings were going to get wet! I had no umbrella, no hat, nothing with which they could prent them from getting wet.

Then I thought again. Heck! What's wrong with a little rain? They've never experienced anything like walking in the rain. So be it! When they came out, I told them apologetically that I didn't have any umbrellas with me as the sun was shining when I parked the car. "Let's just make a run for it, ok?"

True sports like they are, they readily agreed and hand in hand we ran into the rain, out among the umbrellas, dodging them as we ran, school bags in tow. Luckily the rain wasn't torrential and we got to the car very quickly. It was such a good feeling, to clasp their little hands and feel the drops of rain running down my face as we ran together.

Once in the car, we belted in and head for home, as fast as the traffic allowed us, and the children had a hot bath. They were none the worse for the mild drenching and I would like to think they enjoyed that run as much as their grandma did. Rainy days make me feel good and relaxed and I much prefer rainy days to hot sunny ones.

Few people would remember this little song which we used to sing on a rainy morning in primary school.

Rain, rain, go away
Come again another day
Rain, rain go away
Little children want to play.

Thunder, oh so loud
Go and hide behind a cloud
Wind, wind, blow afar
Blow until you reach a star.

Does this song ring a bell for anyone out there?

Food we had in Hokkaido

It was a very interesting journey to the Land of the Rising Sun. We landed in Narita early in the morning after a comfortable flight on Malaysian Airlines. At the immigration counter we had our passports checked and prints of our forefingers taken. This is a good move as no two people's finger prints are identical. Our Malaysian government should do this at all entry points into Malaysia. This way it can keep track of the people from neighbouring countries who come in, commit crime and go out, only to return using other passports. When their fingerprints are kept in a database and on their subsequent entries into our country, their prints can be compared and they can be remanded for entering on different passports. I'm sure this will also be a deterrent to those who come in with dishonest intentions.

During our visit we visited the wet market in Hakodate in Hokkaido. I was surprised to see the size of the crabs and scallops in the water tanks. There were different species of crabs as well.

Most of the seafood was either grilled or steamed and it was very very fresh and tasty.

I had my first taste of a grilled scallop. It was a large one and it was piping hot when we ate it. Very delicious it was and very sweet too, not sugar sweetness but the sweetness of the fresh scallop.

Most of the food we had was arranged by our tour guide. There was usually a soup, rice, grilled fish, tempura, steamed egg with mushrooms or a buffet where we could select what we wanted, such as the different kinds of sushi and ramen. I liked the rice cooked with scallop as it tasted as good as its aroma. Small round orange balls which I later found out were fish eggs ( what kind, I dont know, as our tour guide spoke no English and I do not understand Mandarin ) tasted like bubbles bursting in your mouth, slightly saltish.

However, a lot of food was strange to me and there was no English translation to help. Vegetables were familiar as we also have the same type in Malaysia. It was the cooked or pickled stuff that was totally alien and being unadventurous, I left them untried. My loss, but I did feel squeamish looking at some of them. The style of cooking was totally different.

One lunch was good as we each had scallop cooked in its shell, a whole soft succulent abalone also in its shell, a steamed whole crab shared by four persons, miso soup with crab, and rice flavored by some dessicated crab meat. The ramen which we had for dinner one evening was an experience unequalled at home. I don't know what they added into the soup to make it so tasty and there were some condiments which we had the option of adding to the ramen. Chili flakes also made a difference. The Japanese do not eat chili the way we do at home, sliced or pickled in vinegar or pounded with belacan. Only some places offer chili flakes and these can be added to ramen or miso soup.

However, I noted that such lunch or dinner did not come with any dessert. The only dessert we had were those offered in a buffet and it was usually pineapple, orange and grapefruit. There was also canned fruit cocktail.

Breakfast was provided in the hotels we stayed at and they were usually buffet style, with lots of variety, Asian and Western. Boiled white tofu is obviously a staple as it was present in every breakfast. Eggs were done omelette style or half boiled. Soft rolls, bread slices and croissants with butter and either strawberry or blueberry jam were always available as was cereal ( only one type ) and milk. Yoghurt was also there for the taking and there was a choice of tomato or orange juice. We could also have coffee, tea, green tea and water. There were dumplings, both vegetarian and meat dumplings, something like our dim sum. Porridge with its accompanying condiments and rice too were available.

All in all, it was an interesting eating experience for me as I rarely partake of Japanese food in Malaysia.