FUNNYACCENT

Serving Nasi Lemak with Seaweed

My walking mate, Mari and I had a dinner at my place. I cooked Nasi lemak Sambal Tumis Udang, prawn in hot chili gravy. Mari is my only American friend who could take hot food as we do back home. "Please don't make it mild, I'd like to see how hot can I take it." Mari reminded me over the phone.

Mari and I met over the softball game seven years ago. Well, actually it wasn't a game. I saw a flier on the front door of a building where I live. A group of woman was organizing a softball team. There were three names and phone number to contact at the bottom of a flier with. I called a second name, Mari. A thick southern accent answered my call. "You have an accent." said Mari. "That makes two of us," I responded.
Mari thought it was hillarious the way I said it. We ended up chatting for two hours. The softball team was never actualized, but Mari and I have become good friends.

Over the dinner I told Mari, back in Malaysia we eat Nasi Lemak for breakfast. But over the past ten years Nasi Lemak has become popular among the locals, street hawkers serve it for lunch and dinner. It's like bagel here, people eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

When I was a kid, nasi lemak was served in a wrap banana leaves. They scooped the rice in a cup while the rice was still hot. Press the rice all the way to the rim of the cup. Turned the cup upside down on a piece of clean banana leaf. A banana leaf is layered on top of a piece of an old newspaper. The banana leaf served as a wrapper. Lift up the cup, you get a solid cup-shaped Nasi Lemak. Topping with a slice of cucumber, sambal tumis ikan bilis (anchovies)and deepfried peanuts. Hard boiled eggs, squids and shrimps sambal tumis are popular too.

The banana leaf was folded in four steps that formed mountain like shape. When you unwrapped the banana leafs, the scent of banana leaf and a combination of fresh ginger root, lemongrass, clove, cinnamon stick cooked coconut milk is enough to make you drooling before you taste it. As for ingredients I have them all, except for Daun Pandan, a pandan leaves (a screwpine leaves). pandan leaves has this sweet aromatic scent and used in a lot of Malay dishesfor coloring too. Since I've been living here, I've never come across daun pandan yet. I hope I will one day.

We started with seaweed salad. Mari told me she had seaweed with sushi before, but she likes to learn how to make it. A prepared seaweed they sold at sushi food store is too expensive. I told her about fresh-right-from-the ocean seaweed kerabu I used to eat the years my family lived with grandmotherwhen my father was away. My grandmother's house was about a mile from the beach. There was always a fisherman who had known my late grandfather dropped in at grandmother's kitchen and dumped a basketful of fresh mackerels, anchovies or stingrays or crabs or promfits, clams or just fresh seaweed.

I remember the scent of roasted rice wafted in grandmother kitchen prepared by my sister KN over wood stove. The roasted rice was ground with stone mortar and pastle and added a fresh coconut grind, chili paste and tamarind juice. The seaweed was rinse thoroughly and chopped. Added all the ingredients in big bowl and we got Kerabu Seaweed. I still could tasted a crunchiness of seaweed exploded in my mouth. Boy..........it was heaven. I could tasted an ocean in my mouth.

All Under Heaven

After I watched Hero for a second time, I can make a conclusion, sometimes it takes a life time for us to learn and appreciate of what we have and to live together in peaceful "All Under Heaven".
Broken Sword (Tony Leung) wrote a message in calligraphy. The word he wrote was Sword. But the curves and the strokes of the ink on the paper brought a totally different meaning. When the king finally able to interpret the meaning of the word Sword he understoodd why Broken Sword, an assasin who for ten years has been trying to kill him (the King) changes his mind.

Hero is not only about the fighting and killing, but it goes deeper than that. It's about sacrifice, lcourage,living peaceful and an unfulfilled love. The story goes between present and the past. Two characters, Jet Li (Nameless) and Chen Dao Min (the King) have their versions. They spread their versions through different colors - red, green, blue and yellow. Every move, every step, even a blink of an eye sends a different message to each other. Only a true warriors could understand.

Four skillful warriors (Sky, Nameless, Falling Snow and Broken Sword) joint together in an unspoken language, through their understanding of the warrior codes to kill a king. Nobody understands the king motive, a reason that has driven him for years to unify and rules the world.

One of my favorite scene was when Namelss (Jet Li) and Sky ( Danny Yen) engages in their mind fight. They stood about 30 feet facing each other, eyes closed, but their minds were in a deadly fight. When they opened their eyes, Sky and Nameless moved gracefully toward each other, the tips of their swords cut through the rain drop( I replayed this scene over and over). It was beautiful shot.

Ocean

Which Extremity of the World Are You?
From the towering colossi at Rum and Monkey.

Raq, the Door Opener

After four hours drive from New York, Raq is probably a little confuses when she gets to my place. When I open a front door, I see her empty cage. I call out her name, she doesn't come out from her hiding placet, but I know she is out somewhere in the house.

She is not under the bed, I look behind the sofa, she is not there either. When B returns from the store with a cat litter, I expect Raq would be with him because B likes to take Raq for a walk.

"Bu, where is Raq, I thought she was with you?"
"No, she wasn't, did you try one of the closets?"
"Ahaaa..."
Both of us tiptoed to a bedroom closet. The closet door was three inches ajar. There she was, all four legs folded underneath her furry body.
Her green eyes glistening in the semidarkness looking back at us as saying, "What's up?"

By noon, Raq is settles in. She even finds her favorite spot. She jumps onto my sewing table, walks on my half-way quilt to a window sills. Somehow she manages to manueveres her way between two layers of window curtain and sits for half an hour watching the birds and squirrels in the trees. Birds and squirrels fascinate her. When she gets bored, she goes back to the closet or just lies down in the middle of the bed.

Raq doesn't like to be held, but she enjoys it if I stroke her back and tickle her neck. She would press her cheeks to my hand and legs. Sometimes she gently bites my finger, when I try to hold her, she moves faster than a lightning. I'll let her be for now.

The Sun Is In Hiding Place When Kill Bill 2 Is Out

Boy oh boy the weather is teasing us again. Friday was gorgeous, the sun laughed all day, the blue sky stretched her wings from front to the back and my complexion is getting browner.
Today, the sun was nowhere to be seen, the blue sky turned gray this morning. My new batik-wrap skirt has to wait until next week. (Sigh...............)

We had tortellini for dinner. I made the pasta sauce from a scratch two days ago and put it in the freezer. B likes two days-old pasta sauce. After the dinner, we drove to Jamaica Plain to give B's single cd to Deb. She was glad to finally meet B. We chatted for a few minutes and drove back to the city.
Both of us agreed to see Kill Bill 2. I liked KB2 better than KB1. Not too many limbs chopped off this time.

Vampires and Draculas

When you are away from home, I mean far, far away, there are many things you miss or you don't miss it at all. "When are you getting married?" was the most popular question I got back home.
A question was thrown in my face in different tone and situation. They usually chose a delicate moment say, at the wedding, when everybody could hear their question within 20 miles radius. They never asked a question when I was alone. No, never. The louder the question the better.

These women, they make it as their personal quest to hunt down every single andartu-oldmaids on every wedding day. They look, they search, they seek all the andartu-oldmaids in a crowd, they approach with both hands extending out to greet the victims, and wham...........came the question.

*"How come you're still not married?"
*"What are you waiting for?"
*"Don't be too choosy."
*"So, when are we going to eat nasi minyak?" (A special rice/dishes serves on a Malay wedding day).

We are far apart and yet..........

Mak,
Do you know what I had earlier today? I had kuih pau inti durian (steam bun with durian paste filling).
Do you remember the kuih pau we ate almost everynight when abah was still alive? Abah's favorite was red bean paste, yours was srikaya filling and mine was sardine filling.
We sat on the swing watching the full moon and waited for abah to bring us kuih pau. You made a pot of ginger tehtarik. We sipped the hot tea and enjoyed the cool night breeze.

The interesting fact about the kuih pau I had was made in Brooklyn New York. WE are thousands apart and yet for a split second I felt your presence.

Sushi Rice and Satay Recipe

The chicken came out better than I expected. Tender and moisture. I should've marinated the chicken this morning when I got home from work, but I was so tired.
I've been using my sister KN's satay recipe in two-third of the dishes I prepare. I like the scent of a mixture of pureed lemongrass, fresh ginger and garlic. The aroma coming our from the oven filled out my kitchen. Speaking of lemongrass, I should get a new batch next time I go to Supermarket 88.
The sushi rice I cooked for the first time turned out they way I wanted, soft and glutinous. I think I like sushi rice better than glutinous rice. Why didn't I try it before?

Pickle and Chutney

It's All About Them

Some people can communicate by talking in a loud voice. They shout at each other even they stand less than 12 inches apart. They talk as the other person needs a hearing aid. I'm one of those people who have a hard time to communicate with loud talkers.
I remember when the first time my mother took me to visit my maternal grandmother when I was six years old. My mother was adopted by Tok when she was a baby. She was the only grandmother we ever had, eventhough she never treated any of us as her grandchildren.

My maternal grandmother was known as Tok Gemok because of her size. Her house was like a summer camp, only it was all year around camp. There were so many children (my cousins), uncles and aunties in the house, I didn't know who was coming or who was leaving.
I remember sitting next to mother, leaning my body to her warm body, trying to figure out what was going on with all the shouting. Every few minutes some kids would approached Tok Gemok asking for some thing or, somebody would shout from the kitchen downstairs that somebody hit him. Tok Gemok responded to them by screaming at them that scared the shit out of me.

At one point Tok Gemok told them off by saying she was going to smack their heads to the wall if they didn't stop bothering her. They rolled their eyes and went away.
Those young men whom I learnt later as my uncles were as bad as Tok Gemok too. One of them said to one of my cousins he was going to pick him up and throw his ugly behind to the beach. The little sucker snorted and disappeared behind the coconut trees.
The amazing thing was, no matter howw harsh these kids were threatened, it didn't stop them to return and bothered their 'mean' uncles and aunties. That was what I thought, these people were mean.

One of my aunties told me to go and play with one cousins downstairs in the front yard. I shook my head and shot a quick look at my mother, "No, I'm not going and don't make me" look before she finished her sentence. Just listening to their loud snorting and sscreaming voices, calling stupid and ugly to each other had turned off any desire I had to join them.

When I was 11 years old I had a classmate named Latiffah. Her family was like Tok Gemok's family too. They communicated to each other by shouting. Father to mother, father to sons, father to daughters, mother to father, sons to father, daughter to mothers, mother to sons and sisters to brothers.
The first time Latiffah came over to my house, she was surprised to see my mother and my father were in the kitchen and they were not shouting at each other. On top of that my two little brothers and my sister KN sat at the kitchen table having their teas.

Now at my work place, I meet the same people with different name and different story. I'm aware the fact that working in Human Service, the first thing I have to remind myself over and over is this mantra, "I't not about me, it's about them". I've learned not to be sensitive, I've learned not to take it personally, but sometimes they get me. They get me by the way I respond to them. I don't respond to them by talking back in a loud voice or loud tone. But I respond to them by my internal reaction. This is bothers me. I don't want my decision making be influenced by split second weakness. It's about them, it's about them, I keep reminding myself.