FUNNYACCENT

You Can't Shut and Open Mind

If Nangka Is Called Jackfruit, Would Cempedak be Jillfruit?

Lately my Saturday morning run end up at Ming Supermarket. I could take left turn to West Dedham Street which become Dartmouth Street. From Dartmouth Street I turn right which take me along Boylston Street until I end at Boston Garden.

Instead of taking the leftt turn at West Dedham Street, my feet keep running on Washington Street heading toward Ming Supermarket. Ming Supermarket has been wicked wick lately with its new imported fruits and frozen fresh produce  from Thailand or Vietnam.

I'll just take a quick look become I got to have this when I see piles of frozen cempedak next to piles of durian. I only have a dollar tuck in my left sock, I have to finish my run.

I make another trip to Ming to get the cempedak. I leave it on the counter to defrost it. It doesn't look so smooth like the cempedak we'd just cut it open back home, but it is still cempedak. It tastes like cempedak: creamy , sweet and has its own cempedak fragrance.......heavenly cempedak which make me thinking of making cucog cempedak (cempedak fritters) the next time I get a new batch. I am drooling macam nak pengsan just to think about it.

What's In Your Closet?

Conversation overheard on the bus  this morning:

"You know what I found in Jake's closet the other night?"

"What?"

"A blow up doll...."

"What the fff........."

"That's what I said when I saw it"

"No...no....no....what the fuck you mess around in his clsoet?"

"What?"

"You have no right to look into his closet."

"Exfuckingcuse me,? I think I have the right to look into his clsoet...don't you think?'

"No,  I don't. Who are you? His fucking mother?"

"Shittttt.........you're tripping....., aren't you getting off? This is your stop."

"See you tomorrow...."

Who Is Katrina?

Angry Katrina

As I sip my coffee I turn the weather channel and the weather forecaster is talking about Katrina's Eye wall?

Eyewall? What eye wall?

How Dare You To Dream

When I was nine years old I wrote an essay about Mat Jenin. It was in the classroom assignment. Our beloved Cik Gu Julia was in hospital. She had a minor surgery and wouldn't return to the classroom until next week. The principal, assistant principal and a couple of more teachers from other classes reluctantly dragged themselves to our class to fill in the empty slots. The principal told us to write an essay about the story we heard from old folks. We had two periods to complete the assignment.

I loved Mat Jenin story except when he died at the end of the story. I had always thought the person who created Mat Jenin story was a mean person who had no backbone to do anything in his life even to dream. He created a character and named him Mat Jenin who dared to dream for a better life. At the end of the story he killed the character because in his mess-up mind, Mat Jenin dared to look outside a coconut shell.

Mat Jenin was a village young man who earned a living as coconut picker*.  Every day Mat Jenin climbed up the coconut trees,  selected the matured coconuts and dropped them on the ground. Later he rounded all the coconuts, counted them, and they paid him for the work he did for them with money or coconuts. Mat Jenin sold the coconuts and saved the money.

Mat Jenin was a hard working young man but he was also a dreamer. Sometimes his day-dreams slowed down his daily task. He would be up in the tree dreaming about selling his coconuts and put the money away. When he had enough money he would buy himself  a few acres of coconut estate. Mat Jenin worked harder and climbed more trees. He bought more properties. Now that he owned most of the coconut estates he could hire somebody else to do the job. Every morning he walked around his estates, feeling grateful and appreciating the fortune of his hard work. He stood in the middle of his estate, looking up into the sky and opened up both his arms. When he opened up his arms, he let go the coconut trunk he had been holding onto, he lost his balance and fell on the ground with a big thump.

In my essay, I changed the ending. Instead of letting go of his arms, when he looked up into the sky, a ray of sunlight got into his eyes which brought him back to his task. He finished his work, got paid. He saved the money and finally he actualized his dream.

On Friday, before the end of the class, the principal returned our assignments. When I opened my exercise book, my heart did a somersault, it was like the rock dropped into the water and sank in no time into the bottom of the river. On the top the pages, he scribbled in red ink: Rewrite the ending of your story. It didn't end this way - D.

How dare he is, how dare the stupid principal to critisize my essay. Abah loves my Mat Jenin story. He says I 'm brilliant. That stupid frog-eyes principal is so stupid, so stupid he doesn't know he is so stupid because he is so stupid......

All the way home I was cussing him with all the words I dared not to use in the house. I was hardly inside the house when I started berating the headmaster to Mak. I showed her the comment he wrote in my essay book.

"He doesn't travel much, that's why he never met your Mat Jenin." Mak comforted me.

It was long time ago, but we often forget the stories the grown ups tell the children stay in their minds all their lives. We don't realize the amount of impact  or damages these simple stories can make. I wonder how many children have given up their dreams when the grown ups constantly tell them, "Dont' be like Mat Jenin". Words are heavy to certain people, or light as a feather to others.

Some of us take a critism as a challenge, others will be offended. 

Some of us take another point of view to reflect our words and actions and learn from the past mistakes. The Egoists will be insulted and find ways to throw back the punch, (even it wasn't a punch).

We digest our experiences in different ways.

*LivefromHawaii

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Check this out. Dr. Anuar FArish's interview.

Chain Reaction

After more than a week drooling over  Lisa'a  dalca, I make a similar dish but with  thicker gravy. My version is known as kuah parpu in some of northern parts of Malaysia.  Instead of using potato I switch to sweet potato.

I always have sweet potatoes in my refrigerator. Sometimes when I'm too tired to cook, but I'd still want to have a decent meal (eerrrr...I mean simple home made meal- Buu will eat anything I eat, tolak batu dengan kayu), we'd have baked sweet potatoes. Cut them open as soon as I take them out of the oven, drop some butter on both halves, wallah.........we have healthy dinner.

Back to my dinner tonight:

I chop sweet potatoes, carrots, ginger and brinjal or eggplants. While chopping the veggies, I have a handful of split peas (parpu). Throw in all chopped ingredients, a tablespoon  or two of plain hot chillies paste and a little salt. I cook over high heat for the first twenty minutes and reduce the heat to medium.  Reduce the heat all the way to number two before I remove the pot.

I heat some olive oil in a skillet, and fry finely sliced shallot, garlic and ginger. Throw in cinnamon stick and anise seeds. When the aroma rise above my head, I pour all the ingredients from the skillet into kuah parpu pot. Cover the pot immediately to trap the heavenly aroma. Less than an hour, dinner is served with petit pain roll(run out of frozen roti chanai).

Riding the Bus With Me

Before I work in 02130 zip code I seldom ventured to this site of the town. Besides the job I had before didn't require me to ride a bus except redline subway. My daily trip was between my stop to Harvard Square.

Now, two-third of my ride to work is above the ground. I love it. I switch from red line to orange line and get off at Ba kc Bay Station. I get on the bus that stop in front of the building where I work. The whole trip from red line to orange line and hop onto the bus is between 45 to 50 minutes.

Sometimes I don't ride the bus, instead I ride the red line all the to Park Street station and switch to E GreenLine which go all the way to the end of E line. It takes five minutes walk from the last stop to my work place.

The interesting part of bus ride is when the bus move on the street side by side with E Green Line train when the train emerge from underground half way through Huntington Avenue. From this point there are five lanes. The middle lane is a train track and two lanes on each side are for automobiles.

The bus has to give way or stop when the train stop in the middle of the street for passengers to  get on and off. I've been observing this practice for more than two years, amazed at human ability to work side by side, sharing, give and take when it is necessary. Nobody ever get hurt of strike by a train or a bus or cars during this transition. I took the picture from my seat on the bus to work.

I received a Sepet cd in my mail yesterday. Pak Idrus is very kind to send it to me. Thank you very much Pak Idrus.

A View Through a Narrow Rails

The Workplace owes me four hours over time from last week. Instead of getting paid for over time I leave work at noon. Geri whom I met in Children Literature class at college stands outside Prudential building on Boylston Street waiting for me. We are five minutes early.

Both of us share the same habit. We'd rather be ten minutes early than five minutes late.

Geri is a first grade teacher in one of inner city public schools. It has been a while since the last time we went out for lunch.

One hour wait is too long at Legal Sea Food, so we head to Food Court. Once the food and drink in our hands we head outside the terrace.  All the tables are taken, we sit on the concrete stairs facing the street. I have Tandoori Roti with Gobhi Mutter - cauliflower cooked with potatoes and peas and Geri has Thai Chicken Wrap.

Half way tearing apart my roti, I pick up my camera and maneuver myself to snap a picture of dark statue in front of us. I show Geri the fruit of my effort through the LCD screen.

"Gorgeous, a view through a narrow rails. I like it. If you are the teacher what is the first thing you teach your students?"

"Hmmm........they can see one object from different direction, different point of view."

"Keep talking."

"They won't understand what tolerance is all about unless they learn to see from different point of view."

"I know what you mean. That will open up their ways of thinking."

"Exactly, some questions have more than one answer."

Cute, Sweet and Juicy.......

Cute is overrated word. It seems that cute is smack on every single object on this planet.

Cute shirt, cute shoes, cute girl, cute boy, cute guy, you look cute in that skirt, cute, cute, cute, cute......... but when I saw this munchkin grape, I couldn't help to use the word cute...This is what I call cute and juicy. Damn......... I ate my own word.

When the Time Comes

The past three days have been blessing. Gorgeous weather. The sun has shown its mercy since this weekend. The kind of summer I wish to go on with no ending. Of course everything has its time. Time to grow, time to learn , time to rest, time to love, time to let go, time to stop, time to die. Nothing lasts forever.

When I was a kid I was horrified to think about death. Not about my death, but my mother. When ever I learned about some body's death, I couldn't sleep at night. I tossed in my bed all night. I made numerous trips to a bathroom to wash my face. I thought if I felt asleep, I wouldn't be able to help my mother if she needed me. My worst fear was, if my mother died, my father would gotten himself a new wife. I would get a wicked stepmother who beat me and my siblings everyday. She would forced us to do all the house chores and starved us. She would be as bad as Noormadiah, Umi Kalthum or Siti Tanjung Perak in the old Malay movies.

I never talked about my childhood fear until many years later. I was in my twenties when I learned that I wasn't the only kid who had the fear. Most of my friends shared the similar experience. All of us feared about the death of our mothers. None of us worried about the death of our fathers.

Why my mother and not my father? I could say it from my experience. When I was growing up, most of the kids I knew personally or from distance were the kids who lost their mothers. The first year we lived on army base in Sungai Besi, I became to know this chatty girl who lived four blocks away from my house. We met at Quran reading class. She was two years older than I was, but she was slow at at McAdam reading level. So, Park Ci Adam, our Qumran instructor sat her next to me. She was like a 24 hours weather forecast TV station. Yak...yak....yak...yak....

When her mother died during a complication childbirth,  her father married for a second time a few months later. When they returned from their hometown with her new step mother, she turned into a different girl I used to know. She turned mute.  She still attended the Qumran class, but the only time we heard her voice was when she sat in front of Park Ci Adam to read her Sarah. She never spoke to any of us again. A couple of months later she went back to live with her grandparents in Negeri Sembilan.

There was another kid on the base whose mother died too.  The father married for a second time and took his young wife back to the base. The following year when my father was stationed in Simanggang Sarawak, we went to live with grandmother in Penang for a year.  Three or four kids in grandmother's village lost their mothers. All of them lived with their stepmothers.

During those years I never met, knew or heard about kids who lost their fathers and their mothers got them stepfathers. Makcik Piah was my mother's childhood friend. Her husband was a fisherman. He lost in the sea on one stormy night. They never found his body. Makcik Piah brought up all her four children single-handedly. When I met Makcik Piah for the first time all her children were grown up. Two of her daughters were in Teachers College in Tanjung Malim. Her third daughter went to the same high school with my sister KN and her youngest son was in the first year of high school. Makcik Piah never married again.

Makcik Piah was one of few women I knew in those years who continued to live their lives and brought up their children without men involved. And for old Malay movies I don't remember ever watched one with a main character died leaving his wife and children behind, and later the wife married again. Not even one.