Home away from Home

Bright and early, I boarded the bus and headed out to meet Kak Teh at Malaysia Hall. There was no water to be seen anywhere along my route and I was waiting in front of the Bayswater tube stop - where the familiar figure of Kak Teh came up the street to meet me, and gave me a big hug. We started talking and did not stop until lunch time!

I knew it would be warm and wonderful to meet her, but it was underlined to me that she embodies all that is true and warm of the Malaysian personality - and to many of the community here, she is the heart and home away from home. Meeting her brought me in touch with a whole part of Malaysia inside of me I had not visited for a long time, and it was a gentle homecoming.

I think the cafe at Malaysia Hall is worth a visit. I will confess I was so intent on the conversation, I barely tasted my food! There is no picture of the nasi lemak as I had demolished it before I thought of taking a picture - aiyah, not a food bloggerlah! In the picture you can see the curry puff and a bit of the roti canai, a pot of my Frankincense potion, YM's book (for Kak Teh) and some Terengganu rendang and Asam kepala ikan that Kak Teh kindly brought for me.

Of course I would have carried on till dinner if I could, but I had an appointment with the Tower of London. Ahh, I drifted away back into the bowels of the city, the happy hum of friendly words in my head.

Wot I et: for lunch or comfort food in pouring rain

oo-er, is that a sausage or are you just pleased to see me?

Dodging the flood

Woke up today with more rain slanting across the windowpanes. The children are home at the start of their summer holidays - with its wet weather promise of indoor pursuits! We should be like true brits and don our wet weather gear and wellies and go tramping round the mud, at least to stop the cabin fever from mounting.

However, being a bad blogger mum - (Is that an oxymoron for the holidays? Blogging means "ignoring your children".) I have agreed that if they allow me some time to blog - I will allow them some time on their Nintendo DS. Which I guess will balance out our electronic burnout, I won't spend hours on this because I shall be aware that my little darlings are simultaneously frying their brains.

I was very lucky on Friday going up to London - I left on the 9.13am train and the drizzle was coming down steadily. By the time I arrived at Victoria Station, and got on the first train to my destination there was an enormous clap of thunder and the word "cloudburst" springs to mind. The train was cancelled. The roof of the station gave up the ghost and immediately sprang innumerable leaks as large as rubbertree trunks. It was amusing to see the waterfalls pouring onto the cash and ticket machines, and all the people taking pictures. I had to save the battery and find a train. Bagel, chocolate and flower vendors looked on in amazement at the encroaching flood. Large rivers of water began to snake across the white, slippery stone floors as I dodged huge drips and deluge from platform to platform trying to catch a train out. On my third try I was successful, and chugged away from the beleagured station into clearer skies.

Photo by Warwick Bambrook

My cousin YM from Fusionview picked me up and we had a huge gossip about blogworld, probably boring anyone else within earshot. Angie made us yummy smoked mackerel pasta with rocket, watercress and baby spinach (an added touch she said, owing to my post on tortellini - the blogworld is all about us!). The sun was hot and we decided to walk off lunch at the park, passing gardens bursting with roses and lavender. Two-thirds of our group being Malaysian, we stopped off for coffee and cake.

So while the nation looked like this:

photo by Peter Stewart

I was wandering around in weather like this:


Mr G phoned and said all the trains between London and home had been cancelled. Nobody had made it east since mid-morning and anyone headed west were stopped at Oxford and then turned back, but finally made it home by midnite after 7 hours. We were all shocked at the flood news, and our thoughts go out to those who are still struggling in the continuing rain. Thanks to YM for a lovely visit and more after the lunch break.

Off to the Tower with you!

Ooh crown jewels and ravens and the echo of the executioner's axe. Or I could just be fighting my way through hordes of tourists. Quite excited really, never seen a Beefeater close up before! I say!
This photo is from the Royal Palaces website.

I'm off to London to see the queen, err... I mean YM and Kak Teh. We're gonna have a grreat time!

Have a really really good weekend folks.

Tortellini Malaysian Style - wot I et for lunch

Mr G has taken to buying enormous packs of tortellini, which the children prefer in a soup - tortellini en brodo, I believe it is called. But there is only so much tortellini you can have in a week! And who is left to correct the food balance in the house? So for my lunch, I really really fancied pan mee, not that this is a craving from my childhood - we never seemed to have it in our house or when we went out! I figured the tortellini would do, as the fresh pasta is egg noodle dough, so I boiled it up with Marigold brand vegan low salt soup powder (!! don't ask!! Delia uses the regular kind, same brand.) and added two handfuls of Waitrose rocket, watercress and baby spinach salad from a bag, some mini corn and a big spoonful of chiu chow chilli oil. Happy!

And what else makes me happy? A bowl of lovely ripe summer cherries!

Sunny Intervals - Jacob's Ladder, Bath

This is only the middle bit of the climb up the hill. More steps before and more steps after. I don't always walk it, I confess. But I try to do it more than once a week, hopefully at least three or four times! I caught it in a quiet, summer moment between rain and schoolboys sliding down the bannisters. Apparently they have been doing that for decades from the boy's school at the top - sturdy steel worn smooth by countless...er...slides. There is always birdsong, you'll be able to see the year's progression from these steps: first Spring, now Summer. When the leaves begin to fall, I will chart them to the bareness of winter.

Started to dig (How many HSS does it take to build a Garden?)

*update: It is done now. Top view of garden above and from my front door view of the new grass and herb bed! Two weeks before we can actually walk on the grass!


Front garden being cleared...

Summer is here, make room!

Nigella sativa and Nigella (photo by Francesca York) http://www.nigella.com - this photo is for Kenny. Learn more about the herb here.

These are not quite the right colours but I like them, some strange technical fairyland has touched the edge of my photo! Surreal.

My garden is being dug up and replanted to make an aromatic herb garden. I am excited. Will update you on progress.

I'd like some blue roses, wouldn't you?

First strawberries of summer

I always try to catch that first elusive taste of an English strawberry. It's so subtle, vanishing as it melts in your mouth. These tiny little berries pack a small explosion of it - and you have another and another...until the whole punnet is gone. Even better go out to the all-you-can-pick place on the old Roman Road and get them fresh off the plant in the benign English sun or drenched from the quiet rain.

Kenny Reads, Leaves

Sufian Abas took a very serious portrait of Kenny. He looks like he has a flame of enlightenment over his head like a bodhisattva. Why did I post this pic? It is good to have different viewpoints of everyone, which is why Sufian's photos are so extremely good. Kenny was describing the "I" in his book in the morning, just waking up:

"I see my face as black and white and see no shades of grey." - in Broken Mornings

So since I missed the last Readings, Kenny promised me he would get out Broken Mornings and give me my own private reading when I visited. Lucky me, I thought, but expected him to be kidding. But no, the man remembered his promise. He delivered unto me my own personal read of "Leaves" over the cake I might have mentioned once or twice. Kenny is very good at reading, no wonder ladies get rapt. The paparazzi were too busy listening, we didn't get any photos. It wasn't that kind of evening anyway. He read "Smell" which Spiffy chose and "Settling In" which Lyrical Lemongrass requested. So we all got one. It was fair and square. Kenny said that he felt he had moved on from these stories but liked them again now he heard them aloud. So all was good.

We even got a drawing demonstration on a napkin - hey, he can draw too - look forward to seeing some illustrations when Dark City 2 comes out. We all reluctantly stood up to leave and we dropped Spiffy off at the train and Kenny at his new place, clutching a Just Heavenly cake, I wonder if he ate it or just fell asleep on the spot!

Lyrical Lemongrass and I went off to find the perfect sashimi...we did very well. She blogs about Umai-ya. Mmm, what a lovely crowning evening. Thank you for looking after me so well. I will take this day and store it in my jewel box.

Let Me Eat Cake

Beautifully textured carrot cake from Marmalade in Bangsar Village, photo courtesy of Lyrical Lemongrass

That is how I felt about attending Readings@Seksan's two Saturdays ago. Metaphorically, my life was rich with new experience like reading poetry in Malaysia, a country I had exiled myself from for so long. I was attending with my new blogger friends, another rich and rewarding experience: new kindred is a rare and valuable thing, and here it was in abundance where I never knew it could be found. I was also in touch with my friends from the Convent and my cousins whom I had felt so close to in my teenaged years, right before I left home forever. Perhaps I had come back properly this time, in my whole body, with my whole spirit.

Mirroring my inner life, we did indeed eat a lot of very excellent cake. As you saw in the previous post, my lunchtime was graced with a heavenly treat and so was my teatime. Since it was Lyrical Lemongrass who accompanied me, the standard of the food was high high high. But I digress, since food is always so distracting.

Seksan's is indeed an inspired venue, open to nature and nurturing to the arts. I truly wish to thank Sharon Bakar@bibliobibuli who organises the Readings for her generosity in asking me to read, unproven. She has a detailed account of the Readings at her site on the 26th of May. Sharon is such a prolific and informative blogger of all things literary, that you may have to scroll down a ways to see it. The June Readings will be last-ish Saturday in June, watch for them! She is an oasis in what used to be desert, and the landscape is slowly changing.

I read in august company. An editor of the NST reading evocatively from his book Brickfields: A Time, A Place, A Memory. A veteran poet who has trod the lonely way before us, venerable and published. Young, new, confident talent, already so accomplished, so many awards, poised on the lip of his future. The founder of readings herself, what more can I say! A silverfish short story award winner reading a story so plain, expressive and raw that I was in complete and total awe - about a sexless marriage.

A full spectrum of Malaysian culture in its unique diversity revealed itself both in readers and audience. We do take it for granted, you know - our multiculturality with attendant issues and conflicts. As an individual, this experience in its most positive extremity, seems to enable me to walk some everyman's land between all cultures of this world and is a gift to fitting in, which may not be all people's cup of tea, but I have lived long in hard lands with it.

Photos from Leon Wing, thanks. Left to right Balan Moses, Pey Colborne, Nic Wong, Noraishah Ismail, Bernice Chauly, Wong Phui Nam.