STEAMING IT UP AT PARKROYAL

YOU'D THINK THIS HEAT IS ENOUGH to put you off eating, let alone having a boiling-hot Steamboat dinner! Well, food is food, and when I was invited to review the Parkroyal's latest offering of steamboat, I jumped at the chance, so along I trot to their trendy Cool Bananas poolsite outlet. Actually you can also get steamboat at Tamarind Brasserie but we chose Cool Bananas because it's air conditioned and also because it's got a choice of some other a la carte items which are really quite good, as No2 Son was with me and he's not that fond of steamboat.

So there we are: for RM68++pp (min 4 pax at CB) you get a selection of raw stuff brought to your table, together with Chicken Stock or Tom Yam soup. There's quite a lot of meat: filleted fish, chicken or beef, and lots of seafood: tiger prawns, mussels, crabs etc. Personally it was all I could do to handle the prawns; the thought of tackling the crabs was just too much so I left those alone. Plenty of noodles and green veg as well.

However, they do have a great selection of condiments (garlic and ginger sauce, sambal belacan, must-have chili padi, garlic oil etc) which went well with the chicken stock, my personal preference because it doesn't envelop the taste of everything with lemon grass!

If you're a Prestige Member there's RM10 off, but if you add another 40 you can get freeflow of wine, beer or soft drinks ... mmm. There's "deluxe" fruit for afters, but I chose the Haagen Daaz ice cream instead. One's gotta take full advantage of these rare opportunities to indulge!

No2 Son chose to have the make-your-own pizza which was quite tasty, although to be frank he helped to polish off a lot of the beef!

ONE BLIND MOUSE

YESTERDAY MORNING I woke up with a start ... something wasn't quite right. And sure enough, the ceiling fan wasn't on, a sign that we had had a power cut at some point (probably not too long ago as I wasn't dripping in sweat). I'm not an air-con person, which is just as well.

Anyway I lay there for a bit, hoping that it would magically come back, as is normal during an interruption from TNB - but after about half an hour realised it probably wasn't an external problem.

So down I traipse to check the fuse box, and yes - the trip button was down, so I pushed it back up, thinking myself lucky it was a problem which was quickly fixable. Alas it wasn't to be - nothing came back on.

I rang TNB to be told there weren't any reported problems in our area, but that they would report it and I would get a call from their engineer. So I got dressed and popped next door to ask our neighbour - but they were OK. So it was obviously an isolated problem. Typical.

Still no sign from Tenaga, so I rang my electrician who was here within the hour. He checked around, hummed and haaed ... and then I heard a, "AHA!"

Guess what - one stupid mouse had run up the BACK of the fuse box and lodged itself within the wires, only to be electrocuted somehow or other. It had died a few days back and ... yes you've got it ... when it started to decompose, the juices shorted all our fuses hence the blackout. ARGHHHH!!! The smell when he opened the box was DISGUSTING!

Anyway my knight in shining armour (or rather a Honda Cub) got rid of the little carcass, had to ride off into the horizon to get a completely new junction box and fuses both inside AND outside, so it was another hour or so before we were back to normal again. I'm sorry for the poor mouse BUT to be honest sorrier for myself. The whole thing cost RM450, and now I hear noises from my fridge which means it may not have liked the sudden power cut!

To give Tenaga their due they did follow-up - after the problem was fixed, of course.

Still, if anyone can tell me the number for "mouse" I'll go and put RM10 on it I think ... !!!

CURRY 'N DURIANS

I CAME ACROSS A RATHER NOVEL suggestion the other day: apparently durians go well with curries! Would you Adam and Eve (believe) it!

When this friend suggested it, I was quite astounded. I know it goes well with plain boiled rice, or, a la Thailand, even better with white pulut (glutinous rice) and sweetened cooked santan ... mmm ... but CURRIES?

To prove it, this friend decided to have a CURRY PARTY, so we all trooped along to her place for it a couple of days ago. It wasn't really a Curry and Durian Party actually ... it was a Curry and Durian FEAST! She had ordered TONS of the stuff - well, to be exact, 20 durians - and there were only 8 of us! There were Ang Hey and D20s and all other names that I have never heard of. All absolutely mouthwatering. And the curries! There were fishhead, chicken and beef rendang.

I tell you, she made her point. It was delicious. Both WITH and without curry sauce. We had a great time, and my husband made a real pig of himself, beating all the locals there with his SIXTEEN durians. I managed a measly five ...

SMC - Spicy and Marketey

WASN'T THE WEATHER terrible last night! Still, a group of our friends got together to celebrate a rather special occasion, so where does one head for such an occasion but the Rasa Sayang's Spice Market Cafe of course - otherwise known as SMC. I like the place for many reasons: one doesn't have to traipse all the way into town; it IS somewhere you can take people if you want to go somewhere special ie a bit more upmarket but still be comfortable, and, equally importantly, serves good quality food. It's not cheap, but then you couldn't get the spread without paying for it.

As it was Saturday evening it was their Seafood Buffet - the place was packed. I will say this for the SMC - it really does have some excellent stuff: the Japanese counter is full of fresh sashimic, octopus and other raw delights; the seafood is amazing: slipper lobsters, huge prawns, oysters, crabs, fish etc. The list goes on. I think the only thing you couldn't find there was caviar!

Unfortunately one can only eat so much, so I chose to go for the things I wouldn't normally partake of - all the above of course, plus a rather delectable roast beef. However just HAD to try the Hokkien Mee - not bad, considering it's pork free! I also liked the Sharksfin Soup - it was chokka with crab meat.

Their desserts of course are just out of this world, although I would have liked a little bit more cakey stuff instead of all mousses and creams. It was funny to see the chocolate fountains (yes, they have two - one white and one brown!) spewing the melted chocolate everywhere every time the door opened to the outside, because the wind was so strong it kept blowing the chocolate all over the place!

The SMC has come a long way since it started all those years ago when the Rasa reopened. Then, I'm sorry to say, it left a lot to be desired. Service was substandard and the food was not brilliant. I know, cos I have done many reviews there for both Star and The Expat magazine, and I was forever complaining bitterly to the powers that be about it. However, I was truly delighted to see that not only have they got their act together, but the overall quality of the food served is way above standard. The crowds were a testament to their success.

Having said that, I really was stuffed, so it's not a place I can go to regularly. Not sure what my cholesterol level is today either ... !

OCEAN FOOD

My good old (rich) cuz was in Penang once again and kindly invited her country cousin to dinner, so off we trot to Ocean Green in Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah, one of her favourites, for some seafood. This must be one of the most well-known places in town – despite the fact that it was a Thursday night it was quite packed. Many people go there because it’s become a Penang institution.

After she ordered I piped up with a, “Oh yes I interviewed Dato’ Kee (Phaik Cheen) recently, and she told me that the Fish Assam Pedas with Bee Hoon from here is one of her favourites.” At that my cousin promptly changed her order of steamed fish to that.

First to come were some plain steamed large prawns. They were very fresh, and went well with their home-made chilli sauce. I would have liked it even more if they had marinated it with a bit of salt (or soya sauce) and a pinch of sugar because it would have given the meat a bit more taste. As it was, even with the chilli sauce it was just slightly insipid.

Next came a soft and tasty taufu kerabu, and then the piece de resistance – Fish Assam Pedas with Bee Hoon. One served oneself with a bit of blanched bee hoon and bean sprouts, then poured the curry sauce over. Honest verdict? It wasn’t brilliant. A good Assam Pedas has got kick: sour, spicy, sweet and salty. It was bland, and there really wasn’t enough sauce to go with the amount of bee hoon they served. "So much for Dato Kee's recommendation," she mumbled. Still, at least the fish was fresh.

The baked crabs were also disappointing: mushy and tasteless, unless you doused it with the choon peah sauce (Worcester Sauce and chopped chilli), at which it tasted, surprise surprise, just like Worcester Sauce and chopped chilli!

Having said that, I like the old-fashioned feel to the place - esp the hotel opposite which seems to have been there since time immemorial. The seaside atmosphere brings back memories of childhood when things weren’t all air-conditioned, and you could sit down to a slap-up meal and tuck in with just the sea breeze to cool you down.

POUND FOR POUND

Isn’t it amazing – apparently in the UK, the beleaguered NHS (National Health Service) are about to run a pilot whereby if you are grossly overweight, they will PAY you to slim down. Yes, for every pound that you lose over a 3-month period, you will get one £ sterling in the form of supermarket vouchers, which can only used in exchange for “healthy” food. It will be based on their BMI (Body Mass Index, which if over 30 means you are obese. Volunteers set their own target.

Never mind that it’s for their own good, and if they are obese they stand to shorten their life; they are actually being rewarded for losing weight. I say, what about the others who have always looked after themselves and don’t cost the British public money?

(It’s a bit like when they reward non-payers of fines and car parking violations here by giving them a “discount” if they finally, after years and years of mounting amounts, pay up. Again, the ones who pay on time get no real reward.)

If the pilot is successful, the rest of the UK will follow suit. Of course the NHS are doing this because it already costs them a heck of a lot (millions of pounds) to treat obesity and its related problems: weak hearts, high cholesterol, cancers, bad knees, diabetes etc etc etc.

But will it really work? Experts in the UK have already warned that this might mean people will put on weight then lose it rapidly just to get money, which will mean even more problems. Yo-yo dieting can weaken hearts. And once they get the vouchers, will they maintain the weight?

Still, who can blame the NHS? This must be a last-ditch attempt to get people healthy. Despite people like celebrity chef Jamie Oliver trying to “ejukait” the masses from young, nearly ¼ of the population is overweight. On the one hand you get size zero models who starve themselves to death, and on the other stars like Dawn French (The Vicar of Dibley) who is Size 20 and proud of it (“I’m not bothered,” she said), and are held as bad role models. New statistics apparently show that if the current trend carries on, the majority of the British population will be obese before the turn of the century. That’s scary! Still, the way I'M carrying on, all this eating ... it may be I will need an incentive like that to lose weight!!

MOANA LISA

NO I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting. I'm just having a moan and a rant. In fact, the title should be MOANA HELEN but nobody would understand the joke then would they!!

Today I'm moaning about Penang road markings. It's incredible how badly done and, dare I say it, STUPID they are. In fact, it's got to the stage where every time I see a road being tarmacked, I think to myself, "I wonder how they're going to cock it up!" and inevitably, they do. WHAT IS THE POINT, I ask you, if they're going to spend a fortune repairing, widening and tarring a road surface beautifully, only to bugger up the markings?

I've seen it happen umpteen times - they put down the white markings only to realise they've got it wrong. Then they paint those out with black paint, and repaint more white lines - which are still wrong. A few years down the line when the weather has deteriorated the black paint and the white lines beneath show through, you are left with so many lines you don't know which one is which.

WHEN OH WHEN are the authorities going to learn that, although obviously courtesy and good driving are prerequisites of road safety, equally so are PROPER and SENSIBLE road markings. Some of our markings are so bad that they are positively dangerous.

WHOEVER has heard of a 2-3 lane MAIN ROAD (and I'm talking in particular about the town to Batu Ferringhi Road here because that's the one I travel most often, although there are many more around which are equally stupid) which has one of the heaviest traffic loads around, changing into a secondary road whenever there is a right or left turn? There you are, driving along quite serenely - or as serenely as you can with Penang drivers - and suddenly your road becomes a right turning lane, and you have to desperately try to swerve to the middle lane, which becomes the ONLY lane going FORWARD because the LEFT lane is blocked by cars parked along the side. Sometimes I wonder if they hired monkeys to paint the road marks on, because I cannot conceive of any sane person making such a hash of it.

Another example is at Shamrock Beach, where the road (again we are talking about a PRIMARY road here) going into town suddenly becomes a right turn into the new housing development, forcing drivers who are going on to pull to the left, then rejoin the main road again AFTER the turn. EXCUSE ME but I do believe the main road users have right of way and NOT the ones turning right.

It's a miracle that we have had no major accidents so far - as it is we have our fair share already - but that may be pure luck, and it's only a matter of time. PLEASE whoever is in charge - do review and correct all wherever necessary before something does happen.

IT TAKES A DUTCHMAN ...

... TO COME UP WITH a book about something that the rest of us take for granted because we speak it naturally anyway ... well, after a fashion - an English-Hokkien dictionary!





Yes, Luc de Gijzel from The Hague in Holland, 5-year expat in Penang, proudly showed me his very first effort after years of research. And he did do quite a lot, unearthing along the way some interesting predecessors from China and Singapore.





"When we first arrived (to take up his new posting in Prai) my wife took Hokkien lessons at the YMCA. I joined her," the good-looking Dutchman explained. He needed a dictionary, but trawling through the bookshops here and even in Singapore didn't really help.





"When I asked at a local book shop, I was told that "Hokkien is just a dialect". I thought to myself, "How can you dismiss your own mother tongue like that?" According to Luc, Hokkien is NOT just a dialect but a proper language in its own right. Actually I need to find out more about this myself so I reserve judgement on this.





He then started compiling his own list, which just grew and grew, and then he came across an old dictionary from Singapore, printed in the 1940s. Together with help from his teacher Lee Siew Har, they embarked on this intriguing and, personally, quite daunting, project, and the result, after 1 1/2 years of work, is the "Eng Kok ua Pinang-su Hokkien ua chhiu ji tien" ... or at least that's what it says on the front cover!





Printed by Areca Press, the compact book is available in bookshops for RM22.





Although it's got no intonation per se, the intro does attempt to differentiate between the different pronunciations, but that's not easy: e.g. I can think of is "car" and "eat" - both start with 'ch' but in the latter he's put "chhia" and the former "chiah". Hmmm ... if I weren't a native speaker it would be even more confusing.





However, overall I think he's done a swell job, considering he himself isn't a fluent speaker (difficult for locals to get the 7 intonations right, let alone foreigners - remember that funny "kong kong kong kong kong kong kong kong" - grandpa said the tin can hit me?). He tells me he never knowingly says "cannot" - ie "bay sai" cos it could come out like he's "selling sh_t". Or horse sh_t! It will be a useful present for locals and expats alike.





Sadly, Luc is leaving us to return home, but Penangites should be proud (and slightly ashamed) that he's left us a USEFUL legacy to remember him by.