Verves In Composition

I wonder how long have I been a moron not to notice it. As independence day approaches, we hang our beloved ‘Jalur Gemilang’ along KILOMETERS OF HIGHWAYS, on ALMOST ALL our ARCHITECTURAL ACHIEVEMENTS, and Lord knows where else people are capable of hanging flags..

But the vertical Malaysian flag, I’ve just realized….. Is the wrong way around

Good Grief. After years of living in this country I thought I would have actually known it inside out.

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Mah-lordy. (Excuse me I’m still recovering from the shock of my stupidity) After all the coloring and drawing competitions I’ve entered for on independence days. Well anyway the vertical flag was meant to be pin point accurate, there should be 8 equivalent length stripes with the balance being longer, and there shouldn’t be a swallow tail.

Perhaps there is a good and fairly simple explanation for this. Maybe it was just looked much idealistic from a design point of view.

I just hope that some tourists are not laughing their asses off the moment they touch down on Malaysian soil until they bringing back stories to their own countries on such a rara avis.

But upside down or the right way up, I GET TO SLEEP IN NEXT FRIDAY!!!!!!!! YIPPEE!

Was in Bahau, Negeri Sembilan for a work trip and I heard that the Chinese food there was fantastic.

A kind man in the pawn shop told me that a good place for prawns would be in Koh Teng Restaurant which isn’t hard to find since Bahau is a small place…which had
ONE OF THE BEST PRAWN DISHES I’VE EVER TASTED!

FRESH, HUGE TIGER PRAWNS SWIMMING IN A SAUCE THAT IS SO DELICIOUSLY INDESCRIBABLE!!!!

I really really can’t put into words on the magnetic fusion of the taste but you have got to try it for yourself!

Oui. I cleaned it up.

One thing though, this dish is steeply priced at RM21.00 per prawn so that whole dish of two prawns alone was RM42.00. (koff koff) But go pay for it just to try it!

With Lydia still craving for her fix of Fried Sotong and me yearning to learn the roads in Kuantan, we drove into the then unknown territories of Padang Lalang (well,… unknown to us). Since it is an industrial area, Padang Lalang looks like the kind of place that is so well suited for filming the local industrial horror stories at night.

We were about to turn back when I noticed a small road sign. Following 3 of the same signs later led us to a brightly lit corner behind a seafood processing factory cars all parked until it backed up into the main road.

Your typical seafood restaurant, Malaysian Chinese style. Fumbling with our limited Cantonese food vocabulary we just requested for several recommendations including Lydia’s much craved for Fried Sotong.

These were served as CHUNKS deep fried to a golden hue. You don’t usually get chunky squid served like that in Kuala Lumpur.
The second dish that arrived was a steaming metal dish of fried mee hoon with about 2 1/2 crabs.

Nothing really fancy or different about this, but it’s got really fresh crab meat that you can dig into The final dish were some prawns with hints of oyster sauce, green pepper, shallots and black sauce. I really can’t recall the proper name of the way these prawns were done, but they were pretty good. The whole dining experience only cost us barely RM50.00 so it was quite worth it for a meal for two.Here’s what Lydia’s own thoughts. That’s probably cause she’s gotten her craving for fried sotong ;P

Not too long ago, I took a short road trip down to Kuantan with Lydia on a hunt for good weekend food.

With no maps and only names of restaurants scribbled down in a pocket notepad, we arrived for lunch in surprise to see much of Kuantan shops closed or barely occupied by patrons.

“Maybe folks here eat at home…”

Circling around the commercial blocks near Berjaya Mall, we stumbled across a shop that was lit and the word ‘laksa’ just above the entrance. Aprons and posters and newspaper cuttings as testimony for us to take a gamble on our limited vacant stomach space to give it a go (of course we were hungry as well)

Meet our lunch, a fantastic bowl of Sg. Katong Curry Laksa.

I found my lunch tastefully presented for a coffee-shop styled meal with the fish cakes fanned out , half a slice of lime balanced on a hard boiled egg cut in the same manner, Cockles and shreds of chicken gathered in their own batches on one side.
Don’t request for your usual Yellow noodles or Bee Hoon mix or insist on it. Go for the laksa noodles which compliment the whole taste and texture for a different experience. Try it with and without squeezing the lime. I pinched some of Lydia’s bowl to taste it without lime, but personally it goes better with lime

What really differs about this laksa compared to your usual curry laksa is the texture of the gravy/soup. Instead of a homogenous mix of drippy soup, there is a delightfully sloppy mix of santan in it.

Although the Katong Laksa is a Singaporean brainchild, the one in Kuantan provides a Curry Laksa meal like no other. It’s not too salty, nor sweet like some oddly spiced Laksa(s). It’s all in the texture.