Why Penang Food's Yummy?

Many people often asked me what makes the hawker food in Penang so delicious? I told them it must be the water if not for the good Feng Shui for culinary chefs. I am not kidding okay.

Let me show you my own theory coz I believe there many great chefs in KL and Singapore too and the ones in Penang are not better. Some hawkers in Penang have unhygienic cooking styles yet no one cares since they tasted great. So much rumor mongers accused Assam Laksa sellers for adding mashed old newspapers pulps or chicken feed to thicken their fish gravy. 

I often went up the Air Itam hills to jog around the huge reservoir which is really a sanctuary with thick tropical jungle greens like the ones found in Borneo. It is 202 hectacres big with lots of snakes, monkeys and wild birds.

Whooaaaa! A Cobra!..... no no it was a stick with a leaf. Macam ular kan? My balls shrunk like a coward coz I have phobia for snakes!

So much water in the catchment and they flow down from the upper mountain streams and puddles. Look at the thousands of trees and plants on the banks where they provide all the natural minerals and flavours into the drinking water which makes the cooking somewhat more tasty.

There are plenty of wild Pitcher Plants or Monkey Cups growing everywhere which is a good Feng Shui plant for attracting wealth. Look at Nase's Momma Rose who hung pots of them at their porch, no wonder so kaya!

Of course I thought of our honourable Fable Frog when I saw this sign. I wonder if that is his direct line 5096509???

I think many reports have been made on the weird sightings there. Pontianak or Loch Ness??

Another angle of the lovely reservoir where you could find lots of big fishes swimming happily in the water too.

This popular Air Itam Reservoir overlooks the city of Georgetown, now voted World's No. 2 best tourist destination by the New York Times recently. I find Penang Island a rather unique place with such a good mixture of fine historical buildings, culture and food. Twilight is also Penang born and a curry mouthed weirdo.

After my run, I naturally headed to savour my favourite Assam Laksa stall beside the filthy longkang at the wet market of Air Itam. I know the boss who wore the blue stripes. Every year, he would visit Hatyai for some ayam relaxations with his wife's consent. I was once very close with his wife's entire siblings who are of interesting characters. Her 5 brothers consists of a Temple Medium, 2 Race Horse Bookies, an impotent divorcee and a hardcore womanizer.

 

Once I asked the boss if he added Sin Chew Newspaper pulps into his Laksa gravy? He @#$% me upside down, so I learnt to enjoy them regardless of what shit he added inside the gravy. Since Air Itam dwellers are enjoying the magical drinking water from the dam, it is a fact that most hawker food there are yummiest! Do you think so?

My Chinese New Year Tales

I had the most wonderful surprise tonight! Guess what it was? I am so happy and honoured to see my latest Blog Follower - Master Lynn Yap who is Singapore's No 1 Queen of Feng Shui and a well known TV Celebrity!!!!!! It is 2:00am and her presence brightened up my face like the fireworks. If you wanna hear the accurate Feng Shui advice, please read her blog or better still sign up to be her member. Please don't email and ask me coz I am not a sifu but just a 100% believer in Feng Shui. I better tidy up my blog and refrain from using my vulgar words which was actually spices to add curry to my blog.

I had a great time over the eve till the 1st day of CNY. I slept with new Red T-shirt to sleep from the Rat Year's night and woke up on the Cow's Year morning. I hope my luck will be good 

lah.

My family had our reunion dinner at my dad's new condo. Everyone was present except my sister & family who are living in London, so we placed the mobile phone on the table and chatted with her while we all ate like gluttons. I think she felt miserable and sad for not being around. Serves her right! Nobody asked her to migrate, so don't come & sob-sob like a baby huh! Twilight is not cruel but realistic.

My mum is 79 years old this year and could still lay 15 dishes on the table for us to eat. I always appreciate her cooking while she is still around. She has agreed that this should be her last year to cook and we should dine in comfort from next year. We will head to the nearby Equatorial Hotel instead for future reunion dinners.

This is a Thai dish called "Mee Krob" which is not available in any Thai restaurant in Malaysia and I don't know why. Let me share Twilight's grandma stories again. When Bapa Malaysia the late Tunku Abdul Rahman was alive and lived in Penang, he missed this Thai dish. You see, Tunku was once a student in the prestigious Thep Surin in Bangkok which is a version of Eton College in UK. He loved this dish and summoned our Thai Embassy to find any Thai who could prepare him this dish. My mother was the only one who could fry this well, so she was requested to cook just this dish for Tunku Abdul Rahman. He ate them regularly from my mum's kitchen until he passed away.

 

After dinner, I headed for a drink with old friends at the QE2 joint at the Church Street Pier which was my first visit. It was missing the usual crowd of Ah Kows and Longkau Poh. The Penang social scene invented a new name "Longkau Poh" for the young Ah Liens coz they are always vomiting by the drains after excessive drinks of alcohol abuse.

QE2 actually floats on the sea waters next to the Ferry Terminal and offers a lovely sight of berthed luxury yachts, ships and ferries plying across the harbour.

Twilight with Pino, an Italian hunk who is on holiday visit. His girlfriend Christine is a Penang-born former Miss Malaysia who now runs a swanky Hair Salon by the trendy belt at London's Mayfair. She was the one who taught me to smoke weed and try magic mushrooms in London during my Christmas visit. I fainted in her friend's toilet during the party due to substance abuse. Naughty Twilight! In my earlier blog post, I mentioned about meeting Boy George's clothes designer Dexter Wong, who is also a Penang-born lad who once operated his boutique in London's Hyper-Hyper. Dexter is Christine's friend actually.

The crowd was screaming when midnight struck and they threw balloons to usher the Chinese New Year. Luckily no one was thrown into the sea.

Look at the silly designed Men's Lavatory with urinal bowls below a view of guests walking outside. I call that Unique but Stupid idea coz I need privacy to pee lah! I am not a dog!

We left at midnight and headed to a Taoist Temple of Goddess Tien Hou to pray for prosperity and good luck. Outside the temple, you could see several transvestites luring for customers. It was a pitiful sight indeed.

This is the Temple of Goddess Tien Hou (Ma Chor) along Muntri Street. This Goddess is better known as the Queen of Taoism and is popularly worshipped in Taiwan and Macau. The word "Macau" is actually another version of "Ma Chor" too.

Here is Pino wishing everyone Keong Hee Huat Chye in Hokkien. I wish all my friends and bloggers a Very Happy & Prosperous Chinese New Year too!

Chinese New Year Rush

This is my 2nd blog post in 1 night and that is so unusual of me to do so!

When I heard SK Thamby complained about boring CNY, I can't help getting a confused reaction. My local KL born friends complained the same thing yearly. I asked myself whether I love rushing home to my kampung? Will LeuMas enjoy being in Penang like me? The answer is YES! I love going home if there is no jam and I escaped the jam yesterday coz many were smart to leave before 5pm rush hour.

Penang is full of Chinese community and the festive mood is definitely there! You can hear drums and cymbals clashing almost the whole day with so many lion dances prancing in every street. The fire crackers are lighted up like nobody's business with loud bangs & booms throughout the 2 days. The smell of burnt cracker's gun powder is lovely with shreds of red crackers paper strewn on the street is a lovely sight. The mood is always here in Penang.

I am not pure Chinese but speaks like Banana and believes strongly in Taoism & Feng Shui. So I hunted for a Cow underwear all over Klang Valley until I found this Moo-Moo in a shop. I believe that I must wear a lembu undies on the 1st Day so that my bradder will become a strong bull like Rawhide! Rolling! Rolling! Rolling! Hee Yah! Giddy Up!

On my huge sofa, I packed so many shirts and only jeans for this year. I carted home with lots of special cookies and beer to serve the many guests who come to wish my parents.

Before I left home, I prayed my Tu Di Gong with lots of Gold Paper, food, fruits and the most important "Nien Gou" so that the sweet glutinous rice would stick his mouth when he reports to the Emperor of Heavens that Twilight has been a good boy lah for 2008. Forgive him for his bloody mouths, driving on emergency lanes and yakking on the phone while driving. Please bless all the bloggers who post comments in Twilight's Blog too!

The feeling is always lovely when we arrive home to Penang on the bridge with the welcoming Golden Sunset!

Looking Back

It was such a rush-rush week to get ready to head home for Chinese New Year. I had to pack my barang-barangs for 1 week's stay. This is a luxury vacation trip with free accomodation at my dad's new 'hotel like' condo. I left KL after lunch and ahead of me in the highway were blogger LeuMas, Gary and KP in their own Ferraris. But then my Kanchil arrived Penang 1 hour earlier! The traffic was heavy in many areas but no jams, then how Twilight the tortoise beat the hares?

My secret : I drove along the EMERGENCY LANE most of the time lah!

Before I left home, like a grandma I did last minute spring cleaning and basuh kain, wash toilet etc. Then tried to move boxes here & there till I stumbled into a JD Cole's type of unpacked treasures since carting them back from abroad. 

I just stopped all my cleaning and browsed tru my piles of photos taken over a decade plus some artworks done in American classes. I had to paint and design as well for the Advertising Business studies and I was hopeless until I met a hunky classmate!

Twilight and his 2 best friends posing by the Lake Erie in North of Pennsylvania in Winter. Behind us you can see a black line and that is Canada! The Korean hearthrob student was a hot favourite of the Japanese female students who went Ga-Ga over him. I met him during our stay at the boarding school at Point Park College and we became room mates later. The Italian hunk who looked like BJ Bear was from Cleveland, Ohio and my classmate & Art mentor whom I am grateful to this day.

My fond memories of them:

Lee Joon Sung (Korean) - He shit so smelly and taught me to eat Kim Chi. Later my shit became smelly like his. He taught me to speak Korean but I have forgotten 99% of it now. Alamak!

Michael Legan (Italian) - He told me that all the animals in the zoo are Negro's relatives. He also boasted that Italy is famous for everything on earth!! Mafia, lovers, ferraris, fashion and spaghetti! I taught him business studies & he guided me in all the painting classes which helped me to graduate with honours.

Title: Mountain Goat 

- Used a pointed inkless pen to etch on the black board. It took me 3 days to scrape the white lines!

Title: Mongolian Hunter

Oil painting which took over 2 weeks to finish coz it was freezing winter. In the end I put it in the kitchen's oven to dry it.

Title: My Bird

Used o.1 technical pen to draw this birdie and I forgot its name. Maybe it's Tweety.

Title: American Footballer

This is the conventional air brush similar to how we spray motorcars. It was a white player but I screwed up the skin and changed it to a black American player instead. After that I was good at spraying toilet bowls when urinating.

Title: Malaysian Vegetables

Used acrylic to paint this abstract and it was easy and fast.

Title: In America, I Poured Out My True Colors

I bet Sushi King could not display their noodles hanging in midair like mine. It won a special prize and hundreds of busy bodies snapped photos of my Maggi Mee! 

Malaysia Boleh!

Happy Birthday My Friend

In olden days, when you told anyone that you came from Samutprakan in Bangkok, the Thais would label you as kedekut fellas. Just like how Penangites are stamped as Kiam-Siap on the forehead. So my late grandpa was from this salt mining village which is actually near the present BKK airport. So when my grandpa retired from his last posting as the CPO of South Thailand, he lived in his retreat in Songkhla. Twilight spent his childhood living in this retreat home nearby the famous touristy Mermaid on the rocks by the seaside! Yeah, the house is still there along Thanon Laemsai (Seaside Road). Can you imagine how bloody boring and dead town Songkhla was? So quiet and crime-free then, until you could hear cockroaches making love on the asbestos roof! They would drag forward and backward like crumbling paper. Chieh! Chiieeh! Chiieeeh!... OMG!

My grandpa drilled a lot of Buddhism into my head by making me sit beside while he chanted 5 times a day in front of his altar. I often leaned against the tiang and all the photos of my late grandma & ancestors stared at little Twilight! I was looking at them back with my eyelids closed and saliva dripping on my lap! I was ZZzzzz of course. Most mornings, I had to wake up at dawn and my servants would carry me to sit by the roadside to wait for the monks to come. You know the Thais love to make merits by offering food to the monks, so lovely feeling. 

The Thais love to make merits so often in anyway. They would often hold ceremonies to release animals, fishes and birds. They also love to release their anger like the bloody clashes at the airport, parliament and Sanam Luang grounds. Amboi this is serious hypocrite lah! I really shook my head in disbelief! So make real merits and jangan gaduh or block airports lah!

Last month my friend went backpacking to India and I posted his Haunted House, remember kan? How come most of you didn't notice that the windows on his Drawing Room had several female ghost faces on the white window? 2 bloggers saw it guar! Of course, I saw hundreds of ghosts often floated around his house. When I snapped photos, they also wanna pose including the white Manchu Official ghost beside the opium bed! Look back my old post guys!

My bachelor friend arrived in India, fell sick and flew back the following week on wheelchair alone! He was supposed to come back during CNY but had to return earlier due to severe jaundice and suspected hepatitis! He was whisked into the UH's ICU by the ambulance coz he was so kaput and frail lah. So he is the owner of the blogged Haunted House, lying on the bed above. I brought him a mini Christmas tree which I actually placed on my office table, just to make him shiok & happy lah! He held my hands so tight and even asked me to hug him for the first time! 

Then hor, he reminded me that we shared the same birthday this week. Aiks I really forgot and promised that we must celebrate together! So he listed out all the vinegar pork legs, yam pork, roast pork, ice cream and desserts we will be enjoying later this week! The whole menu list made my saliva drip onto his bed! Tak boleh tahan! Ha ha ha!

2 days after Christmas, then hor..... I received a call.....

OMG! OMG! OMG! Piiiaaannngggg!!!

I am SHOCKED!

My friend died in his sleep! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!! 

I was attending a dinner and took the photos of the RM400 Mop Hairstyle to blog, remember? My dear friend's brother called and dropped the biggest atomic bomb into my heart! I was so fucking SHOCKED and raced to his family home to see a whole bunch of sobbing family. His old mother sat on the chair and wailed her heart out. My heart sank in disbelief. My friend died of brain hemorrhage in his sleep after being sedated earlier on to scan his internal organs. 

I went to the mortuary 3 hours after he died and looked at him lying on the metal tray. He was being dressed up and powdered by the undertaker. I knew he was dead but he could still hear my heart crying out silently. When you shut off your computer, the softwares will take a while to shut down 1 by 1. The same with human bodies, when our heart stops, all the senses may take up to 8 hours to shut down completely. Our loved ones can still hear us, sometimes their tears rolled out when we mumbled parting words.

At the funeral wakes daily, close friends came so often to chit chat. I think we all had a gala time gossiping and bad mouthing about my late friend instead of crying. Sorry friend! All these monsters just roared out in laughter with his siblings as my late friend had left behind lots of memories for us to joke about. I think my friend preferred us to keep happy memories instead of wailing our hearts out. Betul kan?

So back to the Thai Merit making habits that late grandpa hammered into my head. I would always try to make merits from any way - charity, religious books, donations, helping and maybe blogging too! I blog and you laugh, right? So that is merits too! LOL!..

Every month, I would round up several wealthy and kind friends to donate for any causes. I would get my Bruce Lee to buy up the various sutra books monthly and place them in many temples around Klang Valley, out station and even overseas like Macau and Hong Kong. This weekend some books will be hand carried and placed in temples around Guilin, China too.  

Behind the books, I would paste the names of donors and my deceased loved ones. I always wished that merits will be channelled to the deceased ones so that they could effectively reach the Land of Eternity. Several times I really dreamt of them coming back with acknowledgment and I wasn't having nightmare lah. I also hope that I will not have to suffer a hard life with sickness and poverty if I get to live till old age. Hope my fingers will always be strong to type and blog lah!! Ha ha!

Happy Birthday My Friend!

Twilight Doors For 2009

Chinese New Year is just a week away and so many of you are so fully prepared & ready. I went to buy stuffs to upgrade my house Feng Shui so that 2009 would bring more windfall than 2008.

Many Feng Shui masters believe that this "Hulu Gourd" is a very effective tool to trap ghosts if the cap is left opened. Many ghosts are afraid of this and avoid getting sucked into this one-way entry gourd.

If your "Hulu Gourd" has a closed cap, it will attract Wealth into it. I have a number of them & am convinced that they work well for me. You have your rights not to believe me, so diam lah.

All my doors at home were painted Yellow to suit my favourable colour elements then. I am tired of them already and someone commented that they looked like temple's doors. Kaneeneh! I have cursed that fella's mouth with lightning for saying that. That means I am the Twilight Deity inside the bedroom, kan? Ha ha!

So tak boleh tahan, I quickly painted the doors to Everest Pure White bcos I saw so many show houses where White Door is very 'in' now. I must be ahead with time lah.

Suddenly my whole house so terang with white doors and light purple frames. Macam so heavenly feeling and girly colour! Yo! I have to wear sunglasses now.

Twilight took out the biggest dinner plate and used as template. Took a thin brush and dipped into green paint to draw curves. After that paint Hulu Gourds and Birdies! Why burung? So that can travel often. Someone gave my father a Chinese embroidery with 108 Flying Birds and since then everyone in my family has been traveling almost weekly!

Look at my NEW DOOR for a New Year! Cantik kan? Comment please, good or bad never mind. I won't bite you but I might curse you if you said it is crazy idea. LOL.

I believe all my doors will attract so much luck that I will strike Mega TOTO! Then I will laugh like this nerd in the above banner. I will belanja everyone to eat Fatman's Steamboat by the roadside...

The Fate Of Industries

Now whoever says I am Lillian Too's big fan again, kaneeneh! I have said so many times that I only listen to many Feng Shui Masters with open mind okei. So I have scanned the page instead coz I am %$#@ lazy to type. I omitted out 80% of other areas. I normally believe this chart below as she accurately predicted them for 2008. 

The WOOD and WATER elements will be jia lat, so the banks will continue to fall again. The property sector will pick up very fast! Yay!

Look! A Pussy Can Write!

It has been busy weeks at work and I often got home past midnights. Business outside has been slow but, yet still busy and then boss will give us PAY-CUT soon! Well, I will just adapt to it and maybe take up part time prostituting! Gosh! How much can I fetch now? Who wants me?

Sorry I have not posted Lillian Too's predictions coz I am too lazy to retype from her booklet which she gave the participants. Too much topics, craps and goodness! Will do so very soon okei. My mood was so blue until I received this email and laughed at the pussy writing calligraphy! In case you have not seen it, just learn something new okei!

I wonder if the guys could insert into your assholes and write something exotic too? I might try doing Assholed Paintings to sell during this economy crisis. Why not?