No, thank you

Giant opened at Setia Alam on 12 August 2010.  The layout is rather like nearby Tesco’s. You have to take the escalator to the first floor where the hypermarket is located.  Giant’s entrance is located on the far left after you get off the escalator. You have to pass by many hazards before you get to buy your groceries in peace.

The hazards come in the form of sales people who want to entice you to buy anything from induction cooker hobs to perfumes to water heaters to children’s encyclopaedia. I don’t want to sound rude, so I usually just brush them off with a “No, thanks.” But some people can be really persistent, especially if they spot you with a full trolley. A loaded trolley seems to be a magnet for these sales people, shouting out, “Hey! I’m loaded with lots of money and stuff!  Come sell me more goods!”

So there I was, trying to avoid the eagle eyes of the sales promoter after I’d done my shopping.  (Never lock eyes with them, that’s an invitation for them to approach you.) From the corner of my eye, I saw one young woman striding purposefully in the same direction I was heading. I know where she was headed : me.

Excuse me, dkdkkek lwketcmdkk  ekeke e iiieiekk dkellwlsekkee k kkekk ueuoeoie llskeke, free recycling bag. Her elevator speech was gibberish to my ears, honest.  I don’t know what she was peddling and I don’t want a free recycling bag. I think a better method to get customers’ attention is to carry a small card, about A5, with big bullet points for the main selling points of the product. They can still babble their elevator speech but for those who aren’t really listening, at least the card can be shoved at them, politely of course.

Then there are the credit card canvassers (CCC) lying in wait at the check out counters. Again, a loaded trolley is a big magnet to the CCCs.

Do you have a Giant-xx card? No? Very easy to apply.

You say, Sorry but I’m in a hurry.

But it will only take one minute to sign up.

Haha, right, if you can do things at fast-forward mode of 20X.

I’ve been on the other side before. I was an encyclopaedia sales rep about twenty years ago. I was one of those fellas who would hang around the mall trying to entice you into my stall so that I can show you my books. I know how hard it can be. I know how demoralizing the situation can get when everyone just pushes you away with a No, Thanks or when they just plain ignore you. That’s why I always try to be as courteous as I can to these people. They’re just earning an honest living.

So it’s “No, thanks” for me.

If this doesn’t work, the line which always does is : I’VE GOT IT ALREADY.

Clever thieves

A friend of mine fell prey to a new method of thievery. She had gone jogging and left her wallet under the seat, thinking that it would be safe. But thieves nowadays are too smart for their own good. They knew where she had kept her stash but they didn’t steal the wallet. They filched only her credit card and replaced a similar one back into her wallet. Of course the other card was somebody else’s card which had been stolen. She wouldn’t have been any the wiser had she not gone to pump petrol after her jogging. Now these thieves had immediately gone on a spending spree and had chalked up RM5,000 worth of purchases. If she had discovered the theft a few days later, imagine the hefty damage that would’ve been done. By right, the bank should’ve noticed something fishy if a card suddenly registered heavy usage and alerted the card holder.

Another novel thievery involves cheque books. Don’t ever leave them lying in your car, especially with documents containing your signature. These thieves don’t take the entire cheque book. That would’ve raised the suspicion of the owner straight away. They only tear out a few cheques from the book and quickly cash them before the theft is discovered.

Why don’t these thieves use their ingenuity to earn an honest living instead?!

My own website

The last time I took out a domain name was sometime after my first book Congratulations! You have won was released. I registered the contest123.com website to help promote the book and listed all the on-going contests I could find. Unfortunately, the book did not sell well so I closed down the site after a year or two.

Now that I’ve got five books under my belt, it is time to become more professional instead of just relying on my blogs to establish an internet presence. I’ve signed up for a domain name, www.lydiateh.com which streamlines the information on my books. To make things simpler, I link back to my media gallery blog to grab the relevant pages. It was quite a breeze building up the website with the site builder programme which comes with the webhosting package. However, since I know almost zilch html, I can’t really tweak the site as much as I want to. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Quick meals

When I was a stay-at-home mum, I used to cook six days a week. Now that I’m working, this isn’t possible. For the first two months of working life, I catered food. For RM310 per month (weekdays only) to feed my family of six, it is a pretty good deal. There is no need to do marketing, prepare the ingredients and cook. All I need was two tiffin carriers for the caterer to load the food in. The problem is that my family can be quite choosy in their food intake. One day, there was cuttle fish cooked in chilli, four-angled beans and braised tau kwa. Of these three dishes, only the tau kwa suits our palate. We don’t like cuttle fish and four-angled beans, so our dog had a feast thanks to our pickiness.

After we stopped catering, it was economy rice galore. Every day we’d ta pau some dishes from the stall. We can choose what we like to eat, yet the family complained that the food tastes different from home-cooked meals. What a choosy bunch of eaters! In any case, eating out every other meal is no fun and isn’t very healthy either, what with the msg and all.

Now we’ve struck a compromise. On busy days especially those two days when I have to work nights, it is outside food.  On other days, we eat simple home-cooked meals. For those of you who are in the same predicament, you may like to try out some of these ideas. If you have any fast and easy meals to share, please do.

1. Put chicken and herbal ingredients in crock pot in the morning. In the evening, stir-fry some vegetables and open up a can of beans or fry some eggs to eat with rice.

2. Bah-kut-teh can be prepared in the crock pot too. Supplement with fast to cook vegetables such as lettuce. This can be stir-fried or added to the stew itself. If you’re doing the latter, it’s better to add the vegetables in a separate bowl of gravy so as not to alter the taste of the stew.

3. Spaghetti bolognaise. Dump a can of sauce, vegetables such as carrots, onions, potatoes even and minced meat into crock pot. Add an extra can of water and season with sugar and salt to taste. You can boil the spaghetti just before the meal or boil it in advance and refrigerate it before leaving the house.

4. Pasta with white sauce. Dump a can of sauce (Prego is a good choice) and add in diced chicken pieces, carrots, potatoes and a can of water. You can eat it with pasta or bread.

5. ABC noodle soup. Put chicken or pork, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes and onions into crock pot with sufficient water for making noodle soup. When you get home, transfer the soup into a pot for boiling over the stove. Add noodles to the stock. Yee mee, mee hoon or mee suah are good choices.

6. If you have no time to prepare any of the above, you can still customise a nice meal from dishes bought at the economy rice stall. Choose a dish with gravy, say chicken or pork slices in black sauce. Make sure you spoon in extra gravy. When you get home, boil some egg noodles. Drain away the water. In the same pot, add in the meat and gravy. Throw in some vegetables such as butterhead lettuce. Mix well and serve.

7. For a change, hot dogs or burgers would do nicely if you have young kids. For a faster and healthier alternative, boil the sausages instead of frying them. Burger patties can be put into the oven but you’ve got to watch the oven so that the meat don’t burn.

Now we only eat more fanciful meals on Mondays when it is my off-day.  We had Quiche Lorraine last Monday. I still have plenty of Calrose rice so maybe we’ll have sushi next Monday. Today we’ll have steam boat. Bon appetit.

P/S: Baking bread now only happens once in a blue moon when the urge to eat home-baked bread strikes  and when I’m in the mood.  The above picture showed my last attempt at baking buns which was a couple of months back – when the moon turned blue.

Goodbye, Ma

I can’t write about my mother yet. Tears still flow, my heart is still heavy. She left us on Saturday 23 January 2010 at seven something in the evening  after suffering a heart attack at UH.

Goodbye, Ma. You were the greatest mum, daughter, wife, sister, aunt, friend and neighbour. We miss you so very much.

Article in The Star’s National Day Special

Different but same

By Lydia Teh

Food, festivals, family and fun are the factors that make us wholly Malaysian.

ONE plus one equals one or 1 + 1 = 1. Mathematically this is wrong but according to the biblical concept of marriage, it is right. Husband and wife are to cleave to each other as one.

Though they are male and female with different characteristics, temperament and whatever emotional baggage they bring with them to the marriage, they are one.

‘The ties that bind us go beyond food, though that is arguably one of the strongest ties. Take the sarong. This humble piece of cloth is worn by people of all races. It is the ultimate attire for chilling out at home.’ Lydia Teh (centre)

Using the same analogy, Malays, Chinese, Indians and Others are one under the 1Malaysia concept: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 1. Though they are of different races and cultural backgrounds, they are one.

1Malaysia is a new slogan but is the concept new? I read that Yasmin Ahmad said something to the effect of “Dat fella copy me-lah.” I can see where she was coming from.

Her commercials and movies promote bangsa Malaysia and they are so unpretentious and down-to-earth that even children can enjoy them.

Sad to say, her passing has left a void unless one of her protégés rises to the challenge as she did to become a worthy successor of P. Ramlee.

Think about it: aren’t we already practising 1Malaysia to a small extent? Let me enumerate some of the ways since we’re so fixated with numbers.

1. Hari Raya is coming. My family and I will be visiting our next door neighbours to share in the joy of the festival.

If we want to feast on rendang and ketupat, we have to go on the first or second day when there’s plenty to eat. But we’re not gluttons. If we could only visit after the good food is depleted, we’d be just as happy with cookies and syrup, though our stomachs might growl for rendang.

But we don’t just share food with each other (we give them Mandarin oranges and groundnuts during Chinese New Year). We share dust and water too. When they renovated their kitchen, dust floated into our kitchen via ventilation holes.

I didn’t cook when the drilling was intense. The last time I checked, dust is not an edible seasoning.

When our house was being repainted and we needed more water power to operate the high-pressure water machine to spray off old paint, our neighbours came to the rescue by letting us tap into their water supply for free.

2. When we go out to eat at the mamak stall, we can see diners of all races tucking into their roti canai and teh tarik. This is the most muhibbah institution in Malaysia.

Where else can you see Malays, Chinese and Indians under one roof (or roofless sometimes) intent on fulfilling one of life’s basic needs? KFC and McDonalds? But they serve Western food.

Mamak has the Malaysian identity chopped all over it. We are united in our love for ghee-laden food and milk-saturated tea. “United we stand, divided we fall” should be paraphrased as “Ghee-nited we stand, tea-vided we fall.”

3. The ties that bind us Malaysians go beyond food, though that is arguably one of the strongest ties. Take the sarong. This humble piece of cloth is worn by people of all races. It is the ultimate attire for chilling out at home.

Its “natural air-con” and simplicity of design makes it versatile. It can be used as a baby sling or a cradle.

I was rocked to sleep on a sarong cradle when I was a baby. My children had a rocking good time too when they visited grandma.

4. There’s a reason why there are so many beggars and charities asking for donations in public places. The generosity of Malaysians overflows its cup. People give, to these and deserving cases highlighted in the media. Malaysians are truly generous.

Despite being 1Malaysians, there will be facets of our lifestyle that are different from each other. That’s unity in diversity for you.

Take food for instance. We enjoy festive goodies such as kuih bangkit and kuit kapit at both Hari Raya and Chinese New Year but lemang will always be associated with Hari Raya and yee sang with Chinese New Year.

Whether Malays, Chinese or Indians, there will be cultural differences on how we eat (what can I say, our national pastime is eating), how we wed, how we bury our dead or how we celebrate a newborn.

Babies are born pure, like white sheets of paper to be painted on. If a Chinese mother threatens her young one to eat his food or the Ah Neh Neh (colloquial for Indian) will catch him, the boy will grow up fearing dark-skinned people.

If a Malay father warns his daughter not to mix with the Chinese or she might get cheated, the girl will eye with distrust those with mata sepet (slit eyes.) Children are colour-blind. It is the adults who teach them otherwise.

The onus is on our young ones to raise another generation to become more integrated: to eat with each other, to give generously of their friendship and concern, to wear Baju Malaysia (which incorporates different elements of each ethnic group’s traditional wear).

In short, to become as well-mixed as rojak, yet maintaining the distinctive flavours that make us different.

Allow me to end with a poem that is a favourite among readers of Honk! If You’re Malaysian, judging from the frequency with which it is quoted in blogosphere:

“Regarding our inherent make-up, is one race more likely to act in a certain way than another? A friend of mine puts it this way:

Kalau tidak malas, bukan Melayu,
Kalau tidak tipu, bukan Cina,
Kalau tidak minum, bukan India.
(If you’re not lazy, you’re not Malay,
If you don’t cheat, you’re not Chinese,
If you don’t drink, you’re not Indian.)

To my friend I say:

I’m Chinese but I’m no cheat,
My friend’s Indian but he’s no drunk,
Another is Malay but he’s no slob,
Chinese, Indian, Malay or Others,
We are who we make ourselves to be,
Not the stereotypes we’re made out to be.
But if we don’t buck the trend,
We’ll forever be stamped.”

Forty-something Lydia Teh is the author of ‘Honk! If You Are Malaysian’. She likes to eat roti canai when money is tight which isn’t surprising as her latest book is ‘Stretching Your Dollar$ and $ense – More than 300 money-saving tips for anyone and everyone’.

BEHIND THE SCENES

The above picture was taken in The Star’s photo studio with Star employees. From left : Sheela Chandran (in case you’re wondering, she’s Chinese Indian and writes for Star Two, Kamarul is a photographer, Nathan is from the photo department and Lim from Editorial Admin.) What a muhibbah bunch. There was plenty of camaraderie at the photo shoot too. The photograph is by Raja Faisal.

Astro’s U-Wartawan

Catch me on Astro channel 501 tomorrow. I have been invited as a guest on U-Wartawan. Delivered in Bahasa Malaysia, U-Wartawan is an interactive current affairs show that gives viewers the chance to participate in news reporting using information and communications technology (ICT).

The programme, hosted by Nazri Kahar, embraces the news from, and views of, the man-on-the-street and bloggers in relation to daily topics of significance to the community and the country.

Aspiring Citizen Journalists may send in their stories on selected topics in a number of ways : via blog, email, facebook, SMS, MMS and video. You can view past segments here.

Program : U-WARTAWAN , Astro AWANI

Topic : “Rakyat Malaysia Tidak Sopan”.

Date : 26^th May 2009, Tuesday

Time : 1000 pm – 1030 pm (live time)

Do you have anything you want to get off your chest about rude Malaysians?

Out of the mouth of babes

At the red lights, I stopped beside a van carrying Malay school children. The boys were in songkoks and the girls wore the tudung. They looked so angelic. The boy sitting by the window was very cute. I wound down my window to talk to him.

“Tahun 1?” I asked.

“Dua,” he replied.

“Dari sekolah agama ke?”

He nodded. Then another boy from the rear said something as I was winding up my window. At first I thought it was “Goodbye” but it wasn’t. Down came my window and I asked the cute boy, “Dia cakap apa?”

“Dia kata C*b**” That’s a vulgar Hokkien word for the female organ.

I don’t know if they knew it was a bad word, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt and chose to enlighten them about it.

“Itu perkataan tak baik. Nanti Tuhan marah,” I said. I figured that since they’re from a religious school, the idea that God isn’t pleased with such words would get through to them.

One of the other boys said something which I didn’t hear. The cute boy said, “Dia kata kelakar saja.”

A vulgar word is a joke? But then these are just kids, and they may not understand every word which escapes their lips. They probably heard the word bandied around and decided it would be fun to add it to their own vocabulary.

Maybe I was just being a kaypoh but I feel it is my duty to correct them. If my children have done something wrong and I’m not there to admonish them, I hope that a responsible adult would do so.

I wonder if the boys would get nightmares and wake up sweating, “Oh Tuhan, jangan marah, ya? Kelakar saja.”

Weather forecasters

For those of you who entered the cover design contest, I’m sorry I can’t announce the winner yet as my publisher has not made a decision. So, please be patient a little longer, okay?

The weather has been terribly hot these past few days after the wet spell. Just two days ago, I saw some flies with huge wings (what the Hokkiens call tua chui bang) hovering around the fluorescent light. I told my kids that old folks believe these flies signal a change in weather. As it had been hot when the flies appeared, that would mean that the next day would bring rain, right? Wrong. The next day the heat was just as sweltering.

No. 4 said, “Mummy, it didn’t rain but the flies came.”

Perhaps I should ask my friend with the weather nose to come stay with us. Each time her nose starts to get runny, she’ll predict that it will rain the next day. Apparently her weather nose is quite accurate. Our Meteorological department should employ her.

In Kenya they look at how the spiders spin the web and how high the magungu birds fly as indicators of when the weather will change.

When the magungu bird flies higher in the sky than usual and seems to float in the air in its passage from south to north, the Abasuba people living on the islands of Kenya’s Lake Victoria and on the highlands near the lake know the rains are on their way and that it is time to plant.

To scientists, this flight pattern could be associated with the movement of the inter-tropical convergence zone. The Lake Victoria basin falls in an area of deep convection, which might explain the high flight.

To bring together these two paradigms — the traditional indicators and the modern scientific forecasts — a project has been set up to record and monitor the traditional indicators of weather in Kenya and to find their scientific interpretations.

…. The workshops brought to light the traditional indicators that have been handed down through generations: from the patterns of stars, shadows, the direction of the wind and clouds to the flowering of trees and the behaviour of birds, insects and bees. Spiders are often the first to signal a change in the weather. They weave their webs against the wind in anticipation of the insects that will come their way.

Source : http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=44202

Flies, spiders, birds, nose …. what other indicators of weather change have you come across? I wish my friend’s weather nose would twitch… we need rain!

Of monkeys and mung beans

Sorry I haven’t been updating this blog for so long. Caught up with some family matters and then there’s the Eh Poh Nim manuscript to edit. It’s scheduled to be released next year.

Read about Saint Berba in today’s Star.

Dimitar Berbatov says he won’t give Sir Alex Ferguson any disciplinary problems, because he never swears and carries his Bible everywhere.

Berbatov: Says he’ll be good for Ferguson

Berbatov moved to Manchester United from Spurs for £30.75million on transfer deadline day after a protracted transfer saga. The whole story raised question marks about the 27-year-old Bulgarian’s temperament.

But Berbatov himself says despite sometimes going off the rails when he was younger, he is now a changed man.

He told The Sun: “I’ve done many stupid things because of my stubbornness, only because I didn’t want to listen to my parents’ advice.

“And then it always turned out that they were right.”

The talented striker added: “Besides, I am religious and I take The Bible everywhere with me. There are many good pieces of advice for those like me in The Bible.”

Berbatov also says that bad language is not something he indulges in either.

“This is a matter of good upbringing. I don’t swear in my daily life,” he added.

“I try to do everything with style – not only in football. And if I manage to give any positive examples then that is great.”

(This wasn’t on Star’s online portal, so I nicked it from teamtalk.com.

This is uplifting news in a world that’s being polluted more and more by swear words. I don’t swear either and feel uncomfortable when people do so, especially when they swear using Jesus Christ’s name.

Not swearing presents a minor problem. What do you say when you get riled? ‘Expert’ drivers like me often get irritated by incompetent drivers. I know this is a problem which I have to work on. Patience, patience. My son is beginning to drive like me, spouting Stupid! behind the wheel intermittently. Stupid should be banned from my vocabulary unless it is meant in the actual sense of the word, like why are you so stupid that you don’t know red means stop.

Similarly ‘monkey’ should be banished from my lips unless it refers to those creatures swinging along electric cables somwhere near my place. Two days ago I was just telling no. 2 that instead of saying ‘monkey’ I should say ‘mung bean’. Why? Usually the word slips out involuntarily, like when a driver turns without signalling. I’d go ‘Mong….” then oops… “bean!” Mung bean has never been a bad word as far as I know.

Fowl manners

At the market today, I bought a chicken from my regular vendor.  A middle-aged woman was there before me but she was dallying over the chicken pieces.  I chose one chicken which the vendor immediately cut up.  Then she asked him to hurry up and tally up her purchases as she had to rush home.

“I’ve been waiting for you for so long but you’re still undecided,” he said.  He stopped chopping and tended to her.  After she left, he complained about that customer.

“Do you know that lady is a headmistress?  But I don’t like her as she’s very rude.  She always throws her money to me.  Sometimes it lands into the chicken.”  He pointed to a tray of innards.  “And I have to fish it out from there and the money gets wet and dirty.  I’m selling you things, you know, not asking for a hand-out.  Why must simply throw the money?  She’s so scared of touching my hand.  Today because you all are here, she gives me the money properly.”

No matter who we are and what we do, we want to be treated with some respect, don’t we?  People have feelings of self-worth, no matter how menial the task they perform.  Even fowl sellers crave no foul manners.

Be nice

Tighten the belt

Cost of goods and services are on the rise. Everything is more expensive these days. Buns you buy from the roti man have shrunk. Chocolate coating on your favourite doughnuts has become thinner. Rice no longer retails at less than RM20 per 10kg bag (if they are, they’ll be snapped up in the twinkling of an eye.) In short, your money can buy less things compared to say, two months ago.

What’s a desperate housewife to do? Here are some doable measures to tighten the belt.

1. Eat less rice. Now’s the time for the overweight to shed some pounds. Ration rice intake, no more than one bowl per person. To make the kids eat less, give them sweets to munch on half an hour before meals. Guaranteed to make them lose their appetite. Not more than one sweet each, or you may spend more on confectionery instead of rice.

2. Plant your own vegetables in your garden. If you don’ t have a patch of soil to call your own, plant them in containers such as large styrofoam boxes. Not only are you helping to save the environment by putting the non-biodegradable styrofoam to good use, but you’re also doing yourself a favour as you won’t be spraying generous doses of insecticides on the plants. Use natural fertilizers : collect urine from the kids for the vegetables and if you’re up to it, their stools too for extra healthy foliage. Use a disposable face mask to help you breathe more easily during the fertilization process.

3. Switch off lights/fans which are not in use. This is so commonsensical but hard to practise for some people (like me – I don’t like stuffy dark rooms as they’re so depressing). Collect fines for lights/fans not switched off when not in use to help pay the electricity bill. When the weather gets too hot and you’ve got to have the air-con on in order to sleep well, cram everybody into one room.

4. Limit grand meals to once a week/month/special occasions. You don’t need to gorge on good food everyday. Simple food is good for the body too. You can eat eggs/baked beans/spinach for lunch and long beans/a small kembung fish/tofu for dinner without adverse effects. You won’t suffer from malnutrition on such a diet, though you might get withdrawal symptoms from goodfooditis if you live on simple meals for 30 days consecutively. But look on the bright side. Goodfooditis is nothing compared to eating mud cakes which the poor Haitians had to resort to in order to stave off hunger. We’re still a blessed lot here.

More later, if I’m up to it. Rising prices are giving me the eggs, oops aches (eating too many eggs – only 30 sen a piece, still cheaper than one piece of chicken lor). Any you’ll like to add?