Super OL

Now that I am officially an OL (Office Lady), let me tell you about the most powerful tool that a Singapore Office Lady has. It is the humble packet of tissues. What? Surely not! you must exclaimed. What ever could a teeny pack of disintergrating tissues do? Well, this!



Kapow!!

Strategically placed, this nondescript packet of tissue just "choped" (reserved, in proper parlance) this seat while the owner joins the queue to get her food. I am always highly amused seeing random packs of tissues, garnishing almost every seat in the food centre. I have to admit that the devil in me is sorely, sorely tempted to just pick up the tissue packs and see the mayhem that will ensue.

For the guy office worker, a sissy pack of tissue won't do. Thank goodness for free newspapers, conveniently given out at said food centre. So we'll see seats with folded newspapers instead.

I am beginning to discover my favourite foods in Singapore, starting with Seah Im Food Centre opposite HarbourFront. One teh tarik after another and we voted this one as our favourite :



Iced Teh Tarik.... the ones served by in the morning are the best.

Fragrant, good grade red tea with no trace of bitterness or overbrewing, skilfully blended with milk and of course, 'tarik' for the froth on top. The hot version is simply delicious with great milk notes but with the iced version, you'll get to taste how fragrant and mellow the tea is - delicate tastes otherwise hidden when your tastebuds are scalded with the hot version.



It is served here at Shamsudeen Tea Coffee Stall; on the side facing the bus interchange. Here is what I had - mee rebus with paru! The mee rebus is nice, although as not as nice as the ones served at Bedok. The paru is lovely and soft - a result of boiling for a long time and not overfried.



I am mad about paru and making up for lost time in London. It is so difficult to get them in London and more difficult to cook them still. Whenever they serve paru either in Nahar or Mawar, I guaranteed it will be the first dish to finish. Serve them any way - fried, with sambal, with veg, I take them all.

Off to KL!

We are off to KL next week. I have to say I am a little excited! The last time I've been there was some five years ago. We would be meeting some friends on their summer break from London this time round; so it should be good.

I've always love KL. Don't ask me why. Attractions-wise, there is not much to gawk at but I always have fond memories of it. Maybe it is the infectious buzz of the place.

I remember by first time in KL. I was with a big group of uni mates, coming down from Genting Highlands. Whilst they decided to go straight back to Singapore, I was bent on spending a couple of nights alone in KL. My first time ever. My poor pals tried convincing me otherwise but it was just something I had to do.

There I was... A KL virgin, with an orange backpack, in a dodgy hostel, in a rickety shophouse opposite Pudu Raya bus terminal. I was either very brave or very foolish because I opted for a mixed dorm. Ah the bliss of ignorance and youth. The thought that it could be dangerous never cross my mind one single jot.

It was a dim 3 bunk bed room and I secured one of the top bunks, right underneath the airconditioning unit. A wooden locker stood to one side, with a large padlock supposedly to keep your valuables safe but one good kick could have disintergrated the lot. Bed looks clean but the most interesting thing about the room were my room-mates for the next couple of nights.

There was Kwan* (not real name), a HongKong girl who spent her childhood in Brisbane and was backpacking around Asia. And there was Tong, an ex-Buddhist monk. He was in his mid 40s and must have been one of the long time renters. Chatty and with a heart of gold, he took it upon himself to look out for Kwan and I for the short stay.

He gossiped about the other long-term occupants of the hostel. Apparently there was a lot of drug users. "Be careful! Don't eat anything they give you!" was his perilous warning. He gestured to a lower bunk, covered all the way round with a curtain and stage-whispered that the occupant is a transvestite. One that comes back in the early hours of the morning. I didn't have the pleasure of meeting him/her but did see the curtains twitched briefly.

Wandering around KL on my own was exhilarating. No need to make conversation. Just walk in and out. Stop for coffee and people-watch. Stop for a bowl of noodles if you fancy.

One of the things I remember fondly is sitting in the 2nd floor (1st flr to you in UK) of a McDonalds, nursing a coffee and looking out at the horrendous traffic jam outside with pink Bas Mini, looking like iced cakes clogging the arteries.

The other is walking along Petaling Street, looking at cheap shirts and fake watches. The sun was burning hot. And what better way to cool down than to visit this stall.

The famous Air mata kucing stall. For the princely sum of RM1 then, you'll get a cold, cold bowl of refreshing air mata kucing, served in an even colder metal bowl with metal spoon. Locals and tourists alike will stand around, slurping this heavenly concoction before handing the metal bowls back.

On another visit to KL, a friend and I stayed in a hotel at Chow Kit Road. I just love wandering through the colourful market stalls, piled high with fresh produce, with the sellers raising their voices "Ah pilih pilih pilih". The food stalls were a dream! Nasi campur, take as you please, with delicious dishes one after another. I couldn't make up my mind and to be able to dress my own plate of rice, my way, with whatever I please was amazing. I am quite particular about what chicken cuts I get and how much kuah. I simply hate it when some kakak or makcik drown my poor mound of rice with overzealousness.

At night, other stalls set up. A particular one I remembered is the nasi lemak stall, selling classic small packets of nasi lemak. Wrapped up in a banana leaf and a piece of newspaper, it is shaped into the classic pyramid. Inside is warm fluffly rice with a killer sambal, ikan bilis and half an egg. One hand-sized packet is not enough. Nothing is nicer than partaking a packet or two, chatting with your friends and sipping teh tarik under the stars.

Another glorious KL memory was when we supported the Singapore team in the Malaysia Cup Tournament. Up we went in coach and stayed in a dodgy hotel in Brickfields. With a name like Hotel Mexico, we almost expect Speedy Gonzales to come blazing through the door. It was however a tired old hotel with holes in curtains. But it will do. The roti canai sold nearby was simply delicious.

We were looking for transport to Shah Alam and somehow, this pakcik made us part with RM100 to bus us to and fro, dangdut music on high thrown in complimentary. We got there in one piece and had a rip-roaring time, by virtue that Singapore won 4-0 and hoisted the Malaysian Cup. Incidentally, right after that win, a few Malaysian states kicked up a stink and suggested not to allow Singapore to participate in Malaysia cup. Ever.

We waited for the pakcik to pick us up after the match.. and we waited in vain. The pakcik didn't turn up. A volley of curses and swearing later, we got back to KL by sheer luck - by hastily flagging taxi son a very busy highway. Once back in KL, we celebrated Singapore's win and trooped off to a 24hr KFC afterwards. In between biting into Colonel Sander's 11-herbs secret recipe chicken, it dawned upon us how funny it is that one pakcik can smooth talked 7 supposedly smart young adults.

Funnily enough, the next day we were at Chow Kit and bumped straight into him. The guys collared him, with a threatening "Pakcik tipu kita ye? Pakcik pegi mana semalam?" . He said in all earnestness, while stroking his new gold ring "Pakcik carik anak, anak tak ada. Pakcik carik sampai kat airport!" Ah? Kenapa kat airport? Kita tunggu kat Stadium!

My last visit to KL is some 5 years ago and regrettably, the group I went with was more interested in visiting mega malls. It was pretty but rather sterile and frankly, I found is rather similar to shopping in Singapore albeit less squeezy. I didn't get to eat my air mata kucing nor eat classic nasi lemak. So I am hoping I will get to do these next week.

Of moves and grooves

I have plenty to write. Too many. You can't move continents without having a tale to tell.

We are settling down better now; getting into the groove of living in SG. The first few months had been hard mentally. Even though we were born and bred here, we still experienced re-entry shock.

At times, we just wanted to shake our fists at the boorish behaviour here. Like nonchalantly strolling through doors we held often without so much as a thank you, the rushing for trains and buses without due care if grandmas or babies are trampled underneath, the way they try to squeeze through the smallest gap, often overstepping buggies and strollers in their haste.

A well-dressed lady on a bus walked past my seat and accidentally bung her large bag against my knee hard. She gave a cursory glance at her bag and looked away. Until I shamed her by loudly saying "Sorry?" She had the decency to look slightly embarassed and said sorry with a giggle. On hindsight, I got lucky. She could have fixed me a dour expression and looked away again.

Don't get me started on the TV and newspaper here. I've succumbed to subscribing to newsbiscuit.com for a much-needed dose of British humour as well as trawling through metro.co.uk. Come back free newspaper vendors! All is forgiven.

At times, we just miss London. The cold, fresh air, lovely blooms in spring and gorgeous colours in fall. The way the British would run out to tan in a small patch of sunshine during lunch time. The lovely, lovely parks and the fantastic museums. Strangely, I missed the kebabs at Taza and of course, Tuk Din's great cooking.

On the other hand, I am loving all the delicious local food, available 24/7. Mind you, our tastes have changed somewhat. No more dunking chips in chilli sauce for us. But we are having fun trying to find our favourite nasi lemak, teh tarik, briyani etc. again.

We are revelling in durian, durian and more durian. Perhaps some manggis for distraction and durian again. It seems to be a bumper crop this year with D24 selling cheap. With such largesse, we are now not content with poor cheap varieties, gladly shelling out moolah for top notch stuff. Frozen durian at $12 per seed is a very distant memory now.

In all, this is where we will be for the near future. Alia is speaking a little Malay now, which amuses me to no end. Her lovely British accent is slipping little by little and I felt both shock and horror when she told me one day "Mummy, I love Tom and Jelly"

Growing pains

The not-so-little one complained that one of her teeth is wobbly. Finally! The first baby tooth is coming out. I was all for it to come off naturally but a week later, we saw the permanent tooth surfacing a little crooked. Off to the school dentist we went.

I've not been to a school dentist some 20 odd years! The horrible dental nurse in my primary school really put me off going to the dentist. I still had visions of that horrid woman screaming and shouting at me. Thank goodness dentists and dental assistants nowadays are much more child friendly.

The lovely lady attending the not-so-little one talked to her about cartoons, about princesses and other things. Took her mind off when it came to anaesthetise the gum for the extraction and another filling.

The most pleasant thing is she checked Alia's mouth and told me three of the adult molars at the back had surfaced. I just realised how much she had grown!

The tiny baby tooth was given to her to be taken home and I was talking about tooth fairy and how much would the tooth fairy leave. Strangely, she just does not want to have the money, preferring to keep the tooth instead. How much as she grown!

P.Ramlee : The Musical (Season 2)

It was with great excitement that we settled down into our seats at the Esplanade Theatre on Saturday. Being a lifelong P.Ramlee and a musical fan, I can hardly kept still. So here it is finally ~ the story of P Ramlee as a musical. It's like having all my Hari Rayas together.

Armed with goggled reviews of Season 1, I roughly knew what to expect. They made a few changes to cast members (most notably the lead) and I believe, had tighten up the script somewhat. PRTM had won a clutch of awards including a Best Supporting Actress for Melissa Saila and Best Set Design for Raja Maliq so yes, I will be looking out for those.

So how was it? Well, I am notoriously hard to please but yes, I enjoyed myself. It is a seamless production, bar some hiccups with audio and an errant backdrop which may be attributed to first night jitters. While there are some scenes and songs which are forgettable, there are some which had me utterly charmed.

The opening scene of Penang old town to Dick Lee's Penang Swing is just so Dick Lee. It could be any other Dick Lee's production really and for a moment, I was disorientated. It was not until P Ramlee sang Azizah that we begin to anchor ourselves and the rest just got better and better.

The linear development of P.Ramlee's life are told by his relationship with his love(s) of his life - from the mysterious Azizah, potrayed here as the unattainable daughter of a well-to-do family, to Junaidah, the first wife he was 'tricked' into marrying, to Norizan, the glamourous second wife whom he neglected to Saloma, the one who complemented him as an artiste. By weaving in various P Ramlee songs into each episode of his loves, I get to appreciate each song or movie in context to what P Ramlee was going through personally.



Casting Musly Ramlee as P.Ramlee is definitely spot on. I am sure Sean Ghazi was brilliant in Season 1 but there is more to the undertaking than having a wonderful voice. So entrenched is P.Ramlee in our pysche that his mannerisms, voice inflections, not to mention his various jokes are all too familiar to us. In that sense, Musly Ramlee, impersonator extraodinaire, was magical as the great man. Not only was he able to replicate the sharp, high voice of the earlier years, he was able to do the guttural, husky voice of the later years. Now if only we could do something to that horrible wavy wig he was wearing...



Liza Hanim as Saloma sang all of her Saloma numbers faultlessly. In the narration, Saloma was portrayed as having deep-seated love for P Ramlee very early on. However, the lacklustre original songs used to convey her initial unrequited love are just so forgettable. She is hardly Eponine, pining for Marius. Her line "Dah lama saya bersedia, Cik Ramlee" was more effective and succinct.

Both roles of Azizah and Junaidah are sung perfect technically but somehow lacks any emotive outpouring. One could discern the emotion but do not empathise with the characters. Azizah's number did not exactly felt like a young girl giving up her first love nor does Junaidah's come across as the wife and mother, so frustrated, had had enough and now leaving her husband. The rawness of emotions was just not brought across.

My highest praise goes to Melissa Saila, as the glamourous Norizan. True, it is over-the-top and histrionic one-dimensional portrayal but with only a few short scenes and a song, perhaps that is what needed to push the narrative along. She played Norizan with panache and the scene where she sashayed on-stage, back from clubbing, beautiful in a black ensemble with jewels in her hair is definitely a show-stopper. Much had been said of her vocals (which pales against the rest) but her acting definite stole the show.

Much must have been thought out in terms of set design and production. Having dabbled in stage design before, I know how much hard work and planning goes in making set changes as seamless as possible. For the sheer poetry in which they did it, is worth that Best Set Design award alone.



The great wow-factor was, of course, the train scene where an almost-life size locomotive with carriages chugged onto the stage and passengers piled on. The carriages are then opened up so we could see more sing and dance routines telling of P Ramlee's journey on to Singapore, with
a tunnel projected on the background and finally, stopping at Tanjong Pagar station.

Also done brilliantly is the Lido cinema scene for the showing of Penarik Beca. It moves seamlessly from cinema goers going into the theatre, a real beca with Saloma coming into the scene before morphing to a view of inside the theatre, complete with people standing. There are great scenes that gave us a glimpse of movie-making in that era including scaffolding for lighting in absence of rigs.

What I find disconcerting is the music. I could not put a finger to it until Liza Hanim sang Senandung Kasih . It struck me that the score is rather modern, which jars with the period feel. True, this is not a tribute concert to P Ramlee hence we should not expect all P Ramlee's songs. I do understand that it is to appeal to a younger generation but to (perhaps) my jaded ears, the modern score with its love ballads are just typical lagu cinta Melayu you hear on the radio.

The ending is a little insipid, I thought. It came back to the opening scene, circa 1973 where P. Ramlee was in decline. I can't say it is touching or sad - it is just an ending. I would have preferred a more rousing ending like the Buddy Holly's musical. It ended with a tragic radio broadcast of Buddy's plane crashing and then segued to a medley of Buddy Holly's hits with casts dancing and singing, certainly celebrating his music.

I just wished that the ending of PRTM was not of an old couple cuddling in their jammies but of a big, rousing medley of P Ramlee's hits which definitely would have the makcik and pakcik dancing in the aisles and humming his music all the way home. The definite way to remember him.

Bacon & Eggs on a Tuesday night

Husband and I were feeling peckish at around 1 am.
Instead of reaching for the usual cup noodle, he asked for the pack of beef bacon I bought on a whim yesterday.

I can't get halal bacon in U.K. Beef pastrami, turkey ham, pepperoni.. yep, you can get them alright but bacon had eluded me. The first time I had halal bacon was when I purchased a U.S frozen pack at Cold Storage Singapore.

Pop a couple of rashes onto a cold pan, turn the fire on and just wait for them to crisp beautifully. The smell is something else. Once they are a little crispy, I pushed them to the side and crack an egg. Fried it in the same pan and turn off the heat when the egg yolk is still soft. Piled them all up on buttered white bread, lashings of ketchup and a little bit of pepper. A messy tower of different textures - runny, crispy, soft, salty and slightly tart

So there we were. Thousands of miles from London, we were eating a traditional English treat - bacon sarnie. Just missing the brown sauce which I hated anyway and gladly substituted with bbq sauce, and a cup of builder's tea.

Funnily enough, if we have the munchies in London, we always long for something like nasi lemak or bbq stingray!

PS. would have uploaded photos but the camera died on me.

Marks and Spencer and Walker's Crisps

I was too busy to miss London until I passed by M & S at Centrepoint. Oh well, let's pop in for some biscuits and maybe grab a t-shirt or two.

M & S used to be just a five minute stroll from my old flat at Marylebone ; a corner shop of sorts. The place where I get some croissants, milk and eggs for breakfast. Maybe a pizza to pop in the oven if I was too lazy to cook. I passed it whenever I walked to and back from work. No biggie.

But my oh my, it's a different story here. There is a hush, rarified atmosphere with hardly anyone browsing through the clothes. No middle-aged auntie type riffling for drawers or cheap tshirts and certainly no harrassed mums chucking cartons of ready meals into the trolley

... and suddenly I miss London.

• I miss the sunlit trees at Hyde Park where little one will run wild and roll on the grass.
• I miss the slight jolt I feel whenever I see Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey.
• I miss the beautiful Natural History Museum with its gargantuan dinosaur skeleton.
• I miss flying kites on Primrose Hill, with London at your feet.
• I miss Walker's Cheese and Onion Crisps and the funny ads with Gary Lineker in them.
• I miss the TV where even the football commentary can be funny.

heck, I even miss the pushy free newspapers distributors.

9 years I lived and breathed London. Of course it will take more than good teh tarik and roti prata to rival the fond memories.

A prelude to goodbye..

I'm surrounded with the detritus of 8 years in London.
All that means something are packed away in boxes, hopefully to reach our warm shores in one piece. How could one accumulate so much? Especially since we only came with a pack on our backs and the clothes that we wore.