Home Sweet Home

I managed to get up just 15 mins past 7am today after a really nice night of sleep without any mosquitoes. Mom cooked me and bro some vegetarian noddles with very little seasoning for breakfast.

We hit the road just before eight-thirty am and arrived in PJ just after eleven-thirty am. All roads and toll booths were clear...the weather fair and sunny. I have since got home, showered, sent out some urgent emails, and ate some vegan pineapple tarts my mom made (without egg). My suitcase left in the hall not unpacked.

Taiping was quite, incredibly hot but cooling in the night, especially in my parent's house where it's next to a hill and away from city lights and buzz. Sweet J came down on first day of CNY and we did a bit of leisurely driving round town.

Went round Lake Gardens, passed my Chinese high school but same as last year, the main gate was closed..fine, went round to Aulong where my primary Chinese school's gate was shut tight too. We peered out from the car window, I pointed to my old class room in primary six, the wooden sliding doors looked the same to me. Didn't see any new buildings like other schools, the only new feature to the school I haven't visited for over ten years were the shiny new metal gates.

My only luck was the Kamunting vocational school where I did my last two years in high years, I drove past the guard house, waved at the guy in the guard house. I explained to J why I ended up doing commerce or business studies in a vocational school, I could have done it in a normal academic school...it was my dad's idea that I would get jobs easily if I had a cert from a vocational school.

While in Kamunting we drove to the ISA detention camp or what we thought was it -- says something like Pusat Pertahaan or Pelindungan something, something...J said it looked not like ISA, because the compound didn't look like has a great deal of security. At night when I asked my dad, he said the infamous jail was indeed, just down the road from the vocational school...

Done with Kamunting, we head back to the lake gardens and ended up at the foot of Maxwell Hill. Very luckily and quickly we got a slot to park my Sunny in that over-crowded touristy place. We bought cone ice cream and stood there watching families played and picnicked in the stream...old nannies and grannies sat on the grass or on mats with packed food from homes. Toddlers, adults, parents and babies soaked in the water. Just outside the entrance to Maxwell Hill, was the town's public pool, I never knew that it was `Malaysia's first and only fresh water pool'...huh?

J and I walked into the pool house, curious to see how the whole world could swim in that small place. A counter was set up in front of the pool and a man asked approaching crowd, "Berapa budak?" We had a bag of fried Cempedak from outside, so we sat down at the canteen area next to the pool and ordered cold drinks; they also served laksa (RM2), and other noddles, and rent out swimming shorts. Basically nobody steps into the pool, everyone either jumps in or dive in...no one was doing laps or serious swimming but I guess wading around in a pool full of people beats sitting in the sun bursting in sweat.

In the evenings when I didn't go out I did lots of catching up of Chinese movies on TV. If you don't have ASTRO in your home during CNY, you basically will be watching lots of movies with these actors in them: Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Kelly Chen, Tony Leung, Andy Lau...and a few others I can't name.

And guess what, my mom knows who Chef Jamie Oliver is. She obviously doesn't speak English but she said if his show is on TV (8 TV), she doesn't need to see his face to tell that it's him on TV, in that funny, slurring and blurry talking voice, she said.

After lots of cauliflowers and soya products, driving round like crazy in hot sun, and many sms greetings, am back in my familiar desk top where I would work for hours without any home cook meals. Though I like waking up to an empty apartment and eat whenever I like, there's nothing, NOTHING like having home cook (or MOM-cook) food everyday.