Soul Doctor speaks...: The Taiping blog

Chinese new year....holiday for me, but for my mom?

We all ate and ate, she cooked and cooked.

My mom takes pride in cooking for her family...sadly now only about once a year. She and dad have very simple meals on their own in Taiping. It's hard to persuade her to put down her apron to go out and eat in a restaurant during new year, hard maybe not the word...she never let us convinced her that we love her just as much even if she doesn't make us the usual new year feast for days during the celebration.

Don't get the wrong idea, her cooking is above average cooking if not excellent. I, for the same reason why I'm weird, enjoy washing up for the folks after every meals and cook-out; but the amount of work involved to produce the dishes is really, really, something else.

Anyway, maybe next year she'll listen to her children.

Mom at the wet market

Like any year, this Chinese new year I had the privilege again to help round in the kitchen. Mom and I washed up literally every single plate in the cabinet before the eve of new year. Most plates now stay in the cabinet all year through except during new year when they get to be on `main stage'.

Some of the older plates there, each plate carries a memory of different dish for me. As I ran water over each plate n bowl, I couldn't help but feel hungry....hungry for the food I used to eat during my growing up years in Taiping - food from my mom's kitchen.

My family turned vegetarians (except for my sister now) quite some years back but I remember dishes my mom used to make even before we stopped eating meat. There's a plate with fishes drawn on it where my mom used for her famous chicken curry (lots of garlic and potatoes!!). Then of course, there is my favourite flat plate with floral print because it reminds me of those absolutely devilish `hor-pao-dan' (fried eggs with the yolks still soft and golden covered with egg white) my mom used to fry for her kids. You CAN'T find any chap-fan store in KL where they have fried eggs like that.

Now slowly the plates will start to become my Chinese new year memories, but no less they stay as my childhood memories.

Other than my mom's plates, I found my old diaries! Packed in a plastic bag in the corner of my room (now my dad's study room...looks like a store room). Among my diaries from the early to mid 90s, I found two autograph books from my school days.

Boy, those early diaries written in Mandarin!! I guess now I know how I lose my roots in Mandarin...at some point, maybe at round 1993, I stopped writing diaries in Mandarin and turned to English!

SeeMing n Sim were there when we had a mini party in my Taiping bedroom reading my diaries.

we had drinks opposite The Lake Gardens before they head off to SeeMing's home

Sim could only managed the school autographs written in English, SeeMing picked out all the funny, and embarrassing entries and we were rolling on the floor...she said this should go out to all young and schooling persons:

Start a diary today, or make sure you keep your old school autograph books

so that you could in future, look back on your pages and laughed yourself silly with entries like:

from 1994 school autograph book, this boy wrote:

"ambitions (his, not mine): scientist, Army (consider to be GI only), actor (consider Hollywood only)

my philosophy: western philosophy
dream: to be an American"

(you can only guess the choas in my room when Sim found that entry....I have lost touch with most of these friends, I hope his dream came true though)

another one was like...

"first of all I want to say sorry because I couldnt pass this book to AC because I didnt go tuition." (written in English AND Mandarin!!)

Haven't had time to go through all my diaries...will sure find time one day soon to read all and `relive' those moments.

More Taiping pics...

My dad's Datsun