Light Me A Lantern on My Birthday

Lui Cha Again, swiped from williamnyk on Flickr.

Did my usual Saturday ritual at the wet market. But to break the monotony, we had breakfast at a new joint that week-- Restoran Siew Foong. A relatively new place that we frequently observed was closed. Seeing that it was open, we jumped on the chance. As we walked in, we could a whole bunch of staff doing preparatory work. A little girl was reading at one of the tables and upon seeing us walk in, remarked:

"Sorry, we are not open for business. We are undergoing renovation."

Stunned for a while, because we saw a woman actually making YTF at one of the tables. A man suddenly rushed out to shush the girl and welcomed us in. :S. Weirdness. The place served Hakka food, so we ordered their lui cha with brown rice and a bowl of homemade fishball noodles. The lui cha was quite good. Rare to see shops serve it with fried sweet beancurd skin. The soup was also fragrant enough and not the usually watery fare. I gave it a good score.

Had a lunch date with several friends to celebrate my birthday at Kalamazoo. JJ and Bunny were the first to arrive since they lived close by. Next to come was Apollo. Tried their buffalo wings, pork loin with onion bechamel and grilled lamb shoulder. I preferred the lamb. Halfway through my meal, Jase arrived. Thought that he couldn't make it. So nice of him to come although he had to rush back to Ipoh for his grandma's birthday dinner. This year, SK ordered a passion fruit pavlova from -Alex-. Quite a challenge to cut that cake, but it was delicious. True to tradition, JJ and Bunny gave me a red packet for my birthday. They're like my grandaunts. :P. Before leaving the restaurant, I whipped out the Fujifilm Instax that KT got me for my last birthday. Took a photo with everyone and it became an instant door gift.





The last to leave was JJ. Right after lunch, we drove over to Chatime for some refreshments. One Hawaiian fruit juice and peach tea later, we sent JJ back to Bunny's apartment. Went up to chat with them for a while. Quite interesting to see their living arrangements. Board games seem to play a central role in their home with the living room dominated by makeshift items to facility their gaming sessions. Clothes pegs are used to indicate turn sequence. A plastic board is used to mark player statuses and statistics. And to clear that board, they use hand sanitizer. Lots of improvisation. Gaming is truly their passion. Before heading home, I stopped at SK's apartment to drink a nutritional soup of lotus root with pig's tail. She's making good use of Lifebook's pressure cooker. Hehe.





At night, SK, SK's granny, mum and I went over to Fo Guang Shan (Puncak Jalil Chapter)'s Lantern Festival. Loads of residents turned up, no doubt for the free vegetarian food. In addition to the food, there were many performance (mostly songs), some Dhamma talk, lantern riddles (deng mi-- so bloody hard to guess) and lantern making competition. Even some politicians turned up, representatives from MPSJ, PKR and PAS. The PKR guy seemed more comfortable at partaking in the food. The poor chaps from PAS just stared at the food. A nun from FGS gave a speech and it was so close to my heart because the words used and the subject matter was very much like what I hear during the mandarin sermon on Sundays. They even had a candle lighting ceremony where everyone passed on a light like what Catholics do during Easter vigil.



Before going home, we actually stopped at K'Chiangmai Ikan Bakar for supper. Hahaha. Shared a grilled tilapia and ikan keli. Quite yummy and cheap. No wonder they are perpetually full of customers. That concludes my pre-birthday Saturday.



P.S.: See the picture above? Guess what my mother was double-boiling. It's supposedly a Chinese remedy for a gassy tummy.