Malaysia 2015

Woo hoo!

I bought my tickets for Malaysia. Yes, after a lapse of 2 years, I'm making a journey back, this time sans kids and wife.

It'll be in September so I'll have plenty of time to wait. But Kris and I were talking, and my thoughtful wife shared that it's been a long time since my last trip back, and that time because the kids were jetlagged and cranky, I had minimal time with my buddies. Some of whom I met up with only for 2 hours, to catch up on 3 years. Since I have a few weeks of vacation time to kill, she suggested I make a solo trip.

After much pondering, I finally bought the tickets.

Will be back for 2 weeks in September to October. And have committed to giving a couple of lectures to doctors/students in Seremban, and if time permitting, may do more in the Bukit Jalil campus. Aside from that, this will be mainly a trip to be with family and friends.

More to follow, but in the meantime I have 5 months to work out and lose some weight in preparation for the gastronomic expedition I'll be sure to undertake.

The Mysterious World of Kids

So here I am, sipping coffee at 609AM on a weekend. Hoping the kids won't wake up for a bit so that I get some peace and quiet in the house. But inevitably they will get up early, because it's the weekend. If you're a parent I'm sure you know. Which gets me wondering about this and other questions.

• Like why is it that you have to drag kids out of bed on weekdays when they have to go to preschool, but on weekends they miraculously wake up by 630 all energized?
• How after wolfing down two bowls of rice and saying they're full, but only after a mere 30 minutes later they can say "I'm hungry?"?
• How a 4 year old learns the spelling for Ice Cream before Apple?
• Why it is possibly for a toddler that small, to make a poo that large in her diaper?
• How kids can magically make a freshly laundered shirt dirty again within 0.2 milliseconds of putting it on?
• They can't hear you when you're asking them to clean up 3 feet away, but have superhuman hearing when you're sneaking a sweet dessert in the pantry 30 feet away?
• How they never get sick of watching the same cartoon over and over again? Alli and Ava have seen 'Frozen' about a trillion times by now.
• Or how toddlers seem to get more food on their face than into their mouth?

Not that I'm complaining. But maybe someday I should study this and get this published in some scientific journal. And prophetically, I hear commotion from the kids room.... someone's awake. Uh oh. 

When the cat is away...

... the mice comes out to make prawn noodle!

Yes sad as that may sound, I have to resort to doing this secretively.

For some men, when the wife is gone for the weekend, they may have other wilder stories to share. Alcohol. Women. Smoking. Fast cars etc.

For me, it's food.

If you are married to an AngMoh, you may understand. Certain smells do not agree with Kris and the kids. Particularly shrimpy and fishy smells.

You should have seen her reaction when we were dating, the first time I used belacan. From the other side of the house, I hear "What the hell is that???" and her running outside, thinking it was some chemical spill (and they say Malaysia doesn't have biochemical weapons? The silly Westerners obviously have not encountered belacan and durian).

Anyway, this was my lunch(es). I had a pack of prawn noodle paste. One that I had hiding in the deep corner of my pantry, only because I didn't want my wife to leave me and Child Protection Services to come and take my kids away- so I have not used this. For years. Hence the baik sebelum date of April 2013. But then again I've been away from Malaysia too long, and I don't read Bahasa Malaysia anymore and so those words meant nothing. Probably date of manufacture, huh?

Out I went to the store to buy some spaghetti (it's a decent substitute), veggies and shrimp. And gleefully put it together. And I made a potful that it lasted me for two heavenly meals.

It's been 8 hours since my last bowl. My gut is still behaving normally, so I take it this means I'm in the clear and won't die of food poisoning (but if this is my last blog ever, you know what happened).

The wife and kids get back from Wisconsin (visited the in-laws for the Easter weekend- I have to work tomorrow so could not join)- I pray the smell dissipates out of the house by then. Otherwise I'm going to be in trouble.