And the moral of this trip is…

Aaaah. Home sweet home. Okay, Singapore is not my home and I’m leaving in just two months, but it does sure feel good to be back home. Sorry for the outrageously long post yesterday, and not being able to share more about my reflections back from the Penang trip, but I was quite busy all day, having to unpack my bags, wash all my dirty clothes, restock the fridge, upload my pictures, and finally take a long, hot bath! It was storming yesterday, so the cool weather was such a relief from the smothering heat in Malaysia.

But anyway. I was too occupied with reconciling with my long lost wireless friend the internet last night to be able to sit calmly and think back about the Penang trip, but here I am in a less excited mood with my internet-addict thirst satisfied somewhat.

After last night’s mega-post, I don’t want to overdo tonight by going all deep and sentimental and long-winded, so I’ll keep this into a short and sweet list.

Some Facts I learned from my Penang Trip:

1. A lot of my fears are unaccounted. I’ve been wasting precious energy and emotion fretting and worrying over this trip, but guess what? It turned out pretty well. I did not die, nothing disastrous happened, and though there were tough battles, they were nothing I could not handle. I’ll keep this in mind when ED hurls all sorts of other unaccounted, unreasonable fears at me in the future.

2. Food is not such a big deal. Really. I used to obsess over every meal and every snack, panicking over the calories, worrying about whether it would taste good and thus be “worth” the calories. I still have some of that in me, but this trip to Penang and the continuous social eating has pulled me back a step from this obsessive mentality. It has been good practice to eat socially, because slowly I did not care so much for the food as I cared for enjoyment of the company. I still favor slowly and indulgently savoring a meal in my own privacy, but no longer dread but actually anticipate a good social meal.

3. A bit of junk food here and there is not the end of the world. In fact, they can be downright crappily delicious. I wanna enjoy the occasional “trash food” rather than getting so uptight and anxious that I can’t enjoy it at all.

4. Not everyone is as lucky as me to be able to afford to care about nutrition and daily comforts: My host family is not well-off at all. They’re really struggling financially, actually. They can’t afford the daily luxuries like air-conditioning, hot water, well-stocked kitchen equipment, or better-quality food that I take for granted. In order to make ends meet, they have to cut back on more expensive food expenses, like hotdogs instead of fresh meat and white bread instead of whole grain. And here I am spending twice as much money on Greek yogurt because it tastes better than plain. How incredibly fortunate am I? Before I left, I gave this family a “love gift” of R400.

5. Precious relationships can be formed anywhere you go: I am so thankful for the precious people I meet everywhere, be it America, Singapore, or Malaysia. God has really blessed me with great relationships wherever I go.

6. You can be successful just by excelling in one thing you’re truly passionate about: 3 big mansions? Just by selling good char kway teow in the streets? Seriously?

So there they are. Simple facts that I’d forgotten and of which I need to be reminded. There are more, but then they are more religious and spiritual and more suitable for another blog.

I’ll share more pictures of Penang later, but first, today’s eats!

I had lunch with Jingwen and Serene out today. I was pretty much broke after my Penang trip, and Jingwen was saving up her money to buy a puppy, so we just headed for the food court at Raffles City. I ordered the chicken and beef patty teppanyaki:

This was an abundant dish, with chicken pieces, a hand-formed beef patty, and bean sprouts fried up teppanyaki-style, and with a sunny-side egg as a bonus!

The chicken was doused with sweet and spicy Japanese curry sauce, while the beef patty was covered with a sticky, sweet teriyaki sauce.

I thought the egg was perfectly cooked with a lovely, runny yolk. The beef was okay, though the quality was not that good as I came across several suspiciously chewy spots.

The chicken, however, was quite disgusting. Now I dislike Japanese curry, because it’s sweet and to me curry should be as spicy and fiery as possible. I did not know they were going to smother my chicken with this sauce until it was too late. But the curry wasn’t the problem this time. It was the chicken itself, which was tough and strangely bitter. I could only choke down half of the chicken.

This meal also came with a seaweed/egg soup:

Basically tasted like tap water with bits of beaten egg and miserable strands of anorexic seaweed.

Jingwen ordered a smaller portion, just the chicken teppanyaki with white rice:

The same chicken and curry sauce as mine, except her chicken was much better than mine. I thought they were supposed to taste the same? No fair.

When I got home I said a joyful hello to my old snack-friend, the Mr Bean cheese pancake…

By flaying it alive. I love to torture my pancakes.

Dinner was another hello to an old friend:

Monte Cristo Sandwiches, soaking up all the maple syrup nectar. And also an otah with which Liwen surprised me:

Oh, yum. Oh, heaven. Oh, sweet Jesus.

Chomp, chomp, chomp……

………………………………………………………………………………………………

What are you still looking at? Oh, yeah, today’s question of the day: What old-time meals/snacks do you crave the most when you’re out on vacation?

And as promised, some more extra pictures of Penang:

The Penang mountains…

Roadside hawker. Since Penang is famous only for its food, I’m just featuring their famous typical street food stalls.