Malaysian Food Diary

Warning to whoever may be homesick after looking at all the photos of delicious Malaysian food which I've tasted from this point onwards. I will start with the non-Malaysian food first for those who accidentally scrolled down.

French Cuisine:

My flatmate made this for me and she even gave me the recipe for it. So nice of her. Came back to Malaysia and the first dish I cooked for my parents was:

Salmon marinated with Chives and Mango then fried on low fire with olive oil.

This Mango salad got the same response from both my parents as mine. I was totally shocked when L mixed raw spring onions with olive oil and pepper into the freshly cut mango. However, after tasting it, it turned out to be delicious! This was the worst culture shock I'd experienced so far.

Western Cuisine:

Malaysian-ised Chicken Chop at Kluang Station restaurant. The sauce was slightly spicy to cater for the Malaysian taste buds.

Kenny Rogers. To my disappointment, every thing shrunk on portion. Even the chicken was smaller! The taste was however, still the same standard.

Japanese Cuisine:

Ate at Sushi King and I ordered Ramen. Not bad at all.
Saw this square watermelon at KLCC. Too bad it's not for sale
Japanese desserts....just joking. They're actually erasers

Malaysian Food!!!!

As most Malaysians have heard about it, our ex-prime minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir opened a new bakery at the new posh shopping centre called The Loaf:

From the outside

From the inside
Pastries sold there were more expensive than usual, the staffs were more courteous, the environment was less crowded and more peaceful. I didn't buy anything so no feedback from me.

Next weird experience was coming across a selection of cigarettes on a proper restaurant menu.

Nice proper looking menu. I ordered Luo Mee which will be shown later. As I turned to the back to have a look at the drinks section, I came across this:

Cigarettes anyone? Served at any point of the meal, before, during and even after.
Luo Mee - This is a peculiar type of noodles as you can add black vinegar to the soup and it'll enhance the taste.

From this point on, it'll be just random photos of Malaysian food which I've eaten.

Rotiboy - crunchy on the outside, melted butter in the inside. Enough to die for? Hmmm

Pork Noodles

Penang Laksa - White noodles which is transparent looking when raw in soup made from fish.

Rojak Buah - Cut up fruits with some deep fried stuff mixed with peanut sauce

Another version of Rojak Buah

One of my favourites - Yau Yu Ong Choi (Squid with water spinach) - mixed in the same peanut sauce

Best curry noodles I've tasted so far. There was even a generous helping of clam in it.

It was my first time eating this at a restaurant. A different type of bean called 'Guai Dau' in Cantonese. Very delicious but it's also more expensive as compared to long beans or French beans.

Roasted Duck and meat. I'm not really a big fan of duck but this duck wasn't bad at all.

Cantonese style fried noodles

Hokkien style fried noodles - This dish was weird cause according to Penang people, this type of noodles doesn't exist in Penang which is highly populated with Hokkiens but it exists in KL.

Fried rice - liked this stall's fried rice cause they put a lot of prawns in it.

Lala (a type of clam) fried with egg and spring onion - first time I've tried and it wasn't bad. Usually it's oysters with egg but since oysters are expensive, this stall

Want to know what I usually have for breakfast?

From Pau, white carrot cake to Dim Sum, you name it. All the Chinese food for me. Hehehehe. Later on, I moved on to Malay food. But that will be posted next time.

How I miss 10 course dinners. Usually it's served during a function or on special occasions in high class restaurants or hotels. I was lucky enough to attend a medical talk at Hilton hotel after being smuggled in by my aunt and below was what I had for dinner:

From left to right and top to bottom: 1. Cold dish 2. Braised assorted dried seafood soup 3.Steamed Promfret 4.Chicken with San Tung Nut 5.Tiger Prawns 6.Stirred Marrow Quash with mushroom and garlic 7.Noodles with mushroom and bean sprout 8.Tong sui (Dessert) - Sweetened papaya with red dates 9.Deep fried lotus paste sesame ball

It was bad for health but I tend to overeat at dinners like this. The delicious food didn't help to prevent this from happening too.

Malaysian buffet breakfast in a hotel - as you can see how different it is from European breakfast, I do miss them


This was one weird dish I tried at Hong Kie's, a Hong Kong restaurant while visiting my friend at Seremban - It's garlic rice wrapped in leaf topped with an egg and sweet and sour pork ribs. Nice.

Prawn noodles - one of my favourite noodles

Steam boat, or more commonly called hot pot outside Malaysia

Bak Kut Teh - Pork boiled in herbal soup, and Tapai Chicken - Chicken cooked in rice wine

Kajang Satay - Best satay which I've tasted. It's pieces of chicken and beef skewered and then grilled using charcoal. Eaten with peanut sauce, cucumber, onion and ketupat (boiled sticky rice)

That's all for now. Next entry will be focusing on Kelantan food. As a true Malaysian, only the food part of the trip to Kelantan was important. Hahahaha. Till then.

Reunion after such a long time

How long has it been? I think it has been a long 7 years since the last time 3 of us were together in SMK Konven St. Cecilia in Sandakan. It had been such a long time yet it seemed like just yesterday when we met up to do our school project or attending classes on weekdays. The fact that none of us changed that much did helped with the feeling of 'it seemed like yesterday'.

JV and A. Maybe hair longer a bit but other than that, still exactly the same!

Of course I'll need personal photos with each of them.

It took A to graduate from US, JV to be studying in Peninsula Malaysia in a small town called Seremban, which wasn't too far away from Kuala Lumpur, my parents who willingly became my chauffeur and map reader, and all 3 of us to be free for this reunion to happen. So glad that it did cause it'll be extremely difficult in future.

We had our day's out at Jusco Seremban. I didn't even realise that we were all wearing pink. Pink must be in season now. Had lunch, shopped, even did some grocery shopping. Happy to see you gals and may we meet again soon. I think it'll most probably at someone's wedding. Remember to send me invitation card!

From one end to the other

Finally, the moment has come when I can almost officially declare that my summer holiday is starting!!!!!

It's going to be my last day of electives tomorrow. The previous 2 days have been great thanks to the really nice specialist registrar at paediatric cardiology department of IJN who was so willing to teach us so much. Finally, I can differentiate a few types of murmurs, carry out a complete cardiac examination, read a bit of x-rays and ECGs. She's going to my inspiration from now on. To medical students, coming across somebody who is so generous in sharing their experience and knowledge and willing to take out some of their time to teach is like striking the lottery. We'll be extremely grateful to that person especially to those of us who are bounded by the PBL learning system.

This afternoon I was kinda like sulking that I didn't have anything planned or confirmed yet for the next few weeks of my official summer holidays. This depressing period didn't last long as suddenly so many people contacted me asking me to accommodate them for a few days, then in exchange, I wanted to go visit them at their hometown, ex-schoolmates asking to meet up at the same weekend, ex-college friends asking to confirm trips and even informing me of plan B if this trip was canceled. So, from having zero plans to a super packed and hectic schedule, I think I must have wished too hard for an unforgettable summer.

Before I forget, congratulations to those who have graduated this year, good luck to those sitting for exams, best wishes to those who are getting married. Finally, I hope that I can withstand all these excitement and not complain that I miss being bored. Maybe I should think twice before complaining that I'm bored as being bored may be a rare occasion from now on.

Will my holiday ever start?

I'm having some electives blues at the moment. Feeling quite depressed as I found out that PBL wasn't exactly the best learning method considering the tiny speck of knowledge I've gained from the last 3 years of medical school compared to the amount of knowledge students from other universities that don't practice 100% PBL have.

I hate it when I know that I knew something before and have totally forgotten it. I hate it when I can remember that I have learned it before but just can't extract it from my sleeping brain. I hate it when doctors ask you the simplest question of all and you get dumb struck. I hate it when I feel stupid all the time.

When will my holidays start???? This will be my last chance to relax and enjoy life before I need to turn over leaves from a whole forest to morph into the nerdiest medical student ever in order to pass 4th year. A whole year of suffering awaits. Will I ever have the chance to enjoy life?

It is different in a real situation

I got the chance to do chest compression on a real patient during my attachment at A&E. It was really scary and exciting as all the while, I only did chest compressions on models for Basic Life Support examinations and I didn't know how hard should I press or whether I was pressing sufficiently to keep the blood circulating.

The first thing that came to my mind when I stepped up the stool, straightened my arms and positioned myself to start chest compression was, 'Oh my goodness, I could see the patient's face so clearly as I was so close to him'. My mind also wandered a bit to imagine what is it like for the patient to see me towering over him if he ever opened his eyes. Next thing was, 'This must really hurt if he could feel anything because I was practically leaning my whole body weight on him'. But these thought soon disappeared as I was trying my best to save him. This was the time when I really felt that I was saving someone and scary or not scary, pain or no pain doesn't matter anymore.

The doctors were really good. They gave constant guidance on the right technique and how I should use my weight to press rather than using the strength from my arms to minimise exhaustion. Sadly, the patient never regained spontaneous breathing or heart beat after advance life support for half an hour. The doctors had to pronounce him dead.

I felt glad that I was given a chance this early into my medical education to attempt something as important as this rather than not knowing the correct technique and not having the confidence to do it in future.

Was A&E exciting? Yes when unfortunate things happen. As students, we have very ill intentions of hoping for more accidents or mishap to happen so that there will be more excitement while posted to A&E. When I qualify, I'll hope that everybody is in good health so that my workload would be minimal. The irony!

Picking up driving again

After such a long time, after avoiding it for 3 weeks since I got back to Malaysia, finally, I picked up the courage to touch the car again.

It has been 2 years since I last drove. On top of that, my driving skills was never really up to standard in the first place. I thought I would have forgotten how to drive, or my skills must have deteriorated to the extent of not knowing how to drive. How glad I was to find out that I was wrong!

Hehehehe. This time, I just drove for about half an hour in the morning. It was quite scary at first, as I couldn't really estimate how big the car was. By looking into the back mirror, I couldn't estimate how far away I was from the motorbike which conveniently chose the right moment to stop behind me as I was reversing out of my house.

Thus, from that point on, I realised that driving was all about estimation. We estimate the distance between the car in front and your car, estimate how near you are from the side of the road, estimate that you're driving on your side of the road and not declare the road belonging to your ancestors and drive in the middle of the lines, estimate how much you need to turn the steering wheel to clear the pot holes......the list goes on.

I hate it when driving is not like playing the piano when you can afford to make mistakes and just practice and practice until you got it right. I sometimes wished that my car was like a bumper car where I can make mistakes, banging into objects, or maybe accidentally driving it up a divider and come out without a scratch. No, once you bump into something, that's it. You'll be rewarded with a dent on your car to remind you not to repeat the same mistakes.

Afterwards, my parents are going to make me the chauffeur again this afternoon. So, wish me luck. I wonder when will the time come when driving will be a 2nd nature to me, when will it be when driving will be like walking?