Fridays With My Father

For most of my growing up years, my dad worked for the government away from home, only coming back on Thursday evenings by express bus and going back away on Friday nights. His weekend was on Friday, my school weekends were Friday/Saturday.

Friday mornings were always spent with him in town. I’d follow him to Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank, the biggest bank in town (now known as HSBC). Banking was different in those days, customer service was non existent (well maybe somethings haven’t changed that much) so to get all your banking done, you’d have to line up in multiple long queues. I’d pass the time by counting the number of people in front of my dad in the queue.

After banking my dad would treat me to a cup of white coffee at the kopitiam next to the bank on chettiar row, where all the lawyers and chettiars (moneylenders) had their offices, facing the river. a cup of coffee cost 55sen, and dad taught me how to stir and lift the spoon so that it cooled down faster.

We’d then come home for lunch, and after reading the newspapers, checking the oil in the car, some gardening, almost too soon after that, it was time for him to catch his bus back.

Those were my Fridays with my father. I’ll always remember the good times.

Remember Scotts Emulsion Cod Liver Oil?

If I mention Scotts Emulsion Cod Liver Oil, most of you you’d think of the orange flavoured kind you can get at the pharmacy. Something like this:

Tastes great, like Haliborange.

But back when i was a kid, when my mother said it was time for Scott’s Emulsion, i had to run for cover. Back then it was a bottle of thick white stuff, no nice orange flavour, it had a strong, almost nauseating fishy flavour. My brother and I always had to close our nose drinking it, and the thick fishy taste stayed with you for hours after that. Especially when you burped. Ewwwww.

I couldn’t find a pic of it online but, it looked a bit like this:

And it came in a glass bottle like this:

Apparently, the bottles seem to fetch good prices with antique collectors on eBay.

I dunno which is worse, drinking that stuff or the black bitter Chinese meds my grandma make us drink whenever we were sick.

Under The Lion Rock (獅子山下-羅文)

Was watching this talk show where veteran HK/Taiwanese comedian Slyvia Chang (张艾嘉) was doing a candid interview with a few stars from the 80’s, one of them was Lowell Lo (盧冠廷). Watching them reminiscent about the old times somehow reminded me of another HK star, a TV series, and an unforgetable song.

It was Under the Lion Rock by the late Roman Tam, (獅子山下-羅文) and the TV show was named similarly. I can’t remember much about the series, only that it was about the life and hardships of the middle-class Hong Kong citizens.

(The actual Lion Rock in Hong Kong. Its said that Roman is refering to all HK folks)

But the song, now that is a great story. In the current economic situation, where every week, one more of my friends is getting retrenched, Roman could have very well singing about us. Life is always hard, maybe more so for some people, but we can only struggle and make the best of what we have.

Listening to the song on Youtube sure brings back lots of good (and bad) memories. Patrick and his wife has done me a favour and translated the lyrics below (Full chinese lyrics can be found here.)

RIP, Roman…

Life has its joys
But often has sorrows, too
When we all meet under the Lion’s Rock
At least our laughter exceeds our sighs

Together to the ends of the earth
Joining hands to conquer the challenges
Together we work hard to create
Our everlasting legend

Dinner at Checkers, Damansara Heights

Went to Checkers in Damansara Heights last Saturday. We’ve heard a lot about this ‘KL’s best kept secret’ so we wanted to try out their ribs and compare it to Tony Roma’s.

Checkers is a (very very) small homely restaurant nestled in the CEO bungalows of Setiabistari in Damansara Heights. Its so obscure that they don’t even have a signboard. Make sure you have good directions if you have not been there. The place is pretty small, 6 tables inside, 2 outside, so reservations is a must. The decor is a bit lacking, its got a mom and pop ambience, but the important thing here is the food.

The menu is very short, you need to refer to the chalkboard to see what else they have to offer.

For starters, we had the owner’s recommendation of galette, which is a kind of super-thin crusted pizza with ham and mushroom. One of the best i’ve tasted.

For the main course, I had the pork knuckles.

My wife had the pork ribs.

And my daughters had the pork spaghetti.

For desserts the kids had the chocolate mud cake,

While we had the delicious rum ice cream cendol. This was probably the highlight of the meal

Came up to about RM70-80 per person, the receipt is the same type you get at the sundry shop.

All in all the knuckles and ribs are pretty good, but not out of this world. I’d say it warrants a second visit, maybe we might try the famous Lord of the Ribs (RM88) then. But the rum cendol was something else, that alone would be worth the trip all across town.

Checkers Restaurant
19 Lorong Setiabistari 2
Damansara Heights
50490 Kuala Lumpur
03-20953304
(reservations required)

Small Blue Dot

I found this article and just had to reproduce it here, hat tip to the source here. Makes you put everything in your life in perspective - your problems, your grouses, etc.

In 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft photographed the planets of the solar system from outside the orbit of Pluto. This photo shows the earth (tiny dot just left of the white line) from 4 billion miles away. Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote of this photo:

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

…Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

…There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.