Work and food
by prudence on 07-May-2012
I ought to rename this blog. It ought be 'Work and food: what else is there?' because I do a lot more work than travel at the moment.
Actually that's not really true. I'm in Malaysia, after all. As another expat colleague said to me the other day, "I always feel like I'm on holiday in Malaysia."
But there is a lot of work just now. My May Day holiday was full of it. And the weekend was full of it. I was free for just a teentsy weentsy Sunday afternoon.
But the work was at least enlivened by food. Just "normal" food, nothing fancy. But so, so good.
On my way to spring Nigel from hospital on Tuesday, I had breakfast at Teh Tarik Place, on the edge of the Pyramid. Soft-boiled eggs, kaya toast, and teh tarik for less than 5 ringgit, which I reckon is pretty good. They do nice kaya toast -- thick and substantial. This is one of the standard Malaysian breakfasts. Someone once told me about an ice-breaker exercise where participants are asked which they prefer, nasi lemak or roti canai. What a terrible ice-breaker. A) How can you possibly prefer one of those to the other? and B) What about soft-boiled eggs and kaya toast?
I've talked about Saturday breakfast roti canai from Di Naina before. I love the combo of crisp and soft in the rotis, and I hate them to get soggy, so my preferred method of consumption is a spoonful of roti followed by a spoonful (or maybe two) of dahl or curry. I'm not sure this is an orthodox way of eating roti canai, but it's my way.
For Saturday lunch, we went to the new food court in the Carrefour building. Here we shared one of my newest favourite things: claypot chicken rice. The sauce kind of percolates down through the rice, and sticks it to the sides of the baking hot claypot. The flavour is excellent. It's all nice, but those sticky bits you hack off the edges and bottom of the pot are just divine. We followed this with a shared cendol from Mr Cendol. Good cendol. Need to go back and try more varieties.
For the TW Sunday afternoon that I had off, we went to Midvalley Megamall. We went to see a movie, for which there's an excellent review here, we went for an exploratory stroll round the adjoining but much more upmarket Gardens Mall, and we went to Taiwan Recipe, where we sampled their menu of delicious little snacks, accompanied by rose tea: pan-fried dumplings, little meat balls, little crispy packages of sweet corn, and home-made onion pancakes.
If you have to fill your life up with work, do it in Malaysia.
Actually that's not really true. I'm in Malaysia, after all. As another expat colleague said to me the other day, "I always feel like I'm on holiday in Malaysia."
But there is a lot of work just now. My May Day holiday was full of it. And the weekend was full of it. I was free for just a teentsy weentsy Sunday afternoon.
But the work was at least enlivened by food. Just "normal" food, nothing fancy. But so, so good.
On my way to spring Nigel from hospital on Tuesday, I had breakfast at Teh Tarik Place, on the edge of the Pyramid. Soft-boiled eggs, kaya toast, and teh tarik for less than 5 ringgit, which I reckon is pretty good. They do nice kaya toast -- thick and substantial. This is one of the standard Malaysian breakfasts. Someone once told me about an ice-breaker exercise where participants are asked which they prefer, nasi lemak or roti canai. What a terrible ice-breaker. A) How can you possibly prefer one of those to the other? and B) What about soft-boiled eggs and kaya toast?
I've talked about Saturday breakfast roti canai from Di Naina before. I love the combo of crisp and soft in the rotis, and I hate them to get soggy, so my preferred method of consumption is a spoonful of roti followed by a spoonful (or maybe two) of dahl or curry. I'm not sure this is an orthodox way of eating roti canai, but it's my way.
For Saturday lunch, we went to the new food court in the Carrefour building. Here we shared one of my newest favourite things: claypot chicken rice. The sauce kind of percolates down through the rice, and sticks it to the sides of the baking hot claypot. The flavour is excellent. It's all nice, but those sticky bits you hack off the edges and bottom of the pot are just divine. We followed this with a shared cendol from Mr Cendol. Good cendol. Need to go back and try more varieties.
For the TW Sunday afternoon that I had off, we went to Midvalley Megamall. We went to see a movie, for which there's an excellent review here, we went for an exploratory stroll round the adjoining but much more upmarket Gardens Mall, and we went to Taiwan Recipe, where we sampled their menu of delicious little snacks, accompanied by rose tea: pan-fried dumplings, little meat balls, little crispy packages of sweet corn, and home-made onion pancakes.
If you have to fill your life up with work, do it in Malaysia.