This is another funny one from Funny or Die. A lot of phone services are now fully automated and voice-controlled. Imagine it being applied to phone sex lines. Hilarious!

A “kopitiam” translates directly from colloquial Hokkien to mean “coffee shop”. Though it is more a restaurant, albeit a very informal one, than a coffee shop. It’s a kind of restaurant that you’d see all over South-East Asia although known by different local names.

They are characterised by individual stalls set up in the restaurant selling different items, and in Malaysia and Singapore, by the serving of kopi-derived drinks hot and cold, local drinks like sweet soy-bean milk and barley, and even Milo and Horlicks.

The stalls rent their spots from the owners of the restaurant who almost always are the ones selling the drinks. One stall could be selling a soup noodle dish, another could be selling stir-fried noodles, and another could be selling a rice dish. You’d come in and find a free table, and then everyone would order what they want from the different stalls. The drinks guy would come along and you’d order your drinks. Every item is paid for as they are served to your table.

The good kopitiams are usually uniquely identified by one or two stalls which do their dishes especially well. One kopitiam could be famous for its fried kuay-teow or stir-fried rice noodles, and another could be famous for its assam laksa - a sour tamarind fish-based version of the curry laksa.

This one which we went to on our first morning in Penang was famous for its loh-bak - deep-fried pieces of tofu, pork-rolls and crouton-like things with shrimp in them. Here you see mom and dad dipping the pieces into thick gravy and chilli. We had this for starters, and then both mom and I had fried kuay-teow, and dad had a serving of dry wonton-noodles and a serving of Hokkien mee - noodles in prawn broth. We all washed it down with kopi - mom had it white, dad had it iced-white, and I had mine iced-black. This being our first meal in Penang, we covered a lot of ground.

And without further ado, here’s two big pics of prawn mee and fried kuay-teow for you food-porn lovers.

To round off this post, here’s a short clip (0:30) showing you what it looks and sounds like inside a kopitiam. Too bad you can’t smell the food as well. Woohoo!

Inside a Kopitiam
from Marcus Ooi

In the morning, we set out from Shane’s house to Su-Fern’s house to “get the bride”. The rules and rituals for this part of a Chinese wedding were explained previously when I wrote about my other cousin Shane’s wedding to Kirsten in Sydney. A video of that day of “getting the bride” can also be found on another post.

When we arrived, we were immediately met by the bridesmaids who will be the “masters of pain”.

And one of the very first tasks/challenges was for a bunch of Shane’s friends to eat sandwiches filled with chillies.

We had two “gates” - one was the steps upstairs to Su-Fern’s room, and another at the door to her room. After Shane got his bride, Su-Fern and him performed the tea ceremony for her side of the family which was huge. The rest of us adjourned to the front yard for lunch.

Full-sized photos can be found in my Flickr set. Below is the highlight clip of this morning (3:30). Parts of it are in Hokkien but with the subtitles, you should get the gist of it. All you need to know is that the entire process was hilarious thanks to Shane’s crazy friends, and a really fun time was had.

Following this in the evening, we performed the tea ceremony at City Bayview Hotel for Shane’s side of the family. And after which we had the reception in the same place. Stay tuned for those photos.

Getting the Bride
from Marcus Ooi

I’m back! Penang was fantastic. In a nutshell:

• It was all about the food, the food and the food. I easily doubled my daily calorie intake. Which was easily counteracted by …
• A bout of “Bali Belly” or at least the Penang version of it, on and off for 2-3 days. On and off because once it went off, I then got tempted by the spicy food and on it goes again. When shit is peeing from your a-hole, then you know that you are really paying for it. Oh yeah.
• I got into my love of my cultural heritage once again by taking lots of photos of Straits-Chinese and colonial architecture. You will see these photos over the next week or two.
• Oh yeah, there was also a wedding. Photos of which will also be put up soon.

I woke up this morning at 5am for my flight from Penang to KL, and from KL to Perth. I’m beat. Catch you all tomorrow when I get back into the swing of things! Woohoo!

G’day folks! I arrived in KL last night and will be staying here till Monday evening when I’ll fly up to Penang for my cousin Shane’s wedding on Saturday. That’s him and his fiance Su-Fern below.

I have two cousins named “Shane” - one on my mother’s side who got married in January, and this one on my father’s side. And yes, including Rick and Hun-Ye’s wedding in March, this would be the third wedding in the family this year so far. Year of the Pig is good for weddings apparently.

When I’m in Penang I hope to indulge in, amongst all the other good Malaysian food, my favourite hawker food combination - Fried Kuay Teow which is stir-fried rice noodles, and kopi-o-ping, iced black Malaysian coffee.

and perhaps also this - Nasi Kandar, Indian Muslim rice served with curries, and teh-tarik, “pulled tea”.

I will be taking photos as usual so watch out for those when I return on the 26th of June. Till then, I will most probably not be able to blog on my regular schedule, if at all. If you haven’t subscribed to my RSS feed yet, do so now and you will know exactly when I’ve updated.

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Remember Wendy? The friend whom I lost through blogging, and whose friendship that I have said I will not revisit? I bumped into her at the Armin van Buuren gig and we managed to exchange pleasantries. She waved at me, and I waved back and said hello. Our small talk extended to who are you here with, and are you having fun.

At the beginning of the night, Simon had said to me, “Just a word of warning, Wendy’s over there.” I replied, “Then I’ll be here.” I made an effort to avoid her but when she initiated the contact I didn’t have it in me to be cold and cruel, and to brush her off.

Having said that though, I doubt that we will ever go back to where we were even though I can now bear to be in the same room with her. It’s like a deep wound which had healed but had also left an obvious scar. It doesn’t bother you anymore, but every time you looked at it, you are reminded of how you got it in the first place.

Which is a shame. Our friendship was very good while it lasted.

I remember when Krispy Kreme first opened in Australia, my boss’ brother would always buy a dozen from the Sydney Airport every time he flew in from there. Then while the family was in Sydney for Shane’s wedding in January, a cousin from Malaysia would go to the airport every morning the entire trip just to pick up some donuts for the rest of us. Because the Krispy Kreme outlet was located within the secured area in the departure area, he’d had to go through the metal-detector pass the security to get to those donuts, and then come back out again. I’m thinking that the guards would have given him a weird look or two.

It seems like there’s a similar craze for donuts happening at the moment in the countries to the north of us. I base that conclusion on these recent posts from some Malaysian and Singaporean blogs:

• Suanie saw Kimberly raved on about Big Apple Donuts at The Curve, and then decided to try some herself, even as she insisted that she wasn’t a donut person. Needless to say, she loved it.

  In her post, she also does a good write up about how the founder of “Big Apple Donuts” wanted to share with other Malaysians, the kind of donuts that he had tasted whilst living in America. It’s a good read so check it out.

• Meanwhile in Singapore, Dunkin Donuts seemed to have been the preferred brand but they no longer have an outlet there. It looks like the fad which had died out is in resurgence. How else would you explain the need for a service which sources donuts from a Dunkin Donuts outlet in JB (Johor Baharu, a neighbouring Malaysian city just across the border from Singapore) and then make once-per-week deliveries to three locations in Singapore?

  We speculate that they bring in the donuts from Malaysia because if they had an operating bakery in Singapore, wouldn’t it be logical for them to have at least an outlet to go along with it? (via IzReloaded)

• However, nadnut tried out the service after knowing about them but came away bitterly dissapointed by the quality of the service and the lack of professionalism from the couriers. But the donuts were good though.

  The company better fine tune their service because they have a few competitors in Singapore chomping (ho ho ho) at their heels, judging by the two posts below.

• A few days before IzReloaded wrote about the Dunkin Donuts delivery service, he had queued up for three hours (!!!) for half a dozen of donuts from Donut Factory at Raffles City. This was his story, along with pictures of delicious looking donuts.

  According to him, “the donuts at Donut Factory are definitely not Krispy Kreme but they are probably the best you can find in Singapore.”

• And finally, in her post “Why donut queues are so long” Qiaoyun decided to find out the answer to the question that I’m sure many of us who have seen the ridiculous queues at shiny new donut shops would have asked. After joining the queue for some donuts at Vinco Doughnuts at VivoCity, and observing the crew behind the counter, she comes to the conclusion that the long waiting time is due to their inefficent SOP which she detailed in point form. She also adds,
  

  I suspect that maybe the management trains its staff to work very slowly in order to lengthen the queues so that the donut shop can look very, very popular.

  And long queues get longer because Singaporeans just can’t resist queues. The longer one is, the more people want in, never mind what the purpose of the queue is.

  See, Singaporeans love queuing because if people are queuing for it, it must mean that it’s good right? This must be true because a Singaporean said so. Heheh.

I love donuts but queuing up for more than a few minutes to get some seems like too much effort and dedication to me. I’d gladly go into any bakery just before closing to get their half-priced leftover donuts. Heck, I’d even buy marked-down 1-day-before-expiry clear-wrapped on a styrofoam tray supermarket donuts.

I’m a cheap donut whore, yes I am.