so what would your average trip back to Penang be like? For me, I generally avoid Western restaurants (my rule#1 of going back to Penang when you have been living in the UK or Australia for a while) although some local friends love to bring me to a fully air-conditioned fancy restaurants to catch up etc.. Whilst I appreciate the air-conditioned environment, my mind is often drifted to the cheap hawker food that I longed for! (pangi kot tuah-teh) :p Keen to meet up with old friends but they would be busy working during weekdays while you would struggle to tell yourself that your holiday has really started! Well for the best of Penang you will expect to find me, a frequent flyer overseas-Penangite sitting next to a dusty road side eating hawker food, often un-recognisable because I would be so shabby looking, wearing a pair of eh-tuah, cheap round neck t-shirt, no handbags, credit card or even earrings, ordering a dozen of Penang hawker food to the table (without thinking about the African children if I cant finish them) and slurping away on the assam laksa, char koay teow, mi tao bak t'ng, cucur udang, otak-otak, rojak with lots of kacang, chee cheong fun.. so on, like nobody cares! and I will try to eat my best without worrying about my weight problems by drinking the noodle soup up to the last drop, until you can find grainy bits of sand (probably from the road side dust) at the bottom of the soup from your last few scoups haha! To have posted the Penang food photos here would be somewhat of a tortune for many Chung Ling kias living in the UK.. so I'll spare you the emotional reminder and cravings for good Penang food!
But here is what I encountered when flying back to Penang two weeks ago.. the SQ Airbus A380 has finally landed into Penang at 4+pm on a Sunday.. I would then do the usual praying..one, praying that my checked-in luggage from London will come out un-damaged; two, praying that I can escape the Penang customs officer from digging through my luggage contents and finding the colourful bikini that I've just purchased from sale in London. No, not that I had something to hide..but I just disliked any further time spent at the airport after 4 movies, 1 game and 2 attempted sleep on the plane so I couldn't wait to get out of the airport scenes quickly! :) then of course, teary emotions took over me when I saw my old parents waiting at the arrival hall..with my mum joyfully waiting to give me a good hug. Many kisses from me until mum said 'eh, cannot kiss so much..got people staring when you are in Penang lah..' I finally listened to her and reluctantly withdrew myself from expressing the homesick vulnerability after so many months being away from home.. :)
Then the next thing I heard was mum suggesting that there is this makan function by the chinese community for some chinese temple festival and if I would like to tag along..you can imagined when I heard the word 'makan!' - eh, bring it on lah! So for my first round of Penang makan I went.. with an event of 300+ chinese tables and I still cannot figure what the occasion is about, I was only eagerly waiting for the servings of the first dish..and was expecting a Chinese-wedding-style 8 course dinner LOL.. so the first dish came and went, I was busy filling up my appetite with serious Penang food..then the second dish.. then the announcement that the VIP has arrived.. everybody stood up to clap hands so I couldnt see who it was. And because the background was also noisy I worked out my strategy that the best way is to continue enjoying the Penang food in front of me and wait till everybody has sat down to figure out who the VIP is. Because I sat on the side table that was part of the VIP path, I found a pair of hands shown before me ready for a hand shake. You can imagine what happened next - my mouth is filled with food, I had to put down the chopsticks to return the hand shake, looked up and saw our Penang Chief Minister YAB Lim Guan Eng smiling at me. So of course I would return the smile but he wouldnt have the chance to see what I was going to do after - deep down I'd like to dig a hole and bury my face into the sand once he has walked a few feet away from my table. It's absolutely hilarious and embarassing to be caught in the 'tam-chiak' moment eating like you've never seen Penang food before but it's definitely a moment to remember! So next time if anybody is going to ask me how our new Penang Chief Minister is like - I will say that he is younger than as seen in the photos, very charismatic in his speeches and very forgiving when someone has food in the mouth while returning a hand-shake! :p
Then of course what else would you be doing in Penang apart from eating all you can eat? You'd be catching up with old friends. I have a usual small group of Chung Ling friends to catch up with when I do go back.. these days they talk about wedding packages and kids schooling as you can understand it so something new for me to learn about. Then of course new topics about what goes on and about in Penang to keep me updated.. what new shopping centre is built in Penang, what factory is doing retrenchment, and proudly, asking about how the Chung Ling UK alumni is doing since the start of the facebook evolution. I'm glad to hear that my CL classmates in Penang thinks that we are doing so well over here..and I could cheerfully say that 'yeah, we are having a game of football in Hydepark on Saturday 18/4'. (psst, if you havent decided to turn up for the football, come give Steve some 'heng dai' support lah..at least you meet a few more Penang friends along the way! He has really spent a good deal of time setting up this football event only once and doesnt deserve to be ppk). My ex-classmate said something quite true that day. She said that the tri-school Chung Ling kias in Penang may not even be as close as what we now have in the UK.. 出外靠朋友..so we should be glad that we have something like a Chung Ling alumni in the far far land of gloomy UK! We have a huge network to leverage from..eg. Steve is a lawyer himself (his charming young look can be deceiving :p) and you know, we will only have successful event turn outs if everybody do their bits to participate and get to know each other from the alumni. I also caught up with a Penang friend who is a member of the Penang Turf Club and was sending her horse for racing over the weekend.. when I mentioned the Royal Ascot event for the Chung Lings, she said 'wow! the Chung Ling kias are going to learn something about horse racing from where it all began (the original England horse racing tradition) so it would be so much fun and once a lifetime experience!' Let's hope we can keep the alumni alive this way by your participation :)
and before I go to bed tonight, I cant help myself by sharing with you some of the pictures taken while my family and I were on our way to cheng beng in Perak. If you think Penang is the greatest Asian heaven for good food..and we should have pretty much covered all the noodles of the Malaysian taste. Let me ask you if you have heard and tried the Ang Chow Mee Suah (Red Wine Mee Suah)? Have you ever seen this in Penang?
We had this in Sitiawan town along with the famous garlic chilli sauce of the Perak trademark.. 
Also last but not least, my favourite Satay fish and jiu-hu food that I gladly stormed into, at a shop in Pulau Pangkor.
Hope you have enjoyed my stories..good night and see you guys and girls on coming Saturday! :)
