Blogging to stay awake

It’s 5 pm and I am so sleepy can die. But I have a pot of ABC soup simmering in the kitchen and I intend to make the most kickass steam stingray with some sauce I bought from some aunty at the wet market this morning. If I go to take a nap now, I will probably be snoring, drooling and ternganga and terkangkang when the husband gets home at 7 pm. So, no kenot sleep…good wives like me must tahan mati dan tahan lasak, sleepy also find something to stay awake.

*get into yoga pose and start blogging*

I went to the Caunterhall flats this morning because like usual, I have nothing to do after I dropped the kid at kindie. It is one of the lower income low cost flats but I like the hawker foods and the bustling market. I bought some local cili padi from some authentic, organic, kampong aunty who sells all her homegrown kaffir lime leaves, home pounded sambal belacan and other herbs.

And I notice how good I am with all the cooking ingredients while older aunties are clueless what kaffir lime leaves are and what curry leaves are. Adoi…so old already, somemore don’t know what is what meh? You want to show off you are rich and never need to cook or what?

I had koay teow mee th’ng. My style of eating koay teow th’ng is to dump the whole saucer of cili padi with tauyew into the soup to make me sweet sweat. Trust me, eating all those cili padi is good for your health (pronounced as ‘hell).

Before I can buy pork from the butcher, I got a call. Usually, I leave the pork part to the last, after I had my breakfast because pigs are awfully heavy and usually, I need to buy at least 3-5kg of them. I like to buy and store them for a week, easy for me. The 3-5 kgs consist of minced pork, kap sin, eu chi bak, tu kar, sam chan, leng kut and pai kut. I like to get at least 3-4 spare ribs to roast because my kids love the roasted pork ribs. See, pork also have different names, for different cooking styles.

A reporter from a Chinese press asked me if I am interested to video some 150 yrs old herbalist building at risk of getting converted to some modern building. 150 years old? Herbalist? Cun! Sure I want to go kepoh a bit lah. I watched that HK TVB Herbalist Affair series, what’s his name? Kinda romantic feel, hor?

So, I rushed home and took a bath and got my cameras and stuffs and headed to town. Oh, I stuffed all the fishes, prawns and vege I bought into the freezer/fridge, of course.

I think my sense of direction has improved a lot since I do all these kepoh CJs thingie. I parked cun cun near the place where I was suppose to cover. So, I was carrying the tripod and the laptop bag (minus the laptop but useful for my two cameras) and must have walked real fast. A reporter and photographer from some biggie media wound down his window and joked with me to slow down…Yay, I am ‘one of the boys’ now and to tell you the truth, that’s quite an achievement for me.

I got to work. First I used my DSLR to capture some of the photos because photos with the DSLR stands out due to better picture quality. Then, some ADun from DAP came by and I changed to my video camera. Imagine, I si peh busy with changing camera and screwing and unscrewing hot shoe (the part of your camera that attach to the tripod). So, I pun started sweating because it was hot, humid and lately, the weather is freaking sweat-invoking.

I followed the ADun around, climbing up 3 storeys of old, kreakity floor board, musty chambers and greeted by really antique stuffs. The smell of the Chinese herbs really took me back to the 1800s and they have one hundred years old grammaphone (dunno how to spell, lazy to google, don’t know, don’t care).

Then, we headed to some art gallery for a press conference and power point presentation. I think I have an excellent coverage of saving heritage by pooling resources from the owners, heritage folks and the state government.

Once the English press con was over, I rushed to pick my boy from kindie. I was 20 minutes late but had already arranged for him to have lunch at kindie. RM2 per meal. It is RM2 to buy me extra time so it is really worth it. Like my older sons said, “Mom…you better train him to be a bit independent. If not he sure pondan one, every day wait on him like that.” See? I am not guilty for running off to ‘save the world with my video camera’.

Then, we went to Popular at Tesco and also did some grocery shopping. We got home and I cooked tau yew bak. After 15 minutes of the sam chan bak simmering in three cloves, 1 star anise, 1 small cinnamon stick, 5 tiny cubes of rock sugar, dark and light soy sauce, garlic and pepper…..My son screamed, “MOM!!!! I am hungryyyyy! I want rice!”

‘What you hungry? You just ate lunch at kindie. It is less than 2 hours, wei. Cannot so fast hungry. Anyway, the food won’t cook so fast, must wait long long somemore’. Doh…imagine if my kid is in full day care? He will be starved.

30 minutes later…he asked again. *sigh*

40 minutes later, my three older boys got home. So, boh pien, I pun served the tau yew bak lah. Along with some soup and egg.

And now….many hours later, I am awake and ready to go into the kitchen to cook dinner. They had finished my tau yew bak and that means I need to find another dish to cook for the breadwinner. Never mind, serve him telor bawang can liao. Kids more important. LOL.