Penang...but not really

One of the unique characteristics of Malaysia is the food. There's not only a huge variety but they range from a broad diversity of origin. It is still the one thing that we can't get anywhere. Here in the States, you can get the 'American food' almost anywhere in the world since McDs is found basically anywhere.

The most popular M'sian food restaurant in the States is 'Penang'. Can't remember how it started but if Ping is not mistaken, it was opened by a couple from Penang who sells Hokkien mee. Now there are several chains of this restaurant. The closest to Ping is in Chicago. Ping had heard about this place from M'sians when Ping was at Western. Passed the place multiple times but had never gone in there. Everytime Ping goes to Chicago Chinatown, Ping end up going for chinese food rather than M'sian food. The first time Ping went was with friends who already gone there before and didn't like it very much. After that, Ping's desire for dim sum was more than for M'sian food. Furthermore, with Hup Loong's products, it is pretty easy to cook M'sian food.

The one thing that such M'sian restaurants still do not serve are the typical Nyonya or authentic Penang food like 'jeu hoo char', 'tau eu bak', 'lor bak', 'kiam chai ark', 'lam mee', 'chui bak', 'popiah chee', 'khong assam' and many more. These are stuff that in Ping's opinion, need to be really experienced to prepare dishes that taste really good. Until today, Ping still haven't tried any lam mee in KL that taste better than the ones in Penang. As usual, gee kim and tua ee are the best cooks to consult when it comes to authentic Penang food.

However, after the 8 weeks at Woods Hole eating dorm food twice a day, 6 times a week, Ping was craving for any M'sian food. So on Ping's first night at Boston, tiptup and dk brought Ping to the Penang restaurant located at Boston's Chinatown. We ordered achat, kangkung belachan and dried curry chicken. The achat is the best! The last time Ping had achat was a loooong time ago when tua kim bought it for us from some market she went to. Ping could have eaten just the achat with rice. The curry chicken was kinda like the ones that are served with yellow rice when celebrating baby's 'mua guik'...which was really good too. Yum yum...

an escape

Oh no!! The undergrads are coming back. We term them as the 'locust'. When they come back, they just take over the entire campus, the town and the city. Everywhere you go, there's tons of people. The roads are packed with cars and people who don't stop for you to cross the road. The restaurants are packed with people lining up all the way towards the entrance. The check-out lines are so long that it's no longer worth it to buy a box of paper clips. The bars are so pack that it starts to reek with beer and smoke.

This weekend is the welcoming weekend and there's lots of activity going on around the campus. Even as Ping is typing this, Ping can hear the fireworks from the campus...and that's 5 miles away. Ping and Fan decided to take Friday night off and go check out the new eateries at the Union. But little did we know there was going to be so many 'games', it was packed that Ping started to feel claustrophobic. Even the free Fuze, Jones and O didn't seem appealing anymore. However, Ping did manage to snag a free bottle of mandarin orange flavored O. It was just so-so. Prefer Fruit-2-O. They were also giving out free Sobe energy drinks but Ping never did acquire the funny taste of energy drinks so opt out on that. There were also lots of free stuff if you wanna hang around and fill up some forms but Ping wasn't really into all that at that time. Furthermore, Ping was eager to get out of that packed-like-sardin building. After getting past all the people, we went down to the Dairy Store to get 75cents ice-cream.

It was still pretty early after that and Ping didn't feel like going home and facing the lonely apartment. Ping also didn't wanna go anywhere with tons of people. Then Ping felt like playing pool so we went to Pinball Pete. Ping likes that place 'coz no alcohol is allowed, which also makes it popular. The only thing that's not too fun with the place is that sometimes there are shady people loitering in there smoking stuff. But it was fine last night. There was only 4 other people besides us. Played 2 games before Ping reluctantly brought Fan home and came back.

Think Ping made that ball?

down moments...

Jealous of the girl who caught your eye
When you looked at her where was I?

Jealous of the one who’s arms are around you
If she’s keeping you satisfied
Jealous of the one who finally found you
Made your sun and your stars collide

Jealous of the one who won your heart
It seems like a perfect match
She’s gonna get to be where you are
And I don’t get better than that

Whisper words I wish were mine
And they might have been
If I had been there

You know I’d fight the good fight
If I thought I’d change your mind
But if she makes you happy
I would leave the dream behind

Man, she better treat you right
And give you everything
Cause at the moment she doesn’t
I’ll be waiting at the wings.

You may be sitting right there in the same room as her but I know your mind is still on me. When you called me back, I knew you were thinking of me. I knew you wish you could be here telling me everything will be alright. She may be treating you good but I know I was there when you were down. I would be there whenever you call. You might be the light of her life but why isn’t she denying the others? I would have given you my all, but you would never know that would you? She’s there wherever you are. But if I had been there…it would have been me. You let her know…she could be there, she could be a sweetie but I know you’re thinking of me. I was your first and I know she could never take my place. The longer time she takes to make up her mind, the longer time I have. She can take all the time she wants and I’ll be on the watch.

But will you tell me when she makes you happy? Will you tell me when I’m annoying? Will you be honest with me?

And who am I to say all that? Ping is in her imaginary world…sad and lost.

chicken

Grrrr…something went wrong in Ping’s laptop. The wireless network connection is going through an ‘attitude problem’ moment (as we say in Hokkien, ‘pi siang’ / ‘tau hong’). Ping only bring laptop back home on weekends since the network connection at work is faster and more stable. At home, sometimes the wireless doesn’t work very well (but we’ll be changing to DSL soon!!) and sometimes room-mate uses it (yeah..only one of us can use it at one time). Last weekend was the last time Ping brought it back and the wireless connection worked really well.

Yesterday, after Ping came home from JG’s place (she had Sci-Fi channel and it was Stargate’s 200^th episode!), Ping wanted to check email before going off to bed..but it wasn’t connecting. So Pingwent straight to bed thinking that the connection is down (as it happens pretty often). Woke up this morning and it’s still not working! Had Nok check it and it worked fine with her laptop. Went to the lab building and the connection is usually stronger but Ping still couldn’t get connection. It seems like the laptop is getting connected since the status says it’s connected and the signal is excellent. But it’s the browser and email client that doesn’t seem to be detecting the connectivity. They worked fine when Ping connects to the LAN. Once in a while an error message will pop up saying that there is an IP address conflict in the network server..or something like that. Ping Googled for the error and most of the comments Ping found mentioned that it is due to an imposter and only the network company can prevent the imposter from getting connected. Hmm….complicated lah! So Ping will wait till Monday to bug the IT center. This time Ping has no pirated softwares so Ping can bring it to the IT center…kekeke.

But all these made Ping too frustrated to read anything…so Ping dig for stuff to cook. Made Spiced Chicken with Crispy Tortillas. This is an appetizer meal. The bottom is lined with tomatoes and onions. Ping is not a big fan of raw onions so Ping sautéed it in olive oil and place it on the tomatoes. The chicken was seasoned with oregano, cumin, garlic, and cayenne pepper. The dressing is avocado blended with lime juice.
For the main dish, Ping made Roast Chicken with Rosemary Potatoes..and of course not to forget the daily serving of vegetables, green beans! The main dish is a lot faster to prepare than the appetizer. Ping just had to rub the chicken with rosemary leaves and leman grind with black pepper. Then toss the potatoes in the remaining seasoning and throw all into the oven and bake for 30 minutes, which Ping took to prepare the appetizer.
That was yesterday and today, Ping made Sauteed Chicken with Bacon and Corn Sauce. Amazingly, Ping followed the recipe and added onions too! But Ping made sure the onions were totally cooked so that she don’t have to bite into a raw onion and start making funny faces. Yeah..onion is not one of Ping’s favorite. That’s one the eating habit Ping took up from mum..hehe..Ping and mum is not a big fan of onions and scallions.
All the recipes are from Family Circle. Mum used to buy the old copies from MPH warehouse sale for RM 1 each but these recipes are actually from the Family Circle recipe books that mum bought for Ping a few years back. Once in a while, when Ping feels like being more adventurous with cooking, Ping would look for one that Ping has all the ingredients. Haven’t seen this magazine here in the States..if not mistaken, it’s from Australia or New Zealand.

Now Ping has meals for the entire week prepared in the refrigerator. Just gotta heat it up and it’s ready to be eaten. One thing bad about liking to cook is Ping has to eat it all by herself. Next time Ping has to stay with someone who likes to eat but don’t like to cook. Then don’t have to worry about finishing up the food….*Grins*

new battery

This is the second time Ping received an email about Dell replacing some of their laptop batteries due to excessive heat. The first time Ping didn't have to get a replacement. Initially, Ping is too lazy to check this second time but then Ping saw on the website that we don't have to turn off the laptop to remove the battery if it is plugged in..so Ping decided to check. Guess what..Ping has to send it back this time!!!

Ping do realize that the battery gets hot when Ping uses it too long..especially when placing the laptop on my lap. But Ping though it was normal because camera battery warms up too when it is left on for too long. But from stories like that, Ping is definitely gonna get the replacement.

Wheee..time to go home!

Harvard Square

Right after Woods Hole, instead of coming straight back to Michigan, Ping took a self-declared 1 week holiday to tour Boston and NYC. *Grins* Boss asked me when Ping will be back and Ping told him about going to Boston and he mentioned that Boston is a nice place and Ping would enjoy it...so that should be fine. But now that I'm back, boss hasn't give Ping a hard time yet although have yet to discuss about my project yet. Am currently thinking of changing approach...sigh...scary ler. Qualifications coming up in few months and yet Ping don't feel like she has enough preliminary results.

Anyway, the first thing Ping did after arriving Boston via Bonanza busline...go home tidur. Hehe..tiptup came to picked Ping up from Boston South Station and was feeling very sleepy. Went back to TT's place but only slept for a while. It was a good sleep though...especially after the last few nights at MBL, kept thinking about having to wake up early to finish up the report.

The first place Ping went was to Harvard Square. TT drove Ping there and we walked around Harvard Uni campus and surrounding areas. Don't feel like a university campus at all...more like a little town. TT tried to bring Ping into the library but we could only go so far because need to show ID and students can only bring their parents in.

Check out this cool rainbow effect from the fountain just outside their computer lab building...
Another cool thing...this is a lady who stands outside the Coop store as though she's a statue. But when you place money on her skirt, she'll move around. Ping saw a similar act on a vacation to Disney with parents in 2004. A lady stood close to the bushes as though she's part of the flora community. But when you walk close to her, she'll move a little. If you turn back and look, she'll stay still again. Ping saw another lady preparing herself at Central Park in NYC too...cool eh? :P

Fresh seafood

The best thing about living so close to the ocean...seafood!!! That's another thing I miss most coming from an island to a flat land where you're surrounded by corns and soybean.

On weekends, mum would stir-fry 'pek chiau' with soy sauce...definitely the best! I could eat 2 just for lunch and skip the rice. When dad's around, we would have the baby 'pek chiau' deep fried. It would be soooo crispy you can eat the whole thing, even the bones! On days when ahmah is too lazy to cook, she would make steamed 'bola hu' in soy sauce with chilli and that's enough to go with rice. Mum actually managed to smuggle some 'bola hu' for me a couple years ago...gotta do that the next time I go home. Kekeke...

Whenever there's a function, we would go to Teluk Bahang or Batu Maung for finger-lickin good seafood. Crabs and honey prawns!! But now when I go back only for a month, I tend to get sick of them by the end of my break because seafood are not really healthy food and it kinda gets to my stomach after a while. The last two trip wasn't that bad because we have home cook seafood! Instead of going out, we buy them back for gee kim to cook. She's the best cook for homecook food I've known! She can make any hawker food too! That's one thing I'm glad that I get to go back to Penang for hols instead of to PJ. Kekeke..

There was one weekend when se han ee and Uncle Francis brought us to Gertak Sanggul to buy grass for our garden. Uncle Francis saw some fisherman coming up shore and approach them..the next thing you know, we got fresh fish! How often can you actually buy your seafood from the fisherman themselves just when they bring the fish back from the ocean? Definitely not in Michigan!
As for this year, since I couldn't go back home, I got my share of seafood from the coast of Massachusetts. There are fresh lobsters, they were caught and kept in a seawater tank until they are ready to be barbequed or steamed. That's me pulling up the lobster trap. Unfortunately, the trapped that I pulled out had a hard-shelled sea mollusc instead. But the trip out was fun. I just love being out in the sea. Once they are out of the water, the lobsters are basically harmless. They can't move very much except for their claw. So we have to hold them upside down and tie up their claw with a rubber band. If the claw is not tied up, when it is added to other lobsters in the sea water tank, they would clip off each other's claw. Agressive!
Besides lobsters, the Swope serves fish or scallops almost every other day. I definitely did managed to go poultry-less this summer. They have really good shrimp sandwich, crabmeat salad and seaweed mix. Then there's salmon, codfish, sea bass and more. The one thing that we still don't get in US is fishes are not served as whole fish. They usually use only the fillet. But it was still good.

The restaurants closeby all serves seafood too. I've had a mahi-mahi sandwich at Captain Kidd, fried calamari at Landfall, fish and chips at Lee Side and salmon at Phusion Grille.

Everything must come to an end...

The bulk of the summer is now over but it’s the best summer I’ve had ever since I came to the States. For once, I know what I’m doing and what the next step is. It can all be planned out and I can walk through them step-by-step. It is definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity to work on something like that but that’s just the beginning. Like all research, a troubled phase will eventually come if I work on it longer because that’s why it’s called “re-search”. I just have to go back every once in a while and start again. If everything is as smooth as it is over the summer then we won’t be doing any research today. But at the same time, it’s frustrating when nothing works, when for two years, everything you do goes down the drain because it doesn’t tells you anything. Wait….that’s life right? :) We just gotta keep going.

So what exactly was my research about at Woods Hole? I tried to look for methanol oxidizing denitrifiers at Trunk River. They are important for conversion of nitrate to gaseous nitrogen. Nitrate can be pretty harmful to the water quality because it promotes eutrophication that will decrease dissolved oxygen content in the water. From the first couple weeks, we were taught the classical enrichment techniques for different organisms and one of them was using high nitrate medium to enrich for denitrifier. That’s exactly what I used and providing methanol as carbon source. I’ve got the coolest bug ever! It’s a type of prosthecate bacteria, having cytoplasmic protrusions at one or both end of the cell. Aren’t they cute? The first one is at 400X magnification while the other is the scanning electron micrograph of the enrichment culture. They are pretty tiny too if you just consider the size of the cell without the prosthecae. Brought it back with me towork with but still gotta keep my fingers cross to see if they’ll grow as well here.
I’ve not done much culturing work since undergrad days and it feels good to be able to do that again. Molecular biology is definitely a great tool but sometimes it creates a gap between you and your bug. I no longer need to look at them under the scope or grow them under different conditions. All I need is their DNA or RNA to work with. In the end, I don’t even see the bug at all because I make use of our good ‘ol trusted E. coli. It is lots of fun working with molecular approaches because it can answer a lot of questions. But there’s a lot more out there that can be answered by culturing.

Besides science, it’s a lot fun at Woods Hole too. Definitely a work hard, play hard environment. People would work late into the night but we would also be playing games and hanging out in the afternoon. But one reason why it is so intense is that there’s nothing else to do there besides research. The lodging sucks so I’d rather be in lab. The one thing that I love the most is being able to take a 30 minutes break and just sit by the beach, looking out into the ocean and not think of anything. Yup, all I did was sit and stare. After dinner, I could lie down on the bench, look up to the sky and just look at the stars. Sometimes it makes me sad that all of us – mom and dad, ahmah, ahboy – can be looking at the same sky and yet we’re all so far apart. But the intensity of the research doesn’t allow much time to dwell on what we don’t have…which is the one thing that kept me motivated there. It’s all about science.

Now, Ping-Ping is back at Lansing…time to deal with reality.