Archive for July, 2006

Matt Harding is another internet sensation. He went travelling round the world and made a video of himself dancing wherever he went - and he dances in some very precarious places along the way! It made me laugh and want to pull on my hiking boots/ dancing shoes and head off into the wide blue yonder.

So “Where the hell is Matt?”

———————-

———————-

See his website at www.wherethehellismatt.com, which tells us that apparently a chewing gum brand was so taken by his dancing (or rather the audience he was getting from his video) that they sponsored him to go on another round the world dancing trip!

When I was growing up in Malaysia, we always had tasty, spicy, aromatic food. Day in, day out. Garlic. Chilli. Turmeric. And for fruit we always had delicious, flavour-ful mangoes, papayas, rambutans, starfruits. Dripping and juicy with taste. So far so ho-hum.

What we craved was really exotic and exciting foreign food, dishes that were really difficult to achieve in the humid tropical heat. Tastes that involved dairy and foodstuffs that would go off in the rank mugginess. Fruits that were from a cooler climate.

Like lemon meringue pie. Specifically, the home-made lemon meringue pie made by Koo-cheh, my little aunt. She was my father’s youngest aunt and came to live with us with my grandmother when my grandfather died. Kooch was only ten years older than me and she was my favourite aunt. The family called her Mary Poppins as she could always be relied on to keep an eye on us kids.

Making lemon meringue pie in a hot sticky kitchen in the tropics is no joke. It was hugely labour intensive because you had to make each of the three components from scratch. Once a year, for a special occasion, Kooch would spend a whole day in the furnace to make this exquisite dessert. She would make the shortcrust pastry base and bake it blind, with a layer of grease-proffo paper and dried beans to weight down the rising crust. Then she would make the lemon filling, grating the rind of two lemons and boiling it up in their juices, adding sugar and egg yolks and cornflour. She would fill the cooked pastry base with the gluey liquid and let it set.

Finally, she would beat the egg whites with sugar to form a thick, mountainous white fluff that she spooned over the whole lot and the pie would go into the oven to brown the meringue. Later, it would cool on the counter, protected from flies by a half-domed basket and then go into the fridge.

That evening, we would all be abuzz, my parents, grandmother and us kids, saving space for dessert. She would finally bring out the pie and and slice into the soft cloud of meringue, cut down into the rich yellow of the lemon and at last, into the crumbly crustiness of the base. No shop bought lemon meringue pie has ever compared to this home-made tangy, fresh taste blended with the bubbly yet crunchy yet chewy foam of meringue and the bland buttery taste of the baste, all cool and fresh on our palates.

We would regularly beg Kooch to make the pie but she would refuse. When I thnk back on it, she would have been around 17 or 18 and with better things to do than spend hot days cooking for her greedy family. We were lucky she made it for us once a year! But, this reluctance made her a legend in the family at that young age, like a five-star Michelin chef who would only occasionally deign to make her signature dish - and then only when the whim struck her.

Kooch now lives in Canada with her own kids who are around 17 or 18. I have the old Penguin Cookbook of hers, the pages brown and fragile and falling apart. I’ve made lemon meringue pice form there and it always, consistently tastes just as good as if we were tasting it for the first time. This is partly because I’ve only ever made it once every 8 years or more - it is that labour intensive. Or perhaps I’m that lazy…

Still, no matter if I make it or anyone else does, to my family and me, it will always be known as Kooch’s lemon meringue pie.

This Guest Blog is part of the series of Fusion Stories. For more about the Fusion Stories series, go to the Category called Fusion Stories in the sidebar on the far right.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Photo: Azman (left) and Ian (right).

Ian writes:

What would a British born Chinese know about Malaysian food? Very little it would seem, and that was certainly the case before I met my wife, who’s Malaysian Chinese. I’ve always been passionate about food (a little too passionate, my GP tells me) but Malaysians are even more so and it’s not surprising since their cuisine is simply sublime, with a wide range of tastes that reflects the melting pot of cultures in Malaysia.

On our trip to Kuala Lumpur last December, which is always a culinary delight, I tried some buns made by my wife’s aunts (4 sweet little old ladies who are fiendish in the kitchen). The buns had a savoury chicken filling, while the bread was of the softest, fluffiest texture. I asked the aunts to teach me their secret recipe for the buns, which they did, and so, armed with the recipe, we went back to London and tried it for ourselves.

Our bun making was quite a success, but we found that each time we made them, we couldn’t finish eating all the buns (12 in a batch) ourselves, so I thought, why not sell them? I used to frequent a Malaysian stall at Leadenhall Market run by a Malaysian couple, Azman and Naza. They do the most delicious nasi lemak and curry puffs. I had become familiar with Azman and thought that I would ask if he would let me sell the buns at his stall. I was really pleasantly surprised when he said yes.

I started off with a few chicken buns and gradually experimented with other fillings. I’ve now ended up with four different fillings, including sambal ikan bilis, which is typically Malaysian.

Market days are Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. The buns are prepared beforehand (it takes about 3 hours to make a batch) and are baked in the morning. This is sometimes a frenzied affair if the buns don’t turn out for one reason or another and I have to keep baking until I have the requisite number of pretty looking marketable buns. I suppose I’m a bit of a perfectionist in that way! We typically set up the stall at about 11am when Azman trundles up in his 4×4 laden with food and apparatus. Azman’s offerings include rendang wraps, murtabak, bagedils, spring rolls, kuih bakar, cucur udang, nasi lemak, curry puffs and mee goreng. Everything is home cooked by Azman and Naza and is made from family recipes.

It doesn’t get busy at the stall until about 12pm, so we pass our time chatting with the other stall holders. There’s Annie and her aunt who sell cool ethnic jewellery, Borza who sells delectable olives, and Stuart who sells home made fudge, to name a few. The atmosphere at the market is great– all the stall holders are friendly and we help one another out, covering each other’s stalls when needed. Azman and I sometimes find ourselves waffling about the finer points of olives or the current jewellery trend!

Things start to pick up at the stall at about 12pm and continue up to about 2pm. Traffic at the stall is dependant on the weather (a big factor), what day it is (Fridays are good) and also the time of month (end of the month is best). We have our regulars, who come nearly every day. It’s a great feeling to know that people really enjoy our food! Although we have quite a number of Malaysian and Singaporean customers, they don’t make up the majority, which shows how cosmopolitan London is. Some of our customers also ask us to source items of Asian/Oriental food for them, which we are happy to do.

On a good day, we sell out everything at the stall and on a bad day, we have leftover food for dinner (great for my wife)! Our day at the stall typically ends with one of the stall holders buying a round of coffee while we compare notes on how well we did.

Work doesn’t end there though, as Azman and I dash back to our respective homes to prepare food for the next day if it’s a market day. For me, that involves preparing and making the buns from the time I get home up to about dinner time. On non-market days, I cook the fillings for the buns, which is a time consuming affair. Our kitchen now looks permanently like a war zone, with ingredients and kitchen implements taking up most of the room, much to my wife’s chagrin. We also try and experiment with new recipes, and one that we’ve just introduced is a chicken sambal puff. We try to keep things interesting for our customers!

We sometimes set up stalls at various festivals in London. You may see us at the South Bank festival later this year. We are also in the process of applying to set up stalls at various other markets in London, including Borough Market, so that we can share a taste of Malaysian food with more Londoners.

It’s hard work and tiring, but really satisfying to see people buying our home made food and giving us encouraging feedback. It’s also a nice change not to be at a desk job with a lunatic boss. One of the perks of the job, of course, is the constant supply of Malaysian food! Now, who can say no to that?

Written by Fusion View Guest Blogger: Ian Lee

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To find out how you can contribute your cross-cultural story to the Fusion Stories Series, go to my post “Tell Us Your Fusion Story” in the Announcements section of the middle sidebar on the Fusion View homepage.

A comment posted by Lydia on my podcast What Makes a Good Story? about how very English I sound started me thinking about my two voices - my English voice and my Malaysian one - and how they express two different parts of my personality.

I was going to write a post about it but then I realised that a podcast would be the best way to show what I mean - so you can hear the two sides of me.

You can listen to the podcast with the player below.

————-

————-

Or, you can listen to this and other Fusion View podcasts by clicking here.

You can also receive this and future Fusion View Podcasts free via iTunes.

This ’sixties was the era my parents were young and wild in. Here are the Bollywood Beatles meets Elvis to remind us of the good old days that we may be glad we missed…

…………

While I was writing my recent posts on Giving and Receiving Feedback on your writing, I was reminded of the time I showed my mother the completed manuscript of The Flame Tree.

Predictably, as my mum, she loved it. “It’s lovely, darling. It’s beautiful. You write so well.” etc etc etc. Which is what you would expect - and what I did expect from my mum. So in terms of constructive and critical feedback, it wasn’t much use.

What I didn’t expect was when she started to give me specific feedback on one particular scene. It began innocently enough. “You know that bit where Luke and Jasmine get it together at last? At Luke’s house - after the landslide?”

“Yeah?” I nodded without taking it in fully.

“Well, I don’t think they would wait so long to make love…”

Eh, what? She had my attention now.

“That scene is a bit slow. Not realistic-lah. He wouldn’t be all so gentlemanly, you know what I mean? And she wouldn’t be so shy-shy like that.”

Er, I wasn’t sure I was actually hearing this.

“Yah, they just faced this life and death situation, right? They nearly died, right? People want to have sex after they survive something like that. It’s natural. They won’t be able to control themselves…”

“Um, Mum, er…”

“Yah, he would be just desperate to make love with Jasmine. He has loved her all his life. Now, they are together, they nearly died together, she’s in his house that he built for her - he’ll be full of passion…”

Oh, I didn’t like where she was going with this. She’ll be telling me how they should be doing it next - positions and descriptions and all!

“And, Jasmine, there he is all gorgeous and hunky and sweaty after saving her. And now she realises she loves him. She’ll want to touch him and kiss him…”

“Stop!”

i didn’t have enough hands to cover my eyes and ears all at once.

“What, darling? It’s just human nature I’m talking about.”

My psyche had to be nursed back to health with lots of smelling salts and have its clammy brow mopped with damp flannels.

AFter I had recovered from the trauma of learning all about wild passionate sex from my mum, I looked at the scene again and I knew she was right. I deleted it all and started again. The scene in the published novel is truer and it works a lot better.

I think when I was writing the first version, I had an awareness in the back of my mind that my mum would be reading the book. And perhaps in some way that inhibited me when it came to the love scene. (I challenge you writers out there to write a passionate sex scene while holding in your head a picture of of your mum!) But, when it came to the reality of my mum, she responded to my writing as herself - a woman as well as a mother - and freed me in my turn to be true to myself in my writing. Viva la passione!

Continuing from Part One of his Fragment of Japan last Thursday, Andrew writes:

Surreptitious Snake

Summer 2004, sitting on the grassy bank of the Arakawa river, Tokyo’s impressive grey mass smoking quietly in the distance, when a snake decided to pay me a visit. Impromptu to say the least. I was expecting the odd sparrow, possibly a crow or two but a long, black snake had not been on the agenda. I’m still not certain what business he had with me, was it amicable or hostile? I think it was a ‘he’, the flanking maneuver he executed smacked of masculine fourberie. Though the female snake is also known for her guile. In the Chinese folk tale “Baishe Zhuan” (The Story of Madam White Snake) it is said:

“A young man encountered a beautiful maiden attended by a maid during a festive outing near a lake. He followed her and was invited to her fine mansion outside the city, where he dined and stayed overnight. After that one-night stand, the young man became visibly emasculated, his vital essence being slowly drained. The suspicion that he had been bewitched was confirmed by a revisit to the mansion – in reality, a graveyard. A Taoist monk was called in to perform an exorcism, and, sure enough, a white snake and an otter were driven out. Upon this skeleton, though, other elements were soon added to give it flesh and substance.”

(Whalen Lai, Folklore to Literate Theater: Unpacking ‘Madame White Snake‘ Asian Folklore Studies Vol.51 No.1 April 1992 pp.51-66)

To my knowledge, there was no beautiful maiden hiding in this snake and if there was she certainly didn’t invite me to her mansion outside the city because I cycled home afterwards.

Why do we fear snakes? Is it a visceral, physical repulsion to the idea of a flask jaw sinking into our flesh and injecting its venom? Or is it more psychological, the fear of a slow and impotent death? Perhaps the snakebite is a taboo, a deep dark desire and the chance of a flirtation with death. But it’s one desire I wasn’t ready to satisfy.

Ikebukuro Station, West Exit

Twice a week I used to help a volunteer group distribute food, clothes and medicine to the homeless population of Ikebukuro. We’d usually meet at the north exit, split up into groups and each take a wing of the mammoth station. At 8pm the tunnels and halls were full of restless commuters, office workers and secretaries, students heading for night school etc. The rhythm of that hour was intense. Here and there you’d see dark faces peer out of the woodwork. Men in their forties and fifties tucked away behind vending machines, concealed in alcoves, a community bound to the shadows. Many of them were victims of the economic slump of the 90’s, excess fat on a body that had grown too large too quickly…they were laid off in droves. I got to know one man quite well, his name was Kobayashi. He seemed to trust me from the beginning.

One evening I found him sitting in between two plant pots next to a row of drink dispensers. He’d taken his shoes and socks off, and I could smell the sour odor before I even saw him. We went through the drill, asking about any particular illnesses or concerns for that week before handing over a ration of rice and biscuits. He never seemed pleased or disturbed to see me, it was always in pure nonchalance that our exchanges took place and no matter how many times I corrected him, he was convinced of me being American. He’d been there once in the 80’s on company business so sometimes he liked playing the name game – that is naming all 51 states of the USA. On that occasion he didn’t say much at all. He complained to the doctor about chest pains and he was scheduled for a checkup in a nearby practice at the end of the week. As I listened to the doctor, my eyes turned to the flow of commuters. From time to time, oepole would stop to observe, I remember one young man in a suit who stood there shaking his head, I couldn’t make out what exactly he disapproved of, whether it was Kobayashi, the doctor or me. I think people were often curious as to what business a foreigner might have with a homeless man….

But the lines were very clear. In a country where children begin vying for the best position in society from kindergarten age, the pressure and energy that goes into reaching the top crushes those who happen to fall. I often wonder about Kobayashi-san, whether he’s still living in his cardboard cut-out. Perhaps he was lucky, perhaps he moved somewhere else. But I’m sure If I met him again tomorrow, he’d still think I was American.

And -

If you are thinking of moving to Japan, going off to teach or study, and you would like to know more about places and institutions mentioned in this article, then please do get in touch with me via this link. Thanks very much for reading - Andrew Eglinton

Written by Fusion View Guest Blogger: Andrew Eglinton

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To find out how you can contribute your cross-cultural story to the Fusion Stories Series, go to my post “Tell Us Your Fusion Story” in the Announcements section of the middle sidebar on the Fusion View homepage.

As part of my exploration of the writing process, I talk to Terry Bailey, lecturer in scriptwriting at the University of Aberystwyth, where he teaches scriptwriting at undergraduate level and also at Masters level. What are the elements of a good story? How important is structure in a novel or screenplay? Terry outlines the key principles and recommends some good guidebooks on writing and story. I describe how I structured my first novel, The Flame Tree, using post-it notes and a blank wall!

Listen to our conversation with the player below.

………………………

………………………

Or, you can listen to this and other Fusion View podcasts by clicking here.

You can also receive this and future Fusion View Podcasts free via iTunes.

It’s time to take a break from your PC and take a stroll round your local neighbourhood - Russian style…

…

The clip is about 8.5 minutes long and there’s an arty bit near the beginning you just need to sit through and then the truly amazing feats start…

This is the counterpart to my post on Receiving Feedback. You’ve been asked - either as part of a writing group or by a writer friend - to give feedback on their piece of writing. Giving feedback to writers is fraught with dangers. “Be honest,” they say. But writers are notoriously sensitive - how honest should you be?

I think the key is all in how you give your feedback. Depending on how you put it, you can be pretty honest. (Unless, you sense that, honestly, your friend really just wants praise and you would rather not give them the truth for the sake of your friendship. And that’s a judgement call I have to leave to you.)

All things being equal, the “Sandwich” technique usually works well. You sandwich the more challenging apsect of the feedback between two good bits.

1. The first good bit. What did you enjoy? Which aspects were well-written? What phrasing did you like? Be specific. It gives the writer a specific reference they can go back to to see where their strengths are.

2. The challenging bit. What could be improved? What were you not clear about? Which sentence could read better? Again, be specific so the writer can compare specific weaker passages with the stronger passages you pointed out in the first good bit.

If there are a number of points you might make, choose the one that needs the most improvement. Leave the others for now. It can be better for the writer to work on one concrete thing sensibly than to try to fix too many things at once, especially if they are new at this game. You can always help them with the other issues in the next feedback session.

Try to use neutral or objective phrasing. Compare “That really sucked” with “Perhaps you could give us more of a sense of Jim’s reasons for acting in that way” …

Ask: what was the writer trying to achieve in that passage/ chapter/ book? Sometimes what we intend to portray doesn’t quite come out and it can be useful to be told that by an objective voice - at least, I find it useful.

3. The second good bit. Overall, what were the strengths? What resonated with you? Which passages will stay with you?

Sum up in a positive light.

But, at the end of the day, be warned. The writer is likely to obsess over the challenging bit and find it difficult to absorb and retain the two good bits. (Or is that just me?!)

What are your experiences of giving or receiving feedback? Are you part of a writing circle? Do you and your writer friends help each other out by reading each other’s work? Do you have a different technique from the Sandwich? I’d love to hear from you - and I’m sure the other writers reading Fusion View would, too - so please do add a comment.