Archive for September, 2006

Continuing my report from our holiday in Cornwall….

We arrived at our holiday cottage in a valley not far from the north Cornish coast late in the afternoon. We tumbled in, tired and grumpy. We had had a long drive from London and there was still the unpacking to do. But the charm of the place perked us up. It was one of those cute, tiny little cottages with timbered beams across a low ceiling and vast open fireplaces dating from over 200 years ago. There was an richly textured garden of flowers and shrubs in the front and a lawn at the back. And - perking us up even more - there was a basket of fresh scones, a bowl of strawberry jam and a pot of clotted cream waiting for us in the kitchen.

The unpacking could wait. At at time like this, there was nothing for it but to put the kettle on, lay out the cream tea spread out in the garden and settle down for a yummy time.

Clotted cream is made from the thick cream floating at the top of full fat milk. You skim it off and boil it down till its even thicker and richer. Then you let it cool and refrigerate for a few days. The result is a gooey, vanilla-ish, glop that you can dollop on any dessert or fruit.

Scones are a cross between bread and cake - the best ones are light and fluffy with big fat currants in them. The genius of cream teas is that somehow, the blend of crumbly scone with strawberry jam and a dollop of clotted cream interspersed with lashings of hot tea just meld together into a taste experience of sheer bliss.

Whoever said that English food is not much to write home about?

Throughout our week in Cornwall, wherever we turned, there was clotted cream. You could have it on apple and blackberry crumble or with fresh strawberries or on fruit tarts or more scones than you could dream of. We took to having cream tea for breakfast as well as tea time. We walked on cliffs all over the coast but clearly did not walk long enough or hard enough to burn off the joys of clotted cream. Looking at our snapshots of our holiday, you can see me getting chubbier and rounder as the week goes on… Oh dear.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Daphne du Maurier and I’ve read as many of her her books and short stories as I could get hold of. Most, if not all, of her novels were set in Cornwall and described a dramatic and beautiful coastal landscape punctuated by empty moorland. The most evocative works, I think, were “Frenchman’s Creek”, “Jamaica Inn” and of course, “Rebecca”.

Curiously, I had never managed to take a trip to Cornwall until last week when we headed down for a week’s holiday in a country cottage. I had had a hectic time at work and I was tired. It was a long drive from London and as we got stuck in yet another traffic jam, I was beginning to wonder if it was really going to be worth the effort. But then, we pulled out of Exeter and haded up into the heart of Bodmin Moor and it was as if we had dropped out of the hurly burly of reality into the landscape of great fiction.

Bodmin Moor was just how I had imagined it to be - vast swathes of heath and moor, sweeping out across the vista like a stormy sea carved into the dark earth while in the distance, craggy tors brooded sullenly. You see - the drama of the view even makes one wax into purple prose. I was thrilled to see that you can go to the Daphne du Maurier Experience at Jamaica Inn - yes, there really is a Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor - where you can see her writing desk and recreations of scenes from “Frenchman’s Creek”. (We didn’t stop this time - but next time, I shall be there with my camera for a must-have pic of The Desk…)

We went for walks along the cliff tops and again, it was like being in one of her novels - this time, “Rebecca”. The South West Coastal Path perches you on the cliff edge, one precarious footstep away from certain death on sharp, rugged rocks in a foaming sea. I kept thinking of Mrs Danvers saying to the nameless heroine, “Go on, jump. You know you want to.”

Happily, the thought of cream teas and saffron buns kept me from the hypnotic pull of the rhythmic waves… you know you want to, you know you want to. No. No, I don’t want to. I want hot buttered scones and clotted cream.

I shall now have to dig out my old Daphne du Maurier novels and re-read them all. With the nights drawing in and the winter chill in the air, the next few months will be a great time to snuggle up in bed with hot chocolate and a windswept book.

If you’re a Daphne du Maurier fan, do share your thoughts about Cornwall, her books, your favourite characters/ scenes, cream teas… please add a comment or email me.

This is the sort of thing that makes me glad I’m a sedentary, stay-in-front-of-my-computer type of a gal…

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It was misty and cool when I woke up the other morning. Summer has turned now and we are in the first steps of creeping towards autumn.

As a kid in Malaysia, I used to read books set in England, describing mist and fog and it was really hard to imagine what that would be like. Until we went on a family holiday to Fraser’s Hill (as it was then called). Up in the blue-green hills, surrounded by thick jungle, the air was cool and fresh - as if the place were air-conditioned against the thick, heavy tropical heat of the lowlands. In the chalets where we stayed, the lawn had different, more delicate grass. There were bright rose bushes and exotic plants from cooler climes. In the mornings, the mist would sit damply over the hill. Everything seemed mysterious and spooky. I loved it.

The school I came to in England is on the south coast, facing the English Channel. On some winter days, the fog rolling in from the sea would white out the landscape for days on end. At intervals, the fog horn would sound, mournful and eery in the muffled stillness. The air would taste damp and salty and if you spent any time out in the fog, you would come in covered in dew.

My parents were in London in the late 1950s at the time when there were thick “peasoupers” - a combination of fog and pollution from coal fires. Traffic would grind to a halt and people would have to walk. But even walking was hazardous as they would not be able to identify any landmarks or see more than a foot in front of them. My parents describe how the fog would get inside their flats as well, no matter how much they tried to seal the windows and doors with rags. My mum said that even their undergarments would be stained yellow from the noxious “soup”!

I’m glad those days are gone! But I love autumn when the leaves start to turn golden and the air cools - just before it gets really miserably into winter. And on misty mornings, I always think of Keats’s Ode to Autumn:

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 5
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease, 10
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

A recent survey found the iconic food of the British is fish and chips. It started me thinking about other foods that might be specificially associated with the British. There’s roast beef and yorkshire pudding, of course, and cucumber sandwiches. A few years ago, Chicken Tikka Masala, an Indian dish, was voted the nation’s favourite, showing the best of multi-cultural Britain.

For me, one of the foods that is peculiarly British is malt loaf. I don’t know what other country you can find it in. (If you can think of anywhere else in the world where it is cherished and relished, do let me know by adding a comment!)

Malt loaf is a small, dark, fruity loaf which is about the size of a mini-brick. It is sticky and soft so that when you cut into it with a knife, you have to be careful not to press down too hard or you will squash the loaf. When you’ve sliced it, it looks like a slice of bread soaked in syrupy Guinness and crammed with currants and raisins. It tastes best with a slathering of butter on it. Inside your mouth, it is sticky and caramelly, clinging to your palate and teeth. The combination of slightly salty butter and fruity, toffee-like sweetness is just yummy!

Now, we have a rule about malt loaf in our household. We are only allowed to have it after a long, bracing walk - preferably in briskly chilled air. Or, after we’ve worked hard in the garden. In those circumstances, we can luxuriate in the taste and stickiness in the belief that it is good for us - as opposed to just being sweet and fattening. Ideally, we always have it with a cup of strong tea.

Protestant work ethic, sticky currant loaf and a mug of strong tea - how much more British can we get than that!

Hmmm, even writing about it makes me drool. I will have to go for a quick march round the neighbourhood now so I can break open my stache of malt loaf in the kitchen cupboard….

I’ve been a subscriber to this website for a few months and it’s a great mix of news about the British Chinese Community as well as featuring articles and a lively forum for debate and discussion. There are also cultural reviews - movies, art etc - and a fiction section. It’s kinda like Fusion View but with a primary interest in being Chinese in Britain - whereas my aim for Fusion View is to explore cross-cultural experiences whoever and wherever you are, although there is obviously a Malaysian thread running through this blog, given that that is a deep part of who I am.

DimSum was founded by Sarah Yeh, out of her college thesis and it seems to have gone from strength to strength - as has her own career. The DimSum team are a dynamic mix of Chinese, Vietnamese and European writers whose skills range from media through IT to business and economics. A study earlier this year showed that Orientals are under-represented in the UK media so it’s great to see such a high-powered, highly skilled largely Oriental team making a splash on the web.

You can visit the site at http://www.dimsum.co.uk/.

For the next few months, I will be updated this blog on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays with additional posts in-between from time to time.

If you are an email subscriber, you do not need to do anything. Your email notification will come out to you once a week as before on Thursdays.

For other visitors, do check back every week to see what’s new on the site!

This is a video posted by the filmmaker Ahree Lee, compiled of photos she has taken of herself every day for three years and set to music. I found it hypnotic and as I watched, I began to wonder how has my life passed over the last three years - and how will it pass over the next three?

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The film has been screened at US Film Festivals.

Here is a write up:

“The idea is simple, the result is stunning. On November 1, 2001, artist Ahree Lee began taking daily digital snapshots of her own face; and she has continued this project every day since. In 2004, Lee compiled all of her daily images into a montage with a wistful musical score. In the fast-paced parade of images you’re about to see, each second of screen time represents about one week’s worth of pictures.”

Now here’s the law firm that we lawyers have all been longing to work for - the one that says, “You’re looking a bit tired today, why don’t you take a nap?”

New Zealand law firm Meredith Connell has won accolades as an equal opportunities employer for one of its many innovative work-life balance initiatives for its lawyers and staff. It hit the news last week for allowing lawyers to go home and take a nap if they were tired. See the report in the New Zealand Herald here.

The firm is also known for its positive view of Third Age staff, employing Joan Taylor who is 73 in their libary and archive. She works part-time and takes advantage of their weekly subsidised yoga class. Read more here.

If you want to find out more about Meredith Connell and how to apply to work (or sleep) for them, their website is www.meredithconnell.co.nz

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We end the current Fusion Stories series with a post from my father, Ooi Boon-Leong, about his first experience of England in the 1950s as a young, naive student from the colonies. Dad will be 70 next April and still busy with his law practice. I am really pleased and touched that he has taken the time to write this piece for me and to share his perspective of a different time in a country that was foreign to him then but home to me now.

He writes:

There were 3 of us from the same secondary school who had gained admissions to different universities in England, I to Cambridge University and the other two to London University. Two of us were 18 years old and the third a little older than 19. We lived in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaya (then) and none of us had travelled further than Singapore by rail, a city about 300 miles south. The three of us were “village yokels” really, although we spoke fluent English and had all completed the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate Examination. This examination was conducted for all English schools in the Empire with some local variations.

In those days you could go to England either mainly by boat or, more rarely, by air. By air, if you are very rich for it was very expensive and even then you had to spend a night in Bombay or another Indian city and a night or a long lay over somewhere in the Middle East for the plane to refuel. Most people travelled by boat and the most famous of the various lines was the P & O. We could not get a booking and so instead we booked a berth for the three of us in an Italian boat that sailed from somewhere in Australia, stopping in Singapore where we boarded it and the journey ended at Naples, its home port. We had to finish the journey from Naples to London by train.

Being on an Italian boat with lots of Italians going to Naples from Australia, it served Italian food. For the first evening I had my first experience of salami. When I put a slice in my mouth and turned it about, it spread around my mouth and it gummed up all my salivary glands and my mouth dried-up. It was not a pleasant feeling.

The spaghetti was alright because it looked like Chinese noodles but it was strange to eat it with tomato sauce instead of it being fried.

Except for going through the Straits of Malacca and the Suez Canal I was seasick all the way.

We arrived in Naples and went on to Rome. Then we went on by train to Paris where, because we had not booked a hotel we spent the night in the railway station, and went on to catch the boat train and then the ferry to go across to England. We duly arrived on the English side of the Channel and this was my first experience on English soil.

A porter helped each of us with our luggage on to the train. Each of us was in charge of tipping his porter. I was too tired and frustrated and was so relieved to have arrived and to be able to speak to someone without any effort that I happily tipped my potter one pound for carrying my two suitcases. He then said “Sir, this is too much. It’s not that much,” and handed back the pound note. I did not know how much it should be so I tipped him ten shillings anyway.

I was very impressed and still am impressed by his act. He definitely could do with the extra money – buy something for his kids or wife or stand his mates drinks in the pub. This has coloured my view of the English but I also remind myself that it was in 1955 when people all over the world, despite going through a terrible war not so long ago, were gentler, kinder and less greedy.

Another incident also shows the kindness and consideration of the English (or British.) I had settled down in my University and during one of the holidays I bought a ticket for a concert in the Royal Festival Hall in the south bank. It was not a pricey ticket but one in the middle range. When I went into the hall I was shown by the usher to a seat which I suspected was in the more expensive section. I mentioned to the usher that I thought that that could not be the correct seat. He insisted that it was and not to argue with him I took my seat. Sure enough before the concert started the person with the correct ticket came to claim his seat and I had to vacate it. I was, of course, very embarrassed and doubly so because I was a foreigner. I did not want the people who were seating behind and beside me to think that here was a foreigner who was trying to cheat by taking a more expensive seat than what he was entitled to. As I was slowly edging out of my row of seats someone, a man, said loud enough for me to hear “Don’t worry, it can happen to any of us.” I was somewhat relieved because there is at least one person who did not think that I had tried to cheat. Only a people who have a deep consideration for others can fathom without being told the discomfort and embarrassment what a person is undergoing and is kind enough to want to reassure him.

Another incident that deserves mention is this. A college friend had invited me to his home for a few days during the vacation. The first night when I went to bed, I found on my bed side table a pile of four or five books ranging from novels to essays for my night reading. Although I had not brought any reading materials I had not asked for any books. It was a gesture I thought very civilized. Another act prompted by their consideration.

These were not the only kindness I received when in England but they stood out. The others were ones one usually meets with in daily life: the “pleases” and “thank yous,” the holding of doors for one to pass. I think it was Orwell who wrote in an essay that only in England can you push an Englishman off the pavement when you two meet going in the opposite direction.