The World of Tai Tai

Yesterday, from 2.15 to 3.15 p.m, in Two C, the English Club members had fun playing a word-guessing game. One by one, the members were called to the front as an emcee and drew a card from my plastic container.   Each student should ask the others to guess the word on the card by giving verbal clues in English. Miming and the mention of the first letter were not permitted.   The main objective of the activity was to encourage the students to describe things in English, the more the better.           Throughout the one-hour activity, the classroom was buzzing with rapturous laughter. Some words got the students scratching their heads while some were a piece of cake to them. It was both heart-warming and funny to see how different cards elicited different reactions from the members. Some emcees seemed to have an uncanny telepathic connection with a few students.   Before they could give clues, the exclamations of th...

In Kuching, many people rave about the laksa at Chong Choon coffee shop and Madam Tang's Restaurant. To see whether they would live up to their reputations, I decided to give them both a try. Situated on Abell Street, Chong Choon is a wooden shophouse at the back of Longhouse Hotel. It has been operating for more than half a century. By contrast, Madam Tang's Restaurant has three branches in Kuching. I dined at the one beside the famous Min Joo noodle shop on Carpenter Street. Eating laksa is addictive. Over the past few months, my feelings for this noodle dish have swung from mild love to fervent infatuation. A bowl of laksa contains blanched rice vermicelli aswim in a reddish coconut milk-based broth. Arranged atop the noodles are blanched bean sprouts, shrimps, omelet strips, and a few sprigs of cilantro. Sarawak laksa is normally eaten with sambal belacan . A squeeze of a lime also adds tartness to the noodles. The dish is quite similar to the curry noodle...

The novel tells the story of a girl who is brought up in a religiously fanatical family. Constantly confused about her own sexuality, she falls in love with a young woman and is seen as filth by the church and her mother. She soon leaves her home, earning her own living, and thereby divorcing herself from the tethers of conventions. The story challenges conventional beliefs and the impracticality of a fully controlled upbringing. The heroine rebels by sticking to her inner feelings, as evident by her assertion that oranges are not the only fruit towards the end of the novel. Symbolically speaking, oranges refer to her mother and the church, who have been training her to be a missionary since she was a kid . I love the novel for its out-of-the-box storyline. 

  Last Saturday afternoon, I attended a SOSWE gathering at Lalita Restaurant. I have been a member of this writers' club for three years and every moment with my fellow members is always inspirational. I have hitherto contributed 5 to 10 articles and short stories to the club's recently revived newsletter. There are not many members in our club, and only six people turned up for the gathering. Food was delicious and we learnt a great deal from John, a lecturer from New Zealand who has been paid by Curtin Miri to do filming on the diverse ethnic cultures in Sarawak. He also does research on crocodiles and some rare species. He is personable, full of sense of humour and humble with his achievements. A prolific film maker, he has produced a lot of videos that feature many famous writers the likes of Janet Frame and Iris Murdoch.                          ...

E.B. White’s ‘Charlotte’s Web’ is a timeless children’s novel that tells the story of true friendship between a piglet and a spider. The story starts with Fern, a little girl who saves a runty piglet from being slaughtered by her father. She names him Wilbur and nurtures him to full health. Wilbur is later sold to Fern’s uncle and he lives a lonely life, being snubbed by other farm animals. A caring, sympathetic spider named Charlotte befriends him and constantly encourages him to be brave to face the odds in his life. She saves Wilbur many times from being slaughtered by weaving good adjectives about him on her web, making the piglet famous. She eventually dies for Wilbur, leaving behind hundreds of baby spiders, who accompany Wilbur for a short time. At the end of the novel, three little spiders remain on the farm with Wilbur, living happily ever after with him.  The story clutches at my heartstrings with its evocative prose on friendship. Charlotte, the kind ...

Began the day at eleven and filled my stomach with one of the best Kway Tiao I have eaten at Xiang Xiang Food Court. It was delicious, redolent of lard and charred fragrance. Frittering away the whole afternoon reading Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea to the point that the words danced before me and blurred away as I drifted into a deep nap. When afternoon gave way to evening, I had a great dinner of steamed chicken and dried shrimp sambal at my parents' house. Silence is now settling around me and I resume my reading of 'The Sea, the Sea. The complex mentality of the main character baffles me and the more pages I flip, the more amazed I am by how blind he is to his manipulative, self-admiring nature. At this stage I realize that it is drizzling outside. The pattering sound is comforting and sleep-inducing. But I am not going to heed the sensation. I want to go on exploring the book until exhaustion claims my whole being. Goodness me, another night will slip...

An impressive memoir that covers the life of an Olympian-turned-World World II airman who crashed into the Pacific Ocean and went adrift in a raft for many days before being rescued and imprisoned by the Japanese. The author penned vividly his sufferings and how he overcame his pain through divine intervention after the war. The parts where he was singled out for cruel beatings by the Bird, a sadistic Japanese corporal in the concentration camp are most disturbing. The reading subjected me to a whole gamut of emotions, making me empathize with the hero and thereby appreciate life better.

When Miss Gan, the Senior Assistant of Curriculum, told Mr Thye the news, he was updating his personal information on a Ministry website for teachers.                 “You won’t be teaching Form 4B after the mid-semester break,” she said. “Madam Hu will replace you and you will take over her 2D.”                 The news caused a pang in the heart of Mr Thye. He had been teaching 4B for five months and was getting the hang of it. He had introduced a number of language games to the students and had exposed them to different genres of writing through the reading of photocopied extracts from novels. He could not for the life of him figure out what was wrong with his teaching. He had been trying his best all this while.                 Mr Thye looked sidewa...

I have cooked three dishes over the course of three weeks. They are:                                                1. Steamed Cake 2. Pork Adobo 3. Kari kapitan One quiet night three weeks ago, I felt peckish and decided to make pancakes. Halfway whisking, I changed my mind and whisked harder. My brutish strength resulted in an airy batter and I poured it into a greased cake tin. After fifteen minutes, the cake was done and I was surprised by how light and well-risen it was. I ate two slices and brought the rest to school the next day. I dined at a Filipino restaurant(Fiesta FIlipina) one Thursday, and was thrilled by how similar Pork Adobo was to Chinese braised pork. It was appetizingly tangy with the use of vinegar. I googled its...