chinkychiew - learn.love.laugh

I never knew to tell a good BJOTW from a lackluster one. Or at least, I never knew that I was able to. Til a few days ago when I got the chance to dine at JuChunYuan, the home of the original 佛跳墙. Legend has it that a scholar in FuZhou would bring his food around and simply heat it up when he got hungry. And when he opened the lid of the pot, the aromas of this dish wafted into a nearby monastery and smelt so good, the monks threw aside all inhibitions and jumped over the wall to try some. Thus the name of the dish. And JuChunYuan’s Chef Li Yan who hails from Fuzhou, is the 5th generation of chefs to prepare this dish.

The BJOTW here is made out of stock from old hen’s, duck’s and pork bones. Each of the 8 ingredients – sea cucumber, pork tendon, cuttlefish, shark’s fin, scallop, abalone, mushroom, fish maw – were individually rehydrated til tender and cooked before it is combined and double-boiled for hours prior to serving. The soup, full of collagen, was fragrant, thick, sticky and filled you up in spite of the not-too-big serving. At $98++ ($78++ without shark’s fin) for an individual portion, this does not come cheap – but you have to try it at least once in your life. If you ain’t been to JuChunYuan, you haven’t tried the REAL Buddha Jumps Over the Wall

Sweet, sour, spicy, salty. This combination of flavours would probably give the untrained stomach the runs; but for someone like myself who made many a pilgrimage to Penang from a tender age, this burst of flavours in the form of Assam Laksa gets me salivating. It’s not easy to find good Assam Laksa in Singapore, the land of lemak Laksa. But I did. The Assam Laksa at Penang Kitchen is presented in the form of a very, very packed bowl filled with thick beehoon, onion/cucumber/pineapple clies with a generous amount of fish pieces scattered about. The noodles completely infused with the essences of all other ingredients, the fish slices melts in your mouth and the soup, gosh – the soup hit all the right notes both in taste and intensity for all flavours. Yes; sweet, sour, spicy, salty! My tastebuds pretty much died of over-indulgence and went to Penang heaven; immediate addiction. And when the heat gets a little too much to bear, feel free to wash it down with their Nutmeg Lime Juice – immediate neutralisation. (:

My tongue may speak Mandarin the Singaporean way, but my tastebuds remain as Malaysian as my passport is. So Bak Kut Teh, to me, should be comforting and herbal, not peppery and unsettling. Located in a coffeeshop in Marsiling as near to the edge of Singapore as could possibly be, Hong Ji’s claypot herbal Bak Kut Teh is perfect for a rainy day. Just thick enough and thoroughly infused with aromatic chinese herbs, the Bak Kut Teh would have been great with freshly fried You Tiao (which were all sold out when I visited, woe). The pork ribs were fall-of-the-bone tender and perfect when lightly dipped in their dark-sauce cut chilli. In a land where Bak Kut Teh is more widely known in its spicy peppery form, happiness manifests itself the form of Hong Ji for this Malaysian girl.

Thanks to Sentosa for organizing!! :)

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I cannot ease your aching heart,
Nor take your pain away;
But let me stay and take your hand
And walk with you today.

I’ll listen when you need to talk,
I’ll wipe away your tears;
I’ll share your worries when they come,
I’ll help you face your fears.

I’m here and I will stand by you,
On each hill you have to climb;
So take my hand, let’s face the world…
And live just one day at a time.

You’re not alone, for I’m still here,
I’ll go that extra mile;
And when your grief is easier,
I’ll help you learn to smile!

- Author Unknown

Of all the feelings you could ever have, “guilt” I feel, is the worst of the lot. More so than anger, helplessness or disappointment.

Defined as a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some wrong, the premises of “guilt” are that:
1. the (persons involved in the) situation surrounding the wrong matters enough to you for it to haunt you; and
2. it is within your power to have prevented such a situation from having occurred in the first place.
The former is evident in no guilt whatsoever felt should I see a serial child rapist withering in pain from some illness or another (please, judge me another day); the latter being that the sadness of natural disasters fills me, but does not overwhelm or incapacitate me.

As one who does her utmost to live a life of “no regrets”, it torments me to realise that I did not do my best when it mattered. That regret that I could have done more, but did not. At times like these, my heart is so heavy I feel the only way I could move is to drag it behind me on the floor; my eloquence fails me and I am rendered completely incapable of speaking.

They say, one should never cry over spilt milk. But I think we should, and we should remember the awful mess and stain it leaves; then let it serve as a poignant reminder never to let ourselves have to experience this emotion again. To weigh decisions carefully and sensibly; to never berate ourselves again with the tormenting thought that “I could have done more..”

“We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”
— Dr. Seuss, born March 2, 1904

..knowing there is someone you can turn to at the end of the day
..staying in touch with your loved ones through Whatsapp even when they’re miles away
..bearing witness to the growth of your nieces/nephews in spite of the distance
..a bowl of painstakingly boiled soup on the table when you get home
..being missed when you are not there
..knowing you are someone others are proud of
..being able to remember the lyrics of a song you haven’t heard in a while
..unexpected lunch dates
..impromptu long drives and hawker hunting
..realising you’re both laughing at the same thing you witnessed on the streets
..getting one of the last few bowls of Cheng Tng from a popular stall on a hot day
..a table full of cheap and good dimsum
..feeling cared for and loved
..waking up to an email/SMS reminding you that you are loved
..gaining the acceptance of a new young friend

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not;
remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
- Epicurus