Food

What is it with food? We eat to sustain ourselves, while making ourselves happy and/or miserable. Too little food leads to malnutrition but it makes some anorexic people happy. Too much glorious food on the other hand, leads to obesity, but you can't deny the satisfaction brought on after a sumptuous meal.

And when you do find delicious good food, you daydream about it all the time. You wish you could have that Ikea meatballs like, RIGHT NOW. Or that heavenly seafood spaghetti that Myen's father served up a few christmases ago.

The trip to China last year (2008) was a wonderful experience. You have to believe me when I say the food is scrumptious! I'm not sure if it's the water or the product, but the Chinese can cook up a real storm. Malaysia is a food paradise too, that one is sure as hell. We have various herbs and spices that had the British, Dutch, Portugese and Cheng Ho coming back for more. Our food is a culinary mix of cultural fusion, which makes us especially tasty (cue the "Malaysia Truly Asia" song here.)

I digress. Talking about Chinese food, which I AM going to cover in my China trip travel blog (which is taking forever to finish...), I came across two restaurants in Shanghai - Ding Tai Feng from Taiwan and Ajisen Ramen from Japan. Their food is absolutely an eater's paradise! Yes, it was THAT good.

Back home to motherland, I have spent several moments reminiscing the tasty morsels. The wonderful rich broth of Ajisen Ramen, and the juicy, tender Shanghai xiao long paus. I did not take pictures of both and am now slapping myself for it (never was a food photographer, me).

Guess what, Ding Tai Feng opened a new restaurant in the Gardens. I guess my incessant rambling about how good it was finally convinced my gang to celebrate Myen's birthday there.

There were a lot of people, that was promising. I guess everyone heard of the famous Shanghai xiao long paus that Ding Tai Feng was famed for. Obviously I was very excited about revisiting the good times in Shanghai. But then, the menu was...different. A few dishes were replaced. The tastes were changed.

More importantly, the Shanghai xiao long pau tastes different! I cried, I sobbed, I wept, I whimpered, but it doesn't help the fact that Malaysian Ding Tai Feng has smaller, less juicy and less tasty xiao long pau. The other noodle dishes my gang had were significantly smaller and tastes like any other noodle house in KL, but with a higher price. Oh, how I grieved!

Regrettably (or not), we did not take pictures of the food as, honestly, it wasn't quite worth it.

Then there was Ajisen Ramen in Shanghai. Priced at RM 16 a big bowl (filled to the brim with delicious meat chunks, mushroom and whatever), it was totally a steal! And don't get me started on the rich broth, which I managed to almost finish if not for my already expanded-beyond-its-girth stomach. How I missed Ajisen back in Malaysia!

Lo and behold! Ajisen decided to open in Sunway Pyramid! It was by chance that Myen and I, browsing through the mall directory, saw the shop high up on the list, and lunch was decided.

Once again, my loyalty was tested. The menu was totally different, again. The price, higher than I would appreciate. There were a lot of choices, but not much to interest me. I blame the terribly designed menu. When I finally made my mind to have the RM 20 something Peking duck ramen, I could feel my wallet writhing in pain. It wasn't as if I had other yummy choices, but would you rather pay RM 10 for a bowl of noodles and a pitiful amount of veggies instead? The only picture to interest me were the duck. So.

The cruelty! The noodle tasted of alkaline, and the soup wasn't rich! If it weren't for the chilli and the duck, I couldn't have stomached the bowl of thing (I cannot stand the taste of alkaline)! And the price I paid certainly added salt to my wounds.

Oh please, Sakae Sushi has better chicken katsudon.

My painfully expensive and NOT delicious Peking Duck ramen.

Alas, this must be why our government encourages us to eat local food, for foreign gourmet - all right, chain stores - that once reached our shores, are heanvenly no more.

Say hello to char kuey teow and asam laksa again!

Just As Some Small Amusement...

...I googled myself. "Von Ai Hua". My Facebook profile came up first.

Oh, blimey. I'm famous! I'm on Google!

*ahem* Ok...so I found out a whole TON of people named Ai Hua on the web too. But I'm the most unique one, what with my exquisite family name of Von ;)

Oh wait, it seemed like my name came up a lot on German (just a hunch) websites too. Well not my exact full name, but simply "ai hua" here and "von" there. I think "von" means something like "of" or something...

Somehow, I feel damn exotic. I think I can pass off as a German if I feel like it XD

Footnote:
My colleague's brother entered her name for fun too. It turned out her exact name is the name of a concept street somewhere on Earth @@ Wonder if it's been built already.

Reasoning

Have you heard of the saying, that for good luck's sake, you should never tell people your dream? I'm going to do the opposite right now. I'm going to tell you a dream I had during my nap.

Apparently this dream had me so perplexed that it got me dazed for a few moments. I have dreamt of people chasing me, monsters ravaging the cities and a few other worthy of an Oscar best script award. No matter how weird the story would seem, it would still be logical. At least it would seem so to me.

In this illogical dream, my colleague, who in real life doesn't drive and has no car, was driving me home from work in her car. Being too busy on the phone talking to my hardly intelligible mother (probably 'cause she has the flu), we past my house a few roads ahead. Figuring it would be easier for me to just walk back, I said goodbye and got dropped off beside an apartment garden.

Surprised to see something like a monorail station, I walked up the stairs and found it was only some shops built up high on a bridge. Suddenly remembering my mom mentioned about buying something on the phone while in the car, which despite her efforts to scream into my ears what it was, I still couldn't understand. I got to a platform with some chairs and decided I need to call her back and ask what it really was that I should buy.

As I put my bag on the chair and dug for my handphone, somewhere a bus stops and strange enough, me on the platform felt the motion and was pushed far away from where I was standing. Just like how it is when the bus stops suddenly and there wasn't time to grab hold of a pole. In fact, I was pushed so far, I dropped down in the middle of the road. Lucky there weren't any cars then! Then remembering my bag and my precious handphone left unguarded on the chair, I race ahead of two guys and then, I woke up.

This got me thinking. Why the heck am I so bothered by this dream? Perhaps it was a prophetic dream? I then went Freud on it. I couldn't hear my mom properly, I tried to call her back but was pushed back and had to run a long way back. Does that mean, due to miscommunication, I'm going to be pushed away from my goal and had to work hard to get back at it?

Oh screw it. It's not like I have to give a reason to everything. Learnt that from a famous French director, Francois Ozon. We humans have tried to give reason to everything. Not content to it just being a fireball in the sky, the Greeks created the god Apollo, riding his fiery chariot across the sky. To rationalise the fear, some people believe that bad things happen to good people because of the bad deeds they did in their past lives, karma. Not just happy about a free apple falling from the sky, Newton went on to discover gravity. Wait. That last one was a GOOD thing. Oh well.

Maybe I should be content to just think of it as random thoughts produced by my stimulated brain cells while the rest of my consciousness is asleep. Or I could indulge myself into thinking I have sixth sense after all.

I am so contradicting, I scare myself = =