Red, Orange, Yellow: ROY Food

If you're wondering what ROY means, it stands for red, orange yellow: the basic food color of Indian food. It's all because of curry: the magic ingredient that makes Indian food wander all over the world like Alladin's magic carpet.

Back at home, I only get to try one curry dish: chicken curry. It's the yellow kind of curry. I've always known many different kinds of curry but I've not tried most of the other kinds. You have to go to authentic Indian restaurants in Makati and Manila area to try the many different Indian dishes. But here in Malaysia, they're everywhere. They're found in most every corner.

So here are some of the dishes I've tried for the past few days I've been here.
Usually, they serve three kinds of curry sauces in one plate. The more common ones are the fish (ikan), chicken (ayam) and mutton (kambing). You can just dip almost everything to it: bread (roti), rice (nasi), eggs (telur) and others.

Fist meal ever - This is my first meal in Malaysia. I ordered deep fried shrimp and chicken and had string beans in coconut milk as side dish.

Nasi goreng ayam - It's basically friend rice with chicken. It's a staple here. If you're not for the plain rice, you can ask the cook for fried rice for an extra cost of course.

Roti Canai - My colleagues say it's a popular food here. They also say that I have to walk 100 meters to get rid of calories it contains. It's a mix of ingredients that are high in fat: condensed milk and flour and fried in oil. But it's really worth trying.

Appam - It's not very commonly served in most Indian restaurants. I'm lucky (blessed) to have it in one restaurant found in little India (any place that's crowded with Indian shops and restaurants is called little India). The best part of it is you get to dip it in sweetened coconut milk that makes it even more heavenly.

They say Malaysia is one great food paradise. I can say it is. The diversity of its people brought about the diversity of its food culture. You can find Indian, Chinese and Malay restaurants one beside another in most blocks and corners in Kuala Lumpur. Thai, Italian and Japanese restaurants also share the food districts. McDonald (they call it McD) and KFC are also found in most shopping centers and malls. My colleagues even say that Filipino food can be found in some particular ares specially near Catholic churches. The foodie in me is dying to explore all the great dishes I can find here that are truly sedap/ masarap (delicious in Malay and Tagalog respectively) and truly warms the heart. 

Language Similarities

I recently bought an English-Malay Malay- English dictionary. I was also looking for the English-Tamil, Tamil-English but I wasn't able to find one. My colleagues in the organization said I have to look for it in bigger bookstores 

During the nights and free time at the office, I would browse through the dictionary to learn basic words like greetings and common things. I already know that there are words that are similar (if not the same) in the Bahasa Melayu and Tagalog (my language). I've came to know about this when i went to Indonesia for vacation. You see Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu are very similar except for certain words and the pronunciation especially of the 'e'. the Malaysian would read it like the u in under and umbrella and the Indonesians would read it as the word is spelled. example berapa (how much) is read as spelled by the Indonesians and the Maysians would read it as burapa (like the u in under). 

So going back to the similarities in Tagalog and Malay. Here are some of the words that are similar:

And here are some more:

(erratum: rich person should be orang kaya not irang kaya)

Not only are some words similar, the loan words (borrowed words from other language) are spelled almost similar as well:

I think that these similarities are due to the fact that geographically, Malaysia and Philippines share a border. There were even theories that the first Philippine people were descendants of the Malay and Indones races. During the barter trade era, Philippines has also been actively trading with Malaysia and Indonesia being neighboring countries.

As for me this fact is very interesting. Having studied Language in college, finding these similarities brings a clue/ key into their culture as language, as they argue, represents the culture of a country in a dialectical manner.

Not only is it interesting, it is also very helpful. I get to have a clue of what the signages on the streets or document titles say because of the similar words. Meanwhile, I'll go check my Malay dictionary for more.:)

Alone in the dark...

So it was weekend. My first in Malaysia. In my office now, we go to work even during Saturdays, half day of it. At least  I still have 1.5 days for the weekend. I'm currently staying with one of the staff now. They say it will be the case for two weeks as my organization is yet to find a place of my own. I think it's a good thing really but I'm also looking forward to the day I'll be living on my own. It's so romantic that idea. I'm in a foreign country, I get to work with people of different cultural background, I'm in control of my time, I get to explore the way I want and just live the overseas life. But right now, I'm really ok with the setupI

So it's the weekend. I decided to go with my housemate to TESCO, one of the many shopping centers in Malaysia. He works there part-time and during Saturdays, he works til 12. I went along. He went up to his work and I went around the mall. Pretty much the same as my country. There's the grocery/supermarket, the department store, food court, bookstores, boutiques and some other smaller stalls for those selling condominium units or photo packages for wedding and all.

Upstairs was the theatre (yehey) and I decided to eat up time watching a movie. Checked the movie list and found Tin-tin. I saw the trailer back at home and it was pretty interesting. The graphics was really great so I chose to watch it on 3D. I chose my seat, nothing is taken yet so I chose the best seat: the middle one near the stairs. I paid the bill, checked the time and found 30 mins. more before the showing so I decided to take my dinner. Glad there was pasta in the food court coz I've been dying to have sort of comfort food in a while. I've been having Indian and Chinese food for the whole week so I decided for a change in taste at least for the weekend.

After dinner, I went to the theatre and waited a little before they opened it. I'm handed the 3D glasses and went directly to my seat.  Some trailers/previews and the movie started. Wait! Something's weird about this. Is it just dark that I can't see a single soul or I'm really alone? God I'm alone. I'm really alone! Amoooazing. It's the first time for me to go to the theatre all by myself and it's the first time for me to be all alone in the theatre. It's as if I blocked the schedule and paid for all of the seats for me to watch it all by myself. It's really awesome.

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About the film, I immensely enjoyed it. It was the perfect adventure film. It's all the good elements combined: mystery, travel, genius-journalist-lead-character, history of family feud, pirates and ocean adventure, clues here and there, and all the other elements you wish to see in one package plus the really great graphics. It was so detailed that the animated characters looks like real people at times... Good job Spielberg... I'm waiting for the sequel (as I suppose there will be because of the clue left at the hat of gold)....