both with charmingly olde worlde tourist trap pockets although of course penang is much larger and much more established.
ipoh has that hard-to-top japanese genki restaurant.
penang has e&o which is not possible to top, as far as hotels go.
ipoh's churches are housed in industrial looking shophouses. penang's churches meet in expansive neo-colonial properties. i get the same underlying current of aliveness at both.
ipoh's bakeries are pretty much done by early afternoon. in penang they are called patisseries and you can buy cake at 8 PM yesssss.
ipoh has traffic lights and little green and red men. penang has jaywalkers.
food is good at both. i am unable to comment on non-food attractions, having only explored food.
i read this with some trepidation after a steady diet of lightly written non-US fiction of the heartwarming genre and some (US) investigative journalism of the ponderous variety.
the book turns out to be well-crafted pleasantly entertaining and unselfconsciously grounded in niceness. the overriding theme is lives redeemed over time by living and i most of all enjoy the absence of (typically de rigueur) dark themes of the post-modern persuasion (read: gut-punching betrayal devastating loss or supreme pain).
conclusion: as bijoux a work as any of the japanese-korean books with more a bit more interesting writing. worth a read!
mum loses her cellphone but manages to borrow a 'phone to contact people to help her.
every night before bed i revise the 'phone numbers of seven people, she tells me proudly. my friends (5), my neighbor downstairs (1), and yours.
this is brilliant i think. some of us have no idea what our own number is, never mind seven other people's.
mum loses her cellphone and many people mobilize to help look after her shopping access the shop cctv call her 'phone (unfruitfully) and plan to bring her to get a new set before she finds the offending item at home.
all i can say is, how kind people are!
we look for white goods for the new old place today.
fortunately for us HOM is systematic and meticulous in researching options merchants and prices and can hold his own knowledgeably. because me, i am a sucker for sweet-talking sales people as long as they are not too smarmy. and most fortunately God blesses us with a down-to-earth sales guy who gives us his rock bottom prices like a gentleman.
it is exhausting nevertheless. we'll go shopping for tiles and fixtures and paints! the designer chirps. we have no wish to go shopping, i tell her witheringly. that's why we came to you.
HOM and i bite the bullet put down the deposit and sign on to our biggest scale renovation yet and realize with gradually-growing equal-parts delight and trepidation that we are committed to moving back to the old place. by year's end, if all goes well.
may God bless this next phase.
yee-hah!
time was when one wore a plain blue mask in the procedure room and nowhere else.
six years down it is a niche fashion statement cum survival tool. as i report to HOM:
the bus it be full
the people they be coughing
fortunately, mask
what i wish i can play:
... in the junk drawer. for full moon celebration cakes going back ten years. the type that parents give to celebrate their baby's first month and that you redeem by bringing to the bakery to exchange for cake.
that's a lot of cake we forgot to get to eat.
for today's activity i hand-tear up my diaries dating from '87. what i say is, they need to make paper products that are easier to dismantle. people who want to manually shred their lives are often too old for paper cuts and related annoyances.
after the diaries i courageously discard 37 years' worth of employment papers appointment papers and promotion notices. there is no longer a paper trail of my contribution to the economy.
in final news, more photos magically appear to be digitized.
