Portuguese Ikan Bakar; Uptown

Portuguese Ikan Bakar at Uptown, or: What I Ate While Being Serenaded by Guitar Toting Hippie at Food Stall.



(Shout out to Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which in my opinion is the most awesome movie title EVER. That is totally unrelated to this post, as per usual. I apologize: I am evidently a failure at staying on track. I was talking about the Dr. Strangelove movie last night while explaining my very convoluted and evidence-backed dissertation on the central theme of Watchmen to goosey, who is, unfortunately for him, the favoured receptacle for my half-baked ideas on life, the universe and everything. So now I have the movie in my head, because the war room scenes in the Watchmen were just like the war room scenes in Dr. Strangelove, minus crazed character with phantom hand. Also now I am talking about Watchmen again. I apologize again! I have an obsessive personality and inability to STFU! Also I blame this on the book, which I started reading last night. Actually I blame this on a colleague who somehow persuaded me to buy the book during lunch yesterday although I had made up my mind to be patient and wait for a copy from goosey's brother.)

Anyway! This guitar toting hippie sang, specifically, Hotel California and Wonderful Tonight and Belaian Jiwa and a bunch of other old songs of which my faulty memory does not permit recollection. And maybe it's because these were the songs that I used to coerce my father into playing for me on his guitar every night before I went to sleep (I am very capable of making up my own bedtime stories, but am not too proud to request for help on the bedtime song front) when I was young enough to get away with such extravagant coersion, but as soon as he started playing his songs and I got my ikan bakar the night became a little bit balmier and a little bit prettier. It is surprisingly romantic being serenaded by an aging bohemian while eating in an outdoor food court of questionable cleanliness on a sultry KL night with my kind of comfort food, baked fish and rice, in front of you, and a gooselike significant other all to yourself. I very much recommend it.

Must mentally step away now from hybrid happy place of my bed in my bedroom in bungalow in Brunei at 12 years old seeing father's silhouette in doorway holding guitar, and random food court in Uptown with fish and goosey, and return to the excel spreadsheets that are chanting my name in ominous tones.

Seafood Part 3; Malacca

I have a sneaky suspicion, first pointed out by an overly observant goose (he stares at me too much) and confirmed by my eyes, that my arms have gotten marginally fleshier. Although my weighing scales beg to differ. One of you is lying to and deceiving me! If it's the weighing scales I can just throw them out and get a new set. If it's my eyes... matey, we have a mutiny on our hands.

Plus I saw pbil and was like, "OMG you lost so much weight!" And then he was like, "YOU lost weight!" And then I said "really?" And he said "no, I was just saying that". Turd. Maybe it was better when he was scared of me and afraid that I would tell my parents nasty things about him and spoil his relationship with my sister.

Anyway my theory is that my body is stocking up for the winter in the form of fat. I think my body is somewhat confused by having spent every December over the past few years in the freezing arctic tundra that is Ithaca In the Depths of Winter and now come each December, it just starts to stock up on fat, even though it now resides in a tropical country that straddles the equator in so very intimate ways that the only way it could be closer to the equator would be if it WAS the equator. I do not like this fat on the arms business. I think I will pray for it to go away. I don't believe in dieting and I'm too busy (this thing that occasionally rears its virtuous head at me to admonish me once in a while and is called My Conscience has instructed to write that 'busy' is actually a euphemism for 'lazy') to exercise so it will have to be appeals to the Big Guy that will melt this stuff off my arms.

More seafood pictures from Malacca because I'm too busy to run down and get breakfast and want to feast on food in some way, any way, even just visually.

We had to choose our own fish. Like I know how to tell one piece of raw fish from another or something.

Our meal in all its precooked slimy glory


Sting Ray

Ikan bakar


Malay calamari

Chili crab... with peas. Yeah, I don't know why the peas were there either.

Why hello Mr. Crabby, it is very nice to meet you and let us shake claws (clearly my mother never told me not to play with my food)

Seafood Part 2; Malacca

I had no idea Malacca was famous for its ikan bakar and seafood in general. But now I know, and can concur that the reputation is deserved.

Somewhere in a random little restaurant off the beaten tourist track, I ate the following with nasi lemak (because Malaccans are so enamored of the fatty that they eat nasi lemak (!) in place of normal white rice).

Ikan Bakar: with half the fish sliced and cooked in sweet and sour sauce, and the other half sliced and cooked in some... err, other sauce (I wasn't paying a lot of attention when we ordered, perhaps because it was done mostly in what seemed to me to be rapidfire Malay)


BUTTER PRAWNS!: The fattest little suckers I've seen or eaten thus far in Malaysia

Stingray: I kept thinking of the jolly schoolteacher stingray in Finding Nemo. I know. Morbid. It's a good thing the taste was worth it


And, the best for last: Chili Crab! I usually don't like doing a lot of work to get to my food (part of the reason I have never learned how to cook. Other reasons include: having lived with my sister, who now has a CUPCAKE BUSINESS, and my former roommate, who is now studying how to be a chef at the CIA. The way I see it, it's like the Powers That Be gave me a free pass with the cooking thing) and crabs entail a LOT of work.

The exoskeleton is hard as nails, you have to be extremely careful not to cut yourself on the crab shells (or is that just me?) and not to slop crab sauce all over your shirt and face and neck (is that just me as well?) and you work your way through all that cracking and pulling only to arrive at a piece of flesh that is approximately 30% the size of all the exertion through which you went (assuming exertion can be measured in size terms, but my blog, my measurement scales).


Yet it is SO WORTH IT. It is akin to trudging through a treacherous icy mountain to get to an exotic Shangri-La. It is like manually digging giant holes, with just a rusty shovel, over an entire beach, to find a treasure chest. It is similar to watching an Arsenal game full of missed chances and clenched fists and tears of frustration; a game that is redeemed at the last minute by some beautiful footwork executed by beautiful players that culminates in a beautiful, long awaited goal.

If crab meat was the reward of every arduous task I had to face, I might be a lot more productive a person than I am now.


Ironically though, post-dinner Iman was anything BUT productive. The aftermath was a mini mountain of shells and bones and a comatose overly satiated Iman who kept passing out in the car on the way back. Oh well. Good plan in theory.