our penang adventure
Thursday, August 22
So immediately after the extended long weekend over Hari Raya and National Day, I had another extended long weekend just this past weekend, thanks to my leave! And on this occasion, I took a trip up to Penang with the rest of the math lab, in what was our first full reunion since... hmm... our IB days? Yea! Woah! That's quite crazy come to think of it.
Before we go on I must say it's really only through God's grace that this whole plan could have come to fruition. I mean, getting 12 people together for an entire stretch of 3-4 days is really no mean feat, especially when 2 of us are studying overseas, 4 have started the medicine school term, and the rest of the 6 of us are still in the Service. So I honestly thought we'd end up having to leave some people behind, but lo and behold, everyone could make it!
And I'm just so thankful because just last year when the plan still was to go to Europe or Machu Pichu (yes, we had wild dreams), I had to opt out of it because my parents wouldn't allow me to go to those places due to practicality and price respectively. And thus I slipped in one of those sly tiny hidden postscripts at the end of one of my
posts last year to lament about it to Daddy God, with a desperate cry, "Please let there be a way..." Fast forward to the present, and woohoo! This is seriously amazing. So true that He is indeed the One who "
is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think" (Ephesians 3:20)!
So, our time in Penang. Oh my goodness, the first day was seriously non-stop eating! It was like, okay, we're now here to eat Shariff Nasi Kandar! And after piling back into the car and dropping our bags off at the bungalow, we arrive at our next pitstop to have Aki Pancake's ban chang kueh! And after picking Leon up from the airport, we're now off to have more assorted Penang hawker food! Haha, but the food was really good! And I seriously recommend raisin cheese peanut ban chang kueh - Ben and I stumbled upon it, but it was HEAVENLY! Still dreaming about it now... those huge golden raisins... mmmmm...
Anyway, I know simply listing out the food that we had over the entire trip would result in you skimming over the mean and vulgar bits. So instead of doing that, I've created a collage of just some of the yummy food we had there for you to feast your eyes on!
 |
Left to right, top to bottom: Shariff Nasi Kandar, Aki Pancake, Kuay Teow Thng, Peranakan Appetisers,
Curry Mee, Lorong Selamat Char Kuay Teow, Assam Laksa, random Chicken Satay, Prawn Mee.
(Photo credits: Ben Liau, Jonwong, me!) |
It was also coincidentally Jack's birthday on the day he arrived, so we conveniently caused a ruckus at the 2-week old Peranakan restaurant with our err... what are they called? Party poopers? Nonono that means something else altogether... Hang on let me Google this. Ah - party horns, they're called (lol?). Yep so we secretly passed those around all through dinner and surprised him, ending off with Klarissa's awesome homemade Earl Grey Tea with Orange Buttercream cake!
 |
| Happy Birthday Jack! (Photo credits: Jonathan Wong) |
Then we were conned into climbing the treacherous Penang Hill the next morning. But the pint-sized Penang girl was doing it, so what else could we do but grin and bear it. It was pretty fun in the end of course - as is everything you do with a bunch of good friends; randomly breaking into song, bugging Klarissa to see how much further we had to climb, Darren nearly getting attacked by monkeys because he was holding food in his hand... Yep, and even if all that wasn't enough, at least we have the nice picture at the top to make it all worthwhile! (:
 |
*sniff sniff* I think I smell a stink bomb... and he's standing on my right!
(Photo credits: Shaun Lim) |
Of course, no trip with friends is complete without the nonsense at night. Well, for those that stayed up, we mostly played board/card games every night - some trivia game, Bang!, and Ticket to Ride. Which, yes, is definitely fun, but I've come to find it also deprives people the chance for meaningful conversations... I mean, yes I do believe that games are where some crazy memories can be built, and can bring people closer together. But when you have a group of friends already so close to one another, games can start to be more of a hinderance than a help. Similar to how a crutch can help a lame person walk, but will be a hinderance to an able-bodied person. Heh, oh well, just a random musing. I've always been interested in having nice meaningful HTHTs, but personally don't know how to get them started naturally. They just... happen. Maybe it can't be forced? But yet it comes so naturally to some people! Oh well I'm quite off topic now so I shall stop my banter :P At the end of the day, I still enjoyed the games! (And Jonlow is seriously the master of deception in
all games - and has been all the way since I knew him in Year 2!)
Oh but we did have a lot of mindless matchmaking banter on the trip though, hahaha. My goodness, shamelessly trying to matchmake people here and there - myself included! In the sense that I was fully involved in the matchmaking suaning and victimised by it too... haha :P Though so far Klarissa's Singapore-Malaysia matchmaking agency has had a 0 out of 2 success rate... Tsk tsk, not a good start to the business! So, to her next client - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
And in that light, I shall end off with what to me was the best line I heard the entire trip:
[Me, using a spoon to mash and melt my chocolate ice cream in circular motions.]
Jack: Clement, what are you doing???
Ben: Stirring shit.
Hahahahahahaha!
P.S. Oh right I got terrible food poisoning on the last night of the trip - diarrhoea and vomiting. But thank God it was only on the last night, when we didn't have any other grand food stops planned!
AMEN;
7:06 pm
