Less one little bugger...

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I take care of a rather large family of gerbils, ie. African rats (which are smaller than normal rats, and don't bite fingers with vehemence, unlike some crazy hamsters). The family is large enough that I could've had a football team of gerbils, if I hadn't given a couple away and one adult died years ago due to unfortunate circumstances (which is a whole other story altogether!).

Anyhow, I've been keeping 3 males and 4 females for the past couple of years, whom I know all by name though they don't really know their own name, and so far they've all been really healthy... except the oldest female gerbil which gave birth to all the other gerbils. A few months ago, I believed she was attacked by one of the other female gerbils for reasons unknown. She sustained quite a few wounds and I even took her to the vet to get some medication for the poor bugger... and since then, thankfully the other gerbils don't attack her anymore. However, she really looks like grandma gerbil now coz' her fur is dull, her body is scrawny, and one of her legs seems to be eternally cramped, so she can't walk properly and can no longer climb up the cage tunnels. I was expecting her to kick the bucket soon after she got attacked... but until today my grandma gerbil is still going strong, even though I think she's more than 3 years old now, which in gerbil years means she's ANCIENT.

Sad to say, one of my gerbees actually did kick the bucket. But not the one I expected.

Yesterday morning, before heading to work, I sat down at my gerbil cages to give them some bits of apple as I usually do, coz' the little buggers just love their apple bits (but not as much as sunflower seeds!). The past few days, I hadn't had much time to play around with them, so I had only checked their cages for water and food, and wasn't really paying attention to my gerbils themselves. So while giving them apple bits, usually if they're asleep, all I need to do is make that 'tsk tsk' sound or the midly annoying lips pursing noise, and that will wake them up in a jiffy so they will come to the side of the cage for their food. After feeding almost all my little buggers, I noticed that Peanut, one of my male gerbils wasn't coming to me. And the cage for my males is quite large, so I had to poke my head around a bit to see where he was, and I saw him lying down at the bottom of the cage where it was difficult for me to look into from where I was sitting. So usually, if my noises don't wake up my gerbils (sometimes I suspect they have hangovers from the night before), then I knock gently against their cage to wake them up. And I thought Peanut was asleep, so I knocked the cage. No reaction. So at the this point, I was thinking Peanut must've REALLY had a big hangover the night before (note to self: no more putting beer in my gerbil's water bottles).

So after that I got up to have a closer look at Peanut, and as I walked around to the other side of the cage to get a closer look, I saw... (cue Psycho movie theme song NOW), the other side of Peanut's face had already been half eaten out by ants!

And a piercing scream of horror filled the morning air surrounding my condominium.

Ok, ok, I wasn't that dramatic. But of course I was shocked. And in disbelief. And I made quite a few weird whining noises while calling Peanut and hoping that he would miraculously get up. But he didn't. And that would've really freaky if he did with his face half eaten out. But after a few minutes of making weird whiny noises and getting over the fact that Peanut was dead, I had to do the dirty work of cleaning up the body. And that's never a fun thing to do. Especially with the whole half eaten out face thing. I could hardly bare to look at him. But I did manage to gingerly pick him up with a paper towel in hand, and then wrap him up with a newspaper. I would've have liked to give Peanut a proper burial, but living in a condo and having to be at work soon (I highly doubt the idea of giving me time off to mourn my gerbil's death would've gone down well with my boss), I had little choice but to unceremoniously dump Peanut's body in the trash outside.

The thing that bugs me is that Peanut was perfectly healthy, and he didn't seem to have any problems the few days before when I was playing with him. And he was one of the younger generation of gerbils in my brood of little buggers. So I have no idea what happened to him, and I kinda wished I had checked properly on my gerbils the few days before, then maybe I would've noticed something wrong. *Sigh* Well, the only theory I have is that Peanut died of some sort of cardiovascular disease, coz' he was the fattest gerbil of the lot. So much that my nickname for him is Fatty. But my mum has a theory that he may have choked on the food. *Sigh*

Anyhow, I remember when he was still a teenage gerbil, and I was keeping him around the females for a while, he was pretty small compared to the other males. I thought he would stay that way, until eventually I moved him to the male gerbils cage where he belonged... then he gradually grew until he gained his status as Fatty. He was a very 'kwai' fella, every time I held in my hand and gave him a nice head and ear massage with my fingers, he would just sit there and enjoy it. Well, most of my gerbils enjoy it too, but after a while they get active and start wanting to jump off my hands... not so much for Peanut though.

Anyway, he was a beautiful, big, fat but cute gerbil and I am saddened by his mysterious death. Bye bye Peanut! May you enjoy an abundance of sunflower seeds and apple bits in gerbil heaven, if it exists. If not, then, well, errr.... you be a good floating gerbil spirit, and don't go haunting your gerbil friends now (I hope my pastor doesn't start rebuking me for this...).

Sorry if this post is a bit emo because of one rat, but yeah, I am rather sentimental about these things, especially since I had Peanut since he was born. I'm not quite sure how to deal once the rest of my little buggers start dying too. Good grief. I'm already traumatized by the thought. :-(

However, there's always a little silver lining, and today I noticed my grandma's gerbil is walking around better, which shows her leg is healing well. That cheered me up quite a bit. Keep going strong, grandma gerbil!!! Woo!

Less one little bugger...

Photos of a strange world...

Here's a small collection of some random photos I took from here and there, guaranteed to make you smile, laugh, scratch your head or at least raise an eyebrow....

Random pic 1: "Honey, what does the sign at the spot where I just threw the garbage bag say?"

Sign says "Littering is prohibited. Fine RM500.00". I saw this in Ipoh during my amazing Ipoh trip, and it goes to show that people in Ipoh don't seem to be able to read Malay very well.... or it could've been opposites day!


Random pic 2: "We Fight for Free!"


I took this photo a couple of months back on one of my work visits to Jakarta. Translated in English, the sign means "We are willing to volunteer to fight with Malaysia!!!". Needless to say, I wasn't particularly tempted to stick my head out my car window, wave to them and say "Hey there! I'm a Malaysian". That would probably have been equivalent to saying "Hey there! Come beat the crap out of me now!". Apparently this had to do with some tensions between Malaysia and Indonesia over an area of sea called Ambalat containing quite a bit of money-making oil. Ah well.


Random pic 3: "Hyperactive kid? I got just the thing..."

Leashes for kids! I'm torn between thinking this is some form of cruelty to kids and that it's a most brilliant idea. Well, I did notice this kid was particularly active and couldn't stop running and jumping around (I'm quite sure she would've jumped over the railing if not for the leash) so to the parents, I can't blame them and I wish them good luck.


Random pic 4: "Some cream to go with your banana?"

If your bananas aren't big or hard enough, you could just always go back to the supermarket and complain to the manager for a refund.... 0 :-)

Photos of a strange world...

The Amazing Ipoh Trip - Part 3 (FOOD Glorious Food!)

Sorry for the delay on Part 3 of the amazing Ipoh trip. I just got back from an 8-day trip in Indonesia and Bangkok for work again, where as usual I suffer severe internet deprivation (I’m seriously wondering if I should invest in a Blackberry now…). Although I did get to spend the weekend in Bangkok and visit a couple of places, as well as come down with another bout of food poisoning where I threw up in somewhere in Chatuchak market. Hmmm, wonderful way to start a post about food, eh? But I’ll save that wonderful experience for another post.

So the one thing famous about Ipoh which every true blue Malaysian Chinese should know is the food. Not, to be discriminatory or anything, it’s just that the only thing my family ever does eat in Ipoh is the Chinese food and far as I know or care, there’s no other type of food in Ipoh. :P And the first place my parents also zeroes into once we reach Ipoh is this really old school place called Restaurant Tuck Kee, along Jalan Yau Tet Shin at New Town, Ipoh. Unfortunately if you were to ask me how to get there I wouldn't have a clue coz' my dad always does all the driving around in Ipoh and I just sit in the car, usually asleep or half asleep. So if you wanna try the place, have plenty of time on your hands and feeling adventurous, you could take a road trip and drive around Ipoh town til you find it. If it makes it easier, the restaurant looks like this:

However, be warned that there is another restaurant along the same road with the same name, apparently a spin-off of this one, but since it’s not the 'original shop', we never go there. Coz' you know... if it ain't original, it ain't good, or at least that's the general consensus. Just remember the original shop is on the left of the unoriginal shop, and you should be fine.

Once here, we only order the same dishes, which are Fried Kuey Teow, Fried Mee Hoon and ‘Wa Tan Hor’ (flat rice noodles in egg soup), and sometimes bean sprouts, but we skipped that this time round.

Hmmm… Just looking at the pics makes me start hankering for this stuff. And if you’re thinking it all looks really greasy and unhealthy, well, IT IS. It’s all fried in a very un-healthy and un-halal amount of pig’s lard to make it taste like no other fried noodles I’ve ever tasted. Yum! Plus the flat rice noodles (kuey teow) are really nice and smooth, which makes it better. Not something you eat on a regular basis unless you don’t mind looking like the State Puff Marshmallow Man. Nevertheless, taste-wise, I think no other fried noodles in KL, Malaysia or the whole world can compare to this. *Drool!* And of course, my whole family loves it, so much that my brother had to give his 'I'm-so-full-of-good-but-unhealthy-food' look.

Somehow or another that also looks like a 'I-really-need-to-use-the-bathroom' look. Ah well, he enjoyed the food, that's the main thing.

Another unavoidable stop on our ‘makan’ trip is Ipoh’s famous Chee Cheong Fun, which in English would be something like flat rice noodles topped with any kind of sauce, although common sauces used are chilli sauce, soy sauce, sweet sauce or mushroom sauce. Now there are several places in Ipoh that sell really good Chee Cheong Fun, one of which is from another old school shop, quite near to Restorant Tuck Kee, sold by this Chinese lady who recognizes my family even after all these years, coz’ we used to visit her stall often. Here she is, chopping up the Chee Cheong Fun, which initially is made as sheets of flat rice, to make the shape of flat noodles (any self-respecting Chinese would know this, of course, but just in case you’re not one. :) ).

My dad also took us to this other Chee Cheong Fun shop, which is actually the owner’s house, where her noodles sell so well, we has to take orders in advance and then the person ordering can only collect it 2 or 3 hours later. Just goes to show how crazy Ipoh people are about their Chee Cheong Fun! Unfortunately I didn’t get a pic of this other place, and even worse, I forgot to take a pic of the Chee Cheong Fun itself before wolfing it down. But Ipoh Chee Cheong Fun is so famous, that pretty much anywhere you find it, I’m sure it’ll be good.

The next place we visited this trip was one we don’t really consider compulsory but of course the food is still good – meatball and fishball noodles. We actually ate this right after we had our Chee Cheong Fun for breakfast (just so we could get a taste of everything!). So here’s the dingy looking shop where we ate:

Another important thing is Ipoh is... never doubt the dingy looking shops. They usually sell the best food. Perhaps not the cleanest, but the best. And here are the owners of the meatball noodle stall doing their thing.

We came a bit late, so the amount of meatballs and fishballs left wasn’t much, but thankfully there was still enough for us.

The meatballs and fishballs are all homemade, so they have a bit of a weird shape as opposed to processed ones, but of course they taste much better than processed ones.

Another place we went to, but again I committed the cardinal sin of forgetting to photograph the food, is this rather famous chicken rice shop called Lou Wong Beansprout and Chicken, which is also just down the street from Restaurant Tuck Kee (everything’s located so conveniently close to each other, you could have a whole day ‘makan trip’ right there in that small part of new Ipoh town. :) ). The shop not only serves chicken rice, but also pork balls, beansprouts and noodles (and God knows some other stuff we didn’t order). And as you would expect, everything there tastes awesome too. As with most chicken rice shops, you can choose between roasted chicken and white chicken… we went for the latter and the white chicken was juicy and tender. The pork balls came in a pretty generous helping, and since I’m totally in love with pork balls, I wasted no time in wolfing that down too. Man, I can’t believe I forgot to take photos!

So after enjoying enough of good Ipoh to last us… a while, my family decided on our last day there that we ought to give our tummies a break and eat something healthy for a change. So while hanging out at Jusco Ipoh, my dad bought some ‘jambu merah’ and ‘lo hong ka’ drinks. Unfortunately I don’t know what the English name for ‘jambu merah’, but the ones we bought tasted kinda like apples, but softer, and were juicy and sweet (even the fruits in Ipoh taste wonderful!)… and they looked like this.

‘Lo Hong Ka’ is a Chinese name for Aloe Vera drink (or at least, that’s my deduction coz’ that’s what it read on the bottle label). I don’t usually drink this kind of traditional stuff, but was pleasantly surprised to find the drink was naturally sweet and refreshing.

And with that, we ended our amazing Ipoh trip, enjoying some healthy food on the drive back home to Subang. I made myself go on a oil-free diet for a few days after that, but it was well worth it.
You 'Lo Hong Ka' makers owe me for free advertising!

The Amazing Ipoh Trip - Part 3 (FOOD Glorious Food!)