International Women' day and Sewing

International Women’s Day.

The cynical part of me thinks, another day? For what? I suppose I should at least be a tiny bit happy that there is one day in a year that is dedicated to women around the world. What about the other 364 days?

There was the usual morning tea gag at work. I saw a person I didn’t like, unfortunately, another woman, who hasn’t learnt a good way of working with other women, other than with bullying and passive aggression. But it is my workplace too, so I see no reason to avoid the morning tea offering just to avoid seeing her. As it was, there were plenty of others I could converse with. Sadly no gelato pop-up stand. That would have been a hit. Clearly the organisers haven’t gotten into the minds of women. Boring substandard biscuits, cupcakes, fruit and carrot sticks bought from the local supermarket aren’t very tempting. At least make some special effort and bring in some fancy cake!

I’m really hoping another colleague will be able to realise the idea she wants for celebrating the women at our workplace. Documenting the individual stories of women we know, particularly the ones who come from diverse backgrounds, would be a wonderful legacy

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time on textile work. People around me seem to be hatching babies left, right and centre, so this would be the 3rd baby quilt I’m working on since January this year. Which is incredibly fast for me. There is something incredibly meditative about handsewing. Yes, it is a heap slower than using the machine, but handsewing projects are very portable, I can take them almost anywhere, do them whenever my full attention is not required and I can put my hands to good use (I’m referring to those never-ending work meetings….). Funnily enough, for patchwork piecing, handsewing is much more accurate than machine sewing. It’s a trade-off I am willing to accept.

I have a favourite thimble, a silver once which I bought 12 years ago from an old lady who collected silver thimbles. I wonder if she is still living. I remember driving all the way to Ashgrove to look at her collection. It was during the visit that I received the phone call from my obstetrician’s office confirming that I was pregnant, although I didn’t know I was having twins at the time. She seemed genuinely pleased to hear my good news.

I wish more people would do handsewing. It calms the mind down beautifully, and at the end of it you have a lovely and unique object. I love the sensual feel of threads, fibres and fabrics in my hands. I have lots and lots of fabric scraps, some bags are swapped or gifted from friends who sew. Currently I have a slight obsession with making crumb patchwork patches and sewing little hanging ornaments with scraps. Gifting them to people always brings a smile.

I never thought I’d be someone who could be overjoyed at the thought at being gifted fabric scraps that many other folks would throw away.

Buddha's Birthday celebration

Today, I made a date with a friend to go sketching for the first time in years. She suggested we visit the Chung Tian Temple in Underwood, which is close by. It’s the weekend of Buddha’s birthday and the temple was holding celebrations with the temple grounds open to the public.

These stairs lead up to the new extension of the temple compound.

Before we walked too far, we spotted this lovely little bonsai garden in the middle of the grounds. It was edged with lined walkways, so I thought it a perfect spot to warm up for sketching.

My efforts. Pen, inktense colour pencils

I haven’t sketched in a very public and crowded location in many years so it was a bit nerve-racking. But once I got into the rhythm of it, I was fine and it soon became a very meditative exercise. Plus statues don’t move! That made it easy for me to get the lines down. Lots of people came around and took photos of the graceful statue and kids ran about playing chase.

Aren’t the red umbrellas glorious against the blue, blue sky?

Part of the newly extended temple complex

The entire temple complex is very dignified and graceful. This is apparently only stage 2, and there is another large extension to be completed by July 2023. In the centre of this new complex, is a large open courtyard, where live performances were being held. I imagine that outside of festival times, taichi and martial art classes would be held there.

Today the courtyard is lined with pop-up stalls selling food, drink and trinkets. There was a large central dais with a giant statue of Buddha for people to make offerings to, and a stage for performers. Rows and rows of white plastic chairs for the performances but sadly it was too hot in the fierce Brisbane sun today, so most people were huddled along the shaded corridors. Perhaps next time, large sunshades or marquees would be more practical.

Too sunny even for the locals. I would have sat there if Id remembered to bring an umbrella.

I can never walk past a shaved ice dessert without partaking.

A classical bronze (not sure if it is truly bronze or not) incense cauldron, flanked by a donation box. There were a number of incense urns around but I find it rather tasteless and obvious to have a donation box permanently paired with those urns. The idea behind these urns is that your wishes, hopes and prayers will be wafted to the heavens along with the joss smoke.

It wasn’t easy to sketch people as they were moving about too much. But I captured a few vignettes. This lovely elderly Chinese woman smiled at us sitting next to her as she wolfed down an enormous bowl of vermicelli. Another incense urn married to a donation box.

This very graceful pagoda was the highlight of the place. It is a shrine, as well as a resting place for the ashes of the deceased.

The original. I am a very non-religious person, but I would love to be able to rest here when I’m nothing more than a pile of ashes.

There were lots of other cultural performances, such as lion dancing, martial arts displays, choir performances, children’s dances, that sort of thing.

I know the public probably enjoys it. But I do find all these totally unsuitable for a religious festival. A Buddhist temple is meant to be a place of prayer and contemplation. The noise and chaos of all these performances didn’t sit well with my own ethnic understanding. The activities I did think appropriate were the tea meditation ceremonies, landscape and calligraphy writing, blessing ceremonies for babies. I would have loved to see a Taichi exhibition; perhaps that was on another day.

Even the martial arts shows made me uncomfortable. It was very strange to see the martial arts performers dressed in lurid orange uniforms in the style of Shaolin monks, down to the white booties laced with black laces, and yet none of the performers were Chinese in ethnicity. I am very glad to see others not of Chinese descent appreciating Chinese culture enough to join and learn about kungfu. It was, however, very disturbing to realise that no young Chinese person is interested enough to join in learning about their own cultural practices.

Sketching

Platinum carbon fountain pen extra fine nib

I have finally started to decompress after 3 weeks of being on leave and have picked up my sketching pen again.

This is a quick sketch of my child at her cello lesson. I only had my platinum carbon pen with me, the one purchased in Singapore for an excellent price. As it is currently filled with water-soluble ink, it was a great opportunity to practise getting looser lines in my drawing.

I tried to capture the main outlines in a continuous pen line, although I wasn’t totally rigid about this. The shape of the cello was rather difficult to get right, but never mind, it is a sketch after all. But I am very happy with the lines of her clothing and general posture.

I must work more on hands and feet. I find those incredibly difficult to capture in a convincing way. ESPECIALLY FEET.

I might devote some sketchbook pages to feet only. So I shall be looking for hand and foot volunteers.

view from my dashboard

I did this one while sitting in the car, waiting to pick up the kids from school. A perfect block of time to spend on drawing. Plenty of non-moving objects as we are all stuck in a queue anyway.

A good start on returning to urban sketching.

Home - new glasses and then CROSS-STITCH

Travelling always makes me weary. Even though I was very happy to see my parents again, I am still very pleased to be in my own home.

As soon as I was able, I raced off to OPSM to get my new glasses. I’ve worn progressive lenses for some years now. This year, I had a new relatively young optometrist attend to me, and I think they’ve over-corrected, leaving me in the tricky situation of being able to see distances perfectly fine, but unable to read.

NEW LENSES IN. And I can read again! So of course, I returned quickly to my X-stitch project.

A cute little Babushka needle holder - can’t remember who gifted it to me, probably my sister-in-law who knows I like little useful knick-knacks

A very little corner of the project

There’s something very sensual about textile arts and crafts. I’m mostly self-taught. I never had much time in my days of school, but once I left home, finished university and had some spare time, I started exploring all the various crafty activities available, and found myself quickly smitten.

I have a fetish for large X-stitch projects, usually pieces with 10+ pages of pattern sheets. I’m currently working on a design based on a painting by Seurat.

work in progress

Currently working on page 5 out of 15 pattern pages. Thankfully after years of X-stitch experience, I have a method for dealing with such big projects and for keeping track of my progress, including a filing system for the multiple coloured cottons required.

Copied my mum’s working method. She used to highlight whatever she’d done; this would make it far easier to spot which squares still needs stitching.

Sadly, my eyesight is no longer what it used to be. But Officeworks came to the rescue! I had the pattern sheets printed to A3 size. Much easier to see.

Fried Foochow rice noodles for dinner tonight, just because.

Goodbye, JB

My trip back to visit my parents always feels way too short. Every time I return to visit, I see my parents and the lovely women who nannied and housekept for my family getting older and frailer. It always leaves a terribly bittersweet taste in in my mouth. I must make more of an effort to return more often. Even a short trip is better than nothing. Perhaps next time I will visit on my own, without offspring, so that I am not limited by school holidays.

A traditional whetstone for sharpening knives.

I saw this old whetstone lying on the kitchen bench before I left this afternoon. I can’t believe how worn down it is. It’s lost more than half its height over the last 40+ years of use. My family never used to eat out much. There would always be a hot lunch and dinner, with cooked traditional snacks in between for afternoon tea or supper. The preferred kitchen tool is, of course, the giant cleaver. I prefer to use one in my own kitchen too. I’ve never taken to a chef’s knife.

View ahead of us

View behind us

It’s a dreadful ordeal getting across the Malaysia-Singapore border by land. To my dying day, I will never understand why no one has yet managed to solve the issue of the massive traffic jams at both checkpoints. It was a problem when I was a primary school kid FORTY YEARS ago. 4 decades on, it hasn’t improved; if anything it’s gotten worse. I swear it would be faster to take a domestic flight from Kuala Lumpur to Johor Bahru, even with the check-in times and procedures. It took me THREE hours to get from our JB house to the CBD of Singapore. If it wasn’t for those ridiculous white-elephant high-rises mentioned in my previous post, I can SEE Singapore from my home.

It would be faster to swim across the 1 km wide Johor Strait, if it wasn’t for the dodgy quality of the water, sea snakes, crocodiles and of course, my woeful swimming skills.

St Regis, Orchard

Anth booked us into a rather swanky hotel. Even the lobby bathrooms were impressive.

A very phallic-looking ice kacang

My very Anglophile children declined our invitations to wander into Orchard Road’s food courts, preferring to remain in the hotel for room service and endless rounds of chips. So we left them to it.

Of course, I had to refresh myself with one of my favourite desserts. I am not sure why their ice shaving machine produced a shape strangely reminiscent of a phallus, albeit a rainbow-coloured one. But it still tasted good. It did draw a few strange looks from neighbouring tables. Ah well.

JB Update 8 - random things

I want to show you all a very typical Malaysian calendar.

It’s a day-by-day one where you tear the pages off. But it’s an almanac too. I remember my old nanny using the torn off sheets for many purposes, one of the most common being paper used for crushing junior aspirin tablets. She would put the tablet in between a folded piece of calendar paper, and crush it with the back of a spoon, then mix it in with water and us kids would have to swallow the chalky mixture. Yuck.

It’s a calendar which is heavily consulted whenever there are significant household events.

Corner of the house garden.

My family home has a pretty large garden. This little patch is towards the back of the house, and when I was little, only housed a few shrubs and a big hibiscus hedge. We used to pick the flower buds and leaves to play at “cooking”. It has undergone a few changes in the last 4 decades.

For a while it was a koi pond. My mother kept brilliantly-coloured koi fish, with flashes of deep orange and white. She would lie on her stomach and feed the fish lettuce leaves. The fish got bigger and bigger and as time went on, frogs starting making the pond their home too. Amphibian courtship calls would keep my dad awake at night, so eventually after many years, they decided to give the fish away and do away with the pond. It then became a putting green for my dad. Dad used to do short-game practice every evening, with the end result of him being superb at his golf short game. He still does well at golf because of his chipping and putting, now that his long game is no longer as powerful after 3 back surgeries, and this is at age 77.

The little putting hole is now gone. But the contours of the area remain and the pretty shrubbery planted around the area has matured.

You might ask why there is s stone statue of a bull there. It seems a geomancer once came to our home and advised my parents that that part of the garden had “unclean” spirits. The best way to get them to move on was to have a bull effigy of some sort, in representation of one of the 2 Taoist Guardian spirits of Hell.

Another snapshot of Xiaomi, lazing on the patio table. Just because. And please admire her chub chubs.

Decrepit high rises

Every time I visit my old home and see these high rise blocks on the horizon, I get so mad.

These white elephants have turned into such an eyesore.

Supposedly the Sultan of Johor encouraged mainland Chinese investors to put money into developing property in Johor. Why they chose to pour money into reclaiming land from the Straits of Johor and then building condominiums, I will never understand., as Johor is the biggest state of Peninsula Malaysia and land is plentiful. Why would one pay over a million local dollars for an apartment suspended in mid-air, when you can easily purchase a large landed piece of property for the same price? I certainly wouldn’t bother.

Eventually the Chinese government stopped their citizens from investing large sums overseas, so funds for these massive construction projects dried up. Work stopped as labourers weren’t being paid. COVID sounded the death knell.

Now these buildings are falling into ruin and disrepair. The massive projects have also disrupted local water drainage systems; as a result, flash flooding would occur every time there was a rainstorm, which is a frequent occurrence in this tropical place.

Once upon a time, you could see the Strait of Johor from our home, right across to Singapore. There were little fishing boats and old-fashioned fishing huts suspended on the surface of the sea. Fishermen would bring in catches of fish, green mussels and clams every day. We would walk down to the waterside and look into the water for sea-snakes and fish. Although the water wasn’t particularly clean, it was a lovely place for local folks to stroll along to the sounds of gently-rolling waves and the occasional motor-boat. Not anymore. All because of greed.

Household cooktop

My family home has managed with this little modest 2-gas ring cook top for the last few decades; of course, with the ubiquitous rice cooker in every Asian household. This cook top has produced countless delicious home-cooked dishes - steamed, sautéed, boiled, deep-fried. The only method of cooking uncommon to Asian households is oven-baking. A lot of traditional Malaysian cakes and puddings are made by steaming. My mum doesn’t cook, she has had a house cook all her life, and this amazing lady has been with our family for the last 4 decades. She has become a cherished family member like my old nanny. Both ladies are heavily involved in family affairs and are as loyal as the sun. Her cooking easily beats restaurant fare. In her hey day, whenever she tasted a dish at a restaurant, she would scoff, come home and promptly reproduce the same dish (but better) the next day. Sadly she is not very robust these days because of chronic health issues and age, and I continue to worry for her and my ageing parents.

Mahjong finale

On our last evening here this trip, my mum has decided she would set up the mahjong table again to see if she can take some spare change off her son-in-laws. This is a special Sabah form of mahjong where there are 4 players as usual, but 1 player gets to go “on leave”. So Anth is playing while my brother-in-law is on his scheduled break.

JB Update 7 - home vignettes

My parents’ home is quite old, probably built around the 1960s.

It’s built in the style of a tropical bungalow. My parents renovated it with an extension in the late 1980s. I believe it used to be owned by an expatriate physician.

House fixtures from when I was growing up as a child.

The design of the wooden doors has remained unchanged ever since we moved into the house in the late 1970s. I remember spending much time tracing the embossed design with my fingers over and over again.

We have an old hills hoist, but there isn’t enough room on the lines for the household’s washing. Mum got a whole stack of bamboo poles made for hanging out laundry and now she suns all the washing in front of the house where the car porch is. Malaysian car porches aren’t enclosed like the ones in Australia. Most houses will have their compounds surrounded with a fence.

Mum doesn’t peg the washing directly onto the lines. She prefers to put each clothing item neatly onto a hanger so that the shape is retained, before carefully spacing out the hangers onto each bamboo pole, maximising ventilation space. I think many local folks do the same, as it requires less line space overall.

Laksa leaf - this is the magical herb that gives JB laksa its trademark flavour and fragrance. I wonder if I can find this in Brisbane somewhere…..

Our family house is located in a very old suburb which used to house mainly expatriate families. When I was little, there were many Korean, Japanese and Caucasian families living nearby. Over the years, each family packed up and returned to their home countries and the suburb gradually fell into decline. At least half the houses here were owned by a large company which refused to sell the properties individually; instead they wanted a potential buyer to purchase all the houses en masse, which is totally impractical. After a few decades of having no buyer, the houses gradually fell into ruin and disrepair. Opportunistic squatters dismantled the unoccupied houses for copper wiring and steel grills that could be sold.

There are still a few local families living here, but the young people have grown up and moved away, leaving the few households here made up of mostly folks of retirement age, like my parents.

There’s an eccentric hermit living a few houses down from my parents. He fancies himself as an environmentalist. This is the state of his home.

Exactly. No one can see it. It’s totally overgrown.

What was once a pretty little bungalow now looks like a tropical jungle. He doesn’t believe in trimming any plants. Malaysia being an equatorial country, gets a lot of rainfall, and hence vegetation grows incredibly quickly. Within a few months, you couldn’t see his house anymore. He wouldn’t let anyone trim the shrubs on his kerbside either, with branches pushing onto power lines. I shudder to think of the mosquitos, lizards, frogs and snakes hiding in all that. Not to mention how unsightly it makes the neighbourhood look. Apparently, this strange man also has a tendency to walk barefoot around the housing estate. This is not something that Chinese people do outside of the house, especially when there is a great risk of contamination with animal waste, sharp rusted bits and other unpredictable nasties.

I tried out Grab for the first time today. It’s the Malaysian equivalent of Uber. So simple. All app-based. Transport picked me up at the door and dropped me off to a shopping mall of my choice, about 15 minutes’ drive away. All for the princely sum of AU$5.

Refreshing shaved ice dessert with seasonal fruits.

I can never walk past any shop offering shaved ice as a dessert. This little pop-up store offered small hot meals of noodles, cold fruit teas and shaved ice dessert. My choice came with a small jug of condensed milk, chopped up seasonal fruit (watermelons, mangoes and longans) and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Delicious.

JB update 6 - cat

This is my mum’s cat, Xiaomi.

We don’t know exactly how old she is, but she came to our family home as a young stray, so we speculate that she’s around 7 to 8 years old, maybe even 10.

My family loves cats, so she picked the right family to ingratiate herself with.

As you can see, she’s a lovely little tortoise-shell kitty. She’s pretty short and has a stubby little bob of a tail. I don’t know how she would have survived as a stray, but she is certainly pretty snobbish as a cat now.

She doesn’t like any form of fresh food. My family used to feed our old cats fresh fish and chicken, and would mix in the soup broth that the meat was cooked in, which was greatly appreciated by the previous 2 resident felines. But this cat is thoroughly addicted to kibble, and that’s the only thing she would eat. She also appreciates fresh water, and likes her drinking water changed several times a day.

She has a guarding temperament and would scold and chase anyone she considers strangers to her home. It’s interesting that she doesn’t seem to object to my presence, even though I moved out of my parental home long before she came on the scene. Thankfully she doesn’t seem to mind my kids either.

She has her morning naps In a basket on my mum’s desk in her bedroom. She tries to sneak a nap on the bed but is usually shooed off if discovered.

Look at her sooky Highness.

Indoor Easter egg hunt

My sister decided to hold an impromptu Easter egg hunt INSIDE the house. Outside was TOO HOT which would make all the chocolates melt, and the ants would get into the chocs anyway.

She hid them in the craziest places. Inside the snack jars. In between pages of a book on the dining table. Wedged into nooks and crannies of my dad’s golfing trophies. Under my iPAD while I was working. Inside a shopping bag I left on the staircase.

The kids had fun and that was all that mattered.

Jade Ring

I guess it’s inevitable when folks get old. My mum called my sister and I to her bedroom and pulled out some of her treasured belongings, wanting to distribute them to us.

It was a bitter-sweet moment as she sorted through jewellery familiar to us from childhood, and through various other bits and pieces such as watches and brooches.

One of the gemstones uniquely dear to people of Chinese heritage is jade. I’m very fond of it myself as I like the various colours it comes in, how cold and smooth it feels against the skin and the cultural heritage of it. It’s been a beloved stone in Chinese civilisation since B.C. times. It is believed that the stone has protective properties and the colour will clarify and deepen with continued wear. I wear a lavender bangle on my wrist constantly.

The price of jade can vary greatly. The choice of piece that appeals to you is also incredibly subjective. It’s not easy to measure the quality of it with objective classification criteria like diamonds. Lots of people prize the type called Imperial Burmese jade which is an apple green, but there are also plenty of people who value nephrite jade, which has a completely different colour spectrum. I personally like jade with interesting markings, for example, of the type known as “moss in snow” - basically white with green colour patches.

I was very happy to be gifted a ring from my mother today. It is something I have always wanted.

She gifted me with a beautiful jade bracelet, pre-COVID, which was her 21st birthday present from her father. I told her I’ve wanted it ever since I was a child. Now I am so honoured and happy that she has given it to me.

My mum was given this stone by her aunt, and she got it set in her home town in East Malaysia.

JB Update 4

We had a family photography session for my side of the family today. This company prefers to photograph people in their own homes rather than having their own studio so a photographer and his assistant arrived today with all their gear in the late afternoon. Unfortunately there was a sun shower at the same and it was terribly humid. The setting was in our backyard where there is a lovely bright red brick wall.

It’s so hard to get all the family members together. My sister jumped at the opportunity when she realised that for once, we actually had every single member of our immediate family under the same roof.

I’ve done this sort of photo shoot several times and I’m used to the process of having the photographer fussing around with angles, and how your face/hands/knees/torso is positioned. My poor parents however, soon lost their patience. All of us with spectacles soon had our lenses steaming up in the humid air. The men had damp patches on their shirts. Everyone had a dewy look to their faces from the sweat. My 5 year-old nephew wasn’t too impressed and spent a lot of time running around pulling funny faces. But, I think the end results looked quite good.

My parents. The pic does not reveal how grumpy my dad was at being asked to pose…..

Besides my mother, I was also very happy to learn that another special woman was coming to visit us in our JB home, all the way from the northern Malaysian state of Penang. She played a pivotal role in our family life. A housekeeper, a nanny and baby-sitter, my mother’s trusted confidante and friend. A lady who has been part of our family for almost 5 decades. She retired from domestic service about 5 years ago, which was very sad for all of us but we understood. Still, she remains in close touch via WhatsApp.

It’s her 77th birthday today so we went out for a celebratory dinner.

Food. Always food. You cannot be a Malaysian if you don’t like food.

Queensland has the Big Banana and the Big Pineapple. Johor Bahru has the Big Crab.

This stands in front of the Garden Bayview seafood restaurant, JB.

Here is the other special woman in my life, standing at a petite 4 feet 11 inches tall. Incredibly resourceful, fiercely independent, full of practical intelligence, loyal to the nth degree, and 120% trustworthy.

JB Update 3 - home-doings

Lots of home time today. But that’s pretty normal for me anyway.

Pandanus plants. This aromatic plant can be found in almost every Malaysian family kitchen garden. The leaves are commonly used to perfume local dishes. Here it grows almost wild. I have never been able to successfully keep one alive in Brisbane.

In this equatorial weather, shrubs and trees grow pretty much anywhere with virtually no encouragement. I took a stroll around our old neighbourhood this evening, banana trees abound. I love these little monkey bananas. These are incredibly sweet. You won’t find this type of banana sold commercially as they ripen very quickly.

No home cooking tonight as it is a huge chore prepping a meal for 16 people. So my brother flexed his fingers and ordered in. Motorcycles carrying various local foods started arriving.

100 sticks of Satay!

Ketupat! (Compressed rice cakes)

Oyster omelette!

Char Kuay Teow! (Spicy fried flat rice noodles)

Char mee! (Fried noodles)

Yummy, yummy satay. These cost a bomb in Australia, but it’s a local staple, and costs the equivalent of 50 Australian cents per stick. These would have been cooked the traditional way over a grill and charcoal fire.

Cousins enjoying some time together. Here they are practising hair-braiding skills.

Family time. Anth is the chess guru around here.. So everyone was ganged up against him, but I think it was futile. I had no idea he was carrying a tournament chess set around in his suitcase. But it’s turned out very convenient as it’s generated a lot of interest from all the cousins,

16 people in the household has been a whole other level of chaos, but it’s been a very happy kind of chaos.

JB Update 2 - mahjong! 麻将!

A mostly stay-at-home day.

My mum spent much time today cultivating the next generation of mahjong players in our family. For folks unfamiliar with this game, it is a highly addictive social game common to Chinese people. It runs along similar principles to gin rummy. However, mahjong is a lot more tactile, for the following reasons:

• the mahjong tiles make a lovely characteristic clacking sound when pushed against one another

• The tiles are carved individually with beautiful symbols characterising specific sets of either stylised bamboo (索子) or “rounds” or “copper coins” (铜子) with other sets of chinese calligraphic characters - I think the modern sets are carved by machine nowadays, but in the old days they would have been hand-carved

• The tiles themselves are incredibly smooth and cool to touch - as a child I would spend much time touching these tiles and stacking them into towers

• Experienced players are able to deduce the patterns carved onto the tiles without needing to look at them - they would rub the carvings with their fingertips

Mahjong is an incredibly social game. Each game needs a minimum of 3 players, but each table can have a maximum of 4 players. Many ladies of leisure would while away long afternoons with friends, chatting, snacking and gambling at the same time. Fortunes can be gained and lost through mahjong.

In our family, it is purely for fun, especially for my mother’s side of the family. I remember my maternal grandparents setting up a table in our living room every time they visited from Sabah, and my mum would spend time with her parents by playing the game. Us kids would hover around watching, and would play with all the plastic gaming chips representing money. There would be gossip, laughter, mutual insults in a light-hearted manner and cheerful banter around the small square table, which is pretty joyous for us kids.

So here’s my mum training my brother-in-law and my niece, who picked it up super-quickly

Specialised mahjong tables can be bought. These tables are of a certain size, and contains a little drawer on each side of the square top for easy access to gaming chips or money.

My husband tells me he learnt how to count and do basic arithmetic from HIS dad teaching him how to play mahjong.

Little vignettes of the mahjong table

JB update 1

Woke up in my old bedroom. I’ve spent countless minutes, hours and years in this room. This room saw me through my primary and secondary school years. It saw me through my O level exams. Now my children are sleeping with me in my old den.

For lunch today, my mum decided she would indulge me with my favourite lunch and buy real Johor laksa for me. I know it’s a controversial opinion, especially to my East Malaysia husband who thinks Sarawakian laksa is the best, but I personally think Johor laksa IS the best. It’s very creamy and rich with spices and coconut milk, and has my favourite spongy tofu and fried fish balls in it, along with silky yellow noodles.

Luscious JB laksa. I could eat this all week. I have not been able to find one that comes close in Brisbane.

We got some otak-otak too, which is essentially spiced fish paste barbecued wrapped in banana leaf. Sadly we discovered they weren’t fully cooked when we got home, so we had to discard them which hurts my heart.

Otak-otak = BBQ spiced fish paste wrapped in banana leaf

Then of course, I trailed my mum and old househelp as they went about their supermarket errands. We are a massive household of about 15 people right now, so the amount of food required to fuel all these humans is enormous. We ended up with 2 FULL trolley carts of ingredients. Of course, we had to pay a visit to the snack shops.

Southeast-Asian folk are great snackers. You can find countless types of pickled dried fruit, cookies in every shape and colour imaginable, usual cakes, sticky asian cakes made of rice flour

It’s a good time of the year to visit Malaysia as it is Hari Raya Aidilfitri, which is a festive occasion after the traditional Ramadan month. Lots of shops and little pop-up stores offering up festive clothing, household furnishings etc, and all at special discounted prices, of course. And aside from departmental stores, you can still haggle with the smaller stall holders.

Goodbye Kuching, Hello Johor Bahru

Highly recommend the Imperial Hotel, Kuching. It’s not particularly fancy but it’s conveniently located and the best thing about it? The beds are extremely firm, which is great for my back. My other half claims it’s given the best night’s sleep EVER in a hotel.

This is always their first thing that greets me when I walk in through the entrance way of my parental home. A HUGE cross stitch piece done by my mum several decades ago. Link to the chinese historical story below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su_Wu

Entry into Johor Bahru was much less complicated than entry into Kuching. No immigration, no luggage scanning. We simply collected our bags and walked out the arrival doors. And there was my mum and brother waiting for us all.

My sister had already arrived a few days prior, bringing her family with her and now the house is bursting at its seams. But I think my parents are genuinely happy to have lots of noise around, with the sounds of chattering children’s voices and pattering feet going up and down the wooden stairs. I’m sure my mum and our old househelp are going to need a break from all of this commotion after we’ve gone home.

This gilded dragon and phoenix bias relief art piece has been in my parents’ home since my early teens, making it over 30 years ago. I still remember my dad seeing it in a store, and paying money to bring it home. I remember he even told a white lie to my grandmother at the time, concealing the actual cost of this art piece……he said it was given to him by a client….

These wooden palings (I am sure there is a proper name for these things) edge the 22 stairs going upstairs (another Occupational Therapist’s nightmare). These gilded plaques with good luck chinese characters have been hanging there since my early childhood too. Before emails were invented, our family would receive lots of chinese new year cards every year. My mum would make an annual display of stapling all the festive cards together in long columns and attaching them to each of these wooden palings. We would always count them to see how many there were, and whether the new year’s count would beat the count from last year.

Sadly, since email greetings came about, the number of cards dwindled and my mum no longer bothers to continue with that custom.

Kuching 2

Today, we actually had a mission to accomplish - a formal family portrait photography session. After breakfast, we all dutifully got dressed in our colour-coordinated outfits and headed off to the studio.

Admittedly, photography trends have changed significantly, and the photographer was much less directive about how we were standing and sitting. 2 hours went by relatively quickly, and we were soon ready for lunch. Of course, we couldn’t resist taking some candid shots of ourselves with our phones.

We finished up and it was time for lunch. As usual, food is everywhere in Malaysia, but we were mindful that we had younger family members who would get hangry, so we opted for somewhere convenient.

A little eatery that specialises in Hainan chicken rice. I love the traditional wooden name plaque of the shop and the green ceramic tiles providing decoration and ventilation to the interior.

There’s a little china lion with a festive red silk ribbon ball greeting customers at the threshold of the entry way. The doorway has a traditionally raised threshold. One has to be careful in entering - this would be an Occupational Therapist’s nightmare. It’s almost a foot in height.

This was something I had never noticed previously. It is common for the servers to arrive with an enamel mug or china bowl filled with hot water. At first, I was quite puzzled as to the purpose of this. Now I know. It’s for customers to dip their cutlery into before using them. How sensible. No disposable stuff here. Everything is still served with chinaware and stainless steel spoons/forks and wooden/plastic chopsticks.

Even the concrete road bollards are pretty.

Check out the spiral staircases at the backs of the shophouses. These ones have been painted in pretty colours.

A very typical neighbourhood grocery store - “Chap Huey Tiam” in the Hokkien dialect. Literal translation means “shop of odds and ends”. Sure enough, you can find anything from sweets, toilet paper, baby formula, cookies, preserved snacks to cigarettes and cold drinks. Many shopkeepers even act as part-time dealers for local lotto syndicates. The shopkeeper is a trusted local repository of neighbourhood gossip and when I was a small girl of 5 or 6 years old, my dad would often take me with him to our local shop and I’d run around with the shopkeeper’s kids while he chatted with the other men who’d finished work.

Big family dinner with cousins, uncles and aunties tonight. The ubiquitous condiments of a Chinese restaurant - light soy sauce, vinegar, chopped garlic, chopped red chilli and pickled green chillies.

FOOD. FOOD. And more FOOD.

The restaurant had a beautiful feature wall made up entirely of a mosaic landscape, in the style of a traditional Chinese inkwash painting, I’ve once done a mosaic workshop before. There would have been HOURS and HOURS of work, precision and hand dexterity + strength that’s gone into this wall.

Magnificent.

Good morning and good night, Kuching. Thank you for a very hospitable whirlwind stay.

Tomorrow I head to my hometown of Johor Bahru.

Kuching 1

I have not visited Kuching in at least 11 years. It is the birthplace of my husband and in Sarawak, East Malaysia. After the incredible urban cityscape of Singapore, Kuching appears a little quaint, but it still preserves the small-town charm of Malaysia, while having the more modern conveniences of wifi, contactless payments and superb air conditioning.

My in laws were so excited to reacquaint us with the local sights that I could clearly see that a lot of planning had gone into the organisation of our whirlwind stay. For lunch today, we came to the famous “Lao Eah Keng” which essentially directly translates to “Old Decrepit Place”, but in actual fact, is an abandoned Chinese temple, refurbished into a hawker space with the best kolo noodles and dumplings in town. It’s smack in the middle of the tourist strip, in the heart of Kuching city and is well known to the locals as well as foreigners alike. My in laws tell me it’s not uncommon for visitors from neighbouring ASEAN countries to order 70 packs of those delectable noodles, pack them in a freezer bag, and fly them back to their home countries.

View from Jalan Carpenter- looking towards the State Legislative building.

Old temple converted to hawker stall

And eat, we did.

The beautiful little temple across the road on Jalan Carpenter. Obviously a popular temple. As I snapped this pic, there were plenty of people genuflecting to the resident deities.

I love that they are so used to tourists here that they don’t object to tourists taking photos.

My sister in law spotted this beautiful mural done by a local artist, depicting a traditional wooden clog shop. These clogs were once upon a time, incredibly common. You hardly see anyone wearing them anymore.

I love these old shophouses. I think they look incredibly elegant. I’ve never been to the upper levels of one in my life, and have often wondered what it would be like to live in one of these. I imagine it would be pretty dark and possibly quite airless inside, as these buildings are in a long terrace row and extend quite a long way inside. But one could run one’s own entrepreneurial business downstairs, and live upstairs. It would be handy to be able to look out onto a bustling street, and to keep an eye on local foot traffic. These particular buildings are very old and have survived for over 200 years.

Side gate of temple

One thing I have to acknowledge about Malaysia is that you would have a great deal of difficulty here if you were physically disabled, as the place is simply not easily accessible without the blessed ability to walk freely. The walkways under shophouses are incredibly narrow, famously known throughout Malaysia and SIngapore as “5-foot walkways”, and with unpredictable threshold stairs and uneven path textures., As you can see in the picture, some shopfronts have tiles, some have cobblestones, some have plain old concrete. Wheelchairs, walkers, prams…….forget it.

But you cannot beat the historical charm of Malaysia. More to follow in the next post.

Sewing

I’ve been doing a lot of sewing in the past year. Have temporarily retired my painting for now, as doing commissions has become quite stressful, and painting no longer holds the same joy it used to.

A beautiful friend and colleague at work introduced me to the idea of sewing some simple clothes for myself. I’d taken a sewing class before but found it difficult and fiddly. At the time, I simply thought, why bother, clothes can be bought so cheaply literally everywhere. All the measuring, cutting, ironing really wasn’t appealing at the time.

However, in recent years, I have come to see it in a different light. I no longer wish to blend in with the crowd like I used to. I know what style I like, what I feel comfortable wearing, and the image I choose to present to the public. I care much less about what others think about me. Plus, there are so many types of beautiful fabric out there!

I tell you all a secret (not really!). Spotlight is one of my favourite stores. It’s basically a warehouse of haberdashery. if I go in, I invariably come out over a hundred dollars poorer. But, I get to look at and touch all the beautiful fabrics out there and admire the rainbow spools of thread. It doesn’t have a huge range of stuff, but it’s probably the most accessible to casual seamstresses like me.

With the encouragement of my friend, I started off with a simple wrap skirt. It was OK, totally wearable, but I learnt a few things along the way. She’d kindly lent me her overlocker to finish off the raw edges. I don’t really like using those ready patterns you can buy from Spotlight. They come in tissue paper and are so fragile, not really up to repeated use. If I like a pattern, I want to make multiple copies of the same item, but in different fabrics!

About this time, I started to get interested in clothing which is based on Asian traditional costumes, such as hanfu, kimono and hanbok. Those patterns aren’t easily available in Australia commercially, so I looked through Etsy and found some that looked achievable. I’d been hoarding this lovely green fabric for months, so this was the perfect time to use it for a cute little kimono wrap top. It turned out great, and a quilting walking foot solved all my “twisting” issues with the neck band. The original pattern had the right lapel overlapping the left, but after some research, I discovered that the proper Chinese/Japanese/Korean way was to have the left lapel overlap the right, so I switched the sides - luckily the pattern was easily adjusted.

It’s a lot of fun once I realised that there is no rush to finish anything. Now my sewing area is set up so I can easily hop between my sewing machine, my serger and the ironing board.

Trip to Uluru

This trip has been a year in the making. It was a trip of a lifetime and I think a necessary pilgrimage for everyone living in Australia. We flew straight to Ayers Rock airport via Sydney. Uluru was clearly visible on the horizon the moment we stepped out of the plane onto the tarmac. It is impossible to miss this giant coppery red monolith standing out against the blindingly blue sky.

Magical changing of colours during dusk

It was a sight to awe anyone into silence. I was surprised at how lush the surroundings were; apparently it’s because there was quite a lot of rain in the weeks before our arrival. Little wildflowers everywhere, spinifex bushes, grevillias and baby oaks.

Wildflower blooms - totally non-showy, but still pretty and unexpected in a desert setting

I had the incredible opportunity of watching 2 Indigenous artists at work and they very graciously gave me permission to sketch them.

Alison had her earphones plugged in and was clearly in the zone while working on her piece.

Rachael working on her piece. They both had this large orange tub with their paint mixtures safely stored in little plastic take-away containers ready for use. So sensible! Must take notes - very handy for painting on the move.

Group photo at the end. I think they were quite pleased with their little portraits. Initially they were reserved with me. When they saw the finished sketches, they both started giggling and pointing to each other. I am so glad we broke the ice.

We also visited the Field of Lights. Frankly it was a little underwhelming. I was way more mesmerised by the incredible night sky. You could see the Milky Way! One of the few times I wished I had the photography equipment and skill to capture the beauty of the outback night skies.

Field of Lights and little crescent moon on the horizon

It was only 4 days. But it was totally magical.

Lockdown Slow Living

Brisbane was in lockdown again over the last 4 days. I couldn’t go out to buy new canvasses so I decided to recycle an old piece that I really didn’t like that much. Unfortunately it was an old mixed media piece where I had glued a lot of scrap papers of different textures on the canvas so it was a bit bumpy and lumpy to paint on.

I decided then I would paint a self-portrait. I haven’t got a painting of Diesel weasel dog, so I thought I would feature him in this particular painting, along with Maxicat (although Maxi already has his own painting).

I think you would commonly find me sitting in this position at home, doing one of the following:

1. messing around with my phone or iPad

2. crocheting

3. sewing

4. reading

Anth thinks I look gloomy in this painting but I’m not, really. It’s just my resting b*tch face when I don’t have to try hard for anyone. Maxi doesn’t care, and certainly Diesel doesn’t either.

Right now, I have a pile of “To Be Read” books, a large green scented candle from Dusk and a green china oil burner on the wooden bureau at home, so I’ve painted them all in. The pretty leaves, flowers and funny birds are all branching out of books because that’s the best way of escaping now with all those travel restrictions in place.

Rabbits By The Lake

These months of living with random COVID lockdowns have given me more of an opportunity to read. Recently, I took on the challenge of reading a novel in Chinese, which I haven’t done since leaving high school almost 30 years ago. I am very happy to report that I did manage to understand at least 70 to 80% of the characters and got through the story just fine. Luckily, Netflix is currently also showing a live drama serial based on the novel. After I binge-watched the TV series, it turned out to be incredibly helpful when reading the actual book.

The title?

Novel title is: Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation or Mo2 Dao4 Zu3 Shi1 in Mandarin.

Netflix show title is: The Untamed

Apparently there is also an audio drama in Mandarin and an anime version as well. Clearly the story is very popular! So please do go check it out.

It’s basically a love story woven around a mystery thriller, but instead of your typical het couple, the two principal characters are a pair of gay lovers. Obviously nothing of this relationship was shown on the TV series due to strict Chinese censorship laws, but the original novel leaves nothing to the imagination.

Anyway, whatever the format, I liked the love story so much that I decided to paint it for myself. I have to admit it is one of the more entertaining pieces I’ve painted.

After I read the book and watched the TV show, I decided to do a bit more research and bought a book called “Passions of The Cut Sleeve”, which is someone’s PhD thesis on the history of homosexuality in ancient China. I read the whole thing, and was indeed amazed to discover that homosexuality, and even bisexuality was widely tolerated and even accepted in ancient Chinese times. What a surprise.