Makan escapade - Day 2 (1 January 2009)

According to the Lunar Calendar, the 1st death anniversary of my maternal grandmother's death falls on 1 January 2009. As such, the relatives have gathered at my grandmother's home in Muar, Malaysia.

At the tender age of 6, my grandmother who took a boat from China to Malaysia. Her family initially settled down in Malacca before making Muar their final destination. She was a wonderful person who could speak English, Mandarin, Malay, a bit of Tamil (so I am told) and numerous Chinese dialects. She endured hardship throughout her life and despite everything, remained of good cheer and was always concerned for her children and grandchildren. She also single-handedly brought up 8 children with very little finances when my grandfather passed away suddenly at a young age of cancer. Even till a few years before she passed away, she was the queen of the kitchen and did all the marketing and cooking. I have managed to obtain one or two recipes from her and I enjoyed assisting her when she cooked food or made snacks during the times that I visited her. To my deep regret, I did not obtain more recipes from her.

My grandmother suffered a bad fall when the legs of plastic chair that she was sitting on gave way. When she woke up from her surgery, the first thing that she said to my Uncle V was to apologise that she can no longer cook for everyone. Each time she went back to the hospital for a checkup, the doctors always found that she was low in blood and gave her blood transfusion, which she suffered tremendously from the pain of the needle inserted into her as by then, she had lost a lot of weight and did not have much flesh. As such, she was fearful of going to the hospital.

On the day that my grandmother passed away, she suddenly choked and shouted that morning. She passed away in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. During her wake, her body remained soft and did not show signs of decomposition despite the fact that she was not embalmed and she was placed in the coffin with dry ice only. As the wake progressed, a red dot appeared on her forehead (similar to what you see in photographs and statues of the Goddess of Mercy).

I was standing at the head of the coffin (that is, near my grandmother's head) when the undertakers came to seal up the coffin on the day of the funeral. Before they did so, my relatives requested that the undertakes place a string of prayer beads in my grandmother's hands. The undertakers agreed to do so but cautioned us that her body may have become stiff after several days of death. They were amazed when her hands moved easily and were not stiff at all. What was more amazing was that when the prayer beads were placed in her hands, her fingers of their own accord closed around the prayer beads. If I did not see it with my own eyes, I probably would not have believed that this happened.

Mama - be at peace and do not worry about us. We love you very much and you will always remain in our thoughts and prayers.

Everyone woke up early on 1 January 2009. After the usual "let's go, let's go, the sun is up!", several cars of relatives drove to the nearby temple. We have arranged for the chief monk in the temple to offer prayers for my grandmother. Displayed on the table in front of my grandmother's altar were fruits and vegetarian food.

As part of the prayers, the monk requested everyone to form horizontal queues (that is, parallel to the table) in order of "seniority". In Chinese custom, seniority means that the sons of the deceased would form the first queue (in descending order of age). The second queue would be the daughters of the deceased. The third queue would be the daughters-in-law / sons-in-law of the deceased and the grandchildren of the deceased.

At one point during the prayers, the monk started to hand to us the plates of fruit and food. Each of us would symbolically offer up the food to my grandmother before passing the plate to the next person in the line (something similar to "passing the parcel") and the last person in the queue would place the plate back on the table in front of the altar. There was a big of giggling after a while because there was a hold-up in the passing of the plates as the monk's action was faster than us. Also, when it came to the big basket of fruits that Tuayi had arranged (please see the photograph at the top of this post), everyone struggled to hold the heavy basket in their hands, offer up the fruits to my grandmother and then pass the basket to the next person in the line.

After the prayers, we adjourned to a nearby vegetarian restaurant for lunch.

I am amazed how innovative chefs of vegetarian food can be. You can order vegetarian duck, vegetarian roast pig, vegetarian fish, etc. We also enjoyed their hot drink comprising boiled ginger with red dates - it was very refreshing.

Burp! After a very heavy meal, it was time for shopping. Near my 6th grandaunt's home is a factory named "Meng Choon" that manufactures local Malaysian goodies including cookies and exports the goodies to countries like Singapore. As the owner of the factory lives in the house next to my grandaunt and we regularly place orders for the goodies through my grandaunt, we now refer to the factory as "6th grandaunt's factory" and often tease her about receiving commission for the sale of the goodies.

As Chinese New Year is approaching, the product section of the factory looked very festive. They are very generous with their samples. As we were selecting our purchases, an employee brought out a carton of freshly packed goodies. Fresh from the manufacturing line! The goodies cannot get any fresher than this when we buy them directly from the factory.

By the time we were done, it was almost tea-time. Some of my relatives decided to stay in the house to rest or play mahjong.

The rest of us proceeded to a nearby coffeeshop.

We had an enjoyable tea-time chatting. We saw some customers at another table eating satay and we thought of ordering a plate of satay as well. Unfortunately, they seem to have bought the satay from elsewhere and brought the satay to this coffeeshop. sigh....

As my mother and her siblings had grown up in Muar, it was interesting to drive past places of nostalgia, such as schools that they attended as children.

Uncle J and Aunt J (in case your are wondering, their three children do not have names starting with "J" although I think that it would have been cute to name them as such) wanted to buy a chocolate cake from Fung Seng Confectionery that their daughter, PW likes. As such, we made a stop at this confectionery.

Gosh! There is such a large selection of cakes, cookies, pastries, etc at this confectionery. They even have a little cafe where you can sit down and order some tea-time snacks.

Muar is a very historical town and there are numerous landmarks all over the town.

Dinner was held at the coffeeshop near my grandmother's home. Some of the relatives opted to eat the vegetarian food that we had brought to the temple in the morning.

After dinner, we packed our luggages and got ready to leave for the next leg of our makan escapade - Kuala Lumpur. My 6th grandaunt (who lives in Muar) decided to accompany us to Kuala Lumpur as well.

On the way to Kuala Lumpur, my Aunt N stopped at a Shell petrol station to top up the petrol in my car.

It takes about 2 to 2 1/2 hours to drive from Muar to Kuala Lumpur using the North-South highway. Upon our arrival at Kuala Lumpur, my cousin K directed us to a roadside stall selling delicious noodles. The noodles that you see in the photograph below are curry wild boar noodles.

My Aunt N ordered the braised chicken feet noodles.

The beauty of having a digital camera is that depending on the model, you may be able to take night photographs without using a flash. You can see the Petronas Twin Towers in the background in the photograph below.

My 6th grandaunt, my mother, my Aunt N and I will be staying at Uncle J's and Aunt J's home during our stay in Kuala Lumpur.

Kuala Lumpur is renowed for their food. I look forward to sampling as many types of food as I can.