the people we meet

this post is dedicated to all the people i met while i was in europe. i actually regret that i have not taken more photos, especially with my roommates. i am glad that some of us have hooked up via facebook tho.

that’s from the meeting i attended. i don’t often put work related pictures on this blog, but he was wearing a lederhosen and i wanted to share that. i have an awesome story about lederhosens and an old german beer house in munich. if we ever meet, ask me.

that’s my free tour guide masa kat munich. well actually, there were four of them and there were a big group of us. i actually found a group picture on the tour website but i am tiny there.

the picture is of jared, but i fell into heidi’s group instead. she’s in the big group picture.

and that’s spike, the guide in paris who’s from the same company. i like the idea of free tours. i know that it would never work in malaysia because we don’t have a tipping culture and we’d be too cheapskates to make it worthwhile for the guide anyway. but i think have free tours in europe is so cool for poor asian backpackers. spike is a history major at a college in paris and i think its so awesome that she takes time to look up trivia and interesting facts to share with us during the tour. i suppose when you work on tips, you really got to impress the customers.

i wish i had a picture with ena, my bosnian-swedish roommate at that hostel in paris. ena, if you are reading this, i hope you and the spanish guy are having a wonderful time with your apartment with a garden! :)

and i wish i took a photo with the bulgarian guy who was eating cheese at the hostel courtyard, just in case he was telling the truth when he told me that he’s an actor and he’ll be world famous someday.

and that is my guide in barcelona and he’s every bit as a hippy as he looks. he’s from a different tour company, but they also offer free tours for the cheapskate traveller. the way the tour is conducted is basically the same but this guy is more casual than the other company. casual is not a bad thing, though. since the group that gathered for the day were mostly young and curious, we moved at a very relaxed pace.

lupa pulak nama mamat ni.

that’s me with some of my roommates (claire and lilian – both on the right) who went on the barcelona free tour. i found out that the tour company is actually on facebook too and has pictures of us on their photo page there also.

my roommates in barcelona were an unforgetable group of people.

the dorm had eight beds and the thing is, i spent quite some time in barcelona and i met many roommates who came and went.

thing was, there were these other three guys who stayed almost as long as i did and we introduced and reintroduced ourselves to new roommates over and over again.

the three guys are spanish, one of the canary islands (see oscar – i remember!!!) and the other two (fernando and pablo) from a district near madrid. i had the funniest time testing my barely developed spanish with them.

oscar, if you are reading this, i hope you’re having fun in barcelona and have found a job already! :)

escrida is left. deretcha is right. i will not forget that. i just hope i got the spelling correct.

two of the guys speak very little english but they were just the funniest. they gave me some spanish mp3s which i know i will never completely understand.

now you tell me – doesn’t the guy in the baju belang nampak macam edward cullen from the twilight movie?

i met these girls for two evenings in barcelona because we’re supposed to go see flamenco together. the one on the right is italian. the one on the left is spanish. thing is, we needed a foursome to get the tour group going and after two days, it never happened. instead, we spent the evenings by the fountain talking about everything from rome to art to boyfriends.

speaking of rome, i have already introduced you to carlo, one of the two femes photographers i met up with. i followed his friends and family to the world press photo exhibition while i was there too, which i pretty damn cool. his daughter andrea, is an intense ball of energy. put her with her cousin and they become unstoppable.

last, but not least, this is one of my six roommates in rome. he’s irish. i forgot his name, but i remember that it starts with an “F”. evidently, he is unconscious. the reason for that is that he came back at 4am the night before completely intoxicated. just how drunk? by 5am, he has puked all over the shared bathroom floor and dragged some of the mess into the dorm. that’s not his bed he’s landed on either. his pants and shoes are in the corridor and his passport is on the floor.

so there you have it, folks. just some of the colourful characters that made the trip all that more interesting. have an awesome weekend. peace. out.

the first world state of mind

i actually had a lot of expectations in venturing to western europe. of course i wanted to see the art and the history and all. but i had expected a wise air of maturity. a sophistication. all that stuff they told us in morals and ethics classes about a well-behaved civil society of cultured people.

you know where i am getting but mind, i was not completely disappointed. flying over germany was exactly how i envisioned a first world country would be. solar panels. wind turbines. and then in the train to the airport, i notice a little graffiti in the tunnel walls and thought, its okay, we got some creative vandalism at home too.

but as i traveled to paris, the graffiti got more and more and from tunnels, they spanned onto walls of almost the entire track passage. in barcelona, the graffiti crept onto parts of the train. by the time i got to rome, the trains are completely covered on colourful spray paints (pic).

and while the trains themselves are efficient – they come every five minutes, tops – but they are old. i suppose it says something about their engineering if old carriages like those are till used, but i remember standing in a train station in paris feeling kinda disappointed that the train arriving was a box-shaped thing with doors that snapped like an impatient french lady.

heck, i remember taking the train back to my hostel in paris one night, and a drunk man sat beside me and started mumbling to me. he went on and on and on. i was still a few stops from my station and i swapped seats since the train was not full. people looked. it was not nice.

i had maybe too high of an expectation of what a first world state of mind would, or should be. appreciation for health and well-being was one of them. but here’s the truth, majority of the locals i met smoked. you think a lot of people smoke at home, well double or triple that make them all chain smokers while you’re at it. in a crowded street, every other person you see is smoking.

i have nothing against smokers, but i am just shocked by the magnitude. there are cigarette vending machines almost everywhere. people in business suits smoked. parents would smoke in front of children and even while pushing prams. young people, old people, rich-looking ones, homeless, boys, girls, there is specific no demographic to it.

there was a time i was sitting on some steps in trastevere, rome, and a girl with dreadlocks asked me if i had a lighter. and i told her that i did not smoke. she had to pause awhile to register that idea before moving on to ask someone else.

and the LITTER! oh. my. god. they litter everywhere. there is a bin there, but they still litter. i think this is my greatest shock. name it, they’ve discarded it. sweet wrappers. cigarette boxes. cigarette buds. used plastic cups. bits of whatever. in germany, not so bad. paris, more (to my absolute shock and horror). as for barcelona and rome, there was a joke in my hostel that those two cities smell like washrooms – and this is not completely untrue.

crossing roads. in germany, they wait until the little red man turns greens before they cross the streets – even if there are no cars on the road. in paris, if there are no cars, they would sometimes cross the smaller road even if the little red man is not green. in barcelona, if you gather a group big enough, you can stop traffic. in rome, if you run fast enough, you can get across the road before oncoming cars bashes you to bits.

the homeless and beggers on the street are not a nice story. i mean, homeless and beggers anywhere is not a nice story. but over here, i am confused and a greater part of me really does not know how to feel about it. i see immigrants, mostly illegal i am told, on the streets, and refugees and gypsies – all looking for a handout. they tell me stories of war and dead family members and how they come in search of a new life.

and i hear stories about syndicates and how they use these sob stories of the war to pry for money. they wait at the gates of great churches and cathedrals and bear family photos. a number resort to stealing and pickpocketing – i hear so many stories of these too.

walking on the street at night, i see some streets staggered with drunkards, with a bottle in one hand and a foul word on their lips. they eventually collapse on the steps that would be their refuge for the night. steps that are more often a monument of some of the oldest and greatest civilisations in european history, or in the shadow of one, at least.

these are just some examples of my experiences. i had a brazillian roommate in barcelona who shared the same concerns. the latin american people are more caliante, she tells me. i tell her that asians are friendlier.

you know how there are all those campaigns at home that tells us to look to the west for technology and and the first world mentality? i fear that i don’t quite know what is that first world mentality anymore. for the most part, i am undecided about how i feel about europe. i have no regrets taking the trip and would certainly do it all over again. but, you know.

there is something about roving in that continent that gives me the acute awareness of my asianness, and a sense of pride that i have for being an asian. there is just something about these europeans that i just don’t want to be, and i can’t quite put my finger on that that is.

and it is not that europe was a terrible experience. i had loads of fun that i will share with you on the next post (wait for it! it’s gonna be awesome).

maybe i just went about europe the wrong way. maybe things would have been a universe of difference if i stayed at one of those posh hotels with thick embroided drapes and egyption silk bathrobes. things might have been different if i took those fancy tours with a flag waving guide and everyone had matching hats.

but this is the tale of the poor backpacker who walked in the back lanes of europe and found some of the cobbled roads a little uneven.

eating through the world

i have been catching up on my food this past few days. my nasi kandar. my hakka mee. my nasi lemak. char kuey teow. my ayam madu. my rendang. my assam fish. everything pedas pedas pedas! god, how i missed the flavours… how i missed food that actually had any trace of flavour at all!

fine. i’m being unfair. italy tasted like tomato.

thing is, europe IS expensive for the poor asian backpacker. i remember what mom used to tell me when i was put on a budget back in university – the poor student stinges on everything except food. so i walked everywhere on campus (kolej matrix was the furthest thing you can get from the faculty back then) and bought second and third hand books from seniors. but for the humble RM50 per week, i could still scrape at least two square meals a day and ice cream when i felt like it.

fast forward ten years and a whole different continent, one modest meal with no drinks costs me 10 euros. that’s 47.50 ringgit. and that’s drinking from water fountains and eating in narrow cafeterias. for 6 euros, maybe i could get a sandwich with yesterday’s baguette.

and so, i fell into the routine of the poor backpacker scrimping through, just to see the world. hog as much bread as possible from the hostel breakfast no matter how awful they are. one, and only one meal a day outside. and for dinner, cheap dried pasta and tomato sauce that i buy from the local grocery store and cook myself in the hostel kitchen.

i know this sounds so sad, but one of the happiest time i had in barcelona was when i found dried mee sua in the tiniest grocery shop an hour away from my hostel. i bought a packet for 90 euro cents (almost 5 ringgit), a box of chicken stock for 2 euros (almost 10 ringgit) and a packet of chopped vegetables for 60 euro cents (when nobody buys fresh vegetables and they are no yet bad, but just old, they chop it up and sell it in packets). i went back to my hostel kitchen and portioned the box of chicken stock in two. that made two pots of mee sua noodle soup. that’s two days’ worth of dinners. PROPER DINNERS, mind you! i tell you, i happily burnt my tongue eating the noodles.

other times, i found microwave packed food and most of them are as lousy at it sounds. the only consolation is that it is cheap. it is not as filling as i would like it to be, but drink enough water and the growling goes away.

i know what you would tell me the magic word is: maggi! i almost burnt my mouth off drinking maggi soup in paris. the kitchen had a pot, but no bowls, and no spoons. please, don’t even try to imagine. thing is, you don’t want to live on just maggi. seriously.

the worse worse worse is rice. european rice is so different. we have nice long grain whole rice. they have short, fat sticky rice. the rice does not absorb any of the flavours from anything. there was a time i bought a box of mircowavable “curry flavoured rice” and it was the most tasteless thing i have ever put in my mouth. every grain was hard and even though i tried to steam it with water, it stayed hard. i mixed the rice in a bowl of instant chicken soup which resulted in disaster.

i found the word “basmati” on some of the microwave packs and even that was unfamiliar. i found that the rice grains were mixed with european rice. the result was weird. the pack came with a packet of microwavable chicken masala which was anything but spicy. no trace of curry. no trace of chili. just pepper and tomato.

one of the travellers in the kitchen says, you can tell an asian by how she inspects her rice. that is true.

i find that a lot of europeans can do with cold food for days and days and days. there is no urgency for hot food. there is simplicity without attention to strong flavours. and while i am so so so fascinated by the history and art and culture and technology of european countries, i don’t think i can eat like them. even if i was not the poor backpacker and could afford proper meals, i don’t think i can be the one who eats cold food for days at a stretch.

would i do it again – of course i would. everything about europe was a new experience and i have no regrets for seeing what i had. but i might packed a little differently. i would have left the cream crackers i brought with me at home. i would have packed dried bee hoon and little bottles of spices and dried chilli with me. i would have packed rice. heck, i would have packed ikan bilis.

i love malaysian food.

fresh cola mentos

found fresh cola mentos at the airport. i don’t know if this is malaysia yet. but hey, good to know. it’s not bad, though. tee hee.

last day in barcelona

and the sun is shining. the thing about the sun here is that it is super strong, super bright. what makes it dangerous is the constant mediterenean wind that blows, so you actually feel cool while getting serious sunburns that you only notice about six hours later. did i already mention about the red human beings walking about the hostel. yes, that is the aftermath. i cannot understand why people would do that to themselves. i have roommates giggling all evening about how much it hurts while applying lotion. then today, they´re off to even up the tan at the beach.

i think i will go to the beach today. but no, you won´t find me grilling in the sun. duh. i will be in one of the beachside cafes. enjoying chilled drinks. possibly eating a paella, finally. i know, i really should have had one by now.

a coupla days ago, some spanish roommates saved some spanish hiphop and pop mp3s in my player, which is interesting. not that i understand a lot of it, but i can make out random words and that makes me feel strangely happy. i realised that if people spoke slowly, i can actually pick out some nouns and verbs and understand what they try to tell me. my own spoken spanish is a grapple of words that are usually wrongly conjugated so no hope over there. i find that people here appreciate the effort tho.

paella. yes, i can cross that out of my to-do list now. people say it is something like briyani. my verdict: someone lied. it is NOTHING like briyani. the rice is different. the seasonings and herbs are different. the meats are different. the cooking method is different. in paella, the strong ingredient is saffron. personally, i found the paella disappointingly so-so. i know. i was actually hoping to be wow-ed. but no. i think it’s the rice.

well. been there. done that.

in case there are no more updates from me, it means that i have flown to rome and don´t have internet over there. i´m supposed to, though. but that´s what they said in paris too, and meanings may get lost in translation somewhere again. my flight is at 11.30am, but the airport i am flying from is so far out of the city, i´ll actually be heading to the bus station by 7 something. i learnt that that is one of the reason wht the LCC flights here are so freaking cheap – they fly from airports that are so inaccessible and take forever to get to. i expereinced this at both paris and barcelona so far. i would not be surprised to be taking a two-hour bus ride into rome tomorrow.

i will be meeting with some italian photographers on thursday. SL, i know you stalk this site, and yes, they have made contact. they gave me a description of a place in the middle of rome to meet. at the moment, i am 90 percent sure i will get lost. and it has only just occured to me that i have no idea how any of them look like and they have not seen me either, so we might have a problem there. but i am sure we will figure things out. plus, i hear that italians have a big sense of humour. well, more than the french anyway :P

so, until i find another internet connection somewhere, this is me, heading out to the beach, yar.

those who look for the laws of nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator. – antonio gaudi

“picante” means pedas in spanish. an no, the spanish don´t like picante. i told some of my roommates last night about my grandfather, who would not touch his rice if there is no picante fish curry. they don´t get it. they tell me that picante is bad for the stomach. you know what is bad for the stomach, from my point of view? eating hard bread and ONLY hard bread with the teensiest scraps of cold meat and sour salad leaves for days and days and days. i simply cannot imagine how or why poeple would do that? i might have complained about this a few days ago, but i really don´t understand how people can go on without hot food.

figures, these people think that we´re weird too. i met a bulgarian struggling actor while i was in paris and he was arguing with me on soup. why do asians put soup on their noodles. why do asians drown their noodles in soup. the just does not get the idea of noodle soup. of course, he spent the evening eating an enormous brick of stinky cheese, so who am i to argue with the dude.

i miss noodle soup :__(

it is my third day of my cili mission. i´ve been scouring the supermarkets of barcelona to look for cili powder. or cili sauce. heck, i´d even take fresh cili or dried cili and pound my own paste with the hostel´s can opened if i have to. so far, there are none. no tabasco sauce either. even the soya sauce here is super mild – i tasted the bottle my roommate bought yesterday. i know, i know, why am i tasting soya sauce. i just needed something to make sure that my sense of taste has not died over the past two weeks.

i found a grocery story with a chinese owner this afternoon. no, nothing picante either, but i found hoisin sauce. you have absolutely no idea how close i got to juts buying that bottle and dipping my bread in it. oh sigh.

i went to the sagrada familia today. if any of you come to barcelona and because everything is so expensive, would pay for just one tourist attraction, it has to be this one. it has all of the gaudi-ness you want to absorb while in spain but is different because it is still a work in progress. today, the sagrada familia is a construction site, really. but a construction site that started in 1882 and according to some people, will go on for the next twenty years, at least. it is really, watching one of the most artistically endowed churches being built and it really is an amazing project. the art. the architecture. the technology. the harmony the designer had with nature. it really is something. and how the site now is in the middle of a project that may span in total, over two hundred years, and the generations of architects that work on it. yes, this is cool.

i will backdate pictures when i get back in less than two weeks.

everyone wants to understand painting. why is there no attempt to understand the song of the birds? – pablo picasso

sunday afternoon in barcelona and the city is like a freaky movie scene. the part where everything becomes still and silent just before it erupts into some moster eating people scene with a lot of CG effects and explosions and helicopters gushing through a smoky sky.

pardon my sudden over active imagination.

all the shops are closed. all the cafes are empty. there is no traffic on the street and the only poeple i see outside and uncounscious on patches of grass, not always shady.

told you it was like a spooky movie scene.

i know that i´ve been writing a lot about what´s up with me these past few entries… wel, isn´t this the purpose of the journal? anyway, i though i´d let you all in a snippet of the places in barcelona for a bit.

my hostel is a little bit off town, which is a good and bad thing. good, because the middle of barcelona gets muy loco whenever there is even the slightest reason to throw a party. it is football season so you can understand the insanity that happens here. all this is really fun to watch and i spent the whole of yesterday at plaza catalunya and las ramblas surrounded by crazed barcelona fc fans.

but the noise. the riots. the overly euphoric intoxicated human beings. oh. my. god. in a country where you can buy a litre bottle of wine for the price of a can of coke, someone really should have seen this coming. even at my distance, the horns blarring and the people screaming for joy on the streets can still be heard.

and bad because it is a good half an hour walk to the city. it is not the bad kinda walk though. there are lots to see and alot of shady sidewalks and benches to rest. i walked everywhere these three days where the weather has been both hot and windy which is weird for me. i am cold and i got a slight sunburn.

i was the gotic barrios of the city. the many plazas. went to the port. saw the gaudi architecture. but what i loved most of all are the street performers and i am never ceased to be amazed by the musicians, the comedians, the costumed performers, the painters, the break dancers, the jugglers, did i mention the musicians? these people are the soul of barcelona and absolutely brings the city to life. and people appreciate these things over here. they stand about to watch. they dance. they give loose change to support these artists. everyone is happy.

flamenco is cool. i saw a performance yesterday. i personally would not try it because it looks so painful on the heels. but this only means that i have so much more respect for those who do the dance. it is really quite amazing.

on a free tour in barcelona

found this on a facebook group. i know. i just had to be that freaky asian with the peace sign :)

curiosity killed the cat… but didn´t satisfaction bring it back?

i realize that there are two completely different ways to see barcelona. one way is to see all the artsy places, the beach, the weird architecture and the meditereanian food by day and sleep by night because all that walking takes a serious toll on the soles of your feet. and the other is to join in the fiesta and party all night long, you know, tapas, sangria… and sleep by day. which is what half my dorm mates did for the past four days straight. they´re upstairs sleeping right now. they came back at 10am this morning. here´s the cake: TODAY is saturday. i don´t expect to see them till monday.

but this is not just any saturday, i have been told. it is football saturday. barcelona is not playing, but barcelona is rolling out the barrels of beer to celebrate anyway. you see, real madrid plays tonight. if madrid wins, they will play barcelona tomorrow night and there will be a giant street party tomorrow night. TETAPI!!! if madrid LOSES tonight, barcelona automatically wins the championship and the party will be tonight.

and warga barcelona are very optimistic people. either way, i have been told, barcelona will win. everyone is standing by to party either tonight or tomorrow night. the party will be at plaza catalunya and everyone is invited.

i am curious.

but i have also received warnings. things may get violent. they usually do. its not that everyone suddenly go about breaking things. but some people with a little too much happy juice in their systems do and will. riots give fiestas a bad name. intoxicated people give anything a bad name. i was at las rambla yesterday and there was a street DJ spinning and people dancing in the early evening. then came a few drunkards that interupted everything and refused to leave. there was a fight. people rolling on the floor and all.

so, dare i kill the cat?

the sun is up but it is windy and its cold. i am confused. do i bring jacket or not? i am looking at locals walking about in bikinis and here i am shivering. of course, they burn themselves until they are quite bright red and there are quite a number of red human beings walking about this hostel even. it is ugly, it really is. i can´t imagine why they would do that to themselves.

i took in the free walking tour yesterday which is interesting but i kinda wish they showed me more. oh well, it was free after all. my plan for the day is to visit one of gaudi´s work in progress, which has caught my attention for the past few days. in the evening, i think i will look for a toned down watering hole somewhere at the edge of plaza catalunya to see the game. i want to see the fiesta.

nasi goreng versi barcelona

went to a malaysian – indonesian – thai restaurant last night. according to the owner, the chef is from hong kong because all their other cooks – from singapore – ran away. figures. the place is decorated with the most basic knick knacks that looks balinese. it is a small restaurant lot with about six tables, i think.

the menu is deceptive to anyone who has never been to asia. startes includes shushi maki and gyoza.

i know what you´re thinking. singaporean owner? honkie chef? shushi? where is the nusantara vibes? i was thinking the same thing.

the menu comprised of several descriptions of mee soto, laksa, nasi goreng, mee goreng and dishes such as thai green curry, satay and chicken kapitan. sounds nusantara enough, right? well, that´s where the good news ends.

i ordered nasi goreng and i told the guy to make it spicy. i found out the hard way that their definition of spicy is to fry everything with a super giant heap of white pepper. can you imagine nasi goreng with extra extra extra white pepper?

and here is the cherry on top of the whole concoction: their definition of nusantara drinks is… jeng jeng jeng… tiger and singha beer! that´s right. no teh tarik. no sirap bandung. no ais kacang. other drinks is white wine and coca cola. about this, i had to ask the owner guy. WHY? why isn´t there teh tarik on the menu. i sounded almost angry. i sounded quite demanding. offended even.

his reply to me was simply that the spanish don´t like it. and that was the end of it. the food… everything from the nasi to the mee to the curries have all been modified to suit the spanish palate. nothing pedas because of cili. spicy means pepper.

oh, have you noticed what’s wrong with the picture yet?… my nasi goreng came with a fork and knife. the waiter who looked oriental but spoke spanish and spanish only, raised an eyebrow when i asked him for a spoon. i swear, i could have screamed at him.

ugh.

fine. my fault. why on earth did i travel a thousand miles away from home, to a city next to the mediteranian just to eat nasi goreng? well you try eating hard bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and only hard bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner and be happy for two weeks straight. i absolutely craved soemthing greasy and pedas. something charred in a wok. steamed white rice… the long grain ones like the one back home… the measly short graines here have an almost sticky texture, but not quite.

so yes, i am entitled to my taste of oriental food. sigh. looks like it is back to bread for me over here.

ps. tapas and paella. i know. i am on the look out for those over here :)