floral: Petunia

http://floralfridayfoto.blogspot.co.nz/  Petunia

Petunia

International Food festival.

During our International Food festival. I bought Onai, a fruity juice from the Kingdom of Tonga, and some Samoan pie from Samoa.

And I dress very smartly in my Borneo dress.

Japchae, jabchae, chapchae,

Japchae, jabchae, chapchae, chop chae, or chap chae is a Korean dish made from sweet potato noodles, stir fried in sesame oil with vegetables, sometimes served with beef, and flavoured with soy sauce, and sweetened with sugar.
Today at the New Zealand Mt Albert Baptist Church, I had this salad. It brought me back to when I was in NTU, in Singapore. I was involved in our fund raiser for the Deaf In Kenya.

I told Billy this story who plays the guitar in Church.

I was also involved in inviting people to come to buy our food and to contribute their food for us to sell. I befriended Yang, a Korean, and initially she came and bought our food.
The first time she and another Korean wife brought this beautiful plate of Japchae, the person pricing the dish did not recognise it was Japchae and sold it like Chinese vermicelli. When I found out, I wanted to stop the sale, but it was too late, everyone wanted to buy it.

I felt really bad because by selling it too cheaply, we didn't respect it as a specialty dish. When ever I see this dish, I remember my Korean friend Yang, and all the ladies in NTU.

Dawit Arshak

I was privileged to have Dawit Arshak in my living room last week telling me his story. Given the injustice done to him I can understand the intense anger he felt for the first half of his life. Life in Auckland is a thousand times safer, yet he makes some astute parallels with his home country Ethiopia: Neither we nor they, have complete freedom of speech. Steve Worsley

I was excited to meet Dawit, I had a student called Dawit from Ethiopia, and was wondering if he is the Dawit/my Dawit. I taught Dawit and his sister. Much to my delight, this Dawit was the mentor to my Dawit's family. If you look at the post I did on Ethiopian coffee and enjera. That's my Dawit.
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The willow tree

My Dad was bilingual. He told me a story involving a non bilingual person who named his house something like the Willow Villa. Dad said the Chinese educated people laughed until their teeth dropped.

In the Chinese beliefs,a house of willow means a brothel. I finally found out the following.
https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Chinese-Symb…/…/0415002281
Dictionary of Chinese Symbols: Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and Thought (Routledge Dictionaries) Revised ed. Edition
by Wolfram Eberhard
Wolfgang Eberhard's Dictionary of Chinese Symbols:
The willow, much valued as firewood, is a symbol of spring. As spring is the season of erotic awakenings, the phrase ‘willow feelings and flower wishes’ means sexual desire; ‘looking for flowers and buying willows’ means visiting a prostitute, ‘flowers and
willows by the wayside’ are prostitutes, and ‘sleeping among flowers and reposing beneath willows’ is a term for visiting a brothel.
The waist of a beautiful woman is compared to the willow, her eyebrows to the curve of willow leaves. A young girl is a ‘tender willow and fresh flower’ while a woman who can no longer claim virginal freshness is described as ‘faded willow and
withered flower’. A woman’s pubic hair is ‘in the depths of willow shade’.

Ice Cream

Some of you would have read that I write books. Currently, I am writing a recollection of my growing up years in Borneo.


I remember when the American ice cream came to town. Not sure if it was my friend's uncle's. I don't remember the exact location was becos: my sis Elizabeth was in Chinese school, my bro Charles was in English school. My Dad drove just me home from school. Elizabeth and Charles took the bus. They were going on and on about the American ice cream that was new to town. It's that soft serve.



That day, Dad said he couldn't pick me up, I was to wait for the 2, and catch the bus. Charles and Eliza took me to buy this American ice cream via a little hole in the wire fence by Lido theater. We were merrily slurp the ice cream, crawl through the hole. Lo and behold, who did we see? My Dad and the principal Mr Wong Kee Mee. Charles and Eliza threw away their ice cream. I sat in the front seat, happily slurping away. Dad scolding the whole way home. "Not that I don't want you to eat the American ice cream. It is you made us worried that you were kidnapped." (Dad finished his appointment and decided to pick us up.)