Time Stood Still

Snapshots from my childhood peeked from the street corners of Malacca like old friends from a time I had thought lost forever. I remember these sights from the time I was 5, and at that time, they already looked aged to me. I strolled down memory lane after memory lane.

Malaysians have special secrets to sauces. Ostensibly, you are eating yong tau fu and that should be no different from yong tau fu over here... But no, you are quite mistaken. The black sauce that drenches the "mouse noodles" accompanying your yong tau fu has a special something. With the first mouthful, I closed my eyes and shrank back into the 5 year old I used to be in Kuala Lumpur. It must be lard.

Oh sinful lard!

And then there was cendol. Every year, when Chinese New Year came around. We made a pilgrimage from KL to Singapore and stopped by this I-dunno-where place to get a tall cendol. Every year, I looked forward to that cendol. Not too rich with lemak. Not too sweet. With finely ground ice.

I read somewhere once "The past is a foreign land." It was impossible to describe to my children the sights and sounds and smells of my childhood, and it felt good to show them the foreign land from whence I came.