Family tree

It turns out I come from the Goh family not the Soon family! My great grand father who was a Goh had many many sons, his family was very close friends with the Soon family. One day they had a conversation that went something like this:

Real Great Grand Father Goh: I have so many sons!

Great Grand Father Soon: I have no sons only daughters :(

Real Great Grand Father Goh: We are good friends, here have my youngest son :)

However ludicrous this sounds they tell me it’s exactly how it happened. The kicker is the two families stayed very close and my grand father (now a Soon) had too many sons and the new generation of the Goh family had only daughters so my grand father gave his youngest son to the Goh family. This means my youngest uncle has blood from the Goh family but born into the Soon family and then given back to the Goh family!

Malaysian haircut

I had enough of cutting my own hair so I thought I would go for a bit of a trim in Malaysia while I have the locals around to recommend a hairdresser. My dad sent me to his “barber” in Penang so I went along thinking if worse comes to worse I can always just chop off my hair again. So we head to this barber which is run by an East Indian chap who seemed to love singing along with the local Indian radio station and was at the time I walked in trimming some hairy dudes beard and then turning to my dad to try and do up the top button of his pants because his stomach had popped it open, what had I got myself into?

After about 15 minutes of scissors snipping all over my head (90% of the time the scissor blades were 3 inches from my actual hair, I think he just liked the sound of the scissors snipping) and one of those old school razors which I kept thinking to my self please don’t cut me as he worked expert precision around my neck and ears it was finished or so I thought. He was brushing me down and I was ready to get out of the chair when suddenly wrapped both hands around my head so I was in a headlock position and he cracked my neck in both directions! I got out of the chair all dizzy and paid him the requested 10 ringget (4 bucks) and walked out of the shop not believing what he just did and wondering if my neck would untie itself from one big knot in the next 4 hours. I was halfway down the street when my dad finally walked out with 2 extra ringget which he had bargained off the guy after I had already paid him!

The Craic in Ireland

It started with meeting my parents in a small little town that consisted of two main streets but it was good to just sit and relax after the constant sight seeing for the last few months. They were great as usual, never really seem to change although I get the feeling my mum is guilty of something because every time she came within arms reach she was shoving money in our pockets... not that I'm complaining ;)

Everything was so stereo typical and it was an absolute blast. We took a tour to check out the Celtic history and had a hilarious guide always yelling "Jesus, Mary and Joseph" and whenever he saw road workers would say to him self "oh Paddy and Seamus, slowly slowly". He pointed out slowly slowly was necessary as when a rush job was needed to convert the road signs from miles and hour to kilometers an hour road signs were erected that point to three separate directions for the same location on the one post or other signs that didn't contradict but were pointing in the totally wrong direction.

One thing they don't do slowly is drink. We decided to take some locals up for a drink on our last night and in the morning I woke up with a shocking head ache nauseous and a bad after taste of oyster in my mouth. Who would have thought the Oyster stout I ordered was actually brewed with Oysters! It had to be done though and we weren't about to let our 18, 19 and 20 year old hosts out drink us veterans..... yeah right :s

I did learn some Irish though. Here is a translation of a greeting (I'm not joking)

Hi, how you doing?
Irish:Well?

good
Irish:well (with a smile)

How are you doing?
Irish:well?

not so good
Irish:well (with a frown)

Patisserie Redemption

A little bit of history, when I was 11 or 12 I had some good friends who were studying French. Every few months they would go on a field trip to a French patisserie store and come back gloating about the most amazing pastries. I wanted to switch from Indo to French just for those field trips but my language skills were really bad and even custard filled pasties couldn't persuade me to take on the work load of learning French.

Now I'm in Paris the pastries are coming left right and center. Of course my language skills are still no better so when I see Individualle Citrone Tarte I call "Maria! lemon tart, please love" or Millefenille Fraise "Maria! Vanilla slice, please love" and she would go ahead and order in French for me. It works out beautifully!