Olivers Twist (?)

Do you guys remember the first month i was here where i had just enough money to survive? At that time I resorted to fasting, and even going vegetarian for half a month (which was not too bad). However now that i get a full paycheck (minus 119 euros for KWSP an insurance) i can now be more creative in what i cook.

Last month my breakthrough was Original nasi goreng after almost a month of seri aji. Not that seri aji was bad, but even if u eat strawberry ice cream everyday, you will bound to get sick of it. Its a natural human need, the need for variety.

However, with the discovery of the asian market, more possibilities started to come to light. Although it does not have everything, but the essential ingredient's to create a very decent meal was there. Spices like curry powder, ginger, cardamoms and star aniseeds (i think its bunga lawang in malay) are very useful in creating a variety of gravy or "lauk-pauk". The past few weeks saw many successes in reproducing the Mamak stall and Restoran Noor. I have successfully cooked chicken curry, kuah kicap ayam and today, i successfully cooked kuah lemak cili api. Believe it or not i just found the recipe on the internet yesterday and decided to cook it today and i cant believe that it was so easy, i bet anybody can cook it. But it did turn out a bit too spicy since i put about 15 chillies in it. But as my mom would say, "lagi pedas, lagi bagus. baru ada kick!". haha. So the experiment to cook lemak cili api proved successful.

Talking about the asian market. Sometimes the products there quite strange in nature. for example, the star aniseeds (bunga lawang) has a packaging with an Indian woman on it. Thats totally normal since these spices usually come from India. A closer look shows that it is a product of China! It seems that the term "everything is made in China" has some basis. And to top that up, the importer is a British company, TRS Wholesales Co. Ltd. Im not surprised if this company turned out to be a subsidiary of the British East India Trading Company (the multinational company that used to set a regional office in Melaka some hundrad years ago) because most of the spices here are imported by this company. And the prices for these stuff are quite unbelievable. the cardimums costs 2.1euros (about RM10) for 50g wheres in Malaysia it would cost at most RM1 for the same amount. No wonder the europeans killed to get hands on the spice producing nations back in the good old days. Speaking of which, i think i can do business selling spice here. I mean, if it costs RM 10 here and RM1 in Malaysia, I can DHL a whole box here and can still make profit i guess. To save costs, maybe we shouldn't use DHL, maybe just by normal mail, or just "kirim" to anybody who is coming to Germany. Haha. Just a thought.

The past few days has been a bit quiet here in my hostel since most of the dwellers have gone for their summer vacation. That means i have a bigger dominance of the shared kitchen. FYI, I utilize the kitchen the most in my floor. 2nd is the Brazillian girl and her gang. They usually bake cakes and cook some western food.

I kindda like cooking. And being in the situation that i have to cook gives me extra motivation to try out different recipes to keep myself from eating the same thing everyday. I have also gained some unprecedented attention form my floor mates, and they have been somewhat acquainted with Malaysian food. Thats good. But im not implying that im an excellent cook. Let's just say its good enough to eat........twice.

To you guys/girls that claim that they cant cook, please get urself to learn to cook. Believe me its not hard. U just need the will power and some kiasu-ness. If i can do it u can too. Its not like i was born a chef. I started somewhere. Good luck!

Tchuss

Thank god for the vegetarians

Unlike some other parts of the world, vegetarianism is a widely acknowledged group of herbivors that have consideral impact on the way businesses run. For example, in restraunts it's an unspoken rule that there must be a vegetarian menu. Without one, the restraunt might as well be loosing a big number of their vegetarian customers to other restraunts. Even in food products in supermarkets manufacturers will normaly use plant based ingredients unless nessesaray. This is to ensure that the products are suitable for the vegetarian community that is rapidly growing. The number of vegetarians in Germany, Italy and the UK alone already amounts to almost 18 million people, equal to the population of Australia. This means if a company decides to "un-vegetrainize" their products, they would have to consider the risk of loosing 18 million customers or a situation that as if Australia has totaly band their products.

However this was not the case for Masterfoods, the producer of famus chocolate products such as Mars, Snickers and Twix. In a BBC report on 14th May 2007 said, Masterfoods have anounced that their products have started to use an animal based ingredient, "rennet". This caused rage among members of the vegetarian society which refered to the act as "incomprehensible" and it was a step backwards.

"Rennet" is a chemical sourced from calves' stomachs, is used in the production of whey.

This will mean any of their products that has a expiry date after 1st of october will not be suitable for vegeterians.

However, Masterfoods did not consider the 53 million muslims living in Europe that up till now has been consumers of their products. The step to use "rennet" in the products means that they are loosing 53 million of their potential customers, unless the "Rennet" is acquired through a halal process.

So what does this mean to me? Well, its true that muslims and vegetarians have different views and opinion in terms of what to eat and what not to eat. Vegetarians are usualy vegetarians because(among other things) they are against cruelty to animals that is always related to commercial meat production but for me as a non-vegetarian, i believe that our body was naturaly created by god to consume meat and resorting to the total rejection of the consumption of meat for the reason stated above is and easy way out. Instead we should fight for a laws and systems that treats animals in a more humaine way. We can debate all day long about this topic but i choose not to because in the end, nobody wins.

What ever the believes of people, i dont think it's an excuse for us to deny the rights of other parties. I believe that there should be a sence of mutual respect, especialy among minority (such as in this case) vegetarians in Europe. Because believe it or not without the vegetarians(which has a stronger voice in europe), it would also be a big problem for the muslims to consume most of the products in the european market now. Thank god for the vegetarians.

I believe there is no such thing as a race or a certian group of people in this world that is better than the other. We all complement the other. Just like a girl is the other half of the man, a race is a part of the other races and only by working together we can achieve a (close to) perfect world. Towards that, we should be focusing more on the mutual interest of everybody instead of focusing on the differences and believe me, its is way more beneficial that you can imagine.

Shit happens

Even though you be careful as you normally would, from time to time you would be caught off guard when executing your plans. This was the case yesterday when I went to "visit" Ulm, the place where my friend, ex UTM incoming trainee, was staying. Ulm is a small town with the tallest church steeple in the world at 161.53m. So big, i struggled to fit it in my cameras view finder. It was the birthplace of Albert Einstein, which is a big pride for ULMers. Anyway, I already emailed Mustafa on my trip to Ulm. He gave me his phone number. So the night before i came, i sms-ed him about where and when to meet. But for some reason he did not replied me. the next morning before i went i was thinking of rechecking the phone number he gave to me but in the rush to catch the train, i forgot. so it was a 4 hour journey with 2 changes of trains 1st in Heidelberg and 2nd in Stuttgart. actually i think the total journey was only a bit more than 2 hours but the stops were quite long.

so when i arrived at Ulm station, i tried to cal Mustafa a few times but to no avail. That was when i really thought that i entered the wrong number in phone. I tried to find an internet cafe but i couldn't. My only hope was for Mustafa to noticed that i have my mobile number in my email sign off. But i couldnt count on that, so i decided to go around Ulm by myself. With free maps at my disposal and a state transport ticket, this was more than possible.

So, armed with the map, i went around Ulm by myself. Ulm is a small city and the places of attractions were very close to each other so i just walked from each of the places. Its quite a nice place with a number of historical places. Too bad i didnt have a tour guide so i didn't get to know about the history of the places. But i was really astonished by the effort taken to conserve the environment. The rivers were so clean that u could take a swim in it and the streats were clean and its very hard to find any rubbish anywhere. I spent about 4 hours there before i finished my trip and decided that Mustafa was not going to call me. So, i embarked on my 4 hour journey back to Mannheim. Remember that i wanted to buy insoles for my shoes during the "shopping day"? Well i finally bought a pair of "gel" insoles that claim to be extra comfortable bla bla bla. what a bunch of bull droppings. half an hour through the journey it was already flat and was as comfortable as walking on pins and needles. What a waste of 15 euros.

Well my mistake this time was not preparing the necessary travel information and based my whole journey on the assumption that i will meet Mustafa, So i didn't have a backup plan. But its good thing that i could improvise and come up with my own travel plan, so the trip was not a lost cause. But it was a shame that i couldn't meet Mustafa.

But like what Mustafa said when he called me later that night... "shit happens"... and i would say, "shit happens, don't keep sniffing it"...

Ulm Münster

Ulm Münster is currently undergoing reconstruction