Eat, Drink and be (home)sick

(you can click on any of the pictures to make them bigger)



It would would be accurate to say that when it comes to food, I'm not very adventurous. My idea of "brave eating" is finishing all the green beans on my plate when we're at someone else's house. Malaysia, and particularly Penang, is a smorgasbord of new and exciting culinary choices - if you actually like that sort of thing. Anyone looking to try fish eyeball soup, cow lung, and green fish served whole in a black sauce - this is the place for you.

Don't get me wrong, I like to eat, but not eyeballs! If I was the type to make sacrifices for the love of my "blog art", I'd probably try that soup so that I could report on how it tastes, but I'm not quite that committed. Combine the odd sights and smells with the possibility of getting sick every time you eat in a public restaurant and you might start to understand why I typically eat at home.

There are some interesting drink options here, once you get past the standard Coke and Pepsi offerings. My personal favorite is actually pineapple juice, which is available in the US, but I never purchased it before coming here, so it feels like a local delicacy. That should give you an idea as to how adventurous I am.

There are 2 unique juice drinks here that I like quite a bit. One is a white grape juice and the other is blackcurrant & cranberry. By themselves, they sound uninteresting, but what makes both of them special is the inclusion of "aloe vera pulps."


If you click on the picture, you'll see that is a prominent selling feature on their packaging.



Think Orange Juice pulp, only larger and more jelly-like. Here are some pictures of the pulp floating in a glass and then a closeup of the pulp itself - you can click on them to make them bigger.



The first time I had this, I really didn't expect the pulp and it caught me by surprise, but now I like it. That's about how exciting my eating habits have become.

There is a special process used outside the US for preserving drinks (they use it in Europe also), most often used for juices and milk known as UHT (ultra-high-temperature) processing. You can read more about it at that link, but the short version is that they cook the milk at a very high temperature then package it quickly and it lasts for a long time without going bad (as long as you don't expose it to air). How long does it last? Well take a look at these pictures.



Now you may be thinking, "Wow, it's only Dec 1st so that means that milk is good for 3 months!" However, if you were to look at the properties on that picture file, you'd see i actually took the picture at the end of June. That means it's intended to last in that package for more than 9 months without refrigeration! That's not a typo - it is sold on regular supermarket shelves, not in the cold aisles. Needless to say, it tastes a bit funny, but it is real milk - not powder.

Chocolate milk (cold and hot) is quite popular here (perhaps to hide the bad taste), but it's almost exclusively Nestle's "Milo" brand (based out of Australia) - I can't find Hershey's syrup anywhere. You can buy Milo candy, cereal, drink mix, ice cream... you get the idea. No matter how much you cover it up, it still tastes odd (Nico's family was here this summer and his sons refused to drink the milk during the 3 months they were here). I tell you that milk (and other dairy products) is the thing that tastes the "most better" when I'm back in the US. That bovine growth hormone sure is tasty.

My final drink related observation relates to how drinks are served. If you go to a standard restaurant, you're served drinks in glasses as you'd expect. But if you buy them from a street vendor, they serve drinks in plastic bags with a straw (the Intel cafeteria even sells some drinks like this). On a construction site, you might see a dozen of these bags tied to a fence where people will just walk over, drink from the straw, then go back to work.

The only thing that makes sense about this is that it's probably easier to hold this bag while driving around on your scooter than a regular drink cup, but it still seems like a bizarre way to serve drinks.


Now about those odd food choices. I'm including a few of my recent favorites here. First, here's a newspaper ad selling fish. Whole fish with fins, scales, eyeballs and a nice garnish - yuck! Anyone interested in eating an over sized goldfish? They sell for about $1USD each.



Maybe you're not in the mood for fish and want to try some poultry. How about duck? You can buy a whole one for only $2USD. Here, whole means it comes with the head and beak still attached. Now you may wonder why it appears to have at least 3 eyes on one side of it's head - my response to that would be "AAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" Apparently, it's important for mutant ducks to be sold with the heads still attached.

But all of this is a big pile of yummy goodness compared to my final item this week - black chicken! That's right, I said black. I don't mean "dark meat" - this is actually a black chicken, sold like this intentionally. In fact, I took a picture of it still in the package at the top of this page so you could see this wasn't just me having a good time with some markers.


I actually bought this thinking I'd be brave and try to cook it, taste it, and tell you all about it - it's chicken, how bad can it be? But once I took it out of the package, it smelled funny and if you look closely, you'll see that the neck and head is still attached, which was too much for me. If you click on those pictures to take a closer look, it also appears that something funky is coming out of the head region - it was difficult for me to keep my lunch down. I hate to waste food, but this was $1.75USD that I just couldn't bring myself to eat.

Ok last note this week - I've always wanted to post something on youtube.com to see how it works, so I uploaded this video of a recent rainstorm and included it below. You should be able to watch it just by clicking the "play" button below (you may have to click twice). There was no noise in my apartment, all that noise was just the rain and thunder outside my window. It's "monsoon season" here right now, so we're having these sorts of storms at least once each day. I'm used to the rain in Portland, and this is pretty crazy even for me.



No other pictures this week. You can click any of the pictures above to see them full size.