My trip to dreamland – Malaysia

On the 23^rd of July, I woke up at 5:45 and prepared to leave for Malaysia. Just the usual routine, travel by car to Pudong and airplane to KL. The skies were beautiful on the flight, clear blue skies and clouds that look so pretty it looks fake. Here’s a picture.

The good news started when I was reading the newspaper on the plane. Apparently, the harvests for durians were good this year. Simple economics tell us, increased supply decreases prices, ceteris paribus. So, this just means durians for supper the first night in Malaysia.

After about 5 hours 13km above the crust of the Earth, the plane stopped fighting gravity and landed at precisely 3:35 pm. Then, I took the KL express and then taxi to my grandparent’s house.

Here’s a picture of my grandparent’s house and their neighbour’s.

The little house with the yellow doors are the toilets, I guess you can genuinely call this a loo.

As I hoped, after a simple dinner, my grandpa, my dad and I (3 generations of guys from the Chong family) went to the pasar malam (night market) to buy durians. In the end, we returned with 4 durians and 3 kg of mangosteen. That night, my taste buds were fully exercised and I went to sleep at about 11.

The second day, I woke up at about 7 to go to the market for breakfast. Once again, my taste buds were reminded of a stimulus they haven’t experienced in a year. Then, my dad and I were off to fetch my mom from her mother. After that, my parents decided to go to my sister’s church service (it was Sunday if you don’t follow). I was afraid it was going to be similar to the ones in Suzhou, where it is as crowded as Auchan, so I brought a book along, just in case it is, then I could go to a coffee shop nearby to wait for my parents.

It turned out to be a place that wasn’t crowded at all, in fact there were actually some empty seats, so I thought, I guess I can just sit, relax and wait for them to do their thing and then go on with the day’s plans. Then, at about 10:00, everybody stood up, and they started singing. And I guess they really like to sing, cause they just kept going and going, sometimes they start the next song while the previous song was still fading away. Well, I waited through that, and didn’t really keep up with the lyrics of the songs that were in Malay. But I was quite satisfied to hear that the chord progression of the songs were pretty well made, and the different instruments (a band played for the songs) did their job well in filling in their part of the sound spectrum while synergizing with the other instruments well. I also liked the fact that they had a tenor voice to blend in with the main melody (I would say soprano but it isn’t really that high).

Then, we had lunch with my sister’s friends, chat for some time and my parents were comforted in seeing that my sister is mixing with some good honest people and that she is making great reliable friends.

After that, it was basically relaxing at my grandparent’s house, called up ShunYang since he’s in KL also. And then went out with my grandparents for dinner.

Returning to this place has been fun and relaxing for me. It’s a pity I can’t live life just feeding off my parents :P. My grandparents are really pleased to hear that I got a full scholarship for my first year in university. So my grandma decided to reward me and I guess that should make me happy, but lands pressure on my sister I guess. Hope my grandparents don’t compare us too much.

Oh, and my savings in China finally broke the 10,000 rmb barrier! Gonna treat myself well when I get back to Suzhou, I’m gonna have a 3 day home alone :D

 Funny Plants!!

A picture of my grandpa and I, 2 generations is a big difference huh?

Second last day of work

Well, after 3 weeks of working, I'm resigning tomorrow. This will be the first time I will be receiving a pay check (in cash...lol) for working from a stranger.

In these three weeks, I have learnt so much, especially since I've been brought up in an environment that is way too comfortable. The people there are so practical and efficient. One time, our deep frying machine fell from the shelf and our master baker got deep fried, literally. The entire kitchen floor had a layer of hot oil on it, luckily, we're all supposed to wear sport shoes to work, so only the master got injured. We then treated the master and he was sent to the hospital. I could completely imagine what many students from our school would have done after that. Complain, complain, complain and start blaming someone for not putting the deep frying machine properly, and the whole day would have happened without further work done.

No, there, after the master was sent to the hospital, nobody spoke and they all started to grab a scraper and a metal bowl each and started clearing the floor of oil. In merely 20 minutes, the oil was basically all gone, and in 30 minutes, the floor looked cleaner than before the accident. And without rest, we continued doing our job and making stuff to sell. This practicality cannot be found in someone brought up in an environment where somebody else will clean up the mess that he makes, instead, in these 3 weeks, I have learnt to happily and automatically clear up the mess that anybody of the team makes. This allows the whole team to work much faster and so we can leave work earlier.


In these 3 weeks, learning to make food isn't the main thing, more importantly in the field of making food, I learnt to make food, really fast. The crew is so effective, in fact, one time, one person (who left already) made 180 breads in just under 2 hours. That speed is something I really admire and needs to be trained.Here is a picture of the crew.

From left to right, 

-Bor Hung, I'm sure you all know him :P They call me 小张

-小杨, we call him that not because he is an apprentice, because he had an older brother working there, and we call him 大杨. He's the one who made 180 breads in 2 hours. He's basically my master, he taught me how to make most of the stuff I make there.

-徐师傅, he's in charged of all the cakes, he's always trying to find opportunities to make bread (making bread is only by those of highest experience)

-The shop owner -- 老板 He usually works from 6:30 until only about 10, then he relaxes an does other stuff. He makes only quite few number of products, but he does them to great detail. He's always singing christian songs during work.

-申师傅, he's the master baker, the one who got deep fried. He is good at everything. In fact, none of us can match him at any of the products, but there's only one of him, so he does the hardest stuff. He's the bridge between us and the owner's wife, as she's the one who takes care of all the money.

-The two to the right, 小田 and 小陈 are new, they've been here for one week only. Both of them are really slow at doing anything, so they always get shouted at by everyone else. They make our life easy because every time we don't feel like making a product, we just ask them to make it. They must, since they don't really have a set of products they make everyday.

Here are some pictures of the workplace

 You can see the master chef taking a break, smoking outside.

The storage room, before we do anything to the stuff.

The front of the bakery, after we process the stuff from the picture above.

These three weeks, although lowly paid have been a great learning opportunity for me. Generally, I learnt how to be a person of use to the people around me without needing to spend money. The greatest thing I see in the people there is that - when something goes wrong, don't complain or shout, use your energy to fix the problem, and then everybody can take a break. I also see that when you see a problem, don't start taking out your wallet, thinking of buying things to fix the problem. Many people think like that simply because they are capable of spending money like that. But I find it better to look around, find a piece of equipment that can be slightly changed to fix the problem (you might call this ghetto, but I call it a common exercise of practicality).

That was a long piece of writing, and the days of me working at the bakery will be over tomorrow. Oh, and working there really told me how crappy labour work can be, better study hard at university!!

Started Blogging!

Well, I started blogging now not because I want to improve my English, like the way I wrote my diary for like 3 weeks in Chinese and quit... but, for self reflection.

People say that when you look back at yourself 5 years ago, you would laugh, and if you don't, then you haven't grown enough in the past 5 years.

I hope to be able to reflect from my decisions and actions from the past to improve thought pattern in the future. Why? Because reflection of the past is a way to grow my knowledge, and the search for knowledge is one of my 3 goals in life!