La Salle 5 Arts 1, 1989 Class reunion 22nd August 2008

There's just something wonderful and special about reunions, a gathering of people that has common past experiences and memories. This was especially true for my class reunion last Friday at A&W Jalan Timur.

I would have preferred somewhere different to meet, (not a fan of fast food) but I was soon educated on the significance of our place of congregation; Jalan Timur field was where our school had our annual sports day. 

When I arrived (late due to the all round massive jams; excuses, excuses!) at around 8:30pm, it was hard finding my class mates among the crowd of diners, when I finally did spot them, I was unsure as it was 18 years since I’ve seen some of them and I could barely recognize them. After a closer look at a bunch of guys crowded together looking over a photograph, at the back corner of the restaurant (some things haven’t changed), I found my long lost class mates and the faces began to look familiar to the (much) younger, fresh faces I remember from 1989.

Our conversations started with the ‘what are you doing now? Are you married? How many children? How many wives?’ type questions, where I found out what my buddies have been up to and some were incredibly interesting, one has been an air steward for 18 years and saw the world and another had started his career chauffeuring ‘escorts’! Real estate, stationary business, food, IT were the other professions among us, we were all doing alright. 

After the ‘warm-up’ lap, the memories of past began to slowly come back, bits by bits at first and then a mighty rush leading to the 2nd type of rhetorical line of questions like “Do you remember the time when…?”. The conversations just kept going on and on and we covered every subject that we could remember; teachers (our beloved class teacher, Mr. Chin was one of the favorite subjects, more on him later), naughty and sometime illegal things we did, girlfriends (La Salle was an all boys school, with the exception of the sixth formers), female teachers (slightly different slant on the conversation compared to teachers in general!). There was much laughter and joking and it was a great time to say the least. It was funniest when we began to recollect memories of our characters back in school; there was the sensitive one, the unpredictably mental ones (there was a few of those), the stylo ones, the ‘softer’ ones and many others. It was almost as if we were transported in a time machine back in school again and were behaving exactly like 17 year olds (I was 18 then, due to Remove class).

There were 9 of us that made it out of the 21 originally invited and confirmed, sadly we missed the other others that couldn’t make it for one reason or another, it would have been twice the fun, if at all that’s possible. Next phase of conversations centered around those that were not with us and what’s been happening with them, sadly, we spoke of the loss of one of our class mate, Raj Kumar, who perished in a car accident late last year; I had only found out of this much later than the fact and did not attend his funeral. We were told that it was well attended by La Sallians numbering in the hundreds, which was no surprise as Raj was a good friend to many and popular in school. We also spoke of others not in our class and there were some sad stories too, one was in Serenti drug rehabilitation center and some others in trouble with the law.

Our class teacher, Mr. Chin took made up a large portion of our chatter, I’ve not personally met him after school and had to rely on witness’s account of him, apparently, he is quite cool these days, trotting along with Oakleys and ‘quite happening’ as they say. He’s on an overseas teaching assignment and comes back to Malaysia every once in a while, the guys promised that they would arrange for him to attend our next gathering, which would be a blast I think… I’m dying to hear what he has to say about this bunch of misfits! He was strict but fair with us, being the discipline master; he had to be extra strict with us, since he was our class teacher.

Those who atteded: Mohd. Zaini, Shane De Cruz, Imran Hamid, Syed Alam Shah, Shah Jahan, Mohamed Ameen, Loong Kok Leong, Khumararaj & myself (James Valentine). 

To both the Shahs (Syed Alam Shah and Shah Jahan), thanks for organizing this get together, I had a great time and I know the rest did too. To the rest of the gang, thanks for the memories, you were the greatest! I am looking forward to our next meeting, don’t wait another 18 years! OK?

Dessert is served!

I just love dessert, sometimes more than the main course and most times, too much for my own good. So, it made perfect sense that I learned to whip up something myself.

There are just so many recipes and types of desserts out there, which is a little overwhelming for a novice like me, until I saw this episode of a cooking series on Astro (I forget the name and channel) and the chef prepared this banana dessert that looked absolutely delicious.

The original recipe as the chef demonstrated was: heat up some sugar in a hot pan until it melts completely and turns into caramel. Then add butter and some liquid stuff (I can't remember what this is till this day which caused my first blunder). Finally, add in some sliced banana and let it boil for a while, just enough to get the banana half cooked. Then serve and enjoy the sugary delight. It looked mouth watering on TV as the guests were tucking it in; I was convinced it was not possible to fake the look on their faces.

It seemed really easy and quick to prepare. I know most shows give that impression, obviously to keep up the pace and condense everything into an hour, but I was sure, watching the cook in action, that it was really a breeze and even I could do this, and that was what I did.

My first attempt did not turn out as I imagined. It was mother’s day (of all days, I had to choose Mother’s day!) and a very enthusiastic me volunteered to make dessert, to everyone’s pleasant surprise. It did not stay very pleasant for long. I did everything like the cook on TV said, and more, I decided to be “creative” and improvised on the part of the liquid ingredient that I could not remember and used Shandy!! It made such a sizzle on the pan that did not happen on the TV show and a smell that immediately told me that this was not going well. The taste just confirmed what I feared, it was bitter!! You could still taste the sweetness from the sugar, but it had an overpowering bitter aftertaste that lingered. It was just awful. By that time, the smell had invaded the whole house and my family had figured out that my little experiment had gone south. As expected, I didn’t have any takers on my dessert and we had to throw it all out, don’t think that even the pets would have it.

Reeling from defeat, I didn’t give up and tried again after a week, this time the approach was more conservative, no more improvising and I sticking to the original recipe, I tried to at least make it palatable. My first lesson in cooking: don’t start improvising till you at least get the original recipe right! Words to live by. Anyways, this time, with some advise from season veteran friends, I decided to leave out the ingredient that I could not remember, and use just a little bit of water instead, the rest of the recipe and execution were basically the same and this time, at the risk of being a boast, I am pleased to note that it come out wonderfully, my guests and I were enjoying it and I became my own best customer and took 3 servings!

It was a great experience, while I’ve cooked meals, this was my first at desserts and I like it, maybe more than cooking main courses (although my repertoire is limited, to say the least). I’ll be looking at new desserts recipes to try out; hopefully, the family will be more forgiving next time. And to those who have been thinking of trying this, my advise is to go for it, cause if I can do it, then everybody probably can! Just don’t believe everything you watch on TV.

A morning at the Park

It was a cool, overcast morning at the Taman Tun Park on the morning of Labour day, 2008 (that's 1st May for Malaysia, just in case it's different for some other countries). The threat of rain was always looming, but thank goodness it didn't as the Rowlands, Gans and the Singhs decided on a picnic.

We were late as usual, of course, but still pretty early for our liking at 8:30am, when we got there, we were surprised to see that many had already started their jogging, walking, exercising..etc, quite a healthy bunch, these Tmn Tun folks! Attending was the usual suspects, the children, Reuben, Shannon, Maya and Leia and among the adults were Mum (Charlotte Rowland), Daniel and Barbara Gan, Christine and yours truely (that's James, if you've come into this blog by accident).

We started off diving right into the birthday singing for Reuben and then breakfast, the spread was quite elaborate with sausages, sandwiches, milo, coffee, nasi lemak and more, food was good as usual and the people were grateful and satisfied bunch after the feeding frenzie. As soon as that was done, the children got pretty restless and attacked the playground, I followed with a bunch of bubble churning toys, got immediately very popular with a lot of the other children at the play ground, understandably.

The the children got tired of the playgound, we then all went for a walk around the park (partially around the park for some of us older adults!) and that pretty much rounded up the event.

In all, very pleasant outing and enjoyed the time with the family.

Skating Singh, signing off.

New Photo Site

I've created a site exlusively for my pictures / photos. Please check it out at http://skatingsingh.multiply.com/

Have fun!

Water Play

Attended a neighbour's children birthday party and the theme was water play. Was fun to see children play with water, it seems that most children love water, must be all that 9 months of swimming in mummy's tummy..

Sign of the Times

Found this sign in Sentul this morning. When I saw it, I just knew that I've found the picture that I was looking for, not a particularly aesthetically pleasing picture, but one that I feel carries a message.

The sign was obviously old and seems to testify to the stories our parents and grand parents tell of how harmonious Malaysians of various races and religions lived together in "those days".

I believe that this sign truly represent a time when there were genuine mutual respect, equality and love among all Malaysians of different races, religion and creed. I just love the way it represents every major language, demonstrating the desire to communicate and connect with every language group.

What a contrast this is with "signs" of our generation, we have obviously lost something along the way and probably need to learn from our past and carry our personal signs as our fathers did.

Ghost

This has got to be one of, if not the best Malaysian made television series I've ever watched. I'm talking about "Ghost" on 8tv (Sundays, 10:30pm), of course. Admittedly, I've not seen that many Malaysian TV series, but that's not without good reason. Astro offers so many world class series, and advertises it so extensively that it's sometimes difficult to notice the local productions (much like what happened with Malaysian soccer, that’s a story for another time), and I guess I'm also guilty of not supporting the local productions (Sorry!), but after this show, I'm now a born again believer!

In a nut shell, it’s a supernatural, murder mystery series! Zack Imran (Nazrudin Rahman), a promiscuous mega movie star, is murdered, but the murder was covered up as a drunken car accident. Zack’s ghost then continues wondering on earth seeking to reveal the truth with the help of Eza (Cheryl Samad).

The acting is seasoned, very natural and totally believable, despite some of them being fairly new at it. The flow between the 2 leads is so smooth and it just develops so well over each episode (I kinda sense some love interest brewing in there somewhere). Carmen Soo, as Julie is beautiful, talented and carries her 'best friend' role very well. Reefa's mysterious character leaves us guessing.

In the first few episodes, the plot was simplistic and built around the 'who dunnit' plot, but this changed very soon with Eza's love life, Julie's personal struggle and a corrupt, murderous Datuk (sounds familiar!) all thrown into the fray, yet intricately connected. The suspense at the end of each episode keeps the interest high.

I'm don't claim to be a expert in the technical aspects of film making, but just from a layman’s observation, it seems professional and impressive, the angles, panning, lighting and general quality is a class above. I'm told that the director is meticulous in his details and the results really show. The special effects are believable for the most parts and are still commendable in comparison with other series (different story if compared with the local movie scene). My only gripe would be the frequency of the special effects. Because Zack is a lead role and is in most scenes, it's easy to forget that he is actually a ghost without a regular dose of special effects to remind the viewers.

In summary, I love it and highly recommend it, a true example of 'Malaysia Boleh'. I sincerely hope to see a second season.

'Ghost' airs on 8TV (channel 708 on Astro) at 10:30pm every Sunday. You can also catch interesting snippets of information on the show like bloopers on the 8TV web site… http://www.8tv.com.my/