As a kid, Chinese New Year meant that I got to wear new clothes and receive the gift of ang paus from uncles, aunties, cousins, neighbours and friends of the family. Mind you, I have very generous relatives. By the end of the celebration on the fifteenth day, I usually would have amassed a small fortune equal to two years’ worth of daily allowance at that time.

But the new clothes and the ang paus were not what I looked forward to most during those occasions. It was the food, an abundance of food that were cooked only during those first few days, that made the Chinese New Year extraordinary. It was only during those few days of festivities that I got to eat some very flavourful Hakka dishes when we celebrate the festivities at my maternal uncle’s house on the second day.

As I write this, I am already salivating at the thought of the aroma and taste of some of those dishes. They were cooked in very large and heavy cast iron kualis on a big cement stove over a wood fire. The smell of smoke from the burning wood mingled freely with the aroma of the food as they were stir-fried or simmered to perfection. If the fire was not hot enough, the flame would be kindled by blowing air into it through a length of bamboo.

Delicious Hakka dishes (From top left): Stir-fried mixed vegetables, stir-fried belly pork and wood-ear fungus in preserved red bean curd, stir-fried arrow root with belly pork, and braised pig trotter and sengkuang in yellow bean paste.

One of my favourite dishes was, still is, pig trotter and sengkuang braised in a gravy of yellow bean paste and spices. The gravy was sourish, sweetish and salty at the same time. I would spoon copious amount of it onto my rice to eat with the tender meat and tasty sengkuang. The other dish that I would dig into heartily was deep fried pork belly in batter of preserved red bean curd dipped in home-made chilli sauce. Heavenly!

Hakka food has a distinct flavour made unique by the pungence of preserved red bean curd. It is used in many of the recipes. Most of the dishes also use a plentiful amount of belly pork. This makes the food rather greasy. Health concerns aside, they tasted good nonetheless with the liberal use of sugar, salt, thick soya sauce and pork lard. As for the last ingredient, cooking oil simply could not replace it to give Hakka dishes that edge in tantalizing my discriminating taste buds honed for decades by relatives who cooked nothing but the best tasting Hakka cuisine.

The other dishes that I got to eat during Chinese New Year were stir-fried arrow root and belly pork and stir-fried wood-ear fungus and belly pork in preserved red bean curd. The arrow root slices and belly pork were coated in a sticky layer of gravy that was slightly sweet. I especially like the other dish for the crunchiness of the black fungus and belly pork well marinated in preserved red bean curd.

The were the ubiquitous big bowls of piping hot green pea soup cooked with gizzard to complete the feast. To drink the soup, one had to push aside the layer of oil on the surface with a spoon. If my memory serves me right, I have not had the soup for more than three occasions. I disliked the murkiness, the raw taste of the peas and how they made the texture of the soup coarse to the tongue.

Come to think of it, the photo above was taken in 2004. That has been how long since I have eaten those dishes. I would love to learn the recipes but they have been handed down by word of mouth and hands-on cooking through the generations. The amount of ingredients needed are quantified by the gut feelings of the cook rather than by measuring spoons and weighing scales.

Even if I learn to cook, I cannot possibly finish the food, not even if I share it with Wuan, due to my diet. I guess I will just have to wait until the Chinese New Year season and make my way up to Penang to eat bits of those Hakka dishes that, despite six years of hiatus, are still making my mouth water each time I think of them.

St. Anne’s Church Bukit Mertajam.

St. Anne’s Feast Day falls on 26 July. It has been a tradition for Mum to make a pilgrimage to the St. Anne’s Church in Bukit Mertajam a few days prior to the feast day to avoid the traffic jam and the crowd of pilgrims. Since moving to Kuala Lumpur, I have tried to keep to that tradition by going back to Penang towards the end of July and then onward to Bukit Mertajam with Wuan.

I love to be there, to soak in the ambience of the hallowed ground, to let my eyes follow the stairs of granite up to the distinct structure of the church halfway up the hill. It is a wonder that despite the bustling all around the church compound, I always felt a sense of serenity whenever I was there. If there is anything that I look forward to in the month of July, it must be St. Anne’s Feast Day celebrations in Bukit Mertajam.

Unfortunately, we are not able to go on the pilgrimage this year. Wuan has been inundated with work and had to go back to office on weekends, too. She has not had a good night’s sleep for weeks now. We may make a trip to the church when we are in Penang next. I foresee that it will be a totally new experience to be there without all the activities and pilgrims.

There is this ache deep in my left forearm that radiates from just below the elbow all the way to the middle finger. It has been bugging me for the past couple of years. It aches every time I move my forearm. Massaging has not worked.

I thought it was age-related. At my age, body aches are nothing out of the ordinary. My shoulders and right knee occasionally ache too, usually a day or two before a rainstorm. I am that accurate when it comes to predicting when rain will fall!

The discomfort is especially bad today. Although it does not restrict the already limited function of my hand, the constant aching is disconcerting. I have to stop every now and then to massage the spot although I know that will not bring any relief at all. And then realisation struck when I saw how I was handling the mouse.

Using the mouse with the left hand.

My right hand is clawed. None of the fingers have the dexterity to depress the mouse buttons. My left hand is more functional. I use it more than my right hand although I am right handed. I have been using my left hand to operate the mouse since I got a PC that ran on Windows 3.1 back in 1993.

I click the mouse buttons with the middle finger of my left hand. That finger has a limited range of movement but that is the only finger I can use on the mouse because I have most control over it. Even then, it takes a some wrist movements and a little more effort from the finger to depress the buttons. Using the scroll wheel is easier. I place my finger on the wheel and flex or extend my wrist to roll it.

After 17 years of the same movements day in and day out, I guess something has to give. I must have caused repetitive strain injury (RSI) to the flexor muscle of the left arm. Come to think of it, the constant twitching of the thumb, index and little fingers could be related to RSI also. They twitch non-stop whenever my hands are relaxed.

Perhaps I should revert to the touchpad instead. I seldom use it because I needed two hands for functions like dragging a file from one folder to another when I could accomplish that with just one hand using the mouse.

Or maybe I should rub some of my Ah Mah’s hong eu to the ache. The reasons that are holding me back are the greasiness, the stains and the odour it leaves behind on anything it comes into contact with. Otherwise, I swear by its efficacy to relieve bodily aches and pains from the effects of hong sip (rheumatism), strained muscles and minor sprains.