Meeting fellow Malaysian

I feel so content, meeting a fellow Malaysian HERE IN NEW YORK!

Believe it or not, I never had a single Malaysian friend since I got here to New York.

It's pathetic and unbelievable I know, but that's how it is here.

One might ask me: What about them bitchin' Malaysian restaurants in town?

But I'm sorry, how am I suppose to get to know a waiter or waitress serving food, thinking about money and don't give a shit anything else in life, not even his/her own country?

Speaking of which, I thought of a mad story happened the other day.

It was August 30th here (already 31st back home), the eve of our Merdeka Day ("Merdeka" means "Independence" in Malay language). I went in to my favourite Chinese restaurant to ask the people if there's any Merdeka celebrations among our community. This one guy --- I CAN NEVER FORGET HIS FACE!! --- was looking at me like I'm a Martian or something and said, "Oh... that... no lah! We don't celebrate our National Day. US National Day we will celebrate!" I almost gave him a punch on this "fellow Malaysian"'s face. Motherfucker, no self-respect! He responded like a total stranger to the National Day of Malaysia, makes me sick!

Anyway, back to the topic. This guy I met is a piano performance PhD student in Juilliard, Nick Ong. Cool guy, looks so young, but never realize he's even older than my buddy Chong Lim! Wow!

Had a Sichuan dinner with him, some really spicy shit. Thus, I shat spicy too. hehe...

I've seen this guy playing the Liszt piano concerto no.1 with the National Symphony of Malaysia --- oh yeah, I was playing in there. Man, he's a motherfucker man, he can play like nobody's business!!! And now this dude told me that we should play together, you can imagine how fuckin' happy I am.

Nick also told me that he had never been home for 6 years... damn... I can't imagine myself staying outside for six years without them Malaysian food ...

If you are wondering what's so fuckin' special Malaysian food, just walk in to one of the Malaysian restaurants in town, and try ANY dish in the menu. Otherwise, you can ask Jeremy mah brotha. He will tell you how wonderful it is. Know why? Cuz he's a Malaysian now! That triggers another story...

While in LA, Ken and me brought our white boy Jeremy to a South East Asian restaurant, Noodle Planet in Westwood. They have like one of the best food down there. Jeremy had a Hainanese chicken rice there before and was diggin' it, so he didn't even think before he decided to go back.

OK, so there we were, two Chinese-Malaysians and one American dude. We started to recommend food on the menu and shit, and then suddenly we found out there's a special dish called "Durian with Sticky Rice". Ken and I, our eyes were like shining bright right away! (Durian is a kind of spiky fruit that only grows in South East Asian countries. The content is soft and slimy, the smell is too sweet for some people it stinks.) We wanted to order that shit, but we were worried that Jeremy can't take it.

So we asked him, "Dude, we gonna challenge you with somethin'. If you passed this test, you'll be officially accepted in the Malaysian gang. Are you willing to accept it?" He said, "Yeah man, I'm open to try", with his easy-goin', not-the-end-of-the-world tone.

Thus the dish came, we wanted him to try the DURIAN ONLY. So he had a small piece and put it in his mouth and bit it and ate that shit. Ken and I were watching his facial expression intensely, hoping to see some disgusted expressions.

But hell no! He didn't! He didn't show that typical look when Western people tried durians!! Then he said, "Why, I would say this is pretty good actually, I like it!"

We were both amazed like some kinda motherfucker and couldn't believe it.

So he's in. He's a Malaysian now.