Eggs to die for

Five meals a day. Breakfast, morning tea (usually accompanied with kueh and bee hoon and stuff), lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. That's how much we eat whenever we are at a hotel doing official business. Been here at the Hydro Hotel since Friday and leaving on Monday morning. I am lucky. Some of them will leave here on monday and check in straight into another hotel for another round of working and shopping, err, make that workshopping.

My poor family (wife and three children) took two hours to travel from Teluk Air Tawar, via the broken ferry service to Batu Ferringhi to have dinner with me last night. We went to the Ship and everyone's food was good. By the time we finished dinner there was a long queue waiting at the door. Penang is being invaded by tourists, local and outstation, everyone heading for Batu Ferringhi. Don't we have any better attraction than the pasar malam?

Oh, in case you are wondering, I am multi-tasking, listening to the presentation on talent mismatch and blogging via the WiFi (cost RM30 for 24 hours; I insisted that the organisers pay for it; the pipe is a little slow). I did my presentation on "people-centred sustainable development" yesterday afternoon. I thought it was well-received.

Ah, eggs to die for. Eggs have been getting the bad press. Especially if you are a little older (like me). You got to watch your cholesterol! But half-boiled eggs is a weakness for me. I don't do it at home. I usually don't go to the coffeeshop for breakfast. Yesterday I went to the egg station and asked "do you have half-boiled eggs?". "Yes", the chef said and walked to the other end of the counter and opened a food warmer and I got a shock. "Is this half-boiled?", I asked, quite incredulous. Of course, a whole container; must be several hundreds in it. Wow, must be a popular dish.

Simple. Put eggs in a container, pour boiling water on to it (careful, the eggs can crack). Cover and leave for 3 minutes - too long and it becomes too firm. Crack the egg and put into dish. Add a little light soya sauce and some paper. Just eat it straight or with bread (below). Emmmmm yummy. We used to have this for breakfast when we were school kids.

Plain porridge with a preserved bean, pickled vegetable, spring onion and fried garlic in oil. Another simple dish.

I went for a walk on the beach in the morning before breakfast and saw plastic bottles and polystyrene foam discarded on the beach. Met three monkeys, really, monkeys. They we eating the food in polystyrene containers thrown away by some idiots. You can see the corners and hole, probably bitten and ate by the monkeys. My wife told me there was a news item in The Star that the Penang Government has given a directive that all government departments and events are banned from using polystyrene containers. Ahem, I can claim a tiny bit of credit for triggering that initiative.

This are the top shots of the University at the Hydro Retreat.

Had lunch with four of my side-kicks at the Jetty Gau Lam Koay Teow (Beef noodles) on Friday after my not so inspiring talk at the SP Setia World Environment Day event. They promised that the projection would be clear in enough but I had to abandon my slide presentation and go low-tech. So that threw me off. The previous day I was at the Motorola Student Academy Award to celebrate their 35th Anniversay. I was asked to go talk about The White Coffin but they had a slight phobia but I managed to speak for 15 minutes about "the white coffin" without mention it even a single time. Ah, but my slides had visuals of The White Coffin. That 15 minutes was inspired and fun, just looking at the faces and reactions and attention of the young faces.

I thought I should put this up too. My SIL came some 7 years ago and still remembered this special fried bean-paste and fried banana (pisang goreng) and other fried stuff. Opposite Heng Ee School along Jalan Hamilton (near Convent Green Lane School)