Houston

Hi friends,

This weekend Mohan, Mallika, and I went to Houston.  Mohan was presenting a paper at a conference and we took the opportunity to get out of town.  Travelling with a toddler always has its challenges, even though Mallika is a super trooper and very accommodating about being in the car, being off-schedule, etc.  LUCKY US.  Maybe the universe gave us a good traveller in order to balance out the poor eater -- we spend a lot of time and energy trying to get calories and nutrients into our girl.  Anyway, we booked a hotel through hotwire and we got a handicapped accessible room.  Nice to have a slightly different set-up than the typical hotel room and it was more spacious too.  However, having everything accessible to someone in a wheelchair also means having everything accessible to someone who's about three feet tall and also can climb and reach like a little monkey.  Craziness. Mohan kept asking me, "Briana, why did you give her ____ ?!?"  (ballpoint pen, hair dryer, lotion, coins, wallet, etc)  Usually, Ms. Mallika had availed herself of opportunities to get her hands on otherwise off-limits things.  But I admit that a couple of times I just gave her items that were less likely to harm her just to keep her away from things that were truly dangerous.  Oh, and the fact that hotel room doors automatically unlock when you open them from the inside?  Bad news for a toddler parent!  Soon after we arrived and Mohan was at his conference, we were playing hide and seek, I was hiding, Mallika was seeking, and I heard the door open and close.  Panic!  When I rushed out the door, however, I ran right into Mallika who was so stunned at having made her escape that she was just standing there looking down the long corridor.  It only now occurs to me that she had opened the door because she was looking for me.  After all, we were playing hide and seek.

One of the more memorable parts of the trip were our two trips to "Chinatown" on Bellaire Blvd in west Houston.  Driving from Hwy 59 on Friday night, the signage on the strip malls shifted completely to Chinese characters in the space of about two blocks and we found the shopping center up on the left.  The place was HOPPING!  Completely packed parking lot, two stories of shops in an enormous complex, neon and fluorescent lights all over the place, and a million people coming and going from eating establishments, karaoke clubs, cell phone shops, grocery stores, and bubble tea joints. 

I got so excited about feeling like I was back in Kuala Lumpur, I immediately started driving like I was too and, well, that didn't work out too well.  Hilarious.  Bellaire Blvd is something like an 8-lane but neighborhood road and the entrance to the shopping center has cross traffic and double left-turn lanes and about 80 million people trying to go every direction, complete with a lot of illegal maneuvers.  I was no exception.  Besides nearly getting into an accident, I ended up having to bypass our driveway (which was all Mohan's fault for yelling at me) and make the whole loop again.  More legally the second time.  Though I must say, following traffic laws also almost got us killed and got us honked at a lot more too.

Also typical to a KL Friday night dinner experience (where people DO NOT wait for Saturday night to really enjoy the weekend), it took us forever to find a parking place before finally arriving at The Banana Leaf Malaysian restaurant.  Yay!  A very small, quaint place with, not surprisingly, a bit of a wait.  We ended up in the back corner, but so happy and excited, it didn't matter.

We ordered roti canai, barbecue fish, hokkien noodles, and kankung belacan.  We nearly died of anticipation, but the enthusiastic restaurant noise kept us semi-conscious. 

So, in case you don't know already, food is the national pasttime of all Malaysians, and the Malaysian diaspora (including those of us who married in) is no exception.  There are many theories about why this is the case in addition to the obvious point that the food is SO DAMN GOOD how could you not talk about it all the time??  One theory is that Malaysians suffered so much during the Japanese Occupation during WWII and had to survive on nothing but sago and other roots and tubers that could escape detection by the Japanese that they're still coping with PTSD by eating as much good food as they can as often as they can.  Nice idea, but heck, a lot of people were occupied during WWII who still have horrible cuisine.  Another idea is that food is the one place where Malaysians are best able to live out a multicultural fantasy.  Though the reality can get dicey at times, particularly where pork and beef are concerned, it is pretty darn cool how everyone uses everyone else's culinary tricks and makes them their own.  And then sit down to share each others' food.  It's all the more substantial as the political reality between the races becomes increasingly divisive, ugly, and violent.

Anyway, so much reflecting on food without actually talking about The Food.

However, this has gone on too too long today, so I'll have to continue tomorrow.  Till then --

Peace,
Briana