Inner Solace

Speaking of potong…

Last week when I posted about Bombe Alaska, theresalighton responded with this picture of a wafer ice-cream sandwich[1] with the descriptive filename of ‘ice-cream-potong’.

So I spent the following half hour looking up ais potong, reading other peoples’ reminiscences over it, and getting myself all nostalgic over blocks of flavoured ices on sticks and ice-cream sandwiches.

I even found a couple facebook pages dedicated to the love of ais potong. Not surprising given the number of pages dedicated to the love of kolo mee[2].

The things on sticks from Google Images is what I think of when I say ais potong although whether in stick or sandwich form, my flavours of choice are your traditional Malaysian flavours of sweet corn, taro, black glutinous rice, red bean or durian. Love them all.

[1] Nom!  Although whenever I had one of these back home or at one of the shops in Malaysia, I always opted for the sweet Asian style bread sammiches myself :D. <3 that sweet milky bread.

[2] If you Google kolo mee[3], the first hit is to the wiki page for my family’s home town, Kuching[4].

[3] While you’re at it, look up Kuching Laksa or Sarawak Laksa.  Superior to all other variants of laksa, if you ask me. But then, I’m biased.

[4] I love that it says “locals often debate vigorously as to where to find the best variety”[5][6]. Because it’s so true.

[5] Bloody Malaysians and their passion for food, hey. ;)

[6] Also note where it says just after “Visitors should be aware that portions are half of what is usually commonly found at Chinatowns in the West”. This seems to be a sticking point with some tourists who want their ‘value for money’ sized portions.  Aside from the fact you’re probably paying something like RM3 (~AUD$1) for a bowl of food (you cheap bastards) the servings are small because of the following reasons (among others):

1. Do you know how many times Malaysians will eat each day[7]? We really like our food and we eat small so we can eat frequently.
2. If you have small servings you can eat a greater variety of things. One bowl of each item from from each hawker stall, please! Why? We really like our food.

[7] My sister used to joke to me that my grandfather skipped two of his six meals a day to save money to send my father to university.  I suspect she might not have been joking[8].

[8] This is a lot of footnotes. And I think I’ve lost track of the threading[9].

[9] I’m now also very hungry after looking at those food related pages. Damn it.

Had a short but interesting conversation with a nice couple as my sister and I left Beck’s Music Box.

We were asked if we were visiting Perth or here for uni.  We said we were local, ‘been there, done that’ and all that.  They asked us where we were from and we said Malaysia.  He asked if we were from the mainland.  I said no, east of that.  He told us he was stationed in Penang during the Malaysia-Indonesia Confrontation.

My sister asked him if he had heard of Lord Jim, the novel by Joseph Conrad.  He said he had.  My sister told him that the hero was based on James Brooke, the first white Rajah of Sarawak. He was surprised and asked if we were from Sarawak, on Borneo, not far from Sandakan in Sabah.  I was surprised because not many people know that there’s more to Malaysia than peninsula Malaysia.

He told us he had been stationed in, and also visited, many places in the area like Penang, Sabah and Brunei.  We told him that he had probably seen more of the area than we ever have.  His wife told us she had travelled half the world before she saw the north of Scotland.  It’s the typical human curse of not being able to see our own back yards for the greener grass everywhere else.  He said that there are many people in Perth who have never been to the Pinnacles (guilty) and when he went to California, few people he spoke to had ever been to Yosemite National Park.

He also said that he was stationed in Singapore for 6 months. During the Confrontation, as part of the duties of those stationed in the area, they had to collect the bodies which were dumped and which floated in the waterways and send them to Singapore for identification.  They wouldn’t be sent to their respective homes though, just identified.  Only a little nasty and gruesome as jobs go.

Never having lived in Malaysia long enough to learn the local history at school, I only ever get my education in bursts.  The first was in year four (I think) when we did an oral history project and I learned from my mother about the Japanese Occupation[1].  During my Asian Studies degree I got more about the neighbouring countries (mainly Indonesia and China).  At other times I get snippets like this from family and the Internet, and now, strangers.

[1] The wiki article about the Japanese Occupation of Malaya et al is a bit skint, but more information about the Occupation in general is available at the article about the Occupation of Singapore.