Saturday, June 02, 2007

Thai Restaurant Dinner

Another cool thing about the UK is, the halal options we have. The hospital I work at offer a halal option every day and so did the college where I did my A-Levels. Also, despite Coventry being a relatively small city compared to for example Birmingham or Manchester, halal butchers are not at all difficult to find. Many restaurants offer halal food too and we have a significant variety of halal restaurants to choose from - Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and even Thai. It's great.

Last weekend, after a relatively lengthy walk one evening Puan Mama Sarah and I decided to try out a Thai restaurant near the city centre.


Chempong betul!

Amar was unwell last weekend - high temperatures, waking up crying in the middle of the night, snotty nose, low appetite and vomiting phlegm. Still, he seemed quite happy during the outing.

Demonstration of Puan Mama Sarah's multi-tasking ability.

Amar was shying away from the waitress


Since Puan Mama Sarah learnt how to do this "starburst effect" she's been trying it in every possible photo.

Amar was unwell but the above was not him sneezing. He was beeing cheeky and spurting mango juice at me (out of the frame to the left)

For some reason, both Amar and Sarah likes to arrange things very neatly - must have got that trait from their mother.

waiting for the food ...

... still waiting ...

Ah, arrived! Didn't take long at all.




The food was nice.

Many people at the hospital had asked me, why do I call Nisa "Puan Mama Sarah". Let me explain:
1. "Puan" is the Malay word for "Mrs". So "Puan" Mama Sarah means Mrs Mama Sarah.
2. Being Muslims, the Malay culture is heavily influenced by Islamic and Middle East culture. People in the Middle East would sometimes call themselves "the father" or "the mother" of their first born and in this case Nisak is calling herself Sarah's Mother - after our daughter.
3. Some people know this; it's not uncommon for me to to say things with double- or triple meanings. You guys have to look deeper into the name to see the third reason why I call Nisak Puan Mama Sarah. Hint in the above picture.

PS
Currently liking this song.

14 comments:

pycnogenol said...

I knew the 'hidden' meaning all along, and it was for that very reason that I refused to call Puan Mama Sarah by her 'Penilaian Menengah Sederhana' name. (see Mynn, I cannot even bring myself to write that phrase down in my comment to explain that I know what you mean!!)

(Mama Sarah,..kalau tak jemput Pycno ke rumah dan masak sedap-sedap bila balik Malaysia nanti....saja tak mengenali kawan sejati la tu....;))

Anonymous said...

interesting. i didnt know until today PMS means penilaian menengah sederhana as i tot it was something else. SO PMS is something like SPM, after the PMR. phew.....

the multi tasking ability of mama sarah could be seen numerous photos(macam nak jadi android je, acquiring one ability after another).

great entry. :)

Anonymous said...

i cant help but wonder where amar got his cheekiness from :p

well, the apple does not fall far from the tree, does it?

Anonymous said...

Pycno
do you reeeeeaaaaaally know the meaning pycno?

ikelah
puan mama sarah has superb multi-tasking abilities she could do an average of at least 6 tasks per operational cycle.

anne
yeah, but his cheekiness is a bit precocious don't you think anne?

pycnogenol said...

What do YOU think Mynn??

Jamil said...

Because she looks like a Puan?

Anonymous said...

i'm trying to guess what u mean, but to answer you, i think spurting mango juice at his dad is not precocious for a 2 year old :)

dith said...

Is it because she wears pink tudung and that's also Sarah's fave color??? haha

Syahirah said...

hey. i kept on visiting your page with a hope you'd reply to those comments above. i was wondering why do you call your wife PMS. i thought PMS stands for Puan Mama Sarah (well it does) but never knew there was other reasons too. hmm.. what could that be eh?

Anonymous said...

sorry for the late answer - but i had been oncall more than usual this week (lack of staff on the oncall team and I had to replace some of them). Ok here goes:

hiyoshi
she does look like a puan

anne
your answer had me slapping my forehead. Duh! spurting mango juice is normal for a 2 year old. I don't know why i wrote the previous statement. I take it back.

dith
nah, sarah just liked pink naturally.

syahirah and pycno
here's the explanation.

i hated the nick Mama Sarah because ...... the blog is mostly written in English and to me "Mama Sarah" is just wrong grammar for an English language nick name. and that grammatical error just bugs me. In a way I'm like hiyoshi - i write full length smses with grammar as well.

Mama Sarah is probably correct grammar in Malay and that's one of the reasons why I added "Puan" to suggest it's a title.

number 2. Because of the incorrect grammar, if Mama Sarah is an English nick it would mean that "Mama" is the title, and "Sarah" is the name. To me anything with "Mama" at the front just ... sounds whorribly wrong.

Third (this is a sad confession, sorry). I used to be into videogames. Even more so, instead of watching e.g. football or proper sports, I was and probably still am to a certain degree into videogame tournaments (did you guys know Starcraft is like a national game in Korea? There are also Virtua Fighter tournaments in Japan, just like there are numerous first-person shooter tournaments in America). Anyway a name of one of my favourite clans is PMS - google or wikipedia "PMS Clan" for more. but it's an all girl gaming clan that stands for "pandora's mighty soldiers".

see? it's a bit convoluted isn't it? i bet you guys are sorry you asked.

dith said...

Hey Mynn- your convoluted mind is as bad as OK's!!!

Btw, whorribly sounds so 'obscene' ain't it???? hehe

D said...

WOW!! A detailed explanation of the beloved wife's nickname. Very informative indeed! What more can I say, both of you are perfectionists in your own ways... Kudos!

mynn said...

DITH
re: "whorribly". whoops - right grammar doesn't necessarily mean the right spelling. right D?

re: OK
yeah, OK was the one who used to taught me to read between the lines. I think my father in law is also the same - he's extremely subtle. Thanks to them, I've been slightly more proficient in this "tersirat vs tersurat" stuff.


speaking of D, the only way to get her to comment on this blog is to talk about grammar, it seems. tee hee.

D
nice to see you & the family today D, hope you guys enjoyed the dinner. Me a perfectionist??? far from it. you know what D, i think it's those 1 hour drives in the morning then back that has let ideas brew, percolate, simmer and be filtered in my minds to such an extent. how sad huh?

Jamil said...

Looking at the richness and depth of its history, I think the name "Puan Mama Sarah" deserves an entry to itself, no?

That, and perhaps your fussiness over grammar. That'd make for some intellectual discussion :P