I Write Rojak

You know I actually believed there for a few days that I was turning into a morning person! Just because jet lag made me zonk out at 8pm and awake before the sun, I thought I was cured. Alas, my natural body clock just sllllipped back into it’s most familiar framework and here we are, sleeping in until 9am and missing breakfast again. 

It’s not what I want, and indeed it may not even be a feasible schedule here. School in the morning, field trip after lunch sounds peachy, but the scorching afternoon sun and palpable humidity disagree with us. My goal is to somehow (probably magically) arise with my kids so we can eat and start school extra early and have plenty of time to play before the heat forces us home.

In other news, Kyle probably has Dengue fever, the poor dear. It started oddly with a sore throat, then extreme weakness and exhaustion. Then his fever went highfalutin’ off the charts (of my imagination, for we haven't a thermometer). His head has been throbbing and he’s hallucinated (that a giant sea turtle was in our bed and that’s why he couldn’t get comfty) and felt incredibly weak and listless. It’s very pitiful, and I wasn’t even home most of today to take care of him. 

wikipedia.org

I’m glad Dengue’s not contagious (unless that blasted mosquito’s still buzzing around our property), but I’m terribly sorry he’s going through this. I’ve never seen him so sick. To top it off, Libby went and twisted her ankle today so was partially out of commission. Thankfully, the younger kids are somewhat accustomed to being ignored (thanks to our frazzled lifestyle the past two years) so they fended for themselves pretty well. A stocked fridge or pantry would’ve helped.

Indeed, one is on the way! I spent much longer than it would’ve taken to peruse the actual physical grocery store last night shopping on the local supermarket’s website. They deliver groceries for $0.75! The website explains that it requires a good deal of time and effort for their employees to locate and pull the specified grocery items, package it nicely, and deliver it to my doorstep, and that process is reflected in the price. Of $0.75. Yeesh, they need to pay their employees more if you ask me! 

Anyhow, until this point, we’ve been shopping from local markets, which is great, but it’s not quite local enough to get there on foot (which we learned the hard way our first visit, taking nearly an hour in the dark to walk home sans sidewalks with five exhausted kids. Let’s not do that again). What’s worked better is Kyle taking a jog to the market then an Uber back. He typically brings back enough to get us through a day or two of meals. Still, it’s no Costco run, and we’ve been highly supplementing with meals out. 

For instance, this delicious meal cost us $0.25 each. 

As we suspected, it’s very difficult to resist eating out when we can consistently feed our family a ridiculously delicious dinner for under $10. The hawker centers here are flush with stalls frying up tasty yums in every permutation of Asian flavors. Our favorite strategy has been to order 5-7 dishes and put one in front of each person, gobble it down for 30 seconds, then rotate. My favorites so far have been Curry Mee and Char Hor Fun (both soups). I love me a good soup, but these are better than good! It’s a million degrees outside and all I want to do is eat hot, steaming bowls of soup! See how unappealing slaving in the kitchen sounds when delectable everythings are so readily and affordably available?! I love this place.

P.S. The title of this blog post refers to rojak, a local dish of fruits, veggies, and fried dough, plastered in a sticky black sauce that's peanut-y, ginger-y, spicy, sweet, sour, and fishy all at once. I'm not joking. I mean, I've been known to throw multiple unrelated containers of leftovers into one pan and pretend it's a cohesive meal. Still, rojak was a somewhat unsettling assault from every angle even on my tastebuds. Rojak simply means "mixture" and it's an accurate representation of Malaysian cooking styles, demographics, languages, etc. Also my blog post writing style.