runcible spoon

Kopitiam

Last night's Asia Book Club was stomach-pleasingly good.  We had read (or, in many cases, almost finished reading) Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop, by Emma Larkin. The author's real name is not actually Larkin - she has used a pseudonym in order that she not incriminate the many writers, intellectuals and everyday dissents with whom she spoke in Burma.

I thought Secret Histories was fascinating, as well as very nicely written. It was a notch above many similar books by other Westerners in that Larkin is fluent in Burmese and was herself born and raised in Asia. She currently lives in Bangkok.

Of course, my passion may also have been ignited by Larkin's many (and, some might say, reverential) descriptions of Burmese tea houses:

There is a pleasing rythm to the life of the Mandalay tea shops, and whole days can be lost inside them.  In the morning, bicycles and motorbikes crowd around them in congested rows as customers down their first cup of the day before going to work.  At lunchtime, the peak of the day's heat, the tea shops are lazy and quiet; the young waiting boys doze on the tables, while flies hover above them in sultry slow motion. In the late afternoon and early evenings the pace picks up as the boys become busy with orders for tea and snacks, and the shops are again noisy with chatter.

Mmm. Said tea is 'served honey-thick with condensed milk, and washed down with Oolong tea' as a chaser.

In light of all this, it is unsurprising to note that I fell in love with Kopitiam, the Malaysian hawker-style coffee shop where we found ourselves meeting to discuss the book. The atmosphere was just the way I like my small-time Asian eateries: poky, basic, bare-bones and cosy. A couple of golden lucky cats waved their open paws at us from high shelves and an industrial-strength airconditioner was blowing a refreshing gale. The little restaurant quickly became packed out with local Asian students schlepping in in shorts and rubber sandals to grab a fast, easy evening meal.

The char kway teow (hawker-style noodles) were fantastic, and the nasi lemak a real stand-out - the rice and potato/chicken curry being served on a plate studded with golden peanuts, fresh cucumber slices, hardboiled egg, sambal and tangy, pungent ikan bilis (like anchovies, but served dry and crispy). Please, Sir, may I have some more?

For afters, most of us sipped at steaming mugs of teh tarik - a Malaysian-style 'pulled tea' that is served frothy and sweet and suitably strong. It was without a doubt the best I have had outside of Penang. Just amazing.

Andrew, on the other hand, couldn't go past the Grass Jelly drink once he'd noticed it on the menu. The boy has an addiction. The drink had been misrendered as 'glass' jelly, but we decided that only added to the charm of the place.

Trouble in Murakami-ville

Book club was delayed last week as Andrew was sick. I have it on reputable authority, however, that I am in trouble for choosing such a big, fat book as Wind-up Bird Chronicle.

Yes, quite.

I have to say that I got somewhat distracted during our discussion of what should be read this month and conveniently overlooked the size of that particular tome ...

Still, it sounds like it has spawned some interesting encounters already: Liz was reading it on the bus only to find a stranger tapping her on the shoulder. She turned, perplexed, only to have the woman say, you know you only find a book like that one once a decade. Enjoy it.

This bolt-from-the-blue advice was, as Liz put it, pleasantly bizarre.

What's also bizarre in a lovely way is that that it was such a Murakami-style intervention.

Books - clubs - chillies

I have begun something new, courtesy of a good friend of Andrew's and mine. That friend, Liz, has invited us to join a book club based around the idea of reading books by Asian authors. I think it's a cool concept - and I've never really been invigorated by the idea of book clubs in general. They can sound a bit twee.

The idea of being able to read books by Asian authors in the company of a small group of people all also interested in Asia - and Australia's relationship to that region - is very appealing to me. (Although maybe it just legitimates the Murakami jag I've been on!)

The first book the group has read since we joined was Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap. I had mixed feelings about the book, which is a collection of short stories. On the one hand, it was great to read a book which was an intimate portrayal of aspects of Thai society, and yet in other, structural ways it disappointed me.

Still, sitting around a table laden with firey Sichuanese cusine - all studded with chillies the size of children's fingers - discussing a book with characters like a pig named Clint Eastwood and a Cambodian refugee with a mouth full of gold was very fine indeed.

Next up is Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. And no, I wasn't the first to suggest it!