Journal

I think that Malaysia is a really interesting place to live in; and no, I am not hinting at its politics, though that is an interesting topic all on its own.

I was eating at this Indian vegetarian restaurant just a few weeks back, and I decided to go for something familiar: a rawang dosa (slightly spiced Indian pancake), and for the gravy, I asked the waiter for dahl (peanut-based curry).

However, what arrived in a little silver bowl neither looked nor tasted like the dahl I knew. My dad, who was sitting across the table read the confused look on my face.

"That," He pointed at the curry, "Is the real dahl. The one that you normally eat is called samar with green mustard and chili, which originated from South India"

This took me a while to digest. So food is not really what it seems to be here in Kuala Lumpur. I recall eating a dish in a Chinese restaurant that looked like chicken, felt like chicken, tasted like chicken; but to my horror I discovered that I had just ingested a toad, steamed with ginger and herbs.

If that is the case, what other nonsense are we Malaysians eating? Is our lamb chop really made of lamb as the Americans know it, or is it (gasp) marinated beef in special sauce? I rushed to a Vietnamese friend of mine to share this shocking discovery. He treated me to a disk of pork to calm down. However as I ate the meat, I noticed that he was grinning like an idiot.

"What's up?" I asked, mouth full of meat.

"That," he pointed at the meat, "Is dog meat."