Motormouth From Ipoh – Malaysian Food & Travel

The past week in New Zealand had me diving off the plane at a mind-blowing height of 15,000 feet, chomping on delicious lamb, beef and gigantic burgers, sipping hot chocolate with marshmallow, cups after cups of brewed coffee and local wine, as well as tooth-numbing onslaught of fudges, chocolates, churros and more.

There are tonnes of stories that I wish to share with you today, but the crappy Internet connection as of late plus lethargy started to kick in got my brains a bit woozy all morning. Yeah …. and this corrupted mind has not been thinking straight all this while anyway.

Will be back in action within a week. Off to Ho Chi Minh City for work in a few hours’ time. Guess the effort to stay away from beef won’t work after all.

Happy Sunday dear readers!

*For more of Motormouth’s travel tales, hop over to  the Travelogue section. 

“3.3.13.” 5 Years in the Making.

Today is a milestone for Motormouth From Ipoh, no doubt. Tell me back then when I first penned my lunatic thoughts in 2008 that I will still be writing in 2013, I would have laughed it off.

My attention span usually does not permit me to stay in focus for that long. But miraculously, I did. Partly thanks to YOU who’s reading this. You have my gratitude for keeping the passion to eat and share alive.

While I collect my thoughts on life and ponder over the future directions of this space, I’ll leave you with a podcast aired on Business FM 89.9 back in Jan 2013.

The subject was “Is Blogging the New Standard for Food Reviews?” and that most annoying voice on air was of yours truly; Motormouth From Ipoh. Sorry for the delay in publishing this but I missed that when it was aired and did not bother to listen to myself actually. Click HERE for the link to the website where you can listen online or download the podcast.

For the other stories published on 3rd March of previous years;

2009 – The Hanoi Travel Chapter
2010 – The Old Town Kopitiam Saga
2011 – A Simple Soy Sauce Braised Chicken Story
2012 – Or Tor Kor Market, Bangkok

So, how has the Lunar New Year been treating you thus far? Were you part of the crowd enjoying some Gangnam lurve up north? Or frolicking rolling on the streets in KL or on your knees thanking heavens above for the brief escape from reality of no traffic jams?!

Everywhere else was a blast I am sure. Loud fireworks, dancing lions, snakey tunes (U-la-la …. it rolls off the tongue rather fine now, though it was a pretty cringe-inducing endeavour the first listen), politicians with a sudden interest in drumming and learning the Chinese language, while some others have become YouTube darlings with tongue-in-cheek rendition of daring (to make a change) tunes.

Dahfa Fish Fillets can be tied into knots, deep fried and resulting in a very addictive snack!

To most others, yours truly in this bracket obviously, the festive season revolves around more eating than the usual days. Traditionally, we ate kuih kapit (so-called love letters; those fan-shaped crispy thin snacks), nian gao (sweetened sticky rice cakes), pineapple tarts and popped groundnuts.

But then again, humans revolutionize anything and everything. Evolution of modern CNY snacks include fried arrowroot chips (nga ku), crabsticks/filament sticks, seaweed with beancurd sheets, and even sliced lotus roots (ling ngau). But how about Dahfa fish fillets (a ready-to-eat snack to begin with) or fresh potato chips?

Read the rest of this entry »

THE “LAST” FEAST?

Felt like forever since I last wrote about Ipoh food, ain’t it? Thought that I could be running out of ideas on what to eat back home? Close ….

But no cigars.

It has been more than a month since my last homecoming. I can barely remember details nowadays; everything runs at an extremely sluggish rate with foggy recollection of the nitty-gritty happenings merely passing through the mind. Work has been slightly unforgiving this December. The last deadline ever?

Or could this be a sign of growing old?! Maybe. Or the imposing aura of the Apocalypse? Who knows? But here I am; sipping on warm syrup laced with ginger and screwpine leaves (pandan, to you and me) with bobbing balls made from glutinous rice flour; in white (filled with crushed peanuts and sugar) and pink; with less than an hour to go before the clock strikes twelve; proving once and for all ….. that this IS a new beginning rather than an abrupt end.

Welcome back Motormouth, and here’s to more food stories from Ipoh in the coming days. Read the rest of this entry »

I posted the shot above on All About Ipoh sometime ago, and this image almost brought tears to many pair of eyes. A little too melodramatic? Maybe.

But not if you are a child of the 80′s and spent most of your childhood and teenage days shopping at Super Kinta, or gradually developing the slight-rebellious nature and ventured over to Kompleks Yik Foong for the arcade games after school. I am sure you can relate to the heart-wrenching tales of how this Ipoh landmark tried desperately to stay relevant in the late 90′s, yet succumbing to the modern charm of Ipoh Parade and Jusco Kinta City sometime around 2003.

This post is a compilation of images taken at the former Super Kinta and its vicinity last weekend. Gather your parents, grandparents or even great grandparents if you will. And grab that tissue box, just in case. Let’s talk a walk down memory lane …….. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever wondered who Motormouth really is? Or where I came from? (From the womb la … duh. But I mean as in which part of Ipoh?) It has always tickled my fancy; revealing my identity to old school mates, friends, colleagues or even relatives whom have chanced upon this blog, or led to here (more like misled) by fellow hungry peers.

“You like to eat so much meh? Never seen you eat also …”

“Wait. You write on Motormouth From Ipoh? But I thought you had a day job!! My sympathies …”

“Don’t bluff la …. you don’t seem to be the kind who can even string a proper sentence together! Talk nonsense oklah …”

On that note, I’ll leave you with my monochrome epilogue of Pasir Puteh market in Ipoh. The place where I was born and raised until I was 12 years old. Childhood memories are deemed the most precious; naive thoughts and joyful sentiments cherished until the day one takes his last breath. Read the rest of this entry »

I guess throughout my four years of blogging, the past few days have been the most devastating. Almost immediately after the teaser on Saigon, Google banned my website with a warning to all visitors; indicating malware detected somewhere embedded within the site.

Thanks to Boo for relaying the message to me through Whatsapp as I was caught completely unaware of the situation.

Of course, being one endowed with IT knowledge equivalent to an empty barrel of hot air, I struggled to understand even half of what the warning message stated. Or whatever the good people of ServerFreak (where this blog is still being hosted) and the ever-helpful Ken tried to engrave upon this thick skull of mine.

Being an opportunist, I chose to let loose and chilled for a good few days. Some folks over at the Facebook page did express their concern over the mishap. Thank you. No cause for concern yet, as I have no intention of shutting this blog down for the time being.

That being said, this battered soul certainly need a break. Allow me to set things right and meddle with the blog’s layout, theme, fonts and bits that I have worked for months before. And now everything’s back to square one.

I promise that Motormouth From Ipoh will be back. Bigger and better than ever. Happy Weekend, and don’t forget to EAT.