Kuih Balu

I was out shopping for Chinese New Year goodies when I realised what a joke was made out of my mom's favourite cake.

Mom was making a special lookout for this sort of small tea cake, because my brothers loved it too. It's a shame that I didn't know what it is called, until now. I only remember my aunt used to give a lot of these to us when we were small. Mom said it's called kuih balu, or 鸡蛋糕.


We saw the kuih balu in almost every mall or cake shop we went to.

"Is this kuih balu?" Mom asked.
"No, it's kuih bulu." I answered.
"But it looks like kuih balu to me."
I pointed at the label "Kuih Bulu".

Next shop.

"Look ma, this one's kuih balu on the label."
"Yes, yes, it is."

Next shop.

"This one's kuih baulu, ma."
"Eh?"

Next shop.

"This one's kuih balulu, ma."
"Ehh??"
We burst out laughing.


It turns out that the kuih balu mom's been searching for has its name morphed into several variations. This led me to think about how the spoken language of a language can affect the language itself. One possible combination could be this: someone heard it as kuih balu; the next person as kuih baulu; then another as kuih balulu. Therefore, in the Malay language, there are 4 possible nouns denoting the same tea cake. (Or perhaps more?)

According to a native Indonesian, the original name of the cake is kuih bulu. Then again, how would I know if this is truly original? Others, like my mom, might argue kuih bulu is just but another accidental spoken derivative of kuih balu.

Anyway, that's for linguists to find out.

For now, I'm very contented savouring the fragrant sweetness of my 鸡蛋糕 :P

Ayam Penyet House

This morning I read in the Straits Times about how Google serves gloriously delicious and healthy free lunch for its employees (check out the pics here!).

It's an attempt to keep the employees satisfied during working hours which in turn improves productivity.

And I totally agree with it!

Lunch time is a great stress buster; it's timeout from all that coding to let the eyes (and tummy) rest on food, oh glorious food. Luckily for me, there are several great places to makan in the vicinity of my workplace. And it certainly helps that I have colleagues who knows what good food is and where to find them :p

Here, I shall introduce the Ayam Penyet House, which serves authentic Indonesian cuisine.

This is ikan bawal penyet (smashed pomfret).. the pomfret is probably covered up by the chilli and dried prawn seasoning..

this is empal penyet (smashed beef).. the beef is also covered up..

and I ordered soto (chicken soup) with rice due to a bad stomach that day.


On another day, we tried the Lontong Cap Go Meh.

'What in the world is Cap Go Meh?', I asked my colleague. It turns out Cap Go Meh is 十五夜 (quite close to how it's said in Hokkien), which means the fifteenth of the lunar month. So, as you might have guessed, the Chinese Indons have this sort of lontong on the fifteenth of the lunar month.

The lontong is a delightful mix of rice cakes, drumstick, salted tofu and chicken insides all dipped in a kind of sweet curry gravy. I gave the extra chilli a miss, though. But it was still really yummy :p

The strange thing was that no one ordered the ayam penyet. Haa.. But I've tried it before, it's really yummy too. I'll post the pics when I lunch there again.