the one with food and lesson learned

after the meeting with ICGGS (International Conference on Globalization, Governance, and Sustainability) committee ended, a few of us went out to eat @ Nasi Kandar Beratur. i wanna talk about this particular nasi kandar and the things that happened there. i've been living in Penang as a university student for almost 3 years already and that was the first time i went to eat there. and to tell ya, that nasi kandar is really popular and you literally have to line up (beratur) just to order it. haha. it's original nasi kandar and it tastes good. it's actually one of the few fine-taste nasi kandar i've eaten. the side dish is quite dense and concentrated. and that's whats good about it. compared to other mamak's which the side dishes are quite slushy. huhu... 

see this? the line will be like this for almost everyday. people even waited half an hour earlier (9.30PM) just to buy them. it's quite expensive though. i took nasi separuh, a fried chicken and veges with kuah campur = RM5.50. but it was worth the price anyway. 

when we first arrived there, there was this i dunno how to say, i don't wanna say that he's insane. he wandered around the area and shouted in terms of promoting the nasi kandar. the reason i don't wanna labeled him as a demented person was because deep down inside, he's just like the rest of us. maybe he's gone a little bit out of his mind but who's to say he's crazy? who's to say we're not crazy? people's definitions of crazy itself are subjective. we might think a guy who sleeps on the street, talks nonsense, wears dirty clothes and so on as a crazy guy but what about the guy himself? he might sees himself differently. his world is no doubt different than ours. maybe he's just so deep in his world that he tends to ignore the actual reality. it's his own parallel universe. sometimes i think that maybe one of these homeless guys is an anthropologist. being one of them in order to understand them. but who knows. my friend gave the guy a buck anyway. 

maybe it's like that

then while we ate, a child came to our table. he asked for alms (sedekah). i was really broke and i only had 10bucks in my wallet. i looked at him and he was just a child. this sort of thing is normal. my guess is that the kid has an adult looking out for him and at the same time ask the kid to go out and beg for money (employed beggars). i didn't give any since i myself was broke. my friend again gave the kid a buck. then the kid went to another table. this is where it got interesting. sat the table sat 4 young Malay guys maybe mid 20s i supposed. one guy asked the kid if he had dinner already and the kid hesitated.

"kalau belum makan pergi order, abang bayar" he said

i was like 'woooooowwwww'. why didn't i think of that. instead of giving the money, treat the kid a meal. often times, when we give money to someone whose in need, our intentions are good and we wanted them to make the best of it. but sometimes, the money ends up in a place where it's not supposed to. lets say, gambling table, gaming arcade and so on. what the guy did was noble and should i say creative. maybe i can do it sometimes, when my YPJ is in! which it is not in yet and i am super duper broke! ahaha