www.Go To The Mountain - Musings of a Potential Guru

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he will sit in his boat drinking beer all day. When you do not know what else to eat and wanted a simple yet healthy meal, go for fish soup or fish porridge. There are some very popular stalls at Newton, Toa Payoh, Whampoa, Queenstreet, Amoy Street and you can even find good ones in the heartlands and the best fish to me is still the Batang fish (or Spanish Mackerel). It has no fishy smell, is sweet and juicy with a great texture but they are costly, easily fetching from $5 to $8 a bowl. Not only that. You won't get big chunky slices no matter how generous the hawkers.  Fisherman by profession is a tough life. You may think they get lots of dough for their catch but they offload them to wholesalers for auction and then they got to the market. It's not like they can get Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods to do the adverts and pay huge amount, thankfully no. Therefore, a better way is to get your own fi...

I used to know many friends from childhood who grew up from the same vicinity. They were living in Kim Keat, Jalan Bahagia, Jalan Tenteram and later Toa Payoh. Oh yes, we mustn't forget Whampoa. Kim Keat Kim Keat used to have a primary school and behind it a vocational institute, a precursor to our current ITE. Primary school students are not allowed to go to the vocational school but I broke the rule once when I heard they had a canteen (known previously as tuck shop) stall that served the best mee rebus. It was true! The old houses just outside the school are low lying types, unpretentious and promoted good neighbourliness due to the way it was built. There was a pushcart stall peddling coconut and pineapple drinks just outside the school's main gate, you know the kind of pineapple where they let you dip in dark soy sauce with red cut chili in them and was every one's favourite?  Just next to the school was a government clinic which nobody liked as we went th...