This, folks, represents my culinary raison d’être – the world famous Seremban Beef Noodles, otherwise known (in Cantonese) as Ngau Lam Fun; one of countless childhood memories that finally lured me away from IT consultancy and into food full-time some 17 years ago. To expand on that a little, the reason I got into this “food thing” was partly to recreate the food of my years of growing up in Malaysia, and partly to preserve street food recipes that run the risk of getting lost with the passing of the old guard.

Seremban wasn’t much more than a sleepy former mining town back in the day, but this dish (along with Seremban Siew Pao – baked buns), sold at the Pasar Besar Seremban (wet market) brought travellers from as far away as Singapore to savour it. For years, there was talk about people persistently offering large sums of money to the stall owner for the recipe, only to get persistently rebuffed.

This is where I step in – well, actually my stepmom – she was the one who hacked the recipe after we moved to Australia, and I ended up adding it to my restaurant menu (if you don’t know my backstory – no, I no longer own a restaurant; I gave it up in 2013 to look after my severely disabled baby, Noah).

Recipe below involves a degree of guesstimating (agak-agak) because, well, that’s how I roll.

Seremban Beef Noodles

INGREDIENTS:

3kg beef bones
1kg chicken bones
5L water

Meat marinade –

2kg beef brisket, cut into 2” strips
2 Tbsps sesame oil
2 Tbsps thick soy
2 ½ Tbsps chicken stock granules
2 tsps five spice powder
80ml light soy
2 TBS cooking wine
150mls sugar
1 Tbsp ground pepper
1 cup water

Sauce 1 –

1/3 cup oil
2 Tbsps garlic
2/3 cup sugar
3 Tbsps chicken powder
3 Tbsps water + 3 Tbsps tapioca flour (optional)
Meat marinade from pressure cooker

Sauce 2 –

2 Tbsps oil
1 Tbsp garlic
1 Tbsp oyster sauce
1 ½ Tbsps chicken stock granules
½ TBS pepper
1L beef stock
4 Tbsps tapioca flour + 4 Tbsps water

Tapioca rice noodles
Salted mustard leaves
Peanuts, skin on – roasted or deep-fried
Sesame seeds, roasted
Coriander leaves and spring onion for garnishing

METHOD:

1. Make beef stock by simmering beef and chicken bones for at least 2-3 hours.
2. Combine beef brisket with marinade ingredients; pressure cook until tender.
3. To make sauce 1 (dark sauce), heat oil, then add garlic and saute.
4. Add beef and meat marinade from pressure cooker.
5. Add sugar and chicken powder, simmer until thickened.
6. Add tapioca starch & water mixture to thicken further, if necessary.
7. Remove beef and allow to cool, then slice.
8. To make sauce 2 (light sauce), heat oil, then add garlic and saute, followed by oyster sauce.
9. Add beef stock, chicken powder and pepper and bring to a simmer.
10. Thicken with tapioca starch & water mixture.
11. Separately blanch tapioca rice noodles (aka rice spaghetti), then serve topped with beef slices, both sauces, salted mustard leaves, roasted peanuts and sesame seeds.
12. Serve with a side of beef soup made by seasoning beef stock with a sprinkling of chicken powder and white pepper.

My Live Asian Kitchen is made possible with the support of the following –

The post How to Make Seremban Beef Noodles (Ngau Lam Fun) first appeared on Jackie M..

I went through a spell when I would bake this bread 2-3 times a week; however, it’d been months since I stopped doing so at the time of this Live Asian Kitchen broadcast, so I kind of messed up one of the steps. Just a heads-up. Another heads-up – the pics of the bread in this post were from early efforts at the recipe; they should really look a lot fluffier and lighter.

Hainanese Bread

INGREDIENTS:

110g bread flour

125ml water

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270g bread flour

20g bread improver

8g yeast

2 Tbsps sugar

1 tsp salt

100ml water

50g butter

METHOD:

1. 1. Combine 110g bread flour and 125ml water; mix well and cook, stirring, until it reaches 65’C. Much easier if you own a Thermocook or a Thermomix, which is how I do this step. This is called tang zhong and it should look like a paste. Allow to cool.

1. 1. Combine all other ingredients in a dough mixer, add the tang zhong, and knead for 20 minutes. Dough should be elastic.

1. 1. Remove dough hook, cover and rest the dough until doubled in size.

1. 1. Transfer dough onto work surface and flatten into a rectangular shape about 7×4 inches.

1. 1. Roll up the long end of the dough, then transfer into a deep and tall bread tin with straight sides. I don’t actually own a tin like that so I used to rig my regular bread tin with 6 chopsticks held together with kitchen string to create height. It didn’t always work so in this video I used cardboard wrapped in foil. If you can’t be bothered you could split the dough into 2 bread pans (I often did that too).

1. 1. Allow dough to proof until it’s risen 3x in height.

1. Bake for 40 minutes at 190’C.

Visit www.prestigehomeappliances.com.au for more information about the Optimum Thermocook

The post How to Make Hainanese Bread first appeared on Jackie M..

Since I don’t eat pork, I’ve never actually eaten it. I’m not exactly going in blind however; I grew up seeing what it looks like and how it smells etc.

Here’s my Twitch broadcast where I used chicken mince and also made the noodles from scratch >>

Hakka Noodle Mince

INGREDIENTS:

500g chicken mince

5 cloves garlic, minced

½ cup mushrooms, diced (preferably reconstituted dried Chinese mushrooms)

⅓ cup oil

2 Tbsps sesame oil

1 Tbsp chicken powder

½ Tbsp fish sauce

2 Tbsps oyster sauce

1 tsp white pepper

⅔ cup water

METHOD:

1. Heat oil in pan, then add garlic and saute until aromatic.
2. Add chicken mince and diced mushrooms; break up the chicken mince while stirring.
3. Add seasoning ingredients and mix well.
4. Add water and simmer until chicken is cooked through.
5. Mix with separately-blanched noodles and serve hot with sliced preserved green chillies & soya sauce.

Hakka Noodles

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups strong flour

1 tsp lye water

1 tsp salt

⅔ cup water

METHOD:

1. Combine ingredients in a dough mixer and knead well. You may need to transfer onto a flat surface and finish kneading if the dough doesn’t come together in the dough mixer.
2. Rest for 1 hour, covered.
3. Cut into small pieces then roll into thin sheets using pasta roller, starting with the largest setting and gradually working to the thinnest.
4. Cut into ⅔ cm wide strips and cook in salted boiling water until they float to the surface.
5. Remove with sieve and serve with the chicken mince.

The post How to Make Seremban Hakka Noodles (Non-Pork Version) first appeared on Jackie M..

This is my stepmom’s recipe which is influenced by the beef rendang style of my home state of Negeri Sembilan, but with her own “Chinese” twist to it through the use of soya sauce.

Beef Rendang Recipe

INGREDIENTS:

• 500g beef, sliced
• 3 onions, peeled and quartered
• 6 dried chillies, boiled with water until soft
• 6 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1 stick lemongrass (bottom 5 inches)
• 4-5 Tbsp curry powder
• 1 Tbsp Knorr chicken powder
• 1 Tbsp soya sauce
• 5 Tbsp cooking oil
• 3 Tbsp sugar
• 2 cups coconut cream
• 1 cup water

METHOD:

1. Coat beef with curry powder.
2. Puree chillies in blender with about ¼ cup water.
3. Add lemongrass, onion, garlic and blend into a paste.
4. Transfer into wok or deep pan and saute for a minute or two to reduce the moisture in the paste.
5. Add oil and fry another 3-4 minutes, then add  beef slices.
6. Mix well, then add seasoning. Fry until oil starts to separate.
7. Add small amounts of coconut cream and water, and keep stirring.
8. Cover the wok intermittently if using tougher cuts of meat, but turn the heat down when doing so, and continue to stir occasionally to prevent burning/sticking.
9. Cook until meat is tender and most of the liquid is absorbed.

The post How to Cook Beef Rendang from My Malaysian Home State (Negeri Sembilan) first appeared on Jackie M..

This is a famous snack from my Malaysian hometown of Seremban and in this recipe I’m using chicken mince as the filling. These instructions work on a Thermocook or a Thermomix, but in their absence you can use a dough mixer for the dough and a saucepan + stove for the filling.

Seremban Chicken Siew Pao (Baked Chicken Buns) Recipe

• 500g chicken mince
• 20ml light soy sauce
• 25ml thick soy sauce
• 3/4 Tbsp chicken stock granules
• 1/2 Tbsp hoi sin sauce
• a dash of pepper
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 75 g fried onion
• 150 ml water

• 240 g strong flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 120 g butter
• 60 ml water
• 30 ml sugar
• 1 tsp lemon juice

• 130 g plain flour
• 100 g butter

1. Combine all ingredients except fried onions in the mixing bowl, cook at Speed 3 @ 100°C for 15 minutes.
2. Add fried onions and cook a further 5 minutes; adjust seasoning as required.

For the dough –

1. Combine all water dough ingredients in mixing bowl, knead at Speed 3 for 4 minutes. Remove.
2. Combine butter and flour for butter dough in mixing bowl, knead at Speed 3 for one minute. Make sure not to mix for too long or the dough will turn into a mousse-like texture; it should be fairly firm.

For the chicken siew pao –

1. Portion the butter dough into balls 3 cm in diameter and the water dough at double the size. Wrap butter dough in water dough, then roll into an oblong strip. Roll up the strip of dough, turn 90° and roll out again. Roll up into a cylinder, then turn on its side and flatten with rolling pin into a flat, round shape.
2. Fill with 2 tsps filling and seal the edges. Bake in pre-heated oven for 20 mins at 200°C; remove and brush with egg yolk and milk mixture, return to oven for another 20 minutes. Remove and serve.

The post How to Make Seremban Chicken Siew Pao first appeared on Jackie M..

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I’ve never been hugged by my dad.  Growing up, I was under no illusion that I was anywhere near the favourite of his 9 kids.

I thought he was harsh, dictatorial, mean-spirited; I couldn’t stand watching him pander to those with social standing.  I was appalled when he once grabbed a little Indian kid out of the Odeon by the ear and told him never to come back.  The kid had been hawking curry puffs from a basket and the way my dad saw it, was threatening our own livelihood.

He was never quite sure how old I was, let alone remember my birthdays.  He once threatened to break my legs for wearing shorts.  It was a rough relationship and I used it to milk for sympathy from anyone who would listen.

Ironically it took a privileged Scandinavian to help me see things from a different perspective.  I had relayed these stories to Steffen (my boyfriend at the time) in anticipation that it would win me some brownie points; his response took me aback and somewhat annoyed me.

Yes, but did he remember ANY of his kids’ birthdays?  Did he hug ANY of his kids?  Never having met my dad, Steffen, at all of 21, was nevertheless wise enough to the fact that my dad probably had a tough upbringing and A LOT of responsibilities AND was of a different era and culture where affection was not freely displayed etc. etc. etc.  But, but, but – what about his tolerance towards some of my other siblings’ perceived misbehaviour and hardline towards mine?  By that stage, even I knew I was splitting hairs.

My dad, Wa Koy Tang, was born in 1927 in Malaysia from immigrant Chinese parents.  His dad was an alcoholic who died when my dad was some 13 years of age.   Dad had to leave school to take up the breadwinner mantle for the family, having only completed primary school education.

There are gaps in my knowledge of his early years; I know he was sent to labour camp during the Japanese occupation of Malaya, where he worked for a not-completely-evil Japanese industrialist.

He was fed a diet solely comprised of yam which made his face swell up – it gave his mom some relief when she finally got to see him after a long absence, thinking he must have been well-fed by his oppressors, when in fact he was severely malnourished and at the brink of death.  It was also during this stint in the labour camp that he developed an injury to his knee that was to haunt him late in life.

His marriage to my mom was pre-arranged; he met her when she first got off the boat from China – they were both kids back then.  He laughed when he relayed in his twilight years that he thought at the time she was really ugly, with buck teeth.

My parents went on to have 10 kids, 9 of whom made it to adulthood.  My dad worked 20-hour days 7 days a week – that’s 20 hours of hard, physical labour.  He started out selling street food; was enterprising enough to diversify, eventually taking up a canteen at the Odeon Cinema.

He borrowed money from friends to buy a bus and start a school bus run.  He then started a factory bus run.  He ran most of these ventures at the same time.  On top of that, he somehow managed to find time to learn, and excel in, martial arts.  And lead a martial arts school in Seremban, earning him the title of “Tang Sifu” (Master Tang) among his followers.

He even travelled to Port Dickson some twenty miles away once a week to teach additional night classes there.  And he’d hire his bus to daytrippers on weekends driving them to the beachside resort of Port Dickson or to KL.

As a kid, I once found a very nice sketch of a girl back when we were living in Templer Flats.  I tried to cut her out with a pair of scissors so I could play dress-ups with her, but with my poor scissor skills, I accidentally chopped her head off.  Growing up in relative poverty does not preclude one from throwing a tantrum, and I did – I wanted whoever drew that picture to do another one.

Nobody owned up to it, so my stepmom helpfully tried to replicate the drawing to appease me.  Her sketch was awful and I bawled my eyes out.  It wasn’t until many years later that I found out the mystery artist was in fact my dad.

I’ll never fully learn the scope of my dad’s talents.  I know that despite having very little education, he could speak every Chinese dialect, some of which are so obscure I’ve (still) never heard of them.  He could communicate in Malay and seemed to have a better and quicker grasp of English on arrival in Australia than his much younger wife, despite never having learned them formally.

Back in Malaysia he would watch English movies and TV shows without subtitles and understand the entire plot and get the gist of the dialogue without knowing the language.  My dad never had the privilege of education, never had the luxury of indulging in his creativity and exploring his potential; he worked himself nearly to death, driving his buses till, on many occasions, he could no longer keep his eyes open.

And when it came to the dinner table, he always let his family eat first, claiming he was full until there were only scraps left for him.  Only when my stepmom threatened to throw out the leftovers, would he reluctantly eat up.  This pattern of behaviour continued his entire life, even when his kids were all grown up and we were no longer impoverished or in danger of ever going hungry again.

In “throwing away” all my higher education and promising career to pursue my passion for Malaysian food, my dad was the ONLY person in my family who seemed to get it.  My family doesn’t get it; my stepmom with her occasional nagging about my waste of a good education, and the deafening silence and lack of moral support from most other quarters are the kind of stuff I’ve resigned myself to.

And yet, the gleam in my dad’s eyes when he occasionally inquired about how things were going made it all worthwhile – he’d ask with a smile about adding this dish or that dish to my repertoire, reminisce about his own experience in selling the same dishes back in his younger days.

The first time I was featured in a half-page spread in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Living section, he laminated a copy of it and kept it as a souvenir.

My dad is dying.  He’s suffering from dementia and doesn’t have much time left.  He sleeps most of the day and my stepmom looks after him.  He shows signs of lucidity once in awhile, eg. when interacting with baby Noah, even if I doubt he really knows who he is.

Recently at family dinner, my brother-in-law who’s been in Australia probably about half a century, tried to crack a joke by speaking very broken Malay to my dad.

He gave up when he couldn’t remember the Malay word for “fishing”.  My dad, seeming to be in his own little world up to that point, piped up – “pancing ikan!”  Happy Father’s day, Dad.  I love you.

The post Tang Sifu first appeared on Jackie M..

They don’t call me The Curry Nazi for no reason.

My dad told me when he first started out, his family was so incredibly poor that he had to borrow money to buy a pack of cigarettes, break it open, then sell each stick individually on the streets.

His younger sister would be right beside him, and once he made a sale, she would beg the buyer to also consider buying a box of matches.  Some customers would buy them out of pity.

Packs of matches were like 5 cents when I used to work at the Odeon 30-plus years ago;  I imagine they were even cheaper in his day.  It breaks my heart to think of how desperate they must have been.

My legendary lack of patience dealing with customers stems in large part from the stories of my parents’ tough beginnings, and also from observing my dad in particular kowtow to people who held his financial destiny in his hands.

One prime example was my dad’s deference to the Odeon cinema’s general manager. Despite constantly humiliating my dad by scolding him in public over God-knows-what petty little thing and threatening to raise his rent (which he did on a regular basis), my dad always apologized.  The GM was given free run of our canteen so it became his personal candy bar.

This general manager converted to Christianity after we left for Australia, and even came to visit us once, a much humbler and gentler person in his old age.  Back in the day, though, I hated his guts, and that of everyone else who abused their position of power and made life tough for my parents.

To this day I tend to instinctively be very borderline disrespectful of people in positions of authority and in turn I get along great with kitchen staff anywhere around the world where I’m invited to guest-chef.

The post The Hard Sell first appeared on Jackie M..

I remember a boy, Bernard Wong, taking  a liking to me and bringing me candy every day.  We hung out.  Then one day, he started getting obnoxious.  I think he’d even been giving me money, and suddenly he wanted it all back.

I tried to brush him off but he kept tailing me and getting in my face all day.  Every time I tried to walk away, he would follow me.

I started walking around the classroom in circles, but he kept tailing me, and when I walked faster, he did too.  I finally complained to the teacher and he was told to back off.  I still don’t know what his deal was.

Then in first grade (Standard 1) I started ‘proper’ school at Convent Primary on Birch Road.  We were randomly put into classes, and I was assigned to 1B.

Between the time my older sister started school five years prior and when I began, the government had changed the medium of instruction from English to Malay.  Not that it mattered to me as I knew neither language going in.

Some of my older siblings had attended Chinese-medium schools, but at some point, mom had had the foresight to put the rest of us through English/Malay-medium schools.

My textbooks were hand-me-downs from my older sister.  There were pages that were ripped out of it, and others that were torn and missing part of the page.  Min Foong painstakingly filled out the missing pages of text and pictures with her hand-drawn efforts and taped them into my books.

I remember we were given a list of things we needed to bring every day.  One of them was colouring pencils.  I didn’t have a set; I don’t know if we couldn’t afford it, or if I just never dared ask my dad for it.  Every time we had to pull them out to use in class, I had to ask to borrow them from the girl across from me.

Unfortunately, not being able to speak English, I struggled for the right words.  I remember being confused even as I said, ‘Can you let me your colour pencils?’ – simultaneously thinking there was something wrong with the sentence, and being inclined to say ‘lend’ instead of ‘let’, but not knowing why.

Not having consciously come across the word ‘lend’, I didn’t think it existed.   There’s a lot to be said for subliminally learning stuff from our new TV, I guess.

Then came the tests.  I nailed every single one of them.  I was scoring 99-100% pretty much across the board.  I realised, at 7, after a childhood of living in the shadow of my sisters, that I had a gift.

Some kids in my class got 0%.  That was very perplexing to me.  I was taking a shower when I got home, when I yelled out to Yin-chee (‘sister’ Yin, our servant-girl who was to marry my dad) and Min Foong, ‘Can you believe some kids got 0%?  They’re so dumb!’

It seemed to me that the wrath of the heavens immediately descended upon me.  ‘How dare you call anyone dumb?!

You’re going to be the dumb one and you’ll regret it for the rest of your life!’  The verbal tirade went on, it seemed, forever.

I couldn’t understand why they were so mad, but it shut me up for good.  As I got a little older I realised my older sister pretty much sucked at school, so I took solace in the fact that she’d been mad probably because the truth had hit a bit too close to home.

The post Starting School – Seremban first appeared on Jackie M..

There was one toilet, which doubled as a dark room – my brother Choong Fee had taken up photography and had converted it into his personal photo-processing lab.

I remember the thick black curtain which we had to draw aside to get into the toilet, the funny lights, the chemicals, the trays and all the negatives hanging from the toilet ceiling.

I remember the narrow balcony where the neighbourhood kids and I would hang out on, with our legs dangling through the rather wide rails , looking down at the activity 11 floors below.

Sometimes the kids would stick their heads through the rails for a laugh.  I tried but couldn’t because of my over-sized head.  I think I did manage to get it through once but got stuck and needed help to pull out again.  My big head was a running joke in those days.

There were eight apartments on each floor, all lined up in a straight row, and 2 elevators to service the building.  Except for a couple of pot plants, there was almost no greenery.  I never saw a caterpillar until I was probably about 8 or 10, and I remember the first time I did, I thought about it for a second before deciding I was terrified of them.  They freak me out to this day.

We played with the kids on our floor, in a pseudo-communal environment.  One day, my sister Min Foong, five years older than me, came home crying.  My mom asked what was wrong and she said one of the kids wouldn’t let her watch TV at their place.  That upset my mom.

We didn’t have a TV and had been freeloading off them for our TV fix each night.

My mom was our strongest advocate and most tenacious defender.  I remember she saw me crying once and asked what was wrong.  I said one of the other kids had been mean.

He was the resident bully on our floor, and had picked on me lots of times before.  But not that time.  To this day I don’t know why I said what I did.  Anyway, my mom stormed up to his and got into a fight with her because of me and my lie.

Back to the TV thing; that’s the story of how we ended up buying our very first, black and white TV.   My mom was a proud woman and protective of her children.

There were 9 of us, and yet I never felt from her that there was not enough love to go around.  She loved us equally and in great abundance, something I would miss for the rest of my childhood.

Disney’s Jungle Book was playing at the The Odeon, our local cinema, at the time.  On top of his photography, Choong Fee was a gifted artist.  My dad sewed a cover for our new TV and Choong Fee painted it with characters from that movie and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs .  It was exquisite.  This is a pic of me posing next to our new TV.  Below it is a pic of playtime in the narrow corridor of my apartment floor, with my sister Chooi in the foreground.

The post The TV first appeared on Jackie M..

At 15, I’d had a personality transplant; from a mild, soft-spoken and obedient kid, I’d turned into a  take-no-prisoners Hakka warrior overnight.

I was ready to pick a fight with anyone, anywhere, and thanks to spending most of my time working at the Odeon, it generally meant the hodge-podge group of cinema ushers recruited, I was sure, based on their talent to piss me off.

I’d had an uneasy relationship with the cinema staff almost from Day One.  I remember early on at the ripe old age of eight, taking an instant dislike to one of the guys there – he seemed a bit too friendly and it gave me bad vibes.

One day I spotted some graffiti on one of the posters on the outside wall next to our canteen – it looked like something one of the other ushers had scribbled for a laugh. It mentioned a name, which I forget, but let’s say – Bob – and the message said –

‘Bob is sexy’.

I was disgusted and horrified at the same time – at that young age, having only started to learn English at school, I was convinced it wasn’t a good thing.  After all, ‘sexy’ came from the word ‘sex’ – and ‘sex’ was ‘bad’ – therefore, whoever ‘Bob’ was, must be some sort of sexual deviant.

So I asked one of the ushers – ‘Who’s this Bob? Is it him?’, pointing at bad-vibes boy.  He laughed and said yes.

That did it for me.  It confirmed all my suspicions about ‘Bob’.  I made it a point to be blunt and rude to him, and made sure he couldn’t get anywhere near me.

I even took pains to explain it to my younger sister and warn her about him.  It wasn’t until years later that I found out he wasn’t ‘Bob’ at all – it was actually the guy I’d asked the question to – so, not only had I maligned someone due to my lack of English comprehension, I’d done it to the wrong person.

I wonder if he ever puzzled over why I was so hostile towards him all those years.

One of the veteran staff there was nicknamed ‘Bengali’ by everyone – I never knew why – he was Chinese and bald and didn’t have any Indian blood in him as far as I could tell.  He even lived onsite, in a little storeroom upstairs plastered with old movie posters.

He was fond of me to the point of obsession, for some inexplicable reason.  Every time he saw me, he would sing out my name loudly – ‘Nyok! Nyoooook! Ah Nyooook’ – and just keep doing so all hours of the day.  I was pretty sure he was a bit crazy.

He would sit on the 6-inch ledge in front of our canteen during his breaks, enjoying his cigarettes . Every now and then, he would sneak me a movie poster pulled down from the billboards.

This was highly illegal, since they were meant to be shipped back to the film distributors at the end of the movie run.  I’ve often wondered what happened to him after we moved to Australia.

Back to Mr. forgot-to-say-please for his change, he was at the top of my list of ushers I despised.  I’d had a few verbal altercations with him in the past.  This time though, I felt he’d gone too far.

Thanks, I guess, to my family’s survival instinct to avoid having our canteen lease terminated (a constant implied threat by what I saw as the tyrannical management) I never witnessed anyone else confront him about his behaviour.  I had no such compunction about doing so.

‘Mahu tukar (Want change)?’  Here’s your bloody change, I thought – and I flung the coins hard on the stainless steel counter.  As predicted, they went flying everywhere – some hitting him on the face and others bouncing on to the floor.  He totally lost it.

He tried to grab me over the counter, and failing that, dashed around it to enter our canteen, procuring a sharp knife on his way (on top of candy and drinks, we used to sell cut fruit, hence the presence of knives).  He pinned me against the wall and held the knife to my neck, completely out of control.

I groped around for something to fight back with, but the only thing within reach was a sad little bottle opener suspended on a string.  I clutched it and held it against his neck in return – resulting in a knife vs bottle opener standoff, if you can picture it.

Everyone was freaking out (except me – I was all in despite my obviously inferior weapon).

It ended when he got dragged away by some of the bystanders.

Invariably, the General Manager heard about the commotion and summoned my poor stepmom into his office for what I presumed would be a dressing down plus more threats about kicking us out.

Apparently all he told her was to let us know not to fight with his staff.

Or maybe that’s just what my stepmom told me in case I decided to go all Hakka warrior on the GM as well.

This particular usher never bothered me again after that incident.

The post Bob is Sexy first appeared on Jackie M..